[Moral uncertainty and moral realism are in tension]
Is it ever epistemically warranted to have high confidence in moral realism, and also be morally uncertain not only between minor details of a specific normative-ethical theory but between theories?
I think there’s a tension there. One possible reply might be the following. Maybe we are confident in the existence of some moral facts, but multiple normative-ethical theories can accommodate them. Accordingly, we can be moral realists (because some moral facts exist) and be morally uncertain (because there are many theories to choose from that accommodate the little bits we think we know about moral reality).
However, what do we make of the possibility that moral realism could be true only in a very weak sense? For instance, maybe some moral facts exist, but most of morality is underdetermined. Similarly, maybe the true morality is some all-encompassing and complete theory, but humans might be forever epistemically closed off to it. If so, then, in practice, we could never go beyond the few moral facts we already think we know for sure.
Assuming a conception of moral realism that is action-relevant for effective altruism (e.g., because it predicts reasonable degrees of convergence among future philosophers, or makes other strong claims that EAs would be interested in), is it ever epistemically warranted to have high confidence in that, and be open-endedly morally uncertain?
Another way to ask this question: If we don’t already know/see that a complete and all-encompassing theory explains many of the features related to folk discourse on morality, why would we assume that such a complete and all-encompassing theory exists in a for-us-accessible fashion? Even if there are, in some sense, “right answers” to moral questions, we need more evidence to conclude that morality is not vastly underdetermined.
[Moral uncertainty and moral realism are in tension]
Is it ever epistemically warranted to have high confidence in moral realism, and also be morally uncertain not only between minor details of a specific normative-ethical theory but between theories?
I think there’s a tension there. One possible reply might be the following. Maybe we are confident in the existence of some moral facts, but multiple normative-ethical theories can accommodate them. Accordingly, we can be moral realists (because some moral facts exist) and be morally uncertain (because there are many theories to choose from that accommodate the little bits we think we know about moral reality).
However, what do we make of the possibility that moral realism could be true only in a very weak sense? For instance, maybe some moral facts exist, but most of morality is underdetermined. Similarly, maybe the true morality is some all-encompassing and complete theory, but humans might be forever epistemically closed off to it. If so, then, in practice, we could never go beyond the few moral facts we already think we know for sure.
Assuming a conception of moral realism that is action-relevant for effective altruism (e.g., because it predicts reasonable degrees of convergence among future philosophers, or makes other strong claims that EAs would be interested in), is it ever epistemically warranted to have high confidence in that, and be open-endedly morally uncertain?
Another way to ask this question: If we don’t already know/see that a complete and all-encompassing theory explains many of the features related to folk discourse on morality, why would we assume that such a complete and all-encompassing theory exists in a for-us-accessible fashion? Even if there are, in some sense, “right answers” to moral questions, we need more evidence to conclude that morality is not vastly underdetermined.
For more detailed arguments on this point, see section 3 in this post.