INTRODUCTION
- Background to the Study
How can moral beliefs be justified? This is a question that has occupied a central place in the his- tory of moral epistemology. It is not very clear how an individual‘s actions can be described as morally right if his action is not based on justified beliefs about what actions are morally right. Is it possible however to justify beliefs about what actions are morally right?
In his article ‗‗Moral Skepticisms and Justification‘‘, Sinnott-Armstrong advances an epistemic regress argument against the justification of moral beliefs, leading to skepticism about the possi- bility of justifying moral beliefs (Sinnott-Armstrong, 1995, p. 9). The regress argument in general raises the question of how a belief can be justified without being inferred from another belief that is also not justified. The problem here is that an attempt to justify any one belief would seem to require an infinite regress of reasons and if the regress cannot be completed then it follows that no belief can be justified. When applied to moral beliefs, the epistemic regress argument leads to the disturbing conclusion that moral beliefs cannot be justified. Can this problem be remedied ?
In this thesis, I argue for Rawls‘ reflective equilibrium as a method of justification of moral be- liefs that adequately answers Sinnott-Armstrong‘s epistemic regress argument. In A Theory of Justice, Rawls deploys the method of reflective equilibrium to justify his principles of justice. The method consists generally in the identification of considered moral judgments, the formula- tion of moral principles that explicate these judgments and the elimination of conflicts that arise among them (Rawls, 1971, p. 12). In applying the method of reflective equilibrium, Rawls main- tains that ‗‗a conception of justice cannot be deduced from self-evident premises or conditions or
principles; instead its justification is a matter of the mutual support of many considerations, of everything together into one coherent view‘‘1 (Rawls, 1971, p. 21). Reflective equilibrium can therefore be construed as a coherentist method of justification of moral beliefs. In arguing for the plausibility of Rawls‘ method of reflective equilibrium as an adequate response to Sinnott- Armstrong‘s epistemic regress argument, this research also points out the inadequacies of two alternative methods, namely, the intuitionist method and naturalistic epistemology. I have chosen to specifically examine these three methods of justification because they provide the broad basis from which subsequent methods of justification are developed.
The whole project falls within the area of ethics called meta-ethics. This is the area of ethics that is concerned with the nature of moral claims and moral theories. According to Sinnott- Armstrong, meta-ethics can be divided into three main parts: moral linguistics, moral ontology and moral epistemology (Sinnott-Armstrong, 1995, p.4). Moral linguistics is concerned with the meaning of moral terms and whether these terms refer to any objective moral property at all. Moral ontology enquires into the nature of moral facts, if there are any. Moral epistemology is the philosophical inquiry into whether and how we can acquire knowledge of what actions are morally right. One can also interpret it as epistemology applied to moral beliefs. Epistemology is the study of knowledge and justification. Moral Epistemology deals with questions such as what are the sources of moral knowledge, when is a person justified in believing a moral claim and how moral beliefs can be justified. I will focus in this thesis on the question of how moral beliefs
1 The term justification here may be construed either in a pragmatic or an epistemic sense. Rawls himself is silent on how exactly the term justification is to be construed. Thus some scholar‘s interpret reflective equilibrium as a method for selecting moral principles that are simply to guide political action with no regard for meta-ethical questions of whether the principles in question are true and how they can be known to be true. Nevertheless Rawls‘ Reflective equilibrium has been discussed widely in the literature as a method of epistemic justification. This thesis is concerned with reflective equilibrium as a method of justification in the epistemic sense.
can be justified. As pointed out earlier , I will consider the following three prominent methods of justification in moral epistemology: the intuionist method of justification, naturalistic epistemology and Rawls‘ reflective equilibrium.
The intutionist method of justification is the application of foundationalism in the field of epistemology to the justification of moral beliefs (Brink, 1989, p. 102). Foundationalists hold the view that there are basic beliefs that are justified in themselves, or self-justified beliefs, upon which the justification for all other beliefs rests (Lehrer, 1990, p. 39). Foundationalism is one of the several responses to the regress argument. In response to the regress argument as applied to moral beliefs, moral intutionists posit moral beliefs that are non-inferentially justified or grounded on non-inferentially justified moral beliefs in order to terminate the regress. Non- inferential beliefs can also be characteried as self-evident beliefs since their justification lies nowhere than in themsleves. The basic presupposition of the intutionist method is that there are moral beliefs which are justified in themselves and can be used to justify other moral beliefs. For instance, according to Moore, it is self-evident that actions that bring about the best consequences are right (Moore, 1903). Prichard also maintains that it is self-evident that we have certain moral obligations such as keeping of promises (Prichard, 1912). Two contempoary exponents of the intutionist method of justification are W. D Ross and Robert Audi. Ross, for instance, advances the view that there are principles of prima facie duty – fidelity, reparation, justice, gratitude,beneficence, non-maleficence and self-improvement – which are self-evident and reflection is required to know them (Ross, 2002, p. 15). Ross‘ principles of prima facie duty can be understood as general self-evident beliefs about what actions are morally right . Audi also maintains that Ross‘ principles of prima facie duty are self-evident (Audi, 2004, p. 22).
Using the works of Audi and Ross, I argue in this thesis that the intutionist method of justification, in answering the regress argument against the justification of moral beliefs, faces two problems. Firstly, it has to contend with the problem of arbitiariness. The problem of arbitiariness is the problem of how to distinguish between moral beliefs that are justified from moral beliefs that have no rational grounds. As DePaul observes, we often do find that our moral beliefs are terribly not in good order and there are tensions and conflicts among them (DePaul,1993, p. 2). Secondly, it also has to address the issue of epistemic peer disagreement about the justification status of moral beliefs. According to Fanselow, epistemic peers are
‗‗those who are roughly equivalent to us in terms of cognitive abilities, motivation to arrive at the truth and available evidence‘‘(Fanselow, 2011, p. 4). Fanselow defends the following principle of epistemic peer disagreement:
