Unbelievable doubts (and other skeptical discoveries)
Date
2017-05-01
Authors
Faerber, Jonathan
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Abstract
Moral skeptics sometimes argue that science is at odds with morality. These arguments sometimes privilege scientific explanations of moral belief at the expense of objective moral knowledge. More specifically, since morality is (arguably) a biological adaptation involving belief, Richard Joyce and Sharon Street doubt the justification and objective truth of moral belief, respectively. This thesis defends objective normative facts from this empirical problem. Reasons for moral skepticism are not compatible with arguments against objective normativity. Put simply, without objective normativity, skeptics have no ultimate reason to doubt anything in particular, moral or otherwise. So, on pain of incoherence, moral skeptics should doubt the truth, rather than the objective normativity, of moral belief.
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Keywords
Normativity, Meta-ethics, Moral realism, Skepticism, Epistemology, Belief