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In Defense of Best-Explanation Debunking Arguments in Moral Philosophy

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Abstract

We aim to develop a form of debunking argument according to which an agent’s belief is undermined if the reasons she gives in support of her belief are best explained as rationalizations. This approach is a more sophisticated form of what Shaun Nichols has called best-explanation debunking, which he contrasts with process debunking, i.e., debunking by means of showing that a belief has been generated by an epistemically defective process. In order to develop our approach, we identify an example of such a best-explanation debunking argument in Joshua Greene’s attack on deontology. After showing that this argument is not an instance of process debunking, we offer our best-explanation approach as a generalization of Greene’s argument. Finally, we defend our approach by showing that it is not susceptible to some criticisms that Nichols has leveled against a less sophisticated form of best-explanation debunking.

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Notes

  1. Nichols finds this kind of debunking argument defended in Joyce (2006) and Tersman (2008).

  2. See Lipton (2004) for an in-depth treatment of this issue.

  3. We’ll focus on deontology, as Greene usually does. But it’s worth noting that Greene intends his arguments to extend to all non-consequentialist moral theories. See Greene (2008, pp. 75–76) and Greene (2008, p. 725).

  4. 4 To take one example, Berker (2009, pp. 315–316) admittedly finds it difficult to determine which arguments Greene is making.

  5. Strictly speaking, the targets of debunking arguments are beliefs. However, in what follows, we’ll talk of debunking judgments and theories. And we’ll take it as understood that judgments are a particular kind of belief, and that talk of debunking theories is short for debunking beliefs that are either about theories, or that are generated by theories.

  6. For Greene’s experimental work, see, e.g., Greene et al. (2001). For the introduction of the trolley cases in the philosophical literature, see Foot (1967) and Thomson (1976, 1985).

  7. The justifications that we discuss in this paragraph are drawn from Thomson’s (1985) proposed solution to the trolley problem. Greene (2008, p. 68) is clear that she counts as a rationalist deontologist for his purposes.

  8. Similar evolutionary debunking arguments have been put forward by Joyce (2001, 2006), Rosenberg (2011), Ruse (1986), and Street (2006), among others. Most of these authors claim that discovering the evolutionary history of the processes that produce moral judgments undermines all moral judgments, or at least those that presuppose some mind-independent moral truth. In contrast, Greene targets only characteristically deontological judgments.

  9. See Gervais (2015) for an up-to-date account of the debate.

  10. There are a number of ways to make this idea more precise. For example, one might claim that the justificatory status of a belief is lowered in proportion to the extent to which E is a better explanation of why A holds B than SR is, and to the extent to which E and SR are unrelated.

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Acknowledgements

We presented an earlier draft of this material at the Institute of European and American Studies at Academia Sinica. Thanks to the audience there, and especially to Tzu-wei Hung, Ellie Hua Wang, Terence Hua Tai, and Norman Y. Teng for helpful questions and comments. Thanks also to two anonymous reviewers for their helpful suggestions. Much of the work for this paper was completed during Hricko’s time as a postdoctoral fellow in the Institute of European and American Studies at Academia Sinica, and so he would like to thank the Institute, and especially his sponsor Jih-Ching Ho.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Education Center for Humanities and Social Sciences, National Yang-Ming University, No.155, Linong Street, Sec. 2, Beitou District, Taipei, 112, Taiwan

    Jonathon Hricko

  2. Department of Philosophy, University of Pittsburgh at Johnstown, 223B Biddle Hall, 450 Schoolhouse Rd., Johnstown, PA, 15904, USA

    Derek Leben

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  1. Jonathon Hricko
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Correspondence to Jonathon Hricko.

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Hricko, J., Leben, D. In Defense of Best-Explanation Debunking Arguments in Moral Philosophy. Rev.Phil.Psych. 9, 143–160 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13164-017-0341-8

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