Reply to King


Συγγραφέας: Sarah McGrath


Sarah McGrath: Reply to King (pdf, 11 pages)
In “Moral Disagreement and Moral Expertise” (2007), I offer an argument for the conclusion that our controversial moral beliefs do not amount to knowledge. In this paper, I defend that argument against the criticisms put forth by Nathan King in his “McGrath on Moral Knowledge”. 1. The argument Throughout McGrath (2007), I make use of the idea that some beliefs are CONTROVERSIAL, in a technical sense. Specifically: Your belief that P is CONTROVERSIAL if and only if it is denied by another person of whom it is true that: you have no more reason to think that he or she is in error than that you are (p.91).1 I emphasize that even if a belief that one holds is controversial, in the sense that opinion about its truth is sharply divided, it does not follow that that belief is CONTROVERSIAL. After all, one might have good reason to think that all of those who dispute one’s view are more likely to be in error than oneself. (Thus, even if one’s belief that homo sapiens evolved from other species is highly controversial, it does not follow that it is CONTROVERSIAL.) With this distinction in place, I offer the following argument, along with accompanying commentary: