Fragments III

Gilbert Harman, in Moral Relativism and Moral Objectivity (1996),¹ defends moral relativism (the position that moral claims are always relative to the choice of a moral framework, and that what is right according to one framework may not be right according to some other framework), while Judith Jarvis Thomson defends moral objectivism (the position that moral claims have objective truth conditions that aren't relative to moral frameworks, and that it's possible to find out about some claims whether they are objectively true or false). Harman argues that moral diversity and the apparent intractability of moral disagreements justify moral skepticism (the position that the truth conditions of moral claims are relative to moral frameworks, or that moral claims don't have objective truth conditions, or that it's not possible to determine the objective truth of moral claims), and that moral relativism is therefore also justified. Thomson, on the other hand, argues that what is morally right or wrong isn't simply a matter of what it's rational for an agent to want or of what is relative to what an agent might want, and that we can therefore reject moral relativism.

Onora O'Neill (2003),² distinguishes between constructivism and contractualism in ethics. While constructivism may be the theory that moral justification is provided by constructed criteria or principles, contractualism may be the theory that moral justification is provided by general agreement among individuals.

      O'Neill says it may not be possible to completely separate constructivism from contractualism, since constructive reasoning may be a way of achieving agreement, and agreement may provide a basis for constructive reasoning.

What about constructivism vs. contractualism in epistemology?  Constructivism may be the theory that knowledge is constructed, while contractualism may be the theory that knowledge is agreed upon. These two theories may be mutually compatible.

Jennifer Lackey (2008) asks, "What should we do when we disagree?" She explains that if we disagree with someone and we are (1) evidential equals (there's no argument or piece of evidence bearing directly on the question that one of us is aware of and the other is not), (2) cognitive equals (there's no cognitive capacity or incapacity that one of us possesses that the other does not), and (3) epistemic peers (we've fully disclosed to each other all the reasons and arguments for our own views), then the nonconformist response is that we can continue to maintain our own views, without revision, despite the disagreement of our epistemic peers, as long as we have justified confidence in our own views, while the conformist response is that we should give equal weight to the views of our epistemic peers and should therefore revise our views if our epistemic peers disagree with us. A problem for the nonconformist view is the One against Many Problem, that the more epistemic peers disagree with us, the more implausible our own views become. A problem for the conformist view, on the other hand, is the Many against One Problem, that we may initially have only a low level of justified confidence in our own views, but those views may be bolstered if they're shared by our epistemic peers. While the nonconformist view may underemphasize the epistemic importance of disagreement, the conformist view may overemphasize it. Lackey therefore explains that her justificationist view avoids both problems: it holds that the epistemic importance of disagreement depends on the degree of justified confidence with which the belief in question is held, combined with the presence or absence of relevant symmetry breakers between our own epistemic position and those of our epistemic peers.³

FOOTNOTES

¹Gilbert Harman and Judith Jarvis Thomson, Moral Relativism and Moral Objectivity (Malden, Massachusetts: Blackwell, 1996).

²Onora O'Neill, "Constructivism vs. Contractualism," in Ratio, Volume XVI, 4 December 2003, pp. 319-331),

³Jennifer Lackey, "What should we do when we disagree?", in Oxford Studies in Epistemology, Volume 3, edited by Tamar Szabó Gendler and John Hawthorne (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), pp. 274-293.