Moral Epistemology and Alethic Pluralism: Towards a New Theory of Epistemic Justification for Moral Belief

• Applicant: Dr. Marvin Backes
• Subject Area: Theoretical Philosophy
• Term: since 2023
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 519046476

It is widely accepted that it’s not permissible to believe anything we want. Instead, believing is normative – i.e. it is subject to certain epistemic norms. Debates surrounding flat earthers, climate change deniers, or anti-vaxxers illustrate this point well; members of these groups are often criticised and taken to be blameworthy for holding the beliefs they do. But what exactly is the problem with their beliefs? One plausible diagnosis is that their respective beliefs fail to be epistemically justified – i.e. they fail to be good candidates for being true – and therefore violate the epistemic norm of belief. The idea that we should only believe things that are epistemically justified (or even known) is one that is widely endorsed amongst contemporary epistemologists. However, looking at recent work in the field of moral epistemology gives us reason for concern. That’s because moral theorists of all stripes have notoriously struggled to explain convincingly how our moral beliefs come to be epistemically justified, with no widely endorsed account currently on the market. This gives rise to a problem: without a compelling account of what (if anything) epistemically justifies moral beliefs, it remains mysterious why holding moral beliefs is permissible and why we aren’t epistemically blameworthy or criticisable for holding the moral beliefs we do. Put differently, in so far as we think that holding moral beliefs is at least sometimes permissible - which ordinary moral discourse suggests is the case - then we are under considerable pressure to provide a successful account of how moral beliefs come to be epistemically justified. This project aims to explore and ultimately resolve this issue at the intersection of epistemology and metaethics by systematically developing a new theory of epistemic justification for moral belief. The project is divided into three parts. The first part (work package A) draws important connections between recent work in epistemology and metaethics, provides a diagnosis of the main problems we face in contemporary moral epistemology, and puts forward a new method that promises to help us make headway in moral epistemology – the Epistemology-First Approach to Metaethics. The second part (work package B) puts this method to use and elaborates and defends an original theory of epistemic justification for moral belief. Finally, the third part (work package C) investigates how to best integrate the new account of epistemic justification for moral belief and extant accounts of epistemic justification for ordinary non-moral belief in to a single unified theory of epistemic justification.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants