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Genealogical Debunking Arguments, Moral Realism, and the Possibility of Moral Knowledge

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Genealogical Debunking Arguments, Moral Realism, and the Possibility of Moral Knowledge Taking the Helm: Genealogical Debunking Arguments, Moral Realism, and the Possibility of Moral Knowledge by Joshua D. McBee A dissertation submitted to Johns Hopkins University in conformity with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Baltimore, Maryland April 2019 © Joshua McBee 2019 All Rights Reserved Abstract Genealogical debunking arguments aim to show that, given their provenance, none of our moral beliefs are justified, at least assuming moral realism. In particular, they claim that this is so because the best, complete explanation of why we hold the moral beliefs we do neither presupposes nor entails their truth. I dispute this explanatory claim, suggesting instead that, in at least some cases, the best explanation of our beliefs must appeal to our capacity to acquire moral knowledge through reflection. To defend this suggestion, I respond to three different rejoinders debunkers might offer. One of these contends that the proposed explanation is redundant: if we want to explain why someone judges some action wrong, all we need to know is the character of their moral sensibilities. Two other rejoinders appeal to general skeptical challenges. According to the first, if realism is true, the evidence available to us in reflection necessarily underdetermines the truth of our ethical beliefs. Like the so-called Benacerraf-Field challenge to mathematical platonism from which it derives, the second challenge involves two distinct charges: first, that knowledge requires there be a causal or explanatory connection between our beliefs and the facts that realism precludes, and second, that realists cannot explain our reliability in ethics. Making novel use of Ludwig Wittgenstein’s remarks about following rules, I argue that that each of the first two rejoinders rests on a confused view about the ways we are liable to go wrong in ethical reflection. In response to the third rejoinder, I ii argue that while the no-accident condition on knowledge is indeed best understood in explanatory terms, realism does not preclude the possibility that our beliefs might satisfy this condition on knowledge; in addition, I explain how realists can explain our reliability in ethics. In all of these cases, moreover, I suggest that the responses I outline are open only to proponents of a deflationary form of realism that, following Amie Thomasson, I call “simple realism,” conceding to debunkers that their arguments are likely unanswerable by proponents of more inflationary or so-called “robust” forms of realism. Committee: Dean Moyar (primary advisor), Richard Bett (second reader), Chris Lebron, Mark Lance, and Andrew Miller (chair) iii For Dot and Nini iv Acknowledgements You could say I first began thinking about the issues I take up here in fall 2012, when I first encountered Street’s Darwinian Dilemma while reading Parfit’s On What Matters. But I’ve been thinking about much of this in one way or another for far longer. Maybe it would be best to date it back to Christmas 2007, when my brother recommended a book from an introductory philosophy class he had taken the semester before, Russ Shafer-Landau’s Whatever Happened to Good and Evil? Or maybe it would be better to say I started thinking along these lines a couple of years later, in early 2009, when I had my first encounter with Wittgenstein’s later work in Carl Sachs’ epistemology class at the University of North Texas. In any case, these things have been on my mind a long time, and I’ve acquired many debts along the way. In particular, I want to thank Dean Moyar and Richard Bett, both for providing invaluable verbal and written feedback and for supporting me in many other ways throughout the process; the Johns Hopkins University Department of Philosophy for funding, especially for the Barnhart and Sachs dissertation completion fellowships that gave me the time I needed to pull my thoughts together during the final stages of the project; Carl Sachs for encouraging my interest in Wittgenstein all those years ago and for his friendship and mentorship ever since; Ian Moore for helpful v discussion of Blood Meridian, as well as for a philosophical friendship that has been a consistent delight for more than ten years now; Steven Gross for invaluable discussions of contextualism, nonsense, and realism; Louis Gularte, Mario Brandhorst, and other audience members who provided helpful feedback at the 3rd conference on Wittgensteinian Approaches in Moral Philosophy in Leuven; and, for helpful discussion and reading recommendations at various points, Mark Lance, Tom Wilk, Nandi Theunissen, Elanor Taylor, Justin Bledin, Kevin Powell, Itai Marom, Alex James, Patrick