Unbelievable Errors

Abstract

This book defends an error theory about all normative judgements: not just moral judgements, but also judgements about reasons for action, judgements about reasons for belief, and instrumental normative judgements. This theory says that normative judgements are beliefs that ascribe normative properties, but that normative properties do not exist. It therefore entails that all normative judgements are false. The book also argues, however, that we cannot believe this error theory. Instead of being a problem for the theory, the book argues, our inability to believe this error theory makes the theory more likely to be true, since it undermines objections to the theory, it makes it harder to reject the arguments for the theory, and it undermines revisionary alternatives to the theory. The book then sketches how certain other philosophical theories can be defended in a similar way, and how philosophers should modify their methodology if there can be true philosophical theories that we cannot believe. It concludes that to make philosophical progress, we should make a sharp distinction between a theory’s truth and our ability to believe it.

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“…That this prediction or verdict is false need imprisonment, there is no need to adopt the counterintuitive position that Pettit adopts here. 8 The problem was first raised by critics of Berlin's famous Two Concepts of Liberty, such as Benn and Weinstein, "Being Free to Act, and Being a Free Man." See Flikschuh, Freedom, ch.…”

Objectivity and evaluation

“…24 First, Nick Zangwill (2000) argues that sensory properties are non-rigidly mind-dependent, 25 and that aesthetic properties depend on sensory properties. If he is 23 For considerations of this sort, see Mackie (1977), Joyce (2001), Cuneo (2007), Enoch (2011), Parfit (2011), Olson (2014, Streumer (2017), and many others. In the case of morals, the point is often made in terms of an inescapable authority that moral facts or standards appear to have.…”

Companions in guilt arguments

“…It is, however, increasingly popular to formulate the moral error theory in slightly different terms: in terms of the commitments of moral judgers to the existence of irreducibly normative relations (Olson, ; Streumer, ). These are normative relations (such as the reason‐relation or favouring‐relation) that cannot be reductively identified with non‐normative relations.…”

“…Further arguments for the commitment of moral judgers to the existence of irreducibly normative relations include the apparent difference in kind between moral relