Moral Disagreement and Moral Skepticism

Vavova, Katia

doi:10.1111/phpe.12049

Cited by 40 publications

(34 citation statements)

References 26 publications

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“…Even within philosophy, there might be less persistent disagreement than what seems to be the case at first glance (see Kornblith on logic and decision theory [31]: [40][41]. Katia Vavova argues that there is less peer disagreement than one might think even in ethics, at least if we focus on the more applied level, where moral philosophers discuss what to do [32]. For instance, animal ethicists converge over time on how to treat non-human animals, even though a utilitarian like Peter Singer and a Kantian like Christine Korsgaard reach their conclusions through different routes.…”

Section: Peer Disagreementmentioning

confidence: 99%

Retributivism, Justification and Credence: The Epistemic Argument Revisited

Jeppsson

2020

Neuroethics

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Harming other people is prima facie wrong. Unless we can be very certain that doing so is justified under the circumstances, we ought not to do it. In this paper, I argue that we ought to dismantle harsh retributivist criminal justice systems for this reason; we cannot be sufficiently certain that the harm is justified. Gregg Caruso, Ben Vilhauer and others have previously argued for the same conclusion; however, my own version sidesteps certain controversial premises of theirs. Harsh retributivist criminal justice can only be morally right if the following three propositions are true: Moral responsibility exists, retributivism is right, and we can find out how much punishment offenders deserve for their crimes. Suppose that we initially assign a high credence to each of the three propositions; I assume for the sake of argument that there are good arguments in support of each. Nevertheless, these arguments ultimately depend on intuitions. Since we have philosophical peers whose intuitions differ from ours, we ought to downgrade our credence in each. However, even slightly less credence in each proposition means far less credence in a conjunction of all three. Since the stakes are high and there are morally safer options for a criminal justice system, we ought to dismantle harsh retributivist ones.

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Section: Peer Disagreementmentioning

confidence: 99%

Retributivism, Justification and Credence: The Epistemic Argument Revisited

Jeppsson

2020

Neuroethics

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“…For sympathetic discussions of calibrationism and the closely related equal weight view of peer 16 disagreement, see, e.g., (Elga, 2007), (Christensen, 2010), (Sliwa and Horowitz, 2015) and (Vavova, 2014). For critical discussions, see, e.g., (Kelly, 2010), (Lasonen-Aarnio, 2014), (Schoenfield, 2015), and (Weatherson, MS).…”

Section: For By Strongmentioning

confidence: 99%

Perceptual Justification and the Cartesian Theater

Barnett¹

2019

Oxford Studies in Epistemology Volume 6

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According to a traditional Cartesian epistemology of perception, perception does not provide one with direct knowledge of the external world. Instead, your immediate perceptual evidence is limited to facts about your own visual experience, from which conclusions about the external world must be inferred. Cartesianism faces well-known skeptical challenges. But this chapter argues that any anti-Cartesian view strong enough to avoid these challenges must license a way of updating one’s beliefs in response to anticipated experiences that seems diachronically irrational. To avoid this result, the anti-Cartesian must either license an unacceptable epistemic chauvinism, or else claim that merely reflecting on one’s experiences defeats perceptual justification. This leaves us with a puzzle: Although Cartesianism faces problems, avoiding them brings a new set of problems.

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“…Katia Vavova (2014) has recently argued that, when we individuate disputes widely, conciliationism does not require spinelessness 11 . In fact, she thinks that this sort of conciliationism has attractive results: most importantly, it implies that disagreement is not an epistemic threat to our most intuitively secure moral beliefs.…”

Section: Individuating Disputes Widelymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In fact, she thinks that this sort of conciliationism has attractive results: most importantly, it implies that disagreement is not an epistemic threat to our most intuitively secure moral beliefs. Where her conciliationism does require revision of moral beliefs, Vavova argues, those revisions are independently well-motivated (2014: 325).…”

Section: Individuating Disputes Widelymentioning

confidence: 99%

Conciliationism and Moral Spinelessness

Fritz¹

2016

Episteme

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This paper presents a challenge to conciliationist views of disagreement. I argue that conciliationists cannot satisfactorily explain why we need not revise our beliefs in response to certain moral disagreements. Conciliationists can attempt to meet this challenge in one of two ways. First, they can individuate disputes narrowly. This allows them to argue that we have dispute-independent reason to distrust our opponents’ moral judgment. This approach threatens to license objectionable dogmatism. It also inappropriately gives deep epistemic significance to superficial questions about how to think about the subject matter of a dispute. Second, conciliationists can individuate disputes widely. This allows them to argue that we lack dispute-independent reason to trust our opponents’ moral judgment. But such arguments fail; our background of generally shared moral beliefs gives us good reason to trust the moral judgment of our opponents, even after we set quite a bit of our reasoning aside. On either approach, then, conciliationists should acknowledge that we have dispute-independent reason to trust the judgment of those who reject our moral beliefs. Given a conciliationist view of disagreement's epistemic role, this has the unattractive result that we are epistemically required to revise some of our most intuitively secure moral beliefs.

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Moral Disagreement and Moral Skepticism

Cited by 40 publications

References 26 publications

Retributivism, Justification and Credence: The Epistemic Argument Revisited

Retributivism, Justification and Credence: The Epistemic Argument Revisited

Perceptual Justification and the Cartesian Theater

Conciliationism and Moral Spinelessness

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