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Seeing Right from Wrong: a Defense of a Posteriori Ethical Intuitionism

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Seeing Right from Wrong: a Defense of a Posteriori Ethical Intuitionism Syracuse University SURFACE Dissertations - ALL SURFACE July 2016 Seeing Right from Wrong: A Defense of A Posteriori Ethical Intuitionism Preston John Werner Syracuse University Follow this and additional works at: https://surface.syr.edu/etd Part of the Arts and Humanities Commons Recommended Citation Werner, Preston John, "Seeing Right from Wrong: A Defense of A Posteriori Ethical Intuitionism" (2016). Dissertations - ALL. 532. https://surface.syr.edu/etd/532 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the SURFACE at SURFACE. It has been accepted for inclusion in Dissertations - ALL by an authorized administrator of SURFACE. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Preston J. Werner Seeing What’s Right and Wrong: A Defense of A Posteriori Ethical Intuitionism Dissertation Abstract This dissertation develops and defends A Posteriori Ethical Intuitionism, the view that our epistemic access to moral properties is grounded in perceptual experience. It contains two parts. In part I, I present the epistemic access problem for realist moral epistemology and argue against several a priori attempts to resolve it. In part II, I defend A Posteriori Ethical Intuitionism and its ability to resolve the epistemic access problem. Part I begins by arguing that evolutionary debunking arguments are best understood as claiming that we lack epistemic access to mind-independent moral facts. The remainder of part I rejects several attempts to respond to this challenge. I first argue that even sophisticated versions of reflective equilibrium, as coherentist theories, fall victim to a “garbage in, garbage out” objection. I conclude that a proper solution to the epistemic access problem must be foundationalist. I then survey other influential a priori approaches to epistemic access. I conclude that each either fails to ensure epistemic access, or succeeds by providing epistemic access to the wrong properties—viz. not the robustly normative ones. Part II begins with an argument that we can have perceptual experiences of moral properties by making use of a “method of contrast” argument of the sort found in the philosophy of perception literature. Next, I defend the foundationalist credentials of a posteriori ethical intuitionism against the objection that moral experiences are epistemically dependent on (moral) beliefs. I then discuss the role of emotions in generating moral perceptions. If emotions are themselves perceptual, their role in producing moral perceptual experiences is not problematic. Some have argued that emotions cannot be perceptual since we can be morally responsible for having (or failing to have) certain emotional experiences. I argue against this claim, and in favor of a perceptualist conception of emotions. Finally, I return to the issue of epistemic access. I argue that the perceptual view provides an explanation of our epistemic access to the moral properties, and that such a view is compatible with the non-causal nature of those properties. Seeing Right From Wrong: A Defense of A Posteriori Ethical Intuitionism by Preston John Werner B.A. University of Iowa, 2007 M.A. University of Nebraska, 2012 Dissertation Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Philosophy. Syracuse University July 2016 Copyright © Preston John Werner. 2016. Seeing Right from Wrong: A Defense of A Posteriori Ethical Intuitionism by Preston John Werner is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial- NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Acknowledgments: You’ll have to humor me, as this is the first, and may very well be the last, time that I’ll be able to acknowledge how much of me is just an amalgamation of the people I’ve been lucky enough to have been surrounded by the last several years. First, my committee—David Sobel, Hille Paakkunainen, Ben Bradley, Russ Shafer-Landau, and Andre Gallois—have helped me immensely in thinking through these issues, and perhaps most importantly, have encouraged me despite the initial questionable plausibility of the view I defend here. I also think it would be negligent to not also include here Mark van Roojen, who, although is not an official committee member, helped me more than he knows at the initial stages of my project. My thoughts about moral epistemology and much else have been deeply influenced by all six of these people. My dissertation was written in two very geographically distinct places—half at the University of Nebraska and half at Syracuse University. But both places are packed with brilliant and hardworking faculty and graduate students. Interesting and insightful philosophical conversation fills the air like snow on any given Syracuse winter day. I want to thank all of the faculty and graduate students at both of these schools, but especially the following for helping to clear my head on various issues in the dissertation that follows: Patrick Arnold, Aaron Bronfman, Gabe Bruguier, Arturo