Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-jkksz Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-21T02:12:55.961Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Defusing the Regress Challenge to Debunking Arguments

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 August 2020

Shang Long Yeo Open the ORCID record for Shang Long Yeo [Opens in a new window]
Shang Long Yeo*
Affiliation:
School of Philosophy, Australian National University, Canberra, Australia; Department of Philosophy, National University of Singapore, Singapore
*
Email: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstracts

A debunking argument contends that some target moral judgments were produced by unreliable processes and concludes that such judgments are unjustified. Debunking arguments face a regress challenge: to show that a process is unreliable at tracking the moral truth, we need to rely on other moral judgments. But we must show that these relied-upon judgments are also reliable, which requires yet a further set of judgments, whose reliability needs to be confirmed too, and so on. Some argue that the debunker faces an insurmountable regress, which disables the debunking conclusion. In this paper, I explore and defuse this regress challenge.

Keywords

Debunking argumentsregress challengemoral epistemologymoral psychology
Type
Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Philosophy , Volume 50 , Issue 6 , August 2020 , pp. 785 - 800
Copyright
© The Author(s) 2020. Published by Canadian Journal of Philosophy

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Berker, Selim. 2009. “The Normative Insignificance of Neuroscience.” Philosophy & Public Affairs 37 (4), 293–329. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1088-4963.2009.01164.x.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Berker, Selim. 2015. “Coherentism via Graphs.” Philosophical Issues 25 (1): 322–52. https://doi.org/10.1111/phis.12052.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brink, David O. 1989. Moral Realism and the Foundations of Ethics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
de Lazari-Radek, Katarzyna, and Singer, Peter. 2012. “The Objectivity of Ethics and the Unity of Practical Reason.” Ethics 123 (1): 9–31. https://doi.org/10.1086/667837.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Demaree-Cotton, Joanna. 2016. “Do Framing Effects Make Moral Intuitions Unreliable?” Philosophical Psychology 29 (1): 1–22. https://doi.org/10.1080/09515089.2014.989967.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Greene, Joshua. 2008. “The Secret Joke of Kant’s Soul.” In Moral Psychology Vol. 3., edited by Sinnott-Armstrong, Walter. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Horne, Zachary, and Livengood, Jonathan. 2017. “Ordering Effects, Updating Effects, and the Specter of Global Skepticism.” Synthese 194 (4): 1189–218. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-015-0985-9.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Horowitz, Tamara. 1998. “Philosophical Intuitions and Psychological Theory.” Ethics 108 (2): 367–85. https://doi.org/10.1086/233809.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Huemer, Michael. 2005. Ethical Intuitionism. Basingstoke, Eng.: Palgrave Macmillan.Google Scholar
Huemer, Michael. 2008. “Revisionary Intuitionism.” Social Philosophy and Policy 25 (1): 368–92. https://doi.org/10.1017/S026505250808014X.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kahane, Guy. 2011. “Evolutionary Debunking Arguments.” Noûs 45 (1): 103–25. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-0068.2010.00770.x.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Kahane, Guy. 2016. “Is, Ought, and the Brain.” In Moral Brains: The Neuroscience of Morality, edited by Liao, S. Matthew, 281–311. New York: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kumar, Victor, and Campbell, Richmond. 2012. “On the Normative Significance of Experimental Moral Psychology.” Philosophical Psychology 25 (3): 311–30. https://doi.org/10.1080/09515089.2012.660140.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Liao, S. Matthew, Wiegmann, Alex, Alexander, Joshua, and Vong, Gerard. 2012. “Putting the Trolley in Order: Experimental Philosophy and the Loop Case.” Philosophical Psychology 25 (5): 661–71. https://doi.org/10.1080/09515089.2011.627536.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Machery, Edouard. 2017. Philosophy within Its Proper Bounds. Oxford: Oxford University Press.10.1093/oso/9780198807520.001.0001CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McPherson, Tristram. 2014. “A Case for Ethical Veganism.” Journal of Moral Philosophy 11 (6): 677–703. https://doi.org/10.1163/17455243-4681041.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm. 2009. On the Genealogy of Morals. Translated by Douglas Smith. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Nozick, Robert. 1974. Anarchy, State, and Utopia. New York: Basic Books.Google Scholar
O’Neill, Elizabethd. 2015. “Which Causes of Moral Beliefs Matter?” Philosophy of Science 82 (5): 1070–80. https://doi.org/10.1086/683441.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rini, Regina A. 2016. “Debunking Debunking: A Regress Challenge for Psychological Threats to Moral Judgment.” Philosophical Studies 173 (3): 675–97.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rini, Regina A. 2017. “Why Moral Psychology Is Disturbing.” Philosophical Studies 174 (6): 1439–58. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-016-0766-4.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Samet, Jerry, and Zaitchik, Deborah. 2017. “Innateness and Contemporary Theories of Cognition.” In The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2017), edited by Zalta, Edward N.. Stanford, CA: Stanford University. https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2017/entries/innateness-cognition.Google Scholar
Sauer, Hanno. 2018. Debunking Arguments in Ethics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sidgwick, Henry. 1907. The Methods of Ethics. 7th ed. London: Macmillan. https://www.gutenberg.org/files/46743/46743-h/46743-h.htm.Google Scholar
Sinnott-Armstrong, Walter. 2006. Moral Skepticisms. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sinnott-Armstrong, Walter. 2011. “Emotion and Reliability in Moral Psychology.” Emotion Review 3 (3): 288–89. https://doi.org/10.1177/1754073911402382.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Srinivasan, Amia. 2015. “The Archimedean Urge.” Philosophical Perspectives 29 (1): 325–62. https://doi.org/10.1111/phpe.12068.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tersman, Folke. 2008. “The Reliability of Moral Intuitions: A Challenge from Neuroscience.” Australasian Journal of Philosophy 86 (3): 389–405. https://doi.org/10.1080/00048400802002010.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Thomson, Judith. 1985. “The Trolley Problem.” The Yale Law Journal 94 (6): 1395–415.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Vavova, Katia. 2014. “Debunking Evolutionary Debunking.” Oxford Studies in Metaethics 9: 76–101.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Vavova, Katia. 2015. “Evolutionary Debunking of Moral Realism.” Philosophy Compass 10 (2): 104–16. https://doi.org/10.1111/phc3.12194.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wiegmann, Alex, Okan, Yasmina, and Nagel, Jonas. 2012. “Order Effects in Moral Judgment.” Philosophical Psychology 25 (6): 813–36. https://doi.org/10.1080/09515089.2011.631995.CrossRefGoogle Scholar