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  • Contextualism and moral justification
    Klampfer, Friderik
    In his insightful and stimulating book Morality Without Foundations. A Defense of Ethical Contextualism, Mark Timmons presents a strong case for embracing the contextualist alternative to two main ... traditional rivals in moral epistemology, foundationalism and coherentism. His type of contextualism about moral knowledge and/or justification subscribes to the following theses: (i) One may be epistemically responsible in holding certain moral beliefs at a particular time, t, even though one has no justifying evidence or justifying reasons for holding those beliefs at t (epistemic responsibility without justification); (ii) Such moral beliefs may serve as an epistemic basis for being juststified in holding other moral beliefs (provision of justification without justification); (iii) Which moral beliefs need justification depends crucially on certain facts about ones context, including certain social aspects thereof (contextualism about the need for moral justification); (iv) S may be justified in believing some moral proposition, M, on the basis of evidence E in one context, C1, but not in another, C2, or S may be justified in forming or holding a moral belief that M for reasons R in one context, C1, but not in another, C2 (contextualism about the source of moral justification). Timmons' defense of contextualist moral epistemology (CME) is inspiring and thought-provoking, but, as I try to show, ultimately flawed. In the paper, I raise several, both theoretical and practical, objections against it. My main complaint comes down to the following. Contextualism hopes to find firm ground in our diverse and rather unsystematic epistemic intuitions (i. e. intuitions about whether an agent in a given situation knows or justifiedly believes some moral proposition or not). These intuitions may, however, as far as we can tell, be incoherent or simply mistaken. This is not a mere logical possibility. A failure, for instance, to track epistemically relevant differences between contexts in a systematic way, could discredit them once and for all. For a shift (either upwards or downwards) in the standards of epistemic (moral) justification from one context, C1, to the other, C2, to be legitimate (i. e. in order to assess claims to the effect that a person S is justified in believing some moral proposition P on the basis of the evidence E in the context C1 even though we wouldn't judge her (equally) justified to hold the same belief on the same evidential basis in a somewhat different context, C2), these two contexts must be shown to differ epistemically, that is in their respective epistemically relevant features. Not just any difference between C1 and C2 will do. In the paper I argue, by way of examples, that differences, between two contexts of evaluation, in agent's goals, perspectives and/or resources (Timmons' favourites for the role of epistemically relevant features), seldom, if ever, amount to a notable epistemic difference. But if so, the alleged plurality of moral epistemic standards and norms still lacks firm, solid ground; the moral contextualist's triumphant celebration of victory over its foundationalist and coherentist rivals is premature.
    Source: Rationality in belief and action : proceedings of the international philosophical conference held in Rijeka, May 27-28, 2004 (Str. 133-146)
    Type of material - conference contribution ; adult, serious
    Publish date - 2006
    Language - english
    COBISS.SI-ID - 15033096

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