moral knowledge essay

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Moral knowledge? : new readings in moral epistemology

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Locke’s Moral Philosophy

Locke’s greatest philosophical work, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding , is generally seen as a defining work of seventeenth-century empiricist epistemology and metaphysics. The moral philosophy developed in this work is rarely taken up for critical analysis, considered by many scholars of Locke’s thought to be too obscure and confusing to be taken too seriously. The view is not only seen by many commentators as incomplete, but it carries a degree of rationalism that cannot be made consistent with our picture of Locke as the arch-empiricist of his period. While it is true that Locke’s discussion of morality in the Essay is not as well-developed as many of his other views, there is reason to think that morality was the driving concern of this great work. For Locke, morality is the one area apart from mathematics wherein human reasoning can attain a level of rational certitude. For Locke, human reason may be weak with regards to our understanding of the natural world and the workings of the human mind, but it is exactly suited for the job of figuring out human moral duty. By looking at Locke’s moral philosophy, as it is developed in the Essay and some of his earlier writings, we gain a heightened appreciation for Locke’s motivations in the Essay , as well as a more nuanced understanding of the degree of Locke’s empiricism. Further than this, Locke’s moral philosophy offers us an important exemplar of seventeenth-century natural law theory, probably the predominant moral view of the period.

1.1 The puzzle of Locke’s moral philosophy

1.2 critical interpretations of locke’s moral philosophy, 2.1 morality as natural law, 2.2 morality and teleology, 2.3 morality as a deductive science, 3.1 locke’s general theory of motivation, 3.2 locke’s theory of moral motivation, 4.1 locke’s ethics of belief, 4.2 the special role of sanctions, other internet resources, related entries, 1. introduction.

There are two main stumbling blocks to the study of Locke’s moral philosophy. The first regards the singular lack of attention the subject receives in Locke’s most important and influential published works; not only did Locke never publish a work devoted to moral philosophy, but he dedicates little space to its discussion in the works he did publish. The traditional moral concept of natural law arises in Locke’s Two Treatises of Government (1690) serving as a major plank in his argument regarding the basis for civil law and the protection of individual liberty, but he does not go into any detail regarding how we come to know natural law nor how we might be obligated, or even motivated, to obey it. In his Essay Concerning Human Understanding (first edition 1690; fourth edition 1700, hereafter referred to as the Essay ) Locke spends little time discussing morality, and what he does provide in the way of a moral epistemology seems underdeveloped, offering, at best, the suggestion of what a moral system might look like rather than a fully-realized positive moral position. This brings us to the second major stumbling block: What Locke does provide us by way of moral theory in these works is diffuse, with the air of being what J.B. Schneewind has characterized as “brief, scattered and sometimes puzzling” (Schneewind 1994, 200). This is not to suggest that Locke says nothing specific or concrete about morality. Locke makes references, throughout his works, to morality and moral obligation. However, two quite distinct positions on morality seem to emerge from Locke’s works and it is this dichotomous aspect of Locke’s view that has generated the greatest degree of controversy. The first is a natural law position, which Locke refers to in the Essay , but which finds its clearest articulation in an early work from the 1660s, entitled Essays on the Law of Nature . In this work, we find Locke espousing a fairly traditional rationalistic natural law position, which consists broadly in the following three propositions: first, that moral rules are founded on divine, universal and absolute laws; second, that these divine moral laws are discernible by human reason; and third, that by dint of their divine authorship these rules are obligatory and rationally discernible as such. On the other hand, Locke also espouses a hedonistic moral theory, in evidence in his early work, but developed most fully in the Essay . This latter view holds that all goods and evils reduce to specific kinds of pleasures and pains. The emphasis here is on sanctions, and how rewards and punishments serve to provide morality with its normative force. Both elements find their way into Locke’s published works, and, as a result, Locke seems to be holding what seem to be incommensurable views. The trick for Locke scholars has been to figure out how, or even if, they can be made to cohere. The question is not easily settled by looking to Locke’s unpublished works, either, since Locke also seems to hold a natural law view at some times and a hedonistic view at others.

One might conclude, with J.B. Schneewind, among others, that Locke’s attempts at constructing a morality were unsuccessful. Schneewind does not mince words when he writes the following: “Locke’s failures are sometimes as significant as his successes. His views on morality are a case in point” (Schneewind 1994, 199). Schneewind argues that the two strands of Locke’s moral theory are irreconcilable, and that this is a fact Locke must have realized. This view is indeed an apt representation of the frustration many readers have felt with Locke’s moral theory. Locke’s eighteenth-century apologist, Catharine Trotter Cockburn thought Locke provided a promising, but incomplete, starting point for a positive moral system, imploring, in her work “A Defense of Mr. Locke’s Essay of Human Understanding ,”

I wish, Sir, you may only find it enough worth your notice, to incite you to show the world, how far it falls short of doing justice to your principles; which you may do without interrupting the great business of your life, by a work, that will be an universal benefit, and which you have given the world some right to exact of you. Who is there so capable of pursuing to a demonstration those reflections on the grounds of morality , which you have already made? (Cockburn 1702, 36)

Locke’s friend William Molyneux similarly implored Locke to make good on the promise found in the Essay . In a letter written to Locke on September 16 th , 1693, Molyneux presses Locke to work on a moral treatise once he has finished editing the second edition of his Essay , writing as follows:

I am very sensible how closely you are engaged, till you have discharged this Work off your Hands; and therefore will not venture, till it be over, to press you again to what you have promis’d in the Business of Man’s Life, Morality . (Locke 1742, 53)

Several months later, in December of the same year, Molyneux concludes a letter by asking Locke about what other projects he currently has on the go “amongst which, I hope you will not forget your Thoughts on Morality ” (Locke 1742, 54).

Locke never did produce such a work, and we might well wonder if he himself ever considered the project a “failure”. There is no doubt that morality was of central importance to Locke, a fact we can discern from the Essay itself; there are two important features of the Essay that serve to enlighten us regarding the significance of this work in the development of Locke’s moral views. First of all, morality seems to have inspired Locke to write the Essay in the first place. In recounting his original inclination to embark on the project, he recalls a discussion with “five or six friends”, at which they discoursed “on a Subject very remote from this” (Locke 1700, 7). According to Locke, the discussion eventually hit a standstill, at which point it was agreed that in order to settle the issue at hand it would first be necessary to, as Locke puts it, “examine our own Abilities, and see, what Objects our Understandings were, or were not fitted to deal with” (Locke 1700, 7). This was, he explains, his first entrance into the problems that inspired the Essay itself. But, what is most interesting for our purposes is just what the remote subject was that first got Locke and his friends thinking about fundamental questions of epistemology. James Tyrell, one of those who attended that evening, is a source of enlightenment on this matter—he later recalled that the discussion concerned morality and revealed religion. But, Locke himself refers to the subjects they discussed that fateful evening as ‘very remote’ from the matters of the Essay . That may well be, but it is also true that Locke, in the Essay , identifies morality as a central feature of human intellectual and practical life, which brings us to the second important fact about Locke’s view of morality. Locke writes, in the Essay , that “Morality is the proper Science, and Business of Mankind in general” ( Essay , 4.12.11; these number are, book, chapter and section, respectively, from Locke’s Essay ). For a book aiming to set out the limits and extent of human knowledge, this comes as no small claim. We must, Locke writes, “know our own Strength” ( Essay , 1.1.6) and turn our attention to those areas in which we can have certainty, i.e., “those [things] which concern our Conduct” ( Essay , 1.1.6). The amount of attention given to the question of morality itself would seem to belie its primacy for Locke. The Essay is certainly not intended as a work of moral philosophy; it is a work of epistemology, laying the foundations for knowledge. However, a very big part of the programme involves identifying what true knowledge is and what it is we as humans can have knowledge about, and morality is accorded a distinctive and fairly exclusive status in Locke’s epistemology as one of “the Sciences capable of Demonstration” ( Essay , 4.3.18). The only other area of inquiry accorded this status is mathematics; clearly, for Locke, morality represents a unique and defining aspect of what it means to be human. We have to conclude, then, that the Essay is strongly motivated by an interest in establishing the groundwork for moral reasoning. However, while morality clearly has a position of the highest regard in his epistemological system, his promise of a demonstrable moral science is never realized here, or in later works.

It seems we can safely say that the subject of morality was a weighty one for Locke. However, just what Locke takes morality to involve is substantially more complicated an issue. There are two broad lines of interpretation of Locke’s moral views, which I will briefly outline here.

The first interpretation of Locke’s moral theory is what we might call an incompatibility thesis: Locke scholars Laslett, Aaron, von Leyden, among others, hold that Locke’s natural law theory is nothing more than a relic from Locke’s early years, when he wrote the Essays on the Law of Nature , and represents a rogue element in the mature empiricist framework of the Essay . For these commentators, the two elements found in the Essay seem not only incommensurable, but the hedonism seems the obvious and straightforward fit with Locke’s generally empiricist epistemology. The general view is that Locke’s rationalism seems, for all intents and purposes, to have no significant role to play, either in the acquisition of moral knowledge or in the recognition of the obligatory force of moral rules. These fundamental aspects of morality seem to be taken care of by Locke’s hedonism. Worse than this, however, is that the two views rely on radically different epistemological principles. The conclusion tends to be that Locke is holding on to moral rationalism in the face of serious incoherence. The incompatibility thesis is supported by the fact that Locke seems to emphasize the role of pleasure and pain in moral decision-making, however it has difficulty making sense of the presence of Locke’s moral rationalism in the Essay and other of Locke’s later works (not to mention the exalted role he gives to rationally-deduced moral law). Added to this, even in Locke’s early work, he seems to hold both positions simultaneously. Aaron and von Leyden both throw up their hands. According to von Leyden, in the introduction to his 1954 edition of Locke’s Essays on the Law of Nature ,

the development of [Locke’s] hedonism and certain other views held by him in later years made it indeed difficult for him to adhere whole-heartedly to his doctrine of natural law. (Locke 1954, 14)

In a similar vein, Aaron writes:

Two theories compete with each other in [Locke’s] mind. Both are retained; yet their retention means that a consistent moral theory becomes difficult to find. (Aaron 1971, 257)

Yet, it is curious that Locke neither claimed to find these strands incompatible, nor ever abandoned his rationalistic natural law view. It seems unlikely that this view would be nothing more than a confusing hangover from earlier days. Taking seriously Locke’s commitment to both is therefore a much more charitable approach, and one that takes seriously Locke’s clear commitment to the benefits of rationally-apprehending our moral duties. An approach along these lines is one we might call a compatibility approach to the question of Locke’s moral commitments. John Colman and Stephen Darwall are two Locke scholars who have argued that Locke’s view is neither plagued with tensions nor incoherent. Their common view is that the two elements of Locke’s theory are doing different work. Locke’s hedonism, on this compatibility account, is intended as a theory of moral motivation, and serves to fill a motivational gap between knowing moral law and having reasons to obey moral law. Locke introduces hedonism in order to account for the practical force of the obligations arising from natural law. As Darwall writes,

what makes God’s commands morally obligatory [i.e., God’s authority] appears…to have nothing intrinsically to do with what makes them rationally compelling. (Darwall 1995, 37).

Thus, on this account, reason deduces natural law, but it is hedonistic considerations alone that offer agents the motivating reasons to act in accordance with its dictates.

This interpretation convincingly makes room for both elements in Locke’s view. A central feature of this interpretation is its attention to the legalistic aspect of Locke’s natural law theory. For Locke, the very notion of law presupposes an authority structure as the basis for its institution and its enforcement. The law carries obligatory weight by virtue of its reflecting the will of a rightful superior. That it also carries the threat of sanctions lends motivational force to the law.

A slight modification of the compatibility account, however, better captures the motivational aspect of Locke’s rationalistic account: Locke does, at times suggest that rational agents are not only obligated, but motivated, by sheer recognition of the divine authority of moral law. It is helpful to think of morality as carrying both intrinsic and extrinsic obligatory force for Locke. On the one hand moral rules obligate by dint of their divine righteousness, and on the other hand by the threat of rewards and punishments. The suggestion that morality has an intrinsic motivational force appears in the Essays on the Law of Nature and is retained by Locke in some of his final published works. It is, however, a feature of his view that gets somewhat underappreciated in the secondary literature, and for understandable reasons—Locke tends to emphasize hedonistic motivations. Why this is will be discussed in section 4 . At this point, however, it suffices to say that Locke’s theory does not have the motivational gap that the compatibility thesis suggests—hedonism serves as a ‘back-up’ motivational tool in the absence of the right degree of rational intuition of one’s moral duty.

2. Locke’s natural law theory: the basis of moral obligation

In order to get a complete understanding of Locke’s moral theory, it is useful to begin with a look at Locke’s natural law view, articulated most fully in his Essays on the Law of Nature (written as series of lectures he delivered as Censor of Moral Philosophy at Christ Church, Oxford). Two predominant features of Locke’s natural law theory are already well-developed in this work: the rationalism and the legalism. According to Locke, reason is the primary avenue by which humans come to understand moral rules, and it is via reason we can draw two distinct but related conclusions regarding the grounds for our moral obligations: we can appreciate the divine, and thereby righteous, nature of morality and we can perceive that morality is the expression of a law-making authority.

