Moral Knowledge

Moral Knowledge

I am going to defend a view of which I am morally certain: moral knowledge is the best kind of knowledge we have—intellectually, epistemologically. It is knowledge at its finest, purest, least qualified. It is the shining star in the epistemological firmament. Needless to say, this goes against the grain of the entire age in which we live, perhaps of all ages. But it’s true and known to be true (though not admitted). When you know something ethical, you really know it. No other type of knowledge outperforms it. Take any piece of common ethical knowledge: you should keep your promises, you shouldn’t tell malicious lies, you shouldn’t kill innocent people, you shouldn’t betray your friends; I say these are the pinnacle of human knowledge qua knowledge. They have the best epistemic credentials. Why? Because such knowledge is subject to no sensory illusions or deceptions, is of things with no hidden essence or nature, is not of things distant in space and time, requires no specialized technical skills or advanced intelligence, and does not tax or transcend our natural innate cognitive abilities. It is easy to possess this knowledge, and no obstacles stand in its way. There is nothing hidden or difficult or obscure or speculative about it. There are no brain-in-a-vat problems or incomplete-evidence problems. You need no special training to possess it; no course of study is necessary. It is proof against skepticism. No dubious inferences are involved. Thus, it is superior to our knowledge of the external world, our scientific knowledge, our knowledge of the past and future, our knowledge of other minds, even our knowledge of logic and mathematics, and arguably our knowledge of our own minds. There are no hidden truths of ethics, no esoteric profundities, no sophisticated doctrines. And no visual moral illusions leading us down the garden path, or inaccessible layers of moral reality. No guesswork and induction, no elaborate deductions, and no falsifiable hypotheses. Any fool can know his or her ethics. It is certain, transparent, and incapable of deceptiveness. It just is.

The analogy between moral knowledge and mathematical (and logical) knowledge, though illuminating in some respects, doesn’t quite give us the measure of moral knowledge. For mathematical and logical knowledge quickly turn technical and difficult, but this is not so for moral knowledge. You must learn mathematics laboriously at school, but you have no classes in ethics; there is no tricky symbolism to master or clever techniques of reasoning. Both logic and mathematics contain advanced technical branches and developments, but not so ethics; there is nothing like calculus or Godel’s theorem. There is no moral Euclid or Principia Mathematica. All of morality is intellectually elementary, even when real-life situations become complex. In the case of first-person knowledge, we can make the point that much of the mind is submerged and inaccessible to knowledge; and consciousness is eminently fleeting and forgettable—but who forgets that lying is wrong? Nor is first-person knowledge clearly knowledge—true justified belief or the like; but ethical knowledge clearly is. I am aware of my own mind, but do I have beliefs about it? What about infants and animals? But I have moral beliefs, convictions, commitments. Moral knowledge is genuine propositional knowledge, but so-called introspective knowledge is more like a background hum, similar to proprioceptive awareness. We debate ethical propositions, but we don’t debate our state of mind; it isn’t a discursive matter, as ethics is. There is no such subject as “my current state of mind”. So, it looks as if ethical knowledge comes out on top; you can take it to the bank. Secure, pellucid, solid, certain—everything knowledge should be. It lives up to its name.

I hear murmurings of protest: if moral knowledge is so epistemologically impeccable, why are people morally fallible? Why does morality vary from one community to another or one person to another? Excellent question; this is something of a puzzle, given moral knowledge’s ease and obviousness. But that’s what it is—a puzzle. It doesn’t imply that moral knowledge is epistemically lacking, any more than mathematical or logical incompetence implies that mathematics and logic are epistemically wanting. The answer to the puzzle is staring us in the face: the problem is extrinsic to morality itself and concerns its psychological and social context. Moral knowledge conflicts psychologically with self-interest, outright selfishness, greed, hatred of others, etc. People have powerful motives to avoid knowing the moral truth—very powerful. Also, their external circumstances of life get in the way of cool moral reflection. None of this is true of other kinds of knowledge: you have no reason stemming from self-interest to reject or ignore the truths of logic and mathematics. Moral knowledge therefore produces cognitive dissonance, because morality conflicts with egoism; the result is classic dissonance reduction in which moral truths are denied or avoided. I know I should really help my neighbor, but it would conflict with my plans to play tennis, so I shuffle guiltily off telling myself that she will probably be all right. Plus, people are brainwashed in all sorts of ways to avoid what they otherwise would know perfectly well. Everyone really knows that breaking promises is bad (unless they are mentally defective), but they don’t always act on this knowledge. So, moral fallibility is no proof that moral knowledge isn’t the best kind of knowledge there is—not just morally but intellectually. Types of knowledge can be ranked according to their quality, and the moral type comes out top of the list. Don’t let the relativists and nihilists tell you otherwise: moral knowledge is fine and dandy, sweet as a nut, radiant epistemic perfection. Physics is nothing compared to it, let alone neuroscience.[1]

[1] It is only when you have been steeped in contemporary opinion for fifty years or more that you see how threadbare it really is. Opinion can be swayed by all manner of things, often irrationally. It’s as bad as the opinions of previous ages, seen objectively; it may even be worse. We have been schooled to believe that moral knowledge is no such thing, being mere emotion or the will to power, but it is really quite evident that we have a ton of moral knowledge. It’s wrong to torture animals, and you know that perfectly well—how could you not? This is stating the obvious. You would have to be mad not to see this (and “see” is the right verb).