O’Donnell, Daniel Estrada, Dan Korman, Kieran Setiya, Josef Simpson, Nikola Andonovski, Micah Lott, David Killoren, Cara Cummings, and Sharon Street. Of course, a project this size doesn’t take place in a vacuum. It has been a part of my life for many years now and was only possible because I managed to make it into graduate school in the first place and, thereafter, stick with it. Many people helped make all that possible. In particular I want to mention Adam Reid, who was kind enough to drink and commiserate with me after my disastrous first topical; David Jacobs, whose friendship and lifting tips have helped keep me sane; Tim Lowery, who has been a reliable companion for twenty years; Angela Hvitved and Damian Dalle Nogare, with whom I’m so glad we’ve become such good friends; and many other friends whose company has sustained me in various ways throughout the process, including David Lindeman, Alex, Luise, Anton, Aimee, Richard and Megan Lowery, Richard Teague, Shelley, Mike, Sandy, Lisa, Dan, Kasey, and Wes. Finally, I want to thank my family. In particular, I want to thank Ingrid, Jose, Miren, Sabina, and Amelia, whose presence in my life over the last few years has been a joy; my Texas family generally, but especially Mom, Jonathan, Hillary, and Hailey, who have been so consistently supportive and encouraging, and Papa, the first Dr. McBee, and to whom all the cowboy examples are a sort of tribute; and, most importantly, I want to thank Erika, without whose love, support, and encouragement I may well have left the program a long time ago, and without whom life would undoubtedly be worse. vi Writing this, I am touched by how many people have gone out of their way to help me in one way or another or in some other way supported or encouraged me these past eight years. From the bottom of my heart, thank you all. vii Table of Contents Abstract ii Dedication iv Acknowledgments v Introduction 1 1 The Debunking Challenge 6 2 How to Begin at the Beginning 48 3 Making Your Own Epistemic Luck 106 4 Objections and Replies 137 Conclusion 166 Bibliography 171 Biographical Note 182 viii Introduction But then with me the horrid doubt always arises whether the convictions of man’s mind, which has been developed from the mind of the lower animals, are of any value or at all trustworthy. Would any one trust in the convictions of a monkey’s mind, if there are any convictions in such a mind? -Darwin to W. Graham, July 3rd, 18811 Though he does express the thought in an unusually colorful way, Darwin was neither the first nor the last to think facts about their provenance give us reason to be suspicious of our beliefs. Nietzsche’s claims in On the Genealogy of Morality that Christian moral beliefs originated in ressentiment are meant to undermine those beliefs, just as Freud’s claim in The Future of an Illusion that religious beliefs are a form of wish fulfillment are meant to undermine them. Similarly, Marx’s claim in The German Ideology that “the ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas” is meant to 1 Darwin correspondence project number 13230, quoted at Fraser, “Evolutionary Debunking Arguments and the Reliability of Moral Cognition,” p. 457. 1 debunk prevailing moral, political, and economic ideas by suggesting that they reflect, not moral, political, and economic reality, but the class interests of the bourgeoisie.2 More recently, several philosophers, most prominently Sharon Street and Richard Joyce, have followed in Darwin’s footsteps, suggesting that their evolutionary origins should lead us to doubt our moral beliefs or to regard them as unjustified.3 In all of these cases, the impetus is an observation about the source of our beliefs or about the influences that shape or explain why we hold the beliefs we do. Notice, though, that the mere fact that our beliefs have a history or are shaped in all sorts of ways does not by itself entail that they are untrustworthy, unjustified, or in some other way epistemically suspect. Far from it; in fact, information about the sources of or influences on our beliefs can often vindicate or justify them. Suppose, for instance, that a friend tells me the twin prime conjecture is false. Though I am not familiar with the details, I am under the impression that twin prime conjecture is an unproven mathematical theorem, and since I have no reason to think my non-mathematician friend knows anything more about the conjecture than I do, I might wonder whether she has good reason to believe as she does. However, were she to explain that earlier in the day she had read an article in The Washington Post in which a prominent mathematician claimed to have disproven the conjecture, I would not only cease to be suspicious but would come to regard my friend’s belief as justified and likely true. In other cases, of course, information about the provenance of some belief does serve to undermine it.
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