In the Essays on the Law of Nature , Locke writes that “all the requisites of a law are found in natural law” (Locke 1663–4, 82). But, what, for Locke, is required for something to be a law? Locke takes stock of what constitutes law in order to establish the legalistic framework for morality: First, law must be founded on the will of a superior. Second, it must perform the function of establishing rules of behavior. Third, it must be binding on humans, since there is a duty of compliance owed to the superior authority that institutes the laws (Locke 1663–4, 83). Natural law is rightly called law because it satisfies these conditions. For Locke, the concept of morality is best understood by reference to a law-like authority structure, for without this, he argues, moral rules would be indistinguishable from social conventions. In one his later essays, “Of Ethic in General”, Locke writes

[w]ithout showing a law that commands or forbids [people], moral goodness will be but an empty sound, and those actions which the schools here call virtues or vices may by the same authority be called by contrary names in another country; and if there be nothing more than their decisions and determinations in the case, they will be still nevertheless indifferent as to any man’s practice, which will by such kind of determinations be under no obligation to observe them. (Locke 1687–88, 302)

For Locke, then, moral law is, by definition, an obligatory set of rules, because it reflects the will of a superior authority.

Moral rules are obligatory because of the authority structure out of which they arise. But, this is not the only story Locke has to tell regarding the nature of our obligation to divine moral dictates. The set of moral rules that reason deduces are taken by Locke to be reflective of human nature. The rules that govern human conduct are specifically tailored to human nature, and our duty to God involves realizing our natures to the fullest degree. There is a noticeable degree of teleology in Locke’s theory, which is worth pausing to consider in its content and its implications.

In the Essays on the Law of Nature , Locke draws a connection between the natural law governing human action and the laws of nature that govern all other things in the natural world; just as all natural things seem nomologically determined, so human beings are likewise law-governed. Humans are not determined to the same degree as other physical and biological entities, but we are beholden to God to ensure that our lives follow a certain path. Natural law is, Locke writes, a “plan, rule, or … pattern” of life (Locke 1663–64, 81). Locke’s early view has a teleological strain typical of the Aquinian (and thus Aristotelian) tradition. In fact, Locke does not shy away from this teleological angle, acknowledging this inheritance when he writes of Aristotle’s that he

rightly concludes that the proper function of man is acting in conformity with reason, so much so that man must of necessity perform what reason prescribes. (Locke 1663–64, 83)

Locke considers moral duty to be tailored to human nature, a set of laws specific to humanity and governing our actions according to God’s will. These laws are not only discoverable by reason, but in order to fulfill our function, humans are required to make use of reason to this very end. This view resurfaces in the Essay , where Locke writes the following:

it will become us, as rational Creatures, to imploy those Faculties we have about what they are most adapted to, and follow the direction of Nature, where it seems to point us out the way. ( Essay , 4.12.11)

The way it points us, he goes on to explain, is in the direction of our “greatest interests, i.e., the Condition of our eternal Estate” ( Essay , 4.12.11). The greater effort we each make in refining our rational faculty, the more clearly each of us will discern the proper path to eternal salvation.

This teleological element may seem somewhat out of step with Locke’s unqualified empiricist rejection of teleological metaphysics in the Essay . However, it is important to bear in mind that the teleological aspects of Locke’s moral theory do seem to be serving a very specific purpose. Locke seems to be aiming to establish a natural-theological basis for natural law. Why would this be so crucial for Locke?

Locke is grounding human conduct within a general framework of laws originating in God’s divine command. This is not just a nomologically-ordered universe, but one, as we have seen, that reflects the interests of “a powerful and wise creator…who has made and built this whole universe and us mortals” (Locke 1663–64, 103). Humans are obligated to obey God’s laws since God is a superior to whom we owe “both our being and our work” (Locke 1663–64, 105). As such, we are obligated to show obedience to the “limits he prescribes” (Locke 1663–64, 105). The laws governing our nature are discovered by reason and their content is specifically suited to human nature. Thus, for Locke morality is clearly and necessarily anthropocentric, understood by reference to human nature. But moral rules are, above all, an expression of God’s will. It is this latter aspect of morality that binds us to abide by the dictates of morality. Moral obligation is a matter, for Locke, of obedience to the rightful authority of God.

There are two baseline assumptions of Locke’s moral thinking: morality is universal and it is something that can be understood clearly and unequivocally by human reason—when Locke imagines us rationally-discovering natural law, he envisions us applying a rigorous set of logical principles to a set of clear and well-defined ideas about human nature, God, and society. But, how exactly is this done?

For one thing, this process looks a great deal like mathematical reasoning. For Locke, moral rules are founded on a fundamental set of principles, much like mathematical axioms. The fundamental principles can be deduced rationally, and it is from these that we can further derive all of our moral duties. Morality is, therefore, demonstrable, a term indicating mathematical-style proofs wherein conclusions are derived from axiomatic foundations. The moral status of any action is then determined by comparing our behaviour against these demonstrated rules. But, we might ask, what kinds of ideas are moral ideas, and what sort of rationalist could Locke possibly be? Locke is a well-known empiricist; for Locke, the mind is a blank slate, the content of which is supplied exclusively from sensory or reflective experience. Locke famously espouses this empiricist view in the Essay , but holds it quite clearly also in the Essays on the Law of Nature . In fact, however, Locke’s moral rationalism takes this empiricist theory of ideas as its starting point. Moral ideas, for Locke, are fundamentally experiential in origin. They are not directly so, of course, since we do not perceive something like justice or honesty directly. Moral ideas are experiential, in the special Lockean sense that they are complex ideas—products of the mind’s ability to form complex constructions from its simple directly-experiential contents. For Locke, the interplay of reason and sensation works as follows:

reason is … taken to mean the discursive faculty of the mind, which advances from things known to things unknown and argues from one thing to another in a definite and fixed order of propositions… The foundations, however, on which rests the whole of that knowledge which reason builds … are the objects of sense-experience; for the senses primarily supply the entire as well as the chief subject-matter of discourse and introduce it into the deep recesses of the mind. (Locke 1663–64, 101)

From perceptual simple ideas, we can generate complex moral propositions. This seems like a tall order, and Locke offers very little, in any of his works, by way of actually putting this moral reasoning process to work. However, that is not to say that Locke is silent in this regard. There are places in his writings where Locke takes us through some moral demonstrations.

In the Essays on the Law of Nature , for example, Locke claims that, based on sensory experience, we can assert the extra-mental existence of perceptible objects and all their perceptible qualities. All such qualities can be explained by reference to matter in motion. What is also clear to the senses, Locke argues, is that this world of moving objects exhibits a nomological regularity, or as Locke puts it, a “wonderful art and regularity” (Locke 1663–64, 103). Such regularity and beauty leads the contemplative mind to consider how such a world could have come about. Such contemplation would lead any rational being to the conclusion that the world cannot be the result of chance, and must therefore be the product of a creative will. Note that Locke is here trying to demonstrate for us just how sensation and reason work together. The mind moves from ideas of sensation to what Locke considers logical conclusions regarding the creative force behind the world we experience. But, our understanding of natural law is not founded solely in sensory experience. Through reflection, which is an introspective kind of perceptual experience for Locke, humans can gain ideas of our own nature and faculties that serve to complete our understanding both of God and of God’s creative will. This reasoning goes as follows—the creative being, which sensation indicates must exist, cannot be less perfect than human will, nor can it be human, because our ideas of reflection tell us that humans are not, and cannot be, self-causing. Reason must conclude, then, that the world is created by a divine will—a superior power, which can bring us into existence, maintain us, or take us away, give us great joy or render us in great pain. Locke concludes as follows:

with sense-perception showing the way, reason can lead us to knowledge of a lawmaker or of some superior power to which we are necessarily subject. (Locke 1663–4, 104)

From this deduction regarding divine purpose and authority, humans can conclude that they are obligated to render “praise, honour, and glory” to God. Beyond this, the rational agent can deduce, through reflection upon her own constitution and faculties, that her natural impulses to protect and preserve her life, and to enter into society with others are faculties with which she has been uniquely equipped by God and by which she is considered specifically human. These must constitute the basis of the principles and duties governing her conduct—her “function appears to be that which nature has prepared … [her] to perform” (Locke 1663–64, 105). Thus, by a series of steps from perception to reasoning about that perceptual experience, we are, Locke concludes, able to define our moral duties and regulate our conduct accordingly.

In the Essay , Locke develops this idea of the rational deduction of natural law somewhat further, setting it in the context of a more mature and coherent theory of ideas than we find in the Essays on the Law of Nature . In the Essay , moral ideas assume a particular significance owing to their place in Locke’s general taxonomy of ideas. For Locke, all the basic contents of the mind are simple ideas. These are formed by the mind into what Locke terms complex ideas, which are combinations of simple ideas made in the pattern of our perceptions of things in the extra mental world, or according to a pattern created by reason alone. Moral ideas fall into the second category of complex idea, falling under the technical heading complex ideas of modes . Modes are a specific kind of complex ideas, created by the mind from simple ideas of sensation or reflection, but referring to no extra-mental reality. They are not intended as natural kinds, but are products of the mind alone, referring to purely conceptual archetypes. They are best understood in contradistinction to ideas of substances, which are created by the mind but aim to mirror the real essences of extra-mental things—for example, the idea cat is intended to capture a kind of thing in the world that has a specific set of perceivable characteristics. Ideas of substances fail in mirroring reality, however, as they can never be complete representations of the world outside the mind. Modal ideas, on the other hand, are a special kind of idea for Locke, and actually hold out the promise for real knowledge. Modal ideas are ideas by which we fully grasp the real essence of things, because the mind, in some sense, is the originator of them (I will return to this in the next paragraph). The idea of a triangle is a modal idea, made by reason and knowable in its essence with complete accuracy. The idea of a triangle is a product of the mind, and does not refer to anything outside the mind—i.e., any external archetype. The kinds of ideas that fall into this category are the idea of God, mathematical concepts, and, most importantly for our present purposes, moral concepts. Locke writes,

I am bold to think, that Morality is capable of Demonstration , as well as Mathematicks: since the precise real Essence of the things moral Words stand for, may be perfectly known; and so the Congruity, or Incongruity of the Things themselves, be certainly discovered, in which consists perfect knowledge. ( Essay , 3.11.16)

Moral rules, for Locke, are knowable with the same degree of certainty as “any Demonstration in Euclid” ( Essay , 4.3.18).

This might seem to be a tall order when considering the controversy generated by beliefs about moral rules, yet Locke clearly believes that moral rules can, with the right mental effort, yield indisputable universal laws. Locke offers an example of how this might work, by analyzing the moral proposition Where there is no property, there is no injustice . In order to see the demonstrable certainty of this claim, we have to examine the composite ideas and how those agree or disagree with one another. The idea of property, first of all, is a right to something. The idea of injustice, considered next, is a violation of that right. Given these definitions, which Locke thinks are arrived at by careful attention to definition, it is a rational deduction that injustice cannot exist if there is no property to be violated. Injustice and property must, by definition agree. This is a clearly demonstrable rule, according to Locke, deduced from clear and adequately conceived ideas. The only other example Locke offers is the proposition No Government allows absolute Liberty . Government, according to Locke, is the establishment of society upon certain laws, requiring conformity. Absolute liberty is allowing anyone to do as they please. These are modal ideas, according to Locke, and thus known with complete adequacy. As such, it is possible for the rational individual to see clearly that the ideas of absolute liberty and government cannot agree. Of course, most people will argue that these rational deductions rely upon definitions that are debatable. This would not seem to be helped by the fact that, for Locke, modal ideas, like all complex ideas, are put together by the mind; while complex ideas of substance are constructed on the pattern of perceivable objects, modal ideas are, Locke explains, “put together at the pleasure of our Thoughts, without any real pattern they were taken from” ( Essay , 4.4.12). This might seem to pose a problem for Locke’s moral theory, according to which moral laws are just as necessary as mathematical principles. However, Locke is not worried about any relativistic implications. For Locke, any disagreement about definitions of concepts like property, justice or murder, result from insufficient reasoning about the simple ideas that comprise our moral ideas, as well as bias, prejudice and other irrational influences. For Locke, it is precisely because these ideas refer to nothing outside the mind that they can be universally-conceived and adequately understood. Just as the notion of triangularity is known perfectly because it does not depend upon the existence of triangles outside the mind, so justice is understood perfectly because it is not using some extramental archetype as its inspiration. He writes,

the Truth and Certainty of moral Discourses abstracts from the Lives of Men, and the Existence of those Vertues in the World whereof they treat. ( Essay , 4.4.8)

Mathematical concepts are impervious to bias, prejudice or otherwise-idiosyncratic definitions and their relative properties are clear to anyone who understands them perfectly. While many would contend that moral ideas are simply too controversial to fit a proto-mathematical picture, Locke would respond that they seem controversial only because many of us have not taken the time to consider moral ideas in an objective and analytical light. If we were to do so, he argues, we could come to know moral rules with certainty.

Locke, in fact, adds something of a meta-moral dimension to this epistemological point by suggesting that as rational beings it is our “proper Imployment” to contemplate morality. In Book IV of the Essay , where Locke concludes that morality is, like mathematics, a human science (and, properly-speaking, knowledge), Locke draws a teleological lesson—since we are clearly fitted with the capacity for discerning our moral duty, then that is what we ought to do: “I think I may conclude, that Morality is the proper Science and Business of Mankind in general .” ( Essay , 4.12.11) Humans must, he argues, employ reason in the pursuit of that which “they are most adapted to, and follow the direction of Nature, where it seems to point us out the way” ( Essay , 4.12.11). The fact that many people do not or cannot devote contemplative hours to their moral duties is something Locke will consider in his account of moral motivation, however, the key point here is that humans have a teleological makeup that allows for rational certainty with regard to divine moral law.

Is having this degree of knowledge enough to motivate humans to act accordingly—that is, does the sheer recognition of one’s duty have any sway in one’s practical deliberations?

3. Moral motivation 1: reward and punishment

Locke’s hedonism has a dual function in Locke’s moral theory. It accounts both for how we acquire the ideas of moral good and evil that lie at the root of moral law and for the motivation to comply with moral rules. A prominent feature of Locke’s moral legalism is his view that a law needs to carry the threat of sanctions for it to have normative force. Locke holds this view on the basis of his hedonistic theory of human motivation.

Locke develops his hedonistic account most extensively in the Essay . According to this account, pleasure and pain are the primary motivating factors for all human action and human thought. Feelings of pleasure and pain accompany all our ideas, for Locke, prompting us to act in response to our perceptual experiences, and to move, in thought, from one idea to another. If we had no accompanying feeling of delight or pain in the face of certain stimuli we would be unmoved to create music, eat when hungry, or even shift our attention from one idea to any other—the perception of rain would raise in us no different response than a sunny day, the idea of one’s children would inspire no related thoughts of home or family, nor any discernibly different response from the idea of children one does not know. Locke writes,

we should have no reason to preferr [sic] one Thought or Action, to another; Negligence, to Attention; or Motion, to Rest. And so we should neither stir our Bodies, nor employ our Minds; but let our thoughts (if I may so call it) run a drift, without any direction or design; and suffer the Ideas of our Minds, like unregarded shadows to make their appearances there, as it happen’d, without attending to them. ( Essay , 2.7.3)

Pleasure and pain are the engines that make decisions, thoughts, and actions happen. This is not merely coincidence, or chance, for Locke, but yet another example of God’s divine design. God has attached feelings of pleasure and pain to our ideas, so the natural faculties with which humans are endowed “might not remain wholly idle, and unemploy’d by us” ( Essay , 2.7.3).

Pleasure and pain form the basis of Locke’s general theory of motivation, but they are also the bedrock upon which our moral ideas, and the motivation to moral goodness arise. Good and evil reduce, for Locke, to “nothing but Pleasure or Pain, or that which occasions or procures Pleasure and Pain to us” ( Essay , 2.28.5). A flower is good, because its beauty raises feelings of affection or pleasure in us. Illness, on the other hand, is an evil since it raises feelings of aversion in those who have experienced illness in any of its many forms. A good is whatever produces pleasure in us, or diminishes evil, and an evil is whatever produces pain or diminishes pleasure. In this way, for Locke, the ideas of good and evil arise from natural emotive responses to our various ideas. Now, these are not moral goods and evils, but for Locke moral ideas are founded in the general ideas we have of natural pleasures and pains. Locke designates no special faculty by which we acquire the basic moral concepts of good and evil, since these are merely a modification of our ideas of natural good and evil; moral good and evil gain their special significance from considering ideas of pleasure and pain in specific contexts.

Our ideas of moral good and evil do not, therefore, differ qualitatively from natural good or evil. If this is the case, however, one might ask what makes smelling a rose different from helping those in need. For Locke, the answer lies in the different context for pleasures and pains that distinguishes the moral from the natural. While a natural good involves the physical pleasure that arises from the scent of a rose, moral good is a pleasure arising from one’s conformity to moral dictates, and moral evil is pain arising from the failure to conform. The pleasure and pain are not qualitatively distinct, in these cases, but they take on a special significance as a result of the considerations that bring them about. Locke explains this in the Essay , making sure to emphasize the purely contextual distinction between moral and natural feelings:

Morally Good and Evil then, is only the Conformity or Disagreement of our voluntary Actions to some Law, whereby Good and Evil is drawn on us, from the Will and Power of the Law-maker; which Good and Evil, Pleasure or Pain, attending our observance or breach of the law, by the Decree of the Law-maker, is that we call Reward or Punishment . ( Essay , 2.28.5)

Reward and punishment are a distinct species of pleasure and pain, specifying the outcomes attending the decrees of a rightful legislator. In this way, Locke’s is a straightforwardly legalistic account of the concepts of moral good and evil. The practical force of moral laws arises when we compare our actions against these laws, determine the degree to which they do or do not conform to the law and consider the pleasure of pain we will privately experience. In fact, for Locke, the very idea that one being has rightful legislative power over another is predicated on the degree to which the former being can effectively impose sanctions on the latter:

It would be in vain for one intelligent Being, to set a Rule to the Actions of another, if he had not in his Power, to reward the compliance with, and punish deviation from his Rule, by some Good and Evil, that is not the natural product and consequence of the action itself. ( Essay , 2.28.6)

God, according to Locke, is just such a rightful superior with the

Goodness and Wisdom to direct our Actions to that which is best: and he has the Power to enforce it by Rewards and Punishments, of infinite weight and duration, in another Life. ( Essay , 2.28.8)

Locke is clearly committed to the idea that hedonistically-construed outcomes are a necessary condition of any system of law and of legislative authority itself. In this regard, Locke’s views are consistent throughout his corpus. It is worth noting that Locke holds the same view in the early work, the Essays on the Law of Nature , as he does in the more mature works quoted above. In the Essays on the Law of Nature , Essay V , Locke asserts that both God and the soul’s immortality “must necessarily be presupposed if natural law is to exist” (Locke 1663–64, 113). The inclusion of the immortality of the soul would seem to suggest the centrality of rewards and punishments in the afterlife. Locke continues by asserting that “law is to no purpose without punishment” (Locke 1663–64, 113). For Locke, then, an agent may well know the moral law, and that they are obligated to a superior authority, but the obligatory force—i.e., what gives the agent a reason for acting—is the structure of rewards and punishments built into the system.

The question that has plagued Locke scholarship has been how, if at all, the hedonistic elements of Locke’s moral philosophy can be reconciled with his rationalistic account, which suggests that reason can discern morality’s inherent righteousness and motivate accordingly. Some scholars have concluded that Locke effectively abandons the rationalism of his earlier writings by the time he is writing the Essay , and that any such elements found therein are mere holdovers of an earlier position. Von Leyden expresses this view when he writes,

the development of [Locke’s] hedonism and certain other views held by him in later years make it indeed difficult for him to adhere whole-heartedly to his doctrine of natural law. (von Leyden, 1954, 14)

But does it? What I earlier called the compatibilist thesis is held most prominently by scholars John Colman and Stephen Darwall, according to whom Locke’s hedonism does not supplant the rationalist account of natural law and moral obligation, but is, rather, intended to account for the motivational force of moral law. In this way, the two views work together for a complete moral picture. Darwall identifies the distinction between rationally-derived versus legalistically-construed moral obligation when he writes

what makes God’s commands morally obligatory [i.e., God’s authority] appears…to have nothing intrinsically to do with what makes them rationally compelling. (Darwall 1995, 37)

Colman makes a similar point:

Right is the central concept in Locke’s natural law doctrine, but the law could have no purchase on human conduct unless doing that which is right were in some way productive of good. ‘Good’ is the central concept in his moral psychology. (Colman 1983, 49)

Both Darwall and Colman understand Locke as equating moral good and evil with rewards and punishments, such that good and evil are the operative notions that turn moral rules into moral imperatives for rational agents. Agents do not have reasons for acting until they are aware of the rewards and punishments that accompany natural law. On this interpretation, rational insight regarding the righteousness of morality cannot, on its own, motivate humans to act.

Divine sanctions are a constant feature of Locke’s moral philosophy, as we’ve seen, and the compatibilist interpretation goes much further than the incompatibilist interpretation in capturing the nuances in Locke’s moral philosophy. However, there are passages in Locke’s work that suggest that moral rules carry an obligatory force that can motivate rational agents irrespective of rewards and punishments. When this further aspect of Locke’s view is taken into account, we can see that, for Locke, rewards and punishments do not exhaust our reasons for obeying divine moral rules.

4. Moral motivation 2: the righteousness of morality

In the Essays on the Law of Nature , Locke argues that there are two different kinds of obedience to the law of a superior authority, and that these are founded upon two distinct kinds of obligation. The example is as follows:

Anyone would easily … perceive that there was one ground of his obedience when as a captive he was constrained to the service of a pirate, and that there was another ground when as a subject he was giving obedience to a ruler; he would judge in one way about disregarding allegiance to a king, in another about wittingly transgressing the orders of a pirate or robber. (Locke 1663–64, 118)

At this point, Locke might be understood to be distinguishing laws backed by a rightful authority and laws that are not, in which the point is simply that there is no obligation to the pirate, since his are not strictly laws at all on Locke’s definition of the term. However, Locke continues this passage as follows:

in the latter case [subject to a pirate or robber], with the approval of conscience, he rightly had regard only for his well-being, but in the former [subject to a king], though conscience condemned him, he would violate the right of another. (Locke 1663–64, 118)

Locke identifies two distinct grounds of obedience. Recognizing that one’s obligation to the king arises from his rightful authority provides a grounds for obedience that is absent in the case of obeying the pirate. My reasons for obeying the pirate are hedonistic, but my reasons for obeying the king involve my recognition of his rightful authority. Further on in the same Essay , Locke explains that

We should not obey a king just out of fear, because, being more powerful he can constrain (this in fact would be to establish firmly the authority of tyrants, robbers, and pirates), but for conscience’ sake, because a king has command over us by right; that is to say, because the law of nature decrees that princes and a lawmaker, or a superior by whatever name you call him, should be obeyed. (Locke 1663–64, 120)

Thus, sanctions are not the sole motivating factor for Locke. The contrast Locke draws here is an important but commonly underappreciated one; that is, acting for “conscience’ sake” versus acting ‘out of fear’ as two quite distinct grounds for obedience.

The question that remains is how Locke’s notion of acting ‘for conscience’ sake’ can be made sense of within the context of Locke’s general hedonistic account of motivation. It might sound as though we are working with the kind of purely rational motivating factor that Locke’s hedonistic theory clearly rejects; for Locke all human action is motivated by considerations of pleasure and pain.

Recall that for Locke rewards and punishments are specific pleasures and pains. Acting for conscience’ sake will necessarily involve considerations of pleasure and pain, but of a kind quite distinct from sanctions. For Locke, there is a kind of pleasure that attends fulfilling one’s moral duty that is quite distinct from considerations of reward and punishment. In an essay, written in 1692, entitled Ethica A (the first of two essays, the other entitled Ethica B ), Locke appeals to a kind of pleasure that attends the fulfilment of one’s moral duty:

Whoever spared a meal to save the life of a starving man, much more a friend…but had more and much more lasting pleasure in it than he that eat it. The other’s pleasure died as he eat and ended with his meal. But to him that gave it him ‘tis a feast as often as he reflects on it’. (Locke 1692, 319)

The pleasure here is of a special kind. It is not the same as the pleasure we get from satisfying our hunger, nor is it the pleasure that comes with pleasing an authority or earning a reward. In fact, Locke explicitly distinguishes it from the pleasure expected in the afterlife. Fulfilling one’s duty, for Locke, carries its own kind of pleasurable motive—it makes us happy. As Locke writes, further on in Ethica A , “Happiness…is annexed to our loving others and to doing our duty, to acts of love and charity” (Locke 1692, 319). Acting according to moral duty, then, is motivated by feelings of pleasure that attend such acts.

Why, then, does Locke so frequently emphasize the legalistic angle of morality, which depends so heavily on the motivational force of reward and punishment? In Locke’s view, many people fail to acknowledge, or be motivated by, the pleasure inherent to the fulfilment of one’s moral duty, and for these people (which, it turns out, is most of us), God has provided extra incentive—the rewards and punishments God attaches to our actions are a matter of God’s jurisdiction, quite apart from the pleasures of acting dutifully, and in accordance with righteous moral dictates. As Locke explains, God

brings in a necessity of another life…and so enforces morality the stronger, laying a necessity on God’s justice by his rewards and punishments, to make the good the gainers, the wicked losers. (Locke 1692, 319)

Sanctions, therefore, serve to enforce morality ‘the stronger’ but are quite clearly secondary to the intrinsic pleasures motivating dutiful action. So, conscience does not motivate in and of itself, nor does the rational apprehension of one’s moral duty, but Locke identifies a species of pleasure distinct from divine sanctions that makes his notion of acting for conscience’ sake perfectly consistent with his hedonism: to act for conscience’ sake is to be motivated by, and take pleasure in, acting in accordance with one’s moral duty.

Locke’s emphasis can be explained by turning our attention to a view of human nature that lies at the root of Locke’s account. Locke tends to be fairly pessimistic about the degree to which most humans appreciate the inherent righteousness of morality. In fact, Locke maintains a fairly low opinion of the willingness of most people to actually take the time to appreciate the righteousness natural law. If, he writes,

we will not in Civility allow too much Sincerity to the Professions of most Men , but think their Actions to be Interpreters of their Thoughts, we shall find, that they have no such internal Veneration for these Rules, nor so full a Perswasion of their Certainty and obligation. ( Essay , 1.3.7)

Humans are flawed in two respects, according to Locke: we can fail to acknowledge our obligations to natural law, and we can fail to comply even when these obligations are acknowledged.

