Moral Assertion
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Moral Assertion Christoph Kelp 1 Accepted: 14 July 2020 / Published online: 15 August 2020 # The Author(s) 2020
Abstract
In this paper, I introduce a puzzle about moral assertion and defend a solution that centrally features the claim that the normativity of moral assertion centrally features moral understanding. Keywords Moral assertion . Norms of assertion . Moral knowledge . Moral understanding 1. A knowledgeable and reliable informant, A, comes up to you and tells you that tonight’s Champions League match will be screened at the local pub. Based on this testimony, you form the corresponding belief and subsequently spread the word to B. What we have here is a default case of testimony: A approaches you and tells you a humdrum truth. It is also a default case of knowledge transmission via testimony, or so we may at any rate assume. A knows what she tells you and when you form the corresponding belief based on her assertion, you come to know what you are being told as well. Finally, the case is a default case of you telling B what you know. All of this is perfectly familiar and entirely unproblematic. Consider next a variation of the case in which the only thing that changes is the content of what you are being told. Rather than a humdrum truth A offers you a moral truth, say that it’s immoral to patronise the local pub. Again, based on this testimony, you form the corresponding belief and subsequently spread the word to B. We have another default case of testimony, transmission of knowledge by testimony and asserting what you know.1 Since we have two default cases of testimony, transmission of knowledge by testimony and asserting what you know and since the only difference between the two cases resides in the content of what you are being told, we may expect that what’s true in one case is true in the other also. Crucially, however, that’s not what we find. In fact, there is an important difference between the two cases. While in the non-moral case, it is perfectly fine to assert your testimonial belief to B in the way you do, the same does not hold for the moral case. On the 1
I have been encouraged to state that I am assuming a cognitivist view of moral assertion.
* Christoph Kelp [email protected]
1
Philosophy, University of Glasgow, 69 Oakfield Ave, Glasgow G12 8LP, UK
640
C. Kelp
contrary, asserting your testimonial belief to B is on the face of it rather problematic. That’s surprising, if not mysterious. In fact, what the moral assertion case shows is that the following three individually plausible claims cannot all be true: The Moral Assertion Puzzle MAP 1 In default cases, assertions from knowledge are proper.2 MAP 2 In default cases, assertions from knowledge are a source of testimonial knowledge.3 MAP 3 In default cases, moral assertions in the light only of moral testimony are not proper. Here is how the moral assertion case shows MAP1–3 to be inconsistent. First, it’s a default case of (moral) assertion from knowledge: A comes up to you and tells you something A knows, in this case
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