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Moral Knowledge Without Knowledge of Moral Knowledge

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Abstract

Most people believe some moral propositions are true. Most people would say that they know that rape is wrong, torturing people is wrong, and so on. But despite decades of intense epistemological study, philosophers cannot even provide a rudimentary sketch of moral knowledge. In my view, the fact that we have very strong epistemic confidence in some fundamental moral propositions and the fact that it is extremely difficult for us to provide even the basics of an account of moral knowledge gives us an important clue. Both of these facts stem from the very nature of moral knowledge. In this paper I provide an intuitionist account of moral knowledge. I try to remove misunderstanding and add to our understanding of the contemporary account of self-evident moral propositions. For a theory of moral knowledge to be acceptable it must explain both the moral knowledge we have and why it is so very difficult for us to explain. My theory meets both requirements.

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Notes

  1. I think that among recent ethicists Donagan (1977) and Gewirth (1978) come closest to meeting these requirements that were common among the classical modern ethicists.

  2. I disagree with Ross’s view that prima facie principles are foundational. However, to explain the relation the intuitive principles have to prima facie principles would require more space than I have.

  3. I cover these matters of methodology in (Kaspar 2012, Ch.1).

  4. Audi argues that that an intuition of a self-evident proposition can be a conclusion of reflection (2004: 45), and claims that ‘the notion of the self-evident does not entail either unprovability or ungroundability’ (2004: 83). In other words, our ways of coming to know self-evident truths are not limited to simply seeing them.

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Acknowledgements

I read an earlier version of this paper at the 2019 Long Island Philosophical Society Conference at Suffolk County Community College, Selden, NY on April 13, 2019. I would like to thank the participants for their helpful comments and criticisms. I would also like to thank Robert Audi for his insightful comments on an earlier version of this paper.

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  1. Department of Philosophy, St. John’s University, 300 Howard Ave, Staten Island, 10301, USA

    David Kaspar

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Kaspar, D. Moral Knowledge Without Knowledge of Moral Knowledge. J Ethics 26, 155–172 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10892-021-09384-0

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