Castellanos, David Chavez, Çağla Çimendereli, Lorenza D’Angelo, Dante Dauksz, Naomi Dershowitz, Maddie Eller, Aaron Elliott, Luke Elwonger, Kendall Fisher, Allison v Fritz, Carolyn Garland, Shane George, C.J.K. Gibilisco, Reina Hayaki, Landon Hedrick, David Henderson, Ben Henke, Cliff Hill, Isaiah Lin, Scott Looney, Yaojun Lu, Tim Loughrist, Jennifer McKitrick, Joseph Mendola, Justin Moss, Chris Richards, Byron Simmons, Steve Steward, Andrew Spaid, Brian Tackett, Travis Timmerman, Adam Thompson, Kaz Watanabe, Sam Wolf, and Seiichi Yasuda. I want to particularly thank Teresa Bruno and Nicole Dular, my fellow graduate students and advisee siblings. With how much they influenced my thinking, and how much they read of my dissertation, they might as well also be honorary committee members. And finally, my mother and father, Nancy and Bruce, and Ted Towner, roommate, friend, and confidant. This dissertation is for Steve Swartzer and Clare LaFrance, for teaching me how to see, and to Nikki Fortier, Emily Garton, and Mose, for teaching me how to feel. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS PART I 1 CHAPTER 1. HOW TO UNDERSTAND THE EPISTEMIC ACCESS PROBLEM 1 CHAPTER 2. SCANLON’S REFLECTIVE EQUILIBRIUM 31 CHAPTER 3. WHY CONCEPTUAL COMPETENCE WON’T HELP THE NON-NATURALIST 52 PART II 89 CHAPTER 4. MORAL PERCEPTION AND THE CONTENTS OF EXPERIENCE 89 CHAPTER 5. A POSTERIORI ETHICAL INTUITIONISM AND COGNITIVE PENETRATION 118 CHAPTER 6. PERCEPTUALISM ABOUT EMOTIONS AND RATIONAL CRITICIZABILITY 149 CHAPTER 7. TOWARD A PERCEPTUAL SOLUTION TO EPISTEMOLOGICAL OBJECTIONS 170 BIBLIOGRAPHY 203 1 Chapter 1 How to Understand the Epistemic Access Problem for Non-Naturalist Moral Realism Introduction A longstanding objection to non-naturalist moral realism (henceforth “non- naturalism”) is that it is incompatible with any plausible explanation of how we can come to have knowledge of moral truths.1 As most non-naturalists accept, our beliefs about these entities could not be caused by them.2 It is mysterious, the objection goes, how we could have epistemic access to these non-causal entities in order to form justified beliefs about them. I call this kind of epistemological objection the access objection.3 Though the objection is frequently gestured at, it is not often developed in much detail. Nevertheless, it is an objection generally taken seriously (and rightly so). The purpose of this paper is to clarify and develop the various forms of the access objection and propose a unique formulation that I believe is superior to those currently found in the literature. The key in developing a proper understanding of the access objection is to do so in a way that is charitable both to the proponent of the objection as well as the non-naturalist. This means that the objection should neither be 1 Arguably, this objection goes at least back to Mackie (1977), Ch. 1. Harman (1977), Ch.1 presses an arguably similar worry, though it is in terms of explanation rather than causation. Two more recent versions of this objection, which emphasize evolution as particularly damning for non-naturalist epistemology are Joyce (2001) and Street (2006). 2 Huemer (2008), Ch.5, Scanlon (forthcoming), Lectures 1-2, Dworkin (2011), Ch.4, and Ridge (2008), Section 3. 3 As will become clear below, there is no single access objection, but many substantively different ways of pressing a general epistemological concern about our access to objective moral truths. So I mean “access objection” to apply to a range of epistemological objections to non-naturalism. 2 formulated in a way that is clearly misguided, nor in a way that begs the question against the non-naturalist. I develop my formulation of the objection by taking a step back from metaethics to epistemology more generally. I do this in order to motivate a general epistemological principle I call the access requirement, which requires that an adequate epistemology for a given domain explain how our justified beliefs can be in some way responsive to the facts of that domain.4 The access requirement is closely related to the fact that, as Lawrence BonJour says, “one crucial part of the task of an adequate epistemological theory is to show that there is an appropriate connection between its proposed account of epistemic justification and the cognitive goal of truth.”5 If this is right, then a theory of justification for any given domain, ethics included, must meet the access requirement. 1. Benacerraf’s Problem What I am calling the access objection to moral realism can be traced back to Paul Benacerraf’s (1973) “Mathematical Truth”. As its title suggests, Benacerraf was worried about the epistemology of mathematics for a Platonist conception of mathematical objects. David Liggins (2010) helpfully reconstructs Benacerraf’s argument as follows: (B1) If mathematical platonism is true, then we have knowledge of abstract mathematical entities. (B2) If we have knowledge of abstract mathematical entities, then we are causally related to them. (B3) We are not causally related to abstract mathematical entities. 4 For the more precise formulation, see section 5 below.
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