Locke’s views regarding reason and intellectual duty can be characterized as an ethics of belief, according to which our rational abilities place a responsibility on each of us to examine the beliefs we hold, and to be accountable for those things to which we assent. This is particularly the case with respect to moral rules, themselves, which are the ultimate guidelines for a good human life. As Locke sees it, our capacities as rational agents are insufficiently realized in many, if not most, cases. While the law of nature is knowable by reason for Locke, it is not innately known—Locke does not mean to suggest, as many theologians of his day believed, that it “lies open in our hearts” (Locke 1663–64, 89). This would, he grants, be:

an easy and very convenient way of knowing, and the human race would be very well off if men were so fully informed and so endowed by nature that from birth they were in no doubt as to what is fitting and what is less so. (Locke 1663–64, 90)

For Locke, however, this is just not the case. It is clear, to him, that most people do not understand their moral duty in any deep or robust way. To really know one’s moral duty is to be a moral agent, for Locke—moral knowledge is something gained, by the individual, through rational discovery. Moral truths are attainable with the proper use of reason:

there is some sort of truth to the knowledge of which man can attain by himself and without help of another, if he makes proper use of the faculties he is endowed with by nature. (Locke 1693–94, 89)

For Locke, knowledge, properly-speaking, requires that the individual herself perceives the truth or falsity of any claim to which she grants or withholds assent. An individual agent must perform the intellectual analysis and demonstration herself in order to truly know her moral duty. As it turns out, however, the greatest number of people (particularly in Locke’s day), are, he acknowledges

given up to Labour, and enslaved to the Necessity of their mean Condition; whose lives are worn out, only in the Provisions of Living. ( Essay , 4.20.2)

For these people, the opportunity for gaining a clear perception of their moral duty is very narrow. Worse than this, there are people who have the means and the leisure, but “satisfy themselves with a lazy ignorance” ( Essay , 4.20.6). These latter, Locke asserts, have a “low Opinion of their Souls” ( Essay , 4.20.6). But, in neither case are people entirely off the hook, according to Locke, who argues that no matter how busy one is, there should always be time for thinking about our souls and matters of religion. If one fails to do this, then one is relying for one’s salvation and self-realization upon the mere current of opinion or the untrustworthy word of others. Locke asks if this can provide

sufficient Evidence and Security to every Man, to venture his greatest Concernments on; nay, his everlasting Happiness, or Misery. ( Essay , 4.20.3)

The failure to do so is a kind of moral failing for Locke, one that gains its normative force from the teleogical imperative attending our rational natures:

God has furnished Men with Faculties sufficient to direct them in the Way they should take, if they will but seriously employ them that Way, when their ordinary Vocations allow them the Leisure. ( Essay , 4.20.3)

Again, Locke is not suggesting that we do this from considerations of rewards and punishments, but because it is the fulfillment of our divinely-created natures. Despite failures to comply, the normative force of morality is undeniable, for Locke, on these teleogical grounds. Though Locke seems to believe that our failings with regards to moral knowledge result from a failure to engage our minds in the right direction, he does however acknowledge that the discovery of moral truths is difficult and laborious. And this is where sanctions come into play.

Sanctions are not necessary to natural law if we consider it strictly as a system of divine rules. However, sanctions are necessary when morality functions as law . Sanctions are mechanisms for enforcement, where inherent motivating factors are either absent or underappreciated. Consider, as an example, the moral duty to care for one’s children. For most people, this carries inherent obligatory force arising from its being obviously good and necessary. Where a person fails to appreciate the inherent force of this duty, however, laws exist that require parents to provide the means of life and education for their children, and such laws stipulate compliance under threat of sanctions. To call the first instance a law seems unnecessary, but we can clearly see how the concept of a rule of law distinguishes the latter case. Sanctions provide motives when individuals fail to act on the responsibilities reason should on its own reveal and thereby compel. In the Essays on the Law of Nature , Locke writes,

Those who refuse to be led by reason and to own that in the matter of morals and right conduct they are subject to a superior authority may recognise that they are constrained by force and punishment to be submissive to that authority and feel the strength of him whose will they refuse to follow. (Locke 1663–64, 117)

Sanctions thus ensure that people who ‘refuse to be led’ by reason abide by the dictates of natural law; in this way, sanctions ensure that divine moral rules function as a system of law.

When Locke speaks of moral law, he frequently alludes to sanctions. Morality can motivate without sanctions, but it cannot ensure general compliance in the way that a system of law can. God’s imposition of sanctions is thus strictly instrumental. They are not intrinsic to a system of morality, but they are necessary when the obligatory force of moral rules is not adequately understood. The special role of sanctions as a means of shoring up moral compliance is articulated by Locke in several of his writings. In the 1680 essay Of God’s Justice , he writes

though justice be also a perfection which we must necessarily ascribe to the supreme being, yet we cannot suppose the exercise of it should extend further than his goodness has need of it for the preservation of his creatures in the order and beauty of the state that he has placed each of them in. (Locke 1680, 278)

God metes out justice in the form of sanctions as a means of ensuring social order and peace; sanctions ensure social good:

[God’s] justice is nothing but a branch of his goodness, which is fain by severity to restrain the irregular and destructive parts from doing harm; for to imagine God under a necessity of punishing for any other reason but this, is to make his justice a great imperfection. (Locke 1680, 278)

In one of his more mature works, The Reasonableness of Christianity , Locke makes the point several times, that moral law, with its attendant rewards and punishments, was articulated as a means of ensuring obedience. Humans appreciate the intrinsic righteousness of virtuous acts, which are generally granted the highest degree of approbation. However, virtuous behaviour is assured only when it is in an agent’s interests to comply. It is clear to reason that we ought to act virtuously, but it is easy enough for many of us to eschew virtuous actions when they either present hardships or sacrifice of any kind or when they will not clearly benefit our own interests:

The generality could not refuse [virtue] their esteem and commendation; but still turned their backs on her, and forsook her, as a match not for their turn. That she is the perfection and excellency of our nature; that she is herself a reward, and will recommend our names to future ages, is not all that can now be said of her. (Locke 1736, 247)

In order to remedy this problem, Locke explains, God attached clear and explicit sanctions (made plain through revelation) to ensure that the virtuous course of action will always be the more attractive option:

[Virtue] has another relish and efficacy to persuade men, that if they live well here, they shall be happy hereafter. Open their eyes upon the endless, unspeakable joys of another life, and their hearts will find something solid and powerful to move them. The view of heaven and hell will cast a slight upon the short pleasures and pains of this present state, and give attractions and encouragements to virtue which reason and interest, and the care of ourselves, cannot but allow and prefer. Upon this foundation, and upon this only, morality stands firm, and may defy all competition. This makes it more than a name; a substantial good, worth all our aims and endeavours; and thus the gospel of Jesus Christ has delivered it to us. (Locke 1736, 247)

Primary Literature: Works by Locke

Some of the works by Locke listed below can be found in Mark Goldie (ed.), Political Essays , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997.

1663–64, Essays on the Law of Nature , in Goldie (ed.) 1997, 79–133.
1680, “Of God’s Justice,” in Goldie (ed.) 1997, 277–278.
1686–88, “Of Ethic in General,” in Goldie (ed.) 1997, 297–304.
1690, Two Treatises of Government , edited by Peter Laslett, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988.
1692, “Ethica A,” in Goldie (ed.) 1997, 318–319.
1700, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding , in P.H. Nidditch (ed.), An Essay Concerning Human Understanding , based on the fourth edition, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1975.
1736, John Locke, The Reasonableness of Christianity, As deliver’d in the scriptures , London: printed for A. Bettesworth and C. Hitch, in Paternoster-Row.
1742, Familiar Letters between Mr. Locke and Several of his Friends , London: printed for F. Noble, T. Wright and J. Duncan in St. Martin’s Court.

Secondary Literature

Aaron, Richard I., 1971, John Locke , Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Chappell, Vere, 1994, The Cambridge Companion to Locke , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Cockburn, Catharine Trotter, 1702, “A Defense of Mr. Locke’s Essay of Human Understanding ,” in Catharine Trotter Cockburn: Philosophical Writings , P. Sheridan (ed.), Peterborough, ON: Broadview Press, 2006.
Colman, John, 1983, John Locke’s Moral Philosophy , Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
Darwall, Stephen, 1995, The British Moralists and the Internal Ought: 1640–1740 , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Dunn, John, 1969, The Political Thought of John Locke , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Jolley, Nicholas, 2002, Locke: His Philosophical Thought , Oxford: Oxford University Press.
LoLordo, Antonia, 2012, Locke’s Moral Man , Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Rossiter, Elliot, 2016, “Hedonism and Natural Law in Locke’s Moral Philosophy,” in Journal of the History of Philosophy , 54(2): 203–255.
Schneewind, J.B., 1994, “Locke’s Moral Philosophy,” in Chappell (1994).
Sheridan, Patricia, 2007, “Pirates, Kings, and Reasons to Act: Moral Motivation and the Role of Sanctions in Locke’s Moral Theory” in Canadian Journal of Philosophy , 37(1): 35–48.
–––, 2010, Locke: A Guide for the Perplexed , London: Continuum Publishing Group.
–––, 2015, “Locke’s Latitudinarian Sympathies: an exploration of sentiment in Locke’s moral theory” in Locke Studies , 15: 131–162.
von Leyden, W., 1954, “Introduction,” in John Locke, Essays on the Law of Nature , W. von Leyden (ed.), Oxford: Clarendon.

How to cite this entry . Preview the PDF version of this entry at the Friends of the SEP Society . Look up topics and thinkers related to this entry at the Internet Philosophy Ontology Project (InPhO). Enhanced bibliography for this entry at PhilPapers , with links to its database.

Texts by Locke , at earlymoderntexts.com.

Cockburn, Catharine Trotter | Locke, John | moral motivation | nature of law: natural law theories | property and ownership

Acknowledgments

The editors would like to thank Sally Ferguson for carefully reading this entry and pointing out a number of typographic and other infelicitous errors.

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Explaining Moral Knowledge

In this paper I assess the viability of a particularist explanation of moral knowledge. First, I consider two arguments by Sean McKeever and Michael Ridge that purport to show that a generalist, principle-based explanation of practical wisdom—understood as the ability to acquire moral knowledge in a wide range of situations—is superior to a particularist, non-principle-based account. I contend that both arguments are unsuccessful. Then, I propose a particularist-friendly explanation of knowledge of particular moral facts. I argue that when we are careful to keep separate the various explanatory tasks at hand we can see that a particularist-friendly explanation of the fact that (e.g.,) Jane knows that A is morally right might not be so difficult to come by. Moreover, I suggest that a particularist approach to explaining knowledge of particular moral facts may go some way towards discharging the challenge of moral scepticism.

1 Introduction

Particularists claim that moral phenomena can be explained without relying on exceptionless moral principles. The debate over particularism in recent years has focused on whether the rightness and wrongness of actions can be so explained: generalists claim that in order to explain the rightness of some action, A , we must identify a feature, F , of A and a principle according to which any action that has feature F is right (or pro tanto right). Particularists, in contrast, claim that an explanation of the rightness of A can be perfectly adequate without mention of exceptionless universal generalizations – perhaps ceteris paribus generalizations or generic statements will do, or perhaps the fact that A is F can explain A ’s rightness without mention of generalizations at all. 1

However, the rightness (wrongness) of actions is not the only moral phenomenon in need of explanation. The fact (if it is a fact) that some people have moral knowledge must also be explained. If, for instance, an adequate explanation of Jane’s knowledge that action A is right must mention an exceptionless moral principle, then the particularist project of providing an account of morality without relying on exceptionless moral principles will be gravely jeopardized. And indeed, the chief argument in Sean McKeever and Michael Ridge’s [henceforth M&R] book-length critique of particularism is centred on the explanation of moral knowledge. According to M&R a generalist, principle-based explanation of practical wisdom—understood as the ability to obtain moral knowledge in a wide range of situations—is superior to a particularist, non-principle-based account. And consequently, they claim, we have reason to abandon the particularist project. 2

In this paper I assess the viability of a particularist explanation of moral knowledge. First, I consider M&R’s arguments in favour of a generalist account of practical wisdom and I explain why I find them unconvincing (§2). In §3 I propose a particularist-friendly explanation of knowledge of particular moral facts. I argue that when we are careful to keep separate the various explanatory tasks at hand we can see that a particularist-friendly explanation of the fact that (e.g.,) Jane knows that act A is morally right might not be so difficult to come by and I draw some of the implications of the kind of explanations I propose for moral epistemology more generally.

2 M&R’s Arguments

A person of practical wisdom can obtain moral knowledge in a wide range of situations. How does she do this? According to M&R the best explanation of practical wisdom is that “practical wisdom involves the internalization of a finite and manageable set of non-hedged moral principles which together codify all of morality” (139). Their thought is that a person of practical wisdom has at her disposal a set of exceptionless moral principles from which, together with empirical information about the non-moral features of various situations, she can deduce the normative status of actions. This is a generalist model because exceptionless moral principles play an indispensible role in the explanation of the ability of the practically wise person to obtain moral knowledge. And this is the best explanation of practical wisdom, according to M&R, because unlike its particularist competitors it can accommodate two central features of practical wisdom: that practical wisdom extends to novel and unusual situations and that moral knowledge is not entirely a posterior . Consequently, inference to the best explanation leads to the conclusion that we have reason to endorse generalism and to abandon particularism.

To my mind, generalism does not have the explanatory advantages which M&R attribute to it. In order to see why, let us take a closer look at M&R’s arguments.

2.1 The Argument from Scope

M&R grant, for the sake of argument, Dancy’s holism in the theory of reasons. Holism is the view that a feature that is a reason in one case may be no reason at all, or an opposite reason, in another case. Holists distinguish between features that are reasons (favourers) and features that operate on reasons, such as enablers, disablers, intensifiers, and attenuators. 3 On this model, whether a feature is a reason in a particular situation depends on the presence (or absence) of enablers and disablers. Moreover, the contribution that each reason makes to the overall normative status of a particular action is influenced by the presence (or absence) of intensifiers and attenuators. Let us call all these features—reasons, enablers, disablers, intensifiers and attenuators—the morally relevant features of a situation. A practically wise person must be sensitive to all morally relevant features of a situation because if she is not so sensitive her ability to obtain moral knowledge in a wide range of situations would be utterly mysterious. Moreover, if there are morally relevant features to which she is not sensitive her claim to know the moral fact in question may be undermined or defeated.

will invoke the idea that she already knows all of the kinds of considerations which can function as reasons, defeaters, enablers, intensifiers, and deminishers and indeed understands how they interact … The possibility of practical wisdom … is best explained by the hypothesis that the person of practical wisdom already knows and indeed can articulate all of the potential reasons, defeaters, etc. which might be in play. (142)

According to M&R a practically wise person has a “mental checklist” of all potential moral reasons. She runs through this checklist to determine whether any of the items on her list are present. 4 Next, she must find out whether any of the candidate reasons that are present are disabled or enabled. So she runs through a complete list of potential disablers and enablers. 5 Then she checks whether any item on her intensifiers/attenuators list is present. After running through all these lists she will be able to form an accurate judgment about which reasons are “active” in this specific situation and how “weighty” each reason is. Finally, she identifies an exceptionless principle that tells her how these reasons, given their various weights, balance out, and she uses this principle to deduce the normative status of the action in question. On M&R’s view, then, the fact that a person of practical wisdom knows the normative status of an action is explained by her ability to deduce it from an exceptionless principle. Hence, in order to explain Jane’s knowledge of the normative status of A we must appeal to an exceptionless moral principle.

Our account of the person on whom we can rely to make sound moral judgements is not very long. Such a person is someone who gets it right case by case. To be consistently successful, we need a broad range of sensitivities, so that no relevant feature escapes us, and we do not mistake its relevance either. But that is all there is to say on the matter. (1993:64) 6

According to M&R the checklist model is superior to Dancy’s sensitivity model because it explains the scope of practical wisdom: practical wisdom, M&R maintain, should extend to novel and unusual situations. M&R invite us to imagine Wanda, a person of practical wisdom who visits an entirely alien culture. They claim that since Wanda is a person of practical wisdom, if she has access to all non-moral facts about this alien culture she should be able to determine the normative status of actions and practices there. M&R’s checklist model can explain this: since Wanda knows in advance all the morally relevant features and moral principles, her ability to know the normative status of actions depends exclusively on having access to non-moral facts.

Whether this proposed explanation of the scope of practical wisdom gives us a reason to favour generalism over particularism depends on three considerations: (a) the plausibility of the explanans—namely, the checklist model; (b) the plausibility of competing particularist explanations; and (c) our confidence in the truth of the explanandum: if practical wisdom doesn’t extend in the way M&R claim it does then the “explanation” of this alleged feature of practical wisdom will not help us to adjudicate between particularism and generalism.

Let us first assess the plausibility of the checklist model. The thesis under discussion seems to be a thesis about the cognitive process by which a person of practical wisdom obtains moral knowledge. If so, whether, in fact, a person of practical wisdom runs through mental checklists of morally relevant features and performs an explicit mental deduction is not a question that can be answered from the philosopher’s armchair. 7 The only argument we have been given in support of this model is that it best explains the extended scope of practical wisdom. But those of us who are not practically wise cannot obtain moral knowledge by utilizing the same process that a practically wise person employs because we do not know in advance all the potential morally relevant features and exceptionless moral principles. So either we can obtain moral knowledge in some other way, in which case there is some other explanation of how moral knowledge is acquired, or we cannot obtain moral knowledge at all. If there is another way by which moral knowledge can be obtained, then we may wonder whether the checklist account is a better explanation of practical wisdom than the following hypothesis: The difference between us and practically wise people is not that we acquire moral knowledge by using different cognitive processes, but rather that practically wise people use the same processes we do but they simply use them better.

M&R may insist that only people of practical wisdom have direct (or basic) moral knowledge. But first, this seems to undermine the dialectical force of their argument, which is supposed to start from a premise that both particularists and generalists accept. Particularists are unlikely to accept the claim that only people who know all morally relevant properties and moral principles can have moral knowledge. 8 Second, and more importantly, on the view under discussion moral knowledge is an “all or nothing” business. Either one knows all the morally relevant features and moral principles or one cannot obtain (direct) moral knowledge at all. According to the model under discussion, one must deduce one’s judgment from an exceptionless principle and the morally relevant features that are present. In order to obtain knowledge in this way one must correctly identify all the features that are present and the moral principle that applies to the situation at hand. If one uses the wrong principle it seems that one’s judgment would not qualify as knowledge. And even if one selects a correct principle, if one is systematically blind to certain morally relevant features then one’s identification of the correct principle might not be sufficiently sensitive to warrant an attribution of knowledge. This is because even if the principle in question had not been the correct principle to use in the situation due to the presence of additional morally relevant features to which the agent is blind, the agent would still have believed that this is the correct principle to use. Moreover, it is difficult to imagine a plausible account of moral education and moral development that accommodates this “all or nothing” aspect of knowledge of moral facts. 9

Now let us compare M&R’s explanation to an alternative particularist story. According to one particularist model a person of practical wisdom obtains moral knowledge by exercising a skill of discernment. It may, therefore, be useful to consider the scope of other skills by way of comparison. For example, consider a skilled off-road motorcyclist. Let us suppose that she acquired her skill by riding in certain kinds of terrain. If she is a skilled rider, though, we should expect that she will have no difficulty riding in a slightly different terrain from that with which she is experienced. Moreover, we may expect that she will do better than unskilled bikers in unusual and unfamiliar terrain—perhaps we can expect her learning curve to be steeper in new environments. So to the extent that we have a handle on the notion of a skill, and to the extent that we can make sense of the acquisition of moral knowledge by the application of a skill, we should expect this skill to extend to new and even to somewhat unusual situations.

M&R insist that if Wanda is practically wise, she should be able to obtain moral knowledge in an alien environment. If this alien environment is sufficiently similar to ours then we should expect Wanda’s skill of discernment to carry over to this new environment. But what if the new environment is radically different? Presumably Wanda managed to acquire a skill that allows her to obtain moral knowledge in our normal environment. Perhaps we have reason to expect that given enough time and information Wanda would be able to acquire another skill—the skill required for the attainment of moral knowledge in this alien environment. Admittedly, Wanda will need more than just time and information to acquire this new skill—she will also need practice. But is it true that a comprehensive list of empirical facts is all one needs in order to obtain moral knowledge in an alien environment? Suppose that Wanda has access to a super-computer which can tell her the locations and properties of all the fundamental particles at any given time in this alien world. Are we supposed to expect her to be able to know the normative statuses of actions simply by consulting this computer? Is her ability, so understood, anything like what we might recognize as practical wisdom? 10

Even one who shares M&R’s intuitions about knowledge in alien environments may admit that these intuitions can hardly be used as explanatory desiderata that any adequate theory of practical wisdom must accommodate. Consider, for instance, Wendy, whose moral judgments are extremely reliable in our normal environment and also in different, but similar, environments. Let us assume that in such environments Wendy’s judgments are as reliable as Wanda’s judgments and that she can justify her judgments as well as Wanda can. However, unlike Wanda, Wendy is unable to form any moral judgment in radically alien environments. It is far from obvious that we must conclude that Wendy is not practically wise. And consequently, it is not clear that a particularist account of practical wisdom that can explain Wendy’s, but not Wanda’s, abilities is not an account of practical wisdom.

So far, I’ve been treating M&R’s checklist model as a hypothesis about the psychological process by which a person of practical wisdom obtains moral knowledge. However, several features of M&R’s work suggest that we ought not to attribute this view to them. First, one might expect that if M&R wanted to establish an empirical thesis about actual psychological processes they would have provided some empirical evidence in support of their thesis. It would be quite remarkable if we could identify the psychological process by which moral knowledge is obtained simply by reflecting on the possibility of practical wisdom. Second, in the final chapter of their book M&R claim that their principled conception of morality—”generalism as a regulative ideal”—is compatible with both prototype theory and exemplar theory. These theories purport to explain how people classify particulars as falling under a certain concept. The classification process on both theories is very different from M&R’s checklist account. Indeed, the checklist model, understood as a psychological thesis about the process by which moral knowledge is obtained, seems incompatible with prototype and exemplar accounts. Perhaps, then, a more charitable reading of M&R is to interpret the checklist model as a “rational reconstruction” of the process by which a person of practical wisdom obtains moral knowledge rather than as the claim that a person of practical wisdom consciously uses the checklist model to reach moral judgments. 11

While there is a great deal of disagreement over adequacy conditions for explanation, there is a fairly broad consensus that one necessary condition is that the explanans must be true. If so, the checklist model cannot explain moral knowledge unless it is true. Perhaps, then, the thought is that something like the checklist model operates at the sub-personal level. However, relocating the checklist process to the sub-personal level is incompatible with M&R’s insistence that the person of practical wisdom “already knows and indeed can articulate all of the potential reasons, defeaters, etc. which might be in play”, and it undermines the arguments for generalism we have been discussing. Moreover, it is not quite clear to me how to make sense of the checklist model at the sub-personal level. At best, it might be viewed as a highly metaphorical description of a sub-personal psychological process. Finally, it is no less surprising that we could discover the functioning of sub-personal processes merely by reflecting on the possibility of practical wisdom without doing any empirical research, than that we could discover the functioning of psychological processes at the personal level in this way.

It may be tempting to view the checklist model as one extreme on a spectrum of models of the attainment of moral knowledge, where the skill model occupies the other extreme. Viewed in this way we can imagine a range of “in between” views. Rather than interpreting M&R as advocating the checklist model per se, we can, perhaps, interpret them as recommending a model closer to the checklist-model-end, as it were. 12 While read in this way M&R’s proposal becomes somewhat more palatable, it is not clear that anything weaker than the extreme checklist model can be used as an argument against particularism. To undermine particularism M&R must identify moral phenomena that cannot be explained without relying on exceptionless moral principles. Any model that is weaker than the extreme checklist model must allow for explanations without exceptionless principles and hence it will be compatible with particularism. So while moving away from the checklist-extreme increases the plausibility of M&R’s model, it renders the debate over a weakened checklist model tangential to the particularism-generalist debate.

One may certainly feel that the skill-based account of practical wisdom that we are considering is underdeveloped. Furthermore, one may have doubts as to whether such an account can be fleshed out and expanded into a fully fledged plausible theory about how moral knowledge is obtained. Yet M&R’s objection is not that the checklist model is well-developed while the particularist model is not. Instead they claim that there are moral phenomena that the checklist model explains and particularist models cannot explain. I hope to have shown that with respect to the phenomena considered in this section, a particularist explanation is no worse than a generalist checklist explanation. Indeed, given the implausibility of the checklist model and the lack of empirical evidence to support it, the particularist account, thin as it is, seems to offer a more promising approach to a satisfactory explanation of the phenomena we have been considering.

2.2 Moral Knowledge and the a Priori

How does a person of practical wisdom know a particular moral fact, e.g., that this action is right, or that in this case feature F is a reason to do action A ? Presumably, a particular moral fact is a contingent fact—that a particular act is right depends on various contingent features of the action. For example, act A might be right because it brings about a lot of pleasure but that it does so is a contingent matter. Moreover, for holists, that the pleasure an action brings about is a right-making feature is also contingent. This suggests that knowledge of particular moral facts is a posteriori knowledge. But it may seem implausible to hold that knowledge that a particular act is right is entirely a posteriori because the rightness of an action, one might think, is not something that can be discovered by way of a purely empirical investigation.

Archparticularist Jonathan Dancy takes this challenge very seriously. In response he argues that although particular moral facts are, indeed, contingent they are, nevertheless, known a priori ( 2004 , Ch. 8). M&R criticize Dancy’s position at length. It is an advantage of their favoured model, they argue, that it need not appeal to the mysterious category of the contingent a priori . On the view M&R favour we can have a priori knowledge of necessary exceptionless moral principles with purely descriptive antecedents. Knowledge of particular moral facts is gained by deduction from such a priori principles and a posteriori knowledge that their antecedents are (contingently) instantiated. For example, we know that act A is wrong because we know a posteriori that A (contingently) has feature F , and we know a priori that (necessarily) any act that has feature F is wrong. Thus, on the assumption that the person of practical wisdom internalizes a set of exceptionless moral principles we can explain the possibility of practical wisdom without attributing to her the curious ability to know a priori that a contingent fact obtains. So, the thought goes, exceptionless moral principles are essential for an adequate explanation of the possibility of moral knowledge and practical wisdom. 13

As M&R see it, the only two alternatives to the model they favour are Dancy’s “contingent a priori ” and a purely a posteriori account of moral knowledge. And since both these options are unattractive, we have reason to forgo particularism. I agree with M&R that both alternatives are not without difficulties; I find their critique of Dancy’s “contingent- a priori ” compelling and there are familiar worries about a purely a posteriori account of moral knowledge. However, I believe that there are at least two other options open to particularists.

One option is that we can have a priori knowledge of exception-full or defeasible principles. Perhaps statements like “lying is wrong-making” and “pleasure is right-making”, understood as generic- or normic-statements, 14 are both exception-full and knowable a priori . One might appeal to Ross-style self-evidence and argue that “normic statements” are self-evident. That keeping a promise is (normally) right-making is as plausible a candidate for self-evidence as Ross’ claim that keeping a promise is prima facie right. 15 Alternatively, one could argue that normic statements seem right and make use of the principle of phenomenal conservatism. 16 While normic statements cannot be used to deduce the normative status of particular actions, they may be a part of a proper explanation of particular judgments. In order to decide whether normic statements are knowable a priori we will need a detailed account of a priority which I am not prepared to give here. Yet by M&R’s standards we must not rule out the possibility that such statements are knowable a priori simply because they are not analytic. 17

Another alternative is this. It is commonly thought that moral properties (globally) supervene on non-moral properties. Let us call this thesis the Supervenience Thesis or (ST). Moreover, it is plausible that if (ST) is knowable, it is knowable a priori . 18 Particularists need not deny (ST), nor must they deny that (ST) is knowable a priori . 19 (ST) guarantees that there are necessary connections between certain non-moral properties and moral properties. So particularists admit that there are true necessary statements of the form: (ST1) □∀ x ( Gx → Mx ) where x ranges over actions, G is a non-moral property of being in a specific completely defined world-state and M is a moral property. 20 Statements like this are certainly not analytic on any plausible construal of analyticity, but by M&R’s standards this doesn’t entail that they are not knowable a priori . So perhaps statements of this kind might serve as the a priori element, as we have been calling it, that M&R insist any account of moral knowledge must identify.

One might think that (ST1) is a moral principle and so that by identifying the a priori element of moral knowledge in the form of (ST1), I have, in effect, given up on the particularist project. But this would be a mistake. I presented the debate between particularists and generalists as a disagreement over whether exceptionless principles are essential for an adequate explanation of moral phenomena. Suppose we want to explain the rightness of some action, A . I take it that on any plausible theory of explanation the following statement would not qualify as an adequate explanation: action A is right because any action that instantiates the property of being-in-a-world-state-indistinguishable-from-this-one is morally right. Statements like (SP1) do not explain the rightness (wrongness) of actions and so these are not generalizations of the kind that generalists claim, and particularists deny, are essential to moral theorizing.

One may worry that to identify the a priori element of moral knowledge in the form of (ST1) doesn’t solve the problem with which we began. The challenge was to identify the a priori component of our knowledge of particular moral facts. But surely we cannot use generalizations like (ST1) to deduce the normative status of particular actions. So the problem with which we started remains unsolved. 21 Now if the challenge is to indentify an a priori element that we, in fact, know and can use to deduce particular moral judgments that constitute moral knowledge, then I agree that the challenge has not been met. But we should keep in mind that M&R have not met this challenge either since they have not identified exceptionless moral principles that we know and can use in this way. So insofar as we must identify a known a priori element, particularists and generalists are on a par. Both particularists and generalists must appeal to features that are in principle knowable a priori . So, I conclude, whatever role the identification of an a priori element is supposed to fulfil in the explanation of knowledge of particular moral facts, if M&R’s principles can do it, then it’s not clear why (ST1) could not.

3 Explaining Knowledge of Particular Moral Facts

So far I have argued that M&R’s arguments—arguments that purport to identify phenomena that the checklist, principle-based model of moral knowledge explains better than a particularist skill-based model—are unconvincing. In this section I argue that particularist-friendly explanations of knowledge of particular moral facts are, in fact, not so difficult to come by—as long as we identify properly what it is that we are trying to explain.

The task of explaining knowledge of particular moral facts can be understood in several ways. One thing that we might wish to explain is the very possibility of moral knowledge. This task can be described as an attempt to answer the question whether, and if so how, knowledge of particular moral facts is possible. Alternatively, we may wish to explain particular instances of moral knowledge. This task can be described as an attempt to answer questions like this: How does Jane know that action A is morally right?

It may be useful to compare the explanation of knowledge of particular moral facts to the explanation of knowledge of other people’s mental states. Here, too, there are two possible explanatory tasks. One thing we might wish to explain is the very possibility of knowledge of other people’s mental states. This task can be described as an attempt to answer the question whether, and if so how, such knowledge is possible. Another separate goal might be to explain particular instances of knowledge of other people’s mental states. This task can be described as an attempt to answer questions like this: How does John know that Jim is distressed?

Explaining the very possibility of knowledge of other people’s mental states is notoriously difficult. However, coming up with possible explanations of particular instances of knowledge of other people’s mental states is simple enough. For example, consider the following answers to the question ‘How does John know that Jim is distressed?’:

a) John knows that Jim received some disturbing news.
b) John noticed that Jim is restless and out of focus.
c) John is a very sensitive person.
d) John was told so by Bill who is extremely reliable about such matters.

In “normal” contexts, I submit, answers like these are perfectly felicitous and they constitute adequate explanations of John’s knowledge of Jim’s distress. 22 Indeed, if explanations like these are inadequate, we may be forced to conclude that John’s knowledge that Jim is distressed is inexplicable. The fact that we are typically not perplexed by claims like ‘John knows that Jim is distressed’ and our ability in ordinary contexts to offer acceptable explanations for such claims militate against the hypothesis that such claims are inexplicable.

Several aspects of these proposed explanations are worth emphasizing. First, none of them, nor their conjunction, guarantees that John knows that Jim is distressed. Moreover, there are no known exceptionless principles that we can add to these proposed explanations, or that we can reasonably expect John to know, that would guarantee that John knows that Jim is distressed. Second, if the mental supervenes on the physical, then there are some physical features that determine Jim’s distress. Presumably, if John knows that Jim is distressed he must, in some sense, be sensitive to these features. Nevertheless, John need not be able to articulate these features in order to know that Jim is distressed. In fact, it is difficult to imagine a (non-fanciful) context in which these features would partake in a proper explanation of John’s knowledge. Third, the explanandum we are after is that John knows that Jim is distressed, or schematically, that S knows that p (henceforth, ‘KSp’). An adequate explanation of p need not explain KSp and an adequate explanation of KSp need not explain p. For example, while in some contexts Jim’s brain-state may explain Jim’s distress, in non-fanciful contexts Jim’s brain state does not explain John’s knowledge of Jim’s distress. Likewise, while the proposed explanations (a)-(d) above may explain John’s knowledge they do not explain the fact that Jim is distressed. (a) is different from (b)-(d) because (a) entails that Jim received some disturbing news which, in turn, may explain Jim’s distress. This suggests that perhaps one explanation of KSp is that S knows something that explains p. But as the other proposed explanations indicate this is not the only way to explain KSp.

Returning to moral knowledge, explaining the very possibility of moral knowledge, like explaining the very possibility of knowledge of other minds, is a daunting task. In contrast, explanations of knowledge of particular moral facts are widespread and mundane, and it is quite easy to come up with potential answers to questions like ‘How does Jane know that act A is right?’:

e) Jane knows that act A is a compassionate act.
f) Jane examined the situation carefully, she understands what is at stake, she is sufficiently disinterested (or involved), she has been in a situation like this before (etc.)
g) Jane is a very sensitive (or caring, or responsible) person.
h) Jane was told so by Berta who is extremely reliable about such matters.

In “normal” contexts answers like these are perfectly felicitous and they constitute adequate explanations of Jane’s knowledge of the rightness of A . As in our previous example, if explanations like these are inadequate, we may have to conclude that the fact that Jane knows that A is morally right is inexplicable. That we are not typically perplexed by attributions of moral knowledge together with the availability of acceptable explanations suggests that the inexplicability hypothesis is no more palatable in the moral case than it is in the case of other minds.

In the moral case, like the mental case, the proposed explanans does not necessitate the explanandum. Although the moral supervenes on the non-moral, the set of properties on which the rightness of A supervenes need not be included in a proper explanation of Jane’s knowledge that A is morally right. Moreover, since we typically do not know what the subvenient base is, it is better to explain Jane’s knowledge of the rightness of A without attributing to her extraordinary knowledge of this kind. While (e)-(h) may explain the fact that Jane knows that A is right, they do not explain the rightness of A . Unlike (f)-(h), however, (e) entails that A is a compassionate act which, in turn, may explain the rightness of A . This suggests that perhaps one kind of explanation of Jane’s knowledge that A is morally right is that Jane knows something that explains the rightness of A . But as (f)-(e) indicate, this is not the only way to explain Jane’s knowledge.

There are, of course, important differences between the relation of the mental to the physical and the relation of the moral to the non-moral. For example, the supervenience of the moral on the non-moral is (arguably) knowable a priori , whereas the supervenience of the mental on the physical is (arguably) not knowable a priori . 23 Also, (b) above—that John noticed that Jim is restless and out of focus—explains Jim’s distress because (arguably) Jim’s distress causes his restless behaviour. However, in the moral case it is not clear that the rightness of A causes anything. If moral properties are causally inert, then one cannot explain knowledge of such properties by knowledge of their causal consequences. These differences show that the analogy between the two cases discussed earlier can only go so far. But perhaps as far as it goes is far enough—some kinds of explanations seem to be applicable in both the moral case and the mental case.

Let us focus on the explanation of KSp that takes the form that S knows something that explains p—that is, explanations of the kind illustrated by (a) and (e) above. If, as I suggested, the fact that S knows something that explains p can (at least sometimes) explain KSp, then pace M&R, explaining knowledge of particular moral facts doesn’t pose a new challenge for particularism. If particularists succeed in demonstrating that we can explain the rightness and wrongness of actions without appealing to exceptionless moral principles, then what S knows when S knows something that explains p need not include knowledge of exceptionless moral principles. For example, if one can adequately explain the rightness of an act A —say an act of making a charitable donation to a worthy cause—by citing the fact that in doing A the agent of A was neither stingy nor extravagant, without the further commitment that all actions that are neither stingy nor extravagant are right (or even pro tanto right), 24 then the fact that Jane knows that in doing A the agent of A was neither stingy nor extravagant may explain her knowledge that A is right without relying on or presupposing the availability of any exceptionless moral principles.

It may seem tempting to argue that the kinds of explanations I propose are felicitous but incomplete. The proposed explanans provide some pertinent information about the explanandum but they succeed as explanations only because they rely on listeners to fill in the gaps. For example, that Jane’s knowledge that act A is compassionate is a felicitous explanation of her knowledge that A is right, is a pragmatic phenomenon—in normal conversational contexts we can make use of information that remains unstated. In claiming that this explanation is adequate , however, we are helping ourselves to this unstated information. But this information, though unstated, is still a proper part of the explanation. And so the explanations, felicitous or not, are literally inadequate. 25

It is certainly plausible that the explanations I proposed make use of information that remains unstated. Indeed, one could expand on these explanations in various ways. However, it seems implausible to suppose that these explanations are felicitous only because we can rely on the hearer to complete them by adding exceptionless principles that link the stated explanans to the desired explanandum – at present no such principles are known. One condition of adequacy for a theory of explanation is that some “explanations” are adequate explanations. We may, therefore, have reason to be sceptical of theories of explanation according to which felicitous “explanations” are irrevocably inadequate. 26

But if, as I claim, explanations of moral knowledge are so readily available, why have philosophers been so puzzled by knowledge of particular moral facts? And why have explanations of the kinds I proposed been largely overlooked by philosophers?

One reason, I suspect, is that many ethicists still endorse, either explicitly or implicitly, a deductive model of explanation according to which in order to properly explain something one must identify features from which the explanandum can be deduced . The explanations offered above are not deductive—the explanans does not guarantee the explanandum—and so they may have been quickly dismissed because they have been thought to flagrantly fail a basic condition of adequacy for a proper explanation of the phenomena in question. However, a careful examination of the nature of explanation reveals that adequate explanations need not take the form of a deductive argument. 27 Consequently, that the explanations offered above are non-deductive is not, in itself, a reason to discard them.

Another related reason why these explanations have not been considered concerns the type of generalizations on which they rely. When we seek to explain knowledge of particular moral facts we may expect that our explanation will tell us at once something informative about all instances of moral knowledge. This expectation parallels a similar expectation regarding explanations of the rightness of actions—namely, that an adequate explanation of the rightness of actions will tell us at once something informative about all right actions. Particularists, however, insist that this expectation is unwarranted. It may well be the case that the only true general claims we can make about all right actions will be in the form of uninformative trivialities like the following: right actions lie in the mean—they are neither excessive nor deficient—and they are performed at the right times, with reference to the right objects, towards the right people, with the right motive, and in the right way. Statements like this do not provide illuminating information about all right actions—they look more like tautologies or vacuous trivialities—and nothing of interest follows from them. However, there are other ways to understand the explanatory role of such statements. Instead of major premises in syllogisms from which the normative status of particular actions can be inferred, we can think of such statements as summaries of, or placeholders for, specific informative explanations. That is, such statements can be viewed as explanatory schemas that provide information about the structure of proper explanations and the kind of information that such explanations ought to include: to explain the rightness of a particular action we must identify a scale on which the action is neither excessive nor deficient and we must “discharge the hedges”—i.e., the right time, the right object, etc. 28

Returning to explanations of knowledge of particular moral facts: perhaps the only true general claims we can make about all instances of moral knowledge will be trivialities like the following: all such cases are cases in which the agent gets it right. This, too, looks much like a tautology or a vacuous triviality and nothing of interest follows from generalizations of this kind. Thus, if such generalizations explain anything, they cannot do so by functioning as major premises in syllogisms. Their explanatory role is better viewed as explanatory schemas that tell us something about the kind of information that explanations of knowledge of particular moral facts ought to include. All cases of moral knowledge are cases in which the agent gets it right. Sometimes she gets it right because she knows that in doing A the agent of A was neither stingy nor extravagant. Sometimes she gets it right because she knows that in doing A the agent of A was neither fearful nor overconfident. And sometimes she gets it right because she knows that A is a compassionate action. These explanations are not derivable from the general statement about getting it right. Instead they give this general statement its substance and content. Indeed, general statements about getting it right will not be a part of a proper explanation of knowledge of the rightness and wrongness of particular action at all. So a proper explanation of Jane’s knowledge that A is right might be that Jane knows that A is neither excessive nor deficient and that A was performed at the right time, with reference to the right object, etc.,—when the generic features of this explanatory schema are replaced properly with Jane’s knowledge of specific features of the case at hand.

A third reason why the kinds of explanations I suggested have not been considered concerns the aim of giving such explanations. It may be tempting to think that one aim of the project of explaining moral knowledge is to help us figure out what we need to do in order to obtain moral knowledge. The explanation offered by M&R seems to achieve this objective – if we want to obtain moral knowledge we need to internalize a set of exceptionless moral principles from which, together with some empirical information, we will be able to deduce the rightness or wrongness of individual action. Since a complete explanation of Jane’s knowledge that action A is right will mention the principle from which Jane deduced the rightness of A , then once we have this explanation we will be in a position to obtain moral knowledge ourselves. 29 That is, if in order to explain KSp we need to indentify conditions such that whenever they obtain then S knows that p, then any explanation can be used to predict that if these conditions obtain one will know that p. And so, one way to know that p, is to make sure that the relevant conditions obtain.

In contrast, the explanations I proposed cannot help us to figure out what we need to do in order to obtain knowledge of particular moral facts. 30 Jane can know that A is a compassionate action or that A is neither stingy nor extravagant and still not know that A is right. For one thing Jane might not believe that A is right. What’s more, Jane might know these things about A and yet A might not be right. So it may seem as though the explanations offered here have no ‘potential predictive force’ and hence that they are inadequate.

This line of reasoning is, to my mind, unpersuasive. First, there is no reason to insist that an adequate explanation of knowledge of particular moral facts should be useful in or applicable for obtaining moral knowledge. It is constructive, here, to attend to a common distinction in normative ethics between explaining the rightness of actions and providing a practicable decision procedure. 31 Utilitarians, for example, are quick to point out that even if one could show that one cannot use the principle of utility to determine what one ought to do, it may still be the correct explanation of the rightness/wrongness of actions. 32 A similar distinction may be expedient in moral epistemology. It is one thing to explain moral knowledge and it is another thing to offer advice on how to obtain moral knowledge. Hence, that an explanation of moral knowledge doesn’t provide us with practicable advice on how to obtain moral knowledge is no objection to the proposed explanation qua explanation of moral knowledge.

Second, an examination of work on the nature of explanation shows that the “explanation-prediction symmetry thesis”, as we may call it, is not a constraint on explanation that one must accept. Indeed, on all but the classic D-N model of explanation this constraint is abandoned. As Scriven observed in 1959 , “we have more data for explaining than we did for predicting” (469) because when we set out to explain p we are not asking whether p but rather we can use p as part of the data we have at our disposal.

A fourth reason why the kinds of explanations I proposed have not generally been considered is this: even after being presented with these explanations one might still be puzzled about moral knowledge. For example, one who thinks that moral properties are causally inert, non-natural properties, may still puzzle over how we could know whether, where, or when such properties are instantiated.

Here it is important to pay attention to what it is we have been trying to explain. Earlier we identified two explanatory tasks: explaining the possibility of moral knowledge and explaining knowledge of particular moral facts, and we said that we will focus on the latter task. With this in mind we can see that the resistance considered here to the explanations I proposed is based on a conflation of the two explanatory tasks – it is no objection to an explanation of p qua an explanation of p that it fails to explain something else. That there are features of moral knowledge that remain puzzling after an explanation of knowledge of a particular moral fact is given is to be expected.

However, one might think that the real challenge for moral epistemology is the task of explaining the possibility of moral knowledge – this is what philosophers have been interested in all along. I believe that the explanations I proposed may help us to make some headway towards addressing this challenge as well. If we have adequate explanations of instances of moral knowledge we may be able to explain the possibility of moral knowledge “bottom-up”. If we can properly explain Jane’s knowledge that A is right in many different situations, what aspect of the possibility of moral knowledge is left unexplained? Certainly we haven’t identified the mechanism by which moral knowledge is obtained and it may be quite interesting to try to learn more about this mechanism (or mechanisms). But if there is no puzzle about instances of moral knowledge, questions about the possibility of moral knowledge may seem less pressing and more manageable.

This leads us to a fifth and related reason why the kinds of explanations I proposed have not generally been considered: the “bottom-up” explanation of the possibility of moral knowledge seems to beg the question against the sceptic. In framing the issue in terms of explanations of knowledge of particular moral facts we helped ourselves to the explanandum—namely, that in those instances we are addressing the agent in question does have moral knowledge. When one attempts to explain something, one presupposes the truth of the explanandum at least for the duration of the explanation game. It is no surprise, then, that with this presupposition we are able to show that moral knowledge is possible because in effect we already assumed that it is possible.

It is certainly true that framing the issue in terms of explaining knowledge of particular moral facts we presuppose that such knowledge is possible and to that extent framing the debate in this way begs the question against the sceptic. However, one is unlikely to respond successfully to the sceptical challenge if one accepts the sceptic’s terms. Framing the debate in terms of explanation may help us to endorse a perspective from which the sceptic’s terms no longer seem attractive. The proposal is not meant to resolve the sceptical challenge but rather to dissolve it by offering a framework in which it is sensible to resist the sceptic’s terms.

So while we can understand why explanations of the kind I proposed have been overlooked, I conclude that none of the reasons considered here warrants dismissing such explanations as inadequate explanations of knowledge of particular moral fact. Moreover, taking such explanations at face value may help us to circumvent sceptical challenges to moral knowledge.

4 Conclusion

I hope to have shown that moral epistemology does not pose a special problem for the particularist research programme. I considered two arguments that purport to show that exceptionless moral principles are essential for adequate explanations of moral knowledge, and I claimed that both arguments are unpersuasive. In “normal” contexts, I argued, particularist-friendly explanations of moral knowledge of particular facts are not so difficult to come by. Moreover, I’ve suggested that if we have adequate explanations of particular instances of moral knowledge, we might also (indirectly) have an explanation of the possibility of moral knowledge. This “bottom-up” approach to moral epistemology is unlikely to appease the sceptic. Nevertheless it may help us dissolve the problem of moral scepticism by making it easier for us to resist the conditions of adequacy for explanations of the possibility of moral knowledge on which the sceptic insists.

Bales R.E. , ( 1971 ) ‘ Act-Utilitarianism: Account of Right-making Characteristics or Decision-Making Procedure? ’, American Philosophical Quarterly 8 : 257 – 265 .

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Dancy J. , ( 2004 ) Ethics Without Principles ( Oxford : Clarendon Press ).

—— ( 1993 ) Moral Reasons ( Blackwell Publishers ).

Dreyfus H.L. , and Dreyfus S.E. ( 1990 ) ‘ What is Morality? A Phenomenological Account of the Development of Ethical Expertise ’, in Rasmussen, D. (1990) Universalism vs. Communitarianism (The MIT Press) 237–264.

Dworkin G. ( 1995 ) ‘ Unprincipled Ethics ’, Midwest Studies in Philosophy , 20 : 224 – 239 .

Hempel C.G. , , and Oppenheim P. , ( 1948 ) ‘ Studies in the Logic of Explanation ’, Philosophy of Science , 15 ( 2 ): 135 – 175 .

Huemer ( 2007 ) ‘ Compassionate Phenomenal Conservatism ’, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research , 74 ( 1 ): 30 – 55 .

Kagan ( 2001 ) ‘ Thinking About Cases ’, Social Philosophy and Policy , 18 : 44 – 63 .

Ladd J. , ( 1952 ) ‘ Ethics and Explanation ’, The Journal of Philosophy , 49 ( 15 ): 499 – 504 .

Leibowitz U.D. ( 2012 ) ‘ Particularism in Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics ’, The Journal of Moral Philosophy .

—— ( 2011 ) ‘ Scientific Explanation and Moral Explanation ’, Noûs 45 ( 3 ): 472 – 503 .

—— ( 2009b ) ‘ Moral Advice and Moral Theory ’, Philosophical Studies , 146 ( 3 ): 349 – 359 .

—— ( 2009a ) ‘ A Defense of a Particularist Research Program ’, Ethical Theory and Moral Practice , Volume 12 , Issue 2 .

McKeever S. , , and Ridge M. , ( 2006 ) Principled Ethics: Generalism as a Regulative Ideal ( Oxford : Clarendon Press ).

Schroeder ( 2009 ) ‘ A Matter of Principle ’, Noûs 43 ( 3 ): 568 – 580 .

Scriven M. , ( 1959 ) ‘ Truisms as the ground for historical explanations ’, in Gardiner P. , (ed.) (1959) Theories of History (The Free Press) pp. 443 – 475 .

Zangwill N. , , ( 2006 ) ‘ Moral Epistemology and the Because Constraint ’, in Dreier J. , (ed.)(2006) Contemporary Debates in Moral Theory (Blackwell Publishing).

* Earlier versions of this paper were presented at the Virtuous Agency Workshop at Uppsala University, the Centre for Ethics and Metaethics at Leeds, the Law and Philosophy Workshop at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, the 4 th RoME Congress at Boulder, and the Moral Philosophy Seminar at Oxford. I received many helpful questions, comments and suggestions from members of the audience on each of these occasions. I am particularly grateful to Daniel Elstein, David Enoch, Carrie Jenkins, Noa Leibowitz, Yair Levy, Sean McKeever, Sydney Penner, Michael Ridge, Pekka Väyrynen and Jeffrey Wisdom. Special thanks go to Tehila Sagy.

1 For this formulation of the particularism-generalism debate, see Leibowitz (2009a). The list of options here mentioned is illustrative rather than exhaustive. The specific details of what an adequate particularist explanation consists of may vary from one particularist theory to another. See Leibowitz (2011).

2 See M&R (2006) Chapters 6 & 7.

3 See Dancy (2004) Chapters 2 & 3.

4 One question that M&R do not address is how a person of practical wisdom knows that she is in a situation that calls for moral assessment in the first place. That is, how does she know when to run through her mental checklist of morally relevant features? It seems that even proponents of the checklist model must appeal to some skill or ability in their account of moral knowledge, otherwise they may have to resort to “checklists all the way down”.

5 If disablers and enablers can themselves be disabled or enabled, she also runs through a complete list of meta-disablers/enablers.

6 In his latest book (2004:142–3) Dancy expresses a similar position. He claims that moral knowledge is “more like knowledge-how than like knowledge-that” and that moral knowledge is obtained by the application of a skill of discernment.

7 There may be reasons to think that particular moral judgments are not acquired in this way. See, for example, Dworkin (1995) and Dreyfus and Dreyfus ( 1990 ) as well as various sources cited in M&R (2006) ch. 9 section 4.

8 In personal correspondence McKeever pointed out to me that he is happy to allow that moral knowledge is interpersonally transferable (e.g., by testimony) and so that there are other methods for the acquisition of moral knowledge other than the checklist model. The qualification “direct” or “basic” moral knowledge in the text is added in order to emphasize that the focus here is on moral knowledge which does not depend on there being other agents who possess moral knowledge. In any case, particularists are unlikely to accept the claim that unless one is practically wise one can obtain moral knowledge only indirectly.

9 The implausibility of the checklist model becomes apparent if we consider how we know that an act is dangerous (for example). It seems implausible to insist that in order to know that an act is dangerous one must know in advance all possible danger-relevant features (including enablers, disablers, intensifiers and attenuators) as well as the exceptionless principle from which one can deduce that an act is dangerous.

10 Schroeder (2009) raises similar concerns about M&R’s expectations about the scope of practical wisdom.

11 Thanks to Pekka Väyrynen for this proposal.

12 I owe this suggestion to Pekka Väyrynen and Daniel Elstein.

13 This model makes knowledge of principles prior to, and more fundamental than, knowledge of the normative status of particular actions. It is difficult to see how this model could accommodate the practice of revising principles in response to judgments about cases—a practice that M&R want to preserve (see, e.g., p. 158. But see Kagan (2001) for the view that judgments about cases do not generate data for moral theorizing.) Moreover, I suspect that if M&R’s argument succeeds it should be equally forceful against any form of pluralism. So its conclusion seems to be stronger than M&R recognize.

14 “Tigers have tails” is a paradigmatic example of a generic statement. “Tigers have tails” is true even though some tigers have no tails. The term “normic-statement” is introduced by Michael Scriven (1959) for statements that are not analytic and not refutable by a few counter instances. “The normic statement,” he writes, “says that everything falls into a certain category except those to which certain special conditions apply. And, although the normic statement itself does not explicitly list what count as exceptional conditions, it employs a vocabulary which reminds us of our knowledge of this, our trained judgment of exceptions” (1959:466).

15 Indeed, it is not so difficult to come up with scenarios in which it is anything but obvious that keeping a promise is right making. In contrast, it is much harder, and arguably impossible, to find examples that show that keeping a promise is not normally right making.

16 See, e.g., Huemer (2007).

17 M&R take Moore’s Open Question Argument to show that moral predicates cannot be analyzed into purely descriptive language and so that moral principles are not analytic. See M&R’s Ch. 5 (and esp. section 5.2).

18 See, for example, Zangwill (2006) .

19 Dancy explicitly states that he intends particularism to be compatible with (ST). See Dancy (2004:85–93) . For a discussion of the compatibility of (ST) with particularism, see Leibowitz (2009a).

20 I am assuming for the sake of discussion that nihilism is false. This is common ground in the context of the particularism-generalism debate.

21 Thanks to Carrie Jenkins for pressing me on this issue.

22 This list isn’t exhaustive – there may well be other kinds of explanations one could offer.

23 See, for example, Zangwill (2006) .

24 I develop this version of a particularist-friendly explanation of the rightness of actions in Leibowitz (2012) . I will say more about it below.

25 Thanks to Sydney Penner for pressing me on this point.

26 For a more detailed discussion of this issue as well as an argument for why a Hempel-style move to “explanation sketches” won’t do, see Leibowitz (2011).

27 See Leibowitz (2011).

28 The precise details of the particularist explanation of the rightness of actions may vary from one particularist theory to another. The explanation, or “explanation-sketch”, I suggest in the main text is based on the particularist theory I develop in Leibowitz (2012) .

29 One explicit expression of this expectation can be found in Ladd (1952:499) , where Ladd insists that proper explanations “should provide us with statements that have ‘potential predictive force’”.

30 At least not directly. They may be helpful in other ways. See Leibowitz (2012) .

31 For a discussion of the distinction between explaining the rightness of actions and providing decision procedures see Leibowitz (2009b).

32 See, e.g., Bales (1971) .

See M&R ( 2006 ) Chapters 6 & 7.

See Dancy ( 2004 ) Chapters 2 & 3.

Schroeder ( 2009 ) raises similar concerns about M&R’s expectations about the scope of practical wisdom.

See, e.g., Huemer ( 2007 ).

See, for example, Zangwill ( 2006 ).

See Leibowitz ( 2011 ).

See, e.g., Bales ( 1971 ).

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In This Article Expand or collapse the "in this article" section Moral Epistemology

Introduction, general overviews.

Anthologies
Encyclopedia Entries
Historically Important Accounts
Rationalist Accounts of Moral Knowledge
Empiricist Accounts of Moral Knowledge
Psychological Theories of Moral Judgment
Psychological Theories of Moral Development
Moral Belief and Evolution
Moral Skepticism
Moral Nihilism
Moral Disagreement
Intuitions about Cases
Intuitions about Principles
Moral Perception
Desires as Intuitions of Value or Reasons
Emotions and Moral Judgment
Inferring “Ought” from “Is”
Moral Knowledge from Inference to the Best Explanation
Coherence Theories of Moral Knowledge and Warrant
Moral Contextualism
The Reliability of Pre-theoretical Moral Judgment
The Possibility of Theoretical Moral Knowledge
Reflective Equilibrium
Moral Expertise and Deference
Feminist Approaches to Moral Epistemology
Moral Skill or Know-How
Moral and Mathematical Knowledge
Decision under Moral Uncertainty
Non-cognitivism and Moral Epistemology

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Alfred North Whitehead
Feminist Aesthetics and Feminist Philosophy of Art
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Moral Epistemology by Aaron Zimmerman LAST REVIEWED: 26 August 2014 LAST MODIFIED: 26 August 2014 DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780195396577-0208

Moral epistemology is the study of moral knowledge and related phenomena. The recorded history of work in the field extends (at least) 2,500 years to Socrates’s inquiries into whether virtue and expertise in governance can be taught. Every major moral theorist since then has advanced theses about the possibility of moral knowledge and those modes of thinking, feeling, and reasoning that are most conducive to improvements in moral outlook. Though the study of moral language and the metaphysics of morality received more attention by Western philosophers in the 20th century, interest in moral epistemology has grown in recent years as theorists have turned to advances in the scientific study of moral development and moral judgment—and their origins in biological and cultural evolution—in the hopes of shedding new light on the old questions. By further understanding the processes that give rise to our moral beliefs, and the critical evaluation and consequent evolution of moral frameworks, we hope to gain further insight into what distinguishes those rational, reasonable, or well-considered moral views that would seem to comprise moral knowledge from those irrational, false, or unduly biased judgments that fall short. This article begins by describing general overviews of moral epistemology, moves on to consider historically important accounts of moral knowledge, and then addresses contemporary scientific accounts of moral judgment, moral development, and the foundations of moral response in our evolved biology. With these elements in place, it moves on to moral skepticism and the question of whether we have any moral knowledge; moral nihilism, or the view that there are no moral truths to be known; and the extent and nature of fundamental moral disagreement: perhaps the most common route to skepticism about morality. The “special” topics that follow these core concerns demonstrate the breadth and richness of the field. We would seem to have “intuitions” of the morality of certain actions, people, or institutions. Some (non-skeptical) theorists liken these intuitions to perceptions of color or beauty. Others argue that desires provide non-inferential knowledge of value, that basic moral principles are self-evident, or that we can directly infer “ought” from “is.” Theorists discuss, among other things, the reliability of ordinary processes of moral judgment, the role of coherence and reflection in augmenting the rationality of folk moral views, the possibility of theoretical moral knowledge akin to scientific knowledge, and the rationality of basing one’s moral views on testimony.

Brink 1989 and Timmons 1998 distinguish metaethics from other forms of inquiry into morality and moral epistemology from other areas of metaethics. Arrington 1989 traces the recent history of moral epistemology from the “non-cognitivist” accounts of Stevenson and Hare to the rationalism of Nagel, the realism of McDowell, and the relativism of Harman. Audi 1999 distinguishes four approaches: empiricism, rationalism, intuitionism, and non-cognitivism. Utilitarian empiricism claims the intrinsic goodness of something can be inferred from its being desired by people for its own sake and equates the rightness of an act with its promoting intrinsic goodness so understood. Kantian rationalism identifies right actions with those performed from maxims that pass a test of universalizability, the validity of which is known in an a priori, non-inferential manner. Intuitionism holds that a variety of principles are self-evident: Those who understand them are justified in believing them (on the basis of that understanding) in a manner sufficient for knowledge. Non-cognitivism might be thought to imply epistemological moral skepticism, but there are norms we employ to assess feelings and commitments, so a non-cognitivist might construct a substantive moral epistemology. Enoch 2011 briefly surveys various skeptical challenges to realist conceptions of morality and argues that they are inessential because, “There is no distinctive epistemology of moral belief” (p. 154, n. 6). The true challenge is to explain the correlation between considered moral judgments and the judgment-independent facts that make them true. The last three chapters of Shafer-Landau 2003 and its defense of moral realism are similarly devoted to epistemological matters. According to Shafer-Landau, moral skepticism is self-undermining because it is a philosophical thesis, and if there is insufficient evidence to support our basic moral beliefs there is insufficient evidence to support any philosophical view. Sinnott-Armstrong 2008 and Zimmerman 2010 are two recent book-length treatments of moral epistemology. Sinnott-Armstrong 2008 ultimately endorses moral contrastivism : if nihilism is not ruled out via fiat we cannot have moral knowledge. But we can know that certain actions are immoral and others moral relative to the assumption that nihilism is false. Zimmerman 2010 finds all arguments for moral skepticism wanting. One can come to know that a particular act of villainy was immoral by directly inferring as much from one’s knowledge of its value-neutral properties. Knowledge of the general principles that underwrite these inferences can be acquired with the aid of imagination and normal affective experience.

Arrington, Robert L. Rationalism, Realism and Relativism: Perspectives in Contemporary Moral Epistemology . Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1989.

Arrington documents the rise and fall of non-cognitivist theories of morality and evaluates the forms of cognitivism that have been formulated in their wake. In the final chapter, Arrington defends “conceptual relativism.” The rules that constitute our morality cannot be justified, but they do not need to be. They and their correlative ends are simply what we mean by “morality.”

Audi, Robert. “Moral Knowledge and Ethical Pluralism.” In The Blackwell Guide to Epistemology . Edited by John Greco and Ernest Sosa, 271–302. Oxford: Blackwell, 1999.

In the first half of his essay, Audi distinguishes four approaches to moral epistemology: empiricism, rationalism, intuitionism, and non-cognitivism. In the essay’s second half, Audi further describes intuitionism, distinguishes several subspecies of the view, and argues in favor of a “moderate” form, which countenances both inferential and non-inferential knowledge of common sense moral principles and both inferential and non-inferential knowledge of the moral properties of particular actions.

Brink, David. Moral Realism and the Foundations of Ethics . Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1989, chapter 1.

DOI: 10.1017/CBO9780511624612

Brink provides a brief summary of the history of analytic metaethics that distinguishes the epistemological questions involved in this area of inquiry from those of a more metaphysical, semantic, and (purely) psychological nature.

Enoch, David. “Epistemology.” In Taking Morality Seriously . By David Enoch, 151–184. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011.

DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199579969.003.0007

Enoch argues that “there is no distinctive epistemology of moral belief.” Moral realists must simply explain the correlation between our core moral beliefs and the moral facts. Enoch’s explanation rests on the assumption that our survival and reproduction (or various factors that promote such survival, e.g., well-being and reciprocated trust) are themselves good.

Shafer-Landau, Russ. Moral Realism: A Defense . New York: Oxford University Press, 2003.

DOI: 10.1093/0199259755.001.0001

Chapters 10–12 are devoted to epistemological issues. We cannot impugn nihilism on grounds acceptable to a nihilist, but if this entails skepticism, it does so whether or not we adopt a realist conception of moral facts. Skepticism is self-undermining and the process that leads an agent from knowledge of the facts to a judgment of what she ought to do often generates knowledge because of its reliability.

Sinnott-Armstrong, Walter. Moral Skepticisms . New York: Oxford University Press, 2008.

Sinnott-Armstrong surveys a wide range of skeptical positions and positive accounts of moral knowledge. He ultimately endorses a form of “moral contrastivism.” If nihilism is not ruled out via fiat we cannot have knowledge of any positive moral proposition. But we can know that certain actions are immoral and others moral relative to the assumption that nihilism is false.

Timmons, Mark. “Metaethics and Methodology.” In Morality without Foundations . By Mark Timmons, 9–31. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998.

Timmons distinguishes metaethics from normative ethics and differentiates the epistemological component of metaethics from its semantic and ontological elements. He then tries to motivate his commitment to methodological and ontological naturalism and to situate various metaethical positions (and their constituent epistemologies) in relation to this commitment.

Zimmerman, Aaron. Moral Epistemology . New York: Routledge, 2010.

Zimmerman discusses a number of arguments for moral skepticism and a variety of non-skeptical accounts of moral knowledge, dividing the latter into rationalist and empiricist camps. According to Zimmerman, one can directly infer “ought” from “is” without the aid of intuitions or cognitive “seemings.” Knowledge of the general principles that underwrite these inferences or verify their reliability can then be acquired with the aid of imagination and affective experience.

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> Moral Knowledge
> Two Sources of Morality

Book contents

Frontmatter
Introduction
Acknowledgments
Contributors
Realist-Expressivism: A Neglected Option for Moral Realism
Thinking about Cases
But I Could Be Wrong
Moral Facts and Best Explanations
Two Sources of Morality
“Because I Want It”
Realism, Naturalism, and Moral Semantics
Incomplete Routes to Moral Objectivity: Four Variants of Naturalism
Explanation, Internalism, and Reasons for Action
Moral Knowledge as Practical Knowledge
Practical Reason and Moral Psychology in Aristotle and Kant
Hypothetical Consent in Kantian Constructivism
Mill's “Proof” of the Principle of Utility: A More than Half-Hearted Defense

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 August 2010

INTRODUCTION

This essay emerges from consideration of a question in the epistemology of ethics or morality. This is not the common claim-centered question as to how moral claims are confirmed and whether their mode of confirmation gives us grounds to be confident about the prospects for ethical discourse. Instead, I am concerned with the less frequently posed conceptcentered question of where in human experience moral terms or concepts are grounded—that is, where in experience the moral becomes salient to us. This question was central to moral epistemology in the form it took among thinkers such as Locke, Hume, and Kant, and it remains of the first importance today.

The question calls for a naturalistic genealogy of moral terms and concepts. I assume that we are not possessed of an irreducibly moral sense whereby irreducibly moral properties might be revealed to us. I also assume that we human beings have no nonnaturalistic faculties of perception and cognition, and that in any case there is nothing nonnaturalistic that such faculties might register. The question, then, is what it is about naturalistic experience—what it is about experience of the kind that raises no particular worries for a scientific view of the world—that can occasion moral conceptualization and create an opportunity for the useful deployment of moral terms.

The analysis that one offers of moral terms or concepts will sometimes point to a genealogy in this sense. If one offers a noncognitivist analysis in which moral evaluation is conceived of as a species of attitudinal expression or projection, for example, then that will point to a distinctive story as to what it is about experience that occasions such evaluation.

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By Philip Pettit
Edited by Ellen Frankel Paul , Bowling Green State University, Ohio , Fred D. Miller, Jr , Bowling Green State University, Ohio , Jeffrey Paul , Bowling Green State University, Ohio
Book: Moral Knowledge
Online publication: 04 August 2010
Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511550133.006

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COMMENTS

Moral Epistemology - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
How is moral knowledge possible? This question is central in moral epistemology and marks a cluster of problems. The most important are the following. Sociological: The best explanation of the depth of moral disagreements and the social diversity that they reflect is one of two things.
Kant’s Moral Philosophy - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
1. Aims and Methods of Moral Philosophy. 2. Good Will, Moral Worth and Duty. 3. Duty and Respect for Moral Law. 4. Categorical and Hypothetical Imperatives. 5. The Formula of the Universal Law of Nature. 6. The Humanity Formula. 7. The Autonomy Formula. 8. The Kingdom of Ends Formula.
Moral Epistemology - Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Moral epistemology explores this problem about knowledge and justification. First, this article explores the traditional approaches to the problem: foundationalist theories, coherentist theories, and contextualist theories.
Moral knowledge? : new readings in moral epistemology
Richard Brandt discusses the relevance of empirical science to moral knowledge. Christopher Morris develops a contractarian account of moral justification, and David Copp bases moral knowledge on rational choices by societies.
Locke’s Moral Philosophy - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Locke writes, in the Essay, that “Morality is the proper Science, and Business of Mankind in general” (Essay, 4.12.11; these number are, book, chapter and section, respectively, from Locke’s Essay). For a book aiming to set out the limits and extent of human knowledge, this comes as no small claim.
Moral Dilemmas and the Growth of Moral Knowledge
Any moral theory aiming to eliminate genuine moral dilemmas must be able to tell you how to respond correctly in all situations, typically with a way to rank choices hierarchically as well as a way to resolve equivalent choices.
Explaining Moral Knowledge in: Journal of Moral Philosophy ...
In this paper I assess the viability of a particularist explanation of moral knowledge. First, I consider M&R’s arguments in favour of a generalist account of practical wisdom and I explain why I find them unconvincing (§2). In §3 I propose a particularist-friendly explanation of knowledge of particular moral facts.
Moral Epistemology - Philosophy - Oxford Bibliographies
This article begins by describing general overviews of moral epistemology, moves on to consider historically important accounts of moral knowledge, and then addresses contemporary scientific accounts of moral judgment, moral development, and the foundations of moral response in our evolved biology.
Moral Feelings, Moral Reality, and Moral Progress | Oxford ...
This book consists of two essays that are related to each other: “Gut Feelings and Moral Knowledge” and “Moral Reality and Moral Progress.” The longer second essay has not been previously published.
Two Sources of Morality - Moral Knowledge
This essay emerges from consideration of a question in the epistemology of ethics or morality. This is not the common claim-centered question as to how moral claims are confirmed and whether their mode of confirmation gives us grounds to be confident about the prospects for ethical discourse.