Coherentism in moral epistemology: moral science or elaborate intuitionism?

: Moral foundationalists maintain that among our moral beliefs there are some that are justified non-inferentially by something other than just more beliefs. Also, that all of the other beliefs in the system can trace their chain of justification back to members of this special ‘epistemically privileged’ group. The foundations for moral justification might be in the self-evidence of certain beliefs, the alleged infallibility of some basic moral intuitions, the word of a God, or natural facts about the world, to name a few options. The core problem with moral foundationalist theories is that there simply are no obvious viable candidates for this epistemically privileged group, there are serious concerns with the options available. Moral coherentism on the other hand, entirely rejects the claim that there exists this epistemically privileged group of non-inferentially justified beliefs that can function to justify the rest of the system. Instead, they maintain that all moral beliefs are justified only by one’s other beliefs, and that the level of justification correlates with the level of coherence. The problem is that the leading form of moral coherentism, Wide Reflective Equilibrium, holds that justification is achieved by coherence only between types of moral belief; specially the more general, ‘background’ moral beliefs cohering with more specific intuition-based moral beliefs. But with nothing other than different types of subjective moral intuitions regulating each other, this model is open to the charge of intuitionism in disguise, and fails to give any objective justificatory force. My argument is that the problem with Wide Reflective Equilibrium is it only considers inter-moral connections to measure for coherence. But, if we add empirical, nonmoral beliefs to the process (and overcome the worries this extra step creates), that we yield a significantly more objective, and a positive, theory of moral justification. Chapter 1 gives an introduction to the paper. Chapter 2 first explains and outlines WRE, and then argues that WRE is still ‘rigged’ to fit our personal subjective intuitions even after the key literary responses are considered. Chapter 3 presents my alternative version of WRE with the added role for nonmoral beliefs. Chapter 4 considers the relevant objections ad replies to my thesis. Finally, Chapter 5 concludes the work and presents some final thoughts.

Grantor dc:publisher

Oxford Brookes University

Year dc:date

2018

Author dc:creator

• Stainer, Tomasz G. D.

Statement dc:rights

• All rights reserved

Language dc:language

en

DOI dc:identifier

https://doi.org/10.24384/4bb7-rr15

OAI identifier oai:identifier

tle:53173ead-0f09-4586-99e2-026bc92c2ca9:d6bd9758-527a-46cd-bfe2-c433766e8fca:1