What is moral understanding?

Ethical Theory & Moral Practice, 2019

While possessing moral understanding is agreed to be a core epistemic and moral value, it remains a matter of dispute whether it can be acquired via testimony and whether it involves an ability to engage in moral reasoning. This paper addresses both issues with the aim of contributing to the current debates on moral understanding in moral epistemology and virtue ethics. It is argued that moral epistemologists should stop appealing to the argument from the transmissibility of moral understanding to make a case for their favorite view of moral understanding. It is also argued that proponents of exemplarist moral theories cannot remain neutral on whether the ability to engage in moral reasoning is a necessary component of moral understanding.

2022

This dissertation defends an account of moral understanding as the competence to navigate ethical life. The nature of moral understanding is an object of controversy. Some claim that it can be reduced to a form of moral knowledge. Others claim that moral understanding is a complex moral epistemic good that cannot be reduced to a form of moral knowledge. I argue that this dispute dissolves once we acknowledge that the debate about the nature of moral understanding is one about the kind of epistemic competence a moral agent should develop and exercise. Against the view that moral understanding is an explanatory competence and the view that it is the capacity to gain moral knowledge, I argue that moral understanding is the competence to navigate ethical life. Through this navigation, one forms moral beliefs that speak to one’s agency, such that one successfully figures out what one should do. This competence is characterized by the abilities to be epistemically engaged with humility and to appreciate moral reason. Humble epistemic engagement is primarily guided by an attentional activity— moral attention—deemed the proper mark of the active moral agent by Iris Murdoch. Appreciation follows from normative experience resulting from the emotional experience of the subject. As a result, moral understanding is a necessary, although not sufficient, constituent of moral competence. This account aligns with the intuitions whereby moral understanding is something one should possess oneself—it should not be outsourced—whilst accepting help from peers. It also accommodates the fundamental intuitions that this moral epistemic good implies a systematic grasp of morality and the ability to figure out what one should do. I distinguish, moreover, between two significantly different deficits of moral understanding. Ordinary lack of moral understanding is in cases in which one’s navigation is compromised by one’s lack of epistemic engagement. Failed moral agency is in cases where one does not navigate to live well. Only the former deficit can be remedied. Explaining why ordinary ethical navigation fails, in turn, sheds light on the puzzling reality that people, although active and well-intentioned, are often ill-equipped to find their way in ethical life. Becoming clearer on the nature of moral understanding reveals that moral competence involves as much epistemic as practical engagement. The account also provides a novel set of conceptual tools for thinking about the way ordinary moral experience influences moral understanding.

According to Michael Smith, a "central organizing problem" in contemporary metaethics concerns a particular way in which our moral thought and practice is or at least appears mysterious. 1 Our "ordinary moral practice" and the "facts of ordinary moral experience," he says, contain features which are incontrovertible but mutually incompatible. 2 The features, taken individually, account for some of the basic and inalienable characteristics of our moral thought but they are, on his view, jointly inconsistent. Broadly speaking the features are objectivity and practicality. As Smith puts it: "The problem is that the objectivity and the practicality of moral judgment pull in quite opposite directions from each other…. The objectivity of moral judgement suggests that there are moral facts beliefs about what these facts are ... but it leaves entirely mysterious how or why having a moral view is supposed to have special links with [motivation]…. The practicality of moral judgement suggests just the opposite, that our moral judgements express our desires…. While this enables us to make good sense of the link [with motivation], it leaves entirely mysterious what a moral argument is supposed to be an argument about." 3 Let us understand what is meant by the mystery or problem in line with the intention Smith expresses as something which has an explanation, if baffling at first. But the formulation Smith gives of the problem, its standard formulation, involves a problematic psychological account of moral experience. The psychological account involves assuming that moral experience, and what is manifest in ordinary practice, can be accounted for in terms of propositional attitudes, an assumption which drives how the problem is characterized and proposed solutions to it. We need not deny that moral experience can be problematic or mysterious. The principal issue is that the standard view of what constitutes the mystery casts the problem in psychological terms, where the source of the problem is an alleged incompatibility of mental states.

The diversity of moral beliefs across present and historical human societies provides a powerful argument against the existence of a correct morality that we are capable of knowing. In this paper I consider another possible interpretation of this diversity: that the acquisition of moral knowledge is difficult and takes a great deal of time. I develop this theme by first reviewing some of the error, confusion, and surprising new discoveries that have occurred in the history of the sciences and mathematics. Since those who pursue these disciplines have the same cognitive abilities and limitations as those who seek moral knowledge, we have reasons for believing that learning the correct morality, if such a morality exists, will take place by the same complex and tentative processes that operate in the acquisition of other kinds of knowledge.

Journal of Chinese Philosophy

The article defends moral realism against epistemological objections by arguing that if there are moral truths, some of them are known. The claim that moral properties are unknowable because causally inert is shown to be ineffective: none of the main current theories of knowledge requires a causal connection, and anyway moral properties have not been shown to be causally inert. It is explained why a posteriori moral knowledge need not derive from combining a priori moral knowledge with a posteriori non-moral knowledge. The possibility of moral knowledge by perception and by testimony is briefly defended. The role of recognitional capacities for instances of moral properties is emphasized.

Metaphilosophy, 2013

This is the first of two companion articles drawn from a larger project, provisionally entitled Undisciplining Moral Epistemology. The overall goal is to understand how moral claims may be rationally justified in a world characterized by cultural diversity and social inequality. To show why a new approach to moral justification is needed, it is argued that several currently influential philosophical accounts of moral justification lend themselves to rationalizing the moral claims of those with more social power. The present article explains how discourse ethics is flawed just in this way. The article begins by identifying several conditions of adequacy for assessing reasoning practices designed to achieve moral justification and shows that, when used in contexts of cultural diversity and social inequality, discourse ethics fails these conditions. It goes on to argue that the failure of discourse ethics is rooted in its reliance on a broader conception of moral epistemology that is invidiously idealized. It concludes by pointing to the need to rethink both the mission and the method of moral epistemology.

Ethical Theory and Moral Practice, 2024

Moral progress is often modeled as an increase in moral knowledge and understanding, with achievements in moral reasoning seen as key drivers of progressive moral change. Contemporary discussion recognizes two (rival) accounts: knowledge-based and understanding-based theories of moral progress, with the latter recently contended as superior (Severini 2021). In this article, we challenge the alleged superiority of understandingbased accounts by conducting a comparative analysis of the theoretical advantages and disadvantages of both approaches. We assess them based on their potential to meet the following criteria: (i) moral progress must be possible despite evolutionary and epistemic constraints on moral reasoning; (ii) it should be epistemically achievable to ordinary moral agents; and (iii) it should be explainable via doxastic change. Our analysis suggests that both accounts are roughly equally plausible, but knowledge-based accounts are slightly less demanding and more effective at explaining doxastic change. Therefore, contrary to the prevailing view, we find knowledge-based accounts of moral progress more promising.

This chapter discusses the idea of moral knowledge as "know-how" embedded in our social practices. When we consider the possibility that (at least some of) our moral knowledge is embedded in (at least some of) our social practices, there are a number of important questions that arise. In this chapter, I'll consider two:

Philosophical Perspectives, 2004

Ethics 2009

According to pessimists about moral testimony, there are strong reasons not to form moral beliefs on the say-so of others. I defend pessimism by setting out a conception of what I call moral understanding. I argue that moral understanding is different from moral knowledge and that it is an essential part of good character and of morally worthy action. I argue that if we are aiming to acquire and to use our moral understanding, as we should, it is best neither to trust moral testimony nor to defer to moral experts but that taking moral advice can be worthwhile.