Review: Moral Scepticism and Moral Knowledge

Moral Scepticism and Moral Knowledge by Renford Bambrough
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I want to read more and think more deeply about philosophy, but sometimes it feels like reading occasionally -- without making a career of it -- is nearly fruitless. I got a little intimidated on this one, off the bat dropping experts' terms like nomos and phusis... But, I eased into the short study which I feel is open to laymen like myself.

So, regardless of whether you believe or are convinced by the author's arguments, this is a good, concise survey of objectivist and subjectivist approaches to morality from the ancients (Aristotle) to contemporaries. The author is on one side of the fence and this work is an argument for objectivism via

...a direct proof of the objectivity of morals, and hence to undertake to show that the familiar arguments for moral subjectivism, however popular and persuasive, are necessarily ill-founded.

I tend to feel leery of objectivism in many epistemological areas, especially something that feels metaphysical to me, such as morality. However, I came to this book directly after reading Report on Planet Three and Other Speculations and Clarke armed me with the open-mindedness to consider beyond the expected senses. We have more than the five senses. There's a sense of balance for instance. Why not a sense of morality? That does not lead to an absolute interpretation of right and wrong. After all, among the sighted, not all those that see a painting will agree to its beauty. So, if an objective reality is one that we can detect and compare aspects from any our "sense", maybe I can agree to an objective reality for morality ... in that "sense" (I am not repeating an argument of the author's, but this may be the closest thing to an original idea in philosophy that I have conjured up, ever.)

Indeed, I think one of my main reasons for reluctance to embrace and objectivist view of morality -- and I guess then placing me in the realm of "moral scepticism" the author refutes here -- is that it feeds into a threatening equation: morality + objectivism = absolute truth in so many human minds. Indeed, that is acknowledtged here by quoting others, including

...P. H. Nowell-Smith when he remarks that 'It is no accident that religious persecutions are the monopoly of objective theorists' (Ethics, p. 47).

To put it another way, I find it difficult to consider or discuss the epistemology of morality with such investigations careening off inot the morass of determining morality.

Though we are concerned here with abstract issues of epistemology, they are directly relevant to substantive moral issues, as can be shown by an example which also serves as a first step towards the positive characterisation of morality that we are seeking. It is a true story of an incident at an American university some years ago. A graduate student was expelled from the university, and it was believed by other students that he had been expelled for living with a woman student on the campus. At once there was a protest parade with banners declaring that 'Morality is a matter of private choice'. Later it was rumoured that the expulsion had been imposed as a penalty for gross and persistent blackmail of a member of the faculty. The protest died: there were no banners proclaiming that 'Blackmail is a matter of private choice'.

Certainly an enlightening anecdote.

Further than all this, the author makes some throught-provoking arguments for fitting in the moralistic "ought" in the logicians' expressions of proposotions and implication.

Overall, a quick and worthy read in this area. I am surprised the author's approachable writing is not more widely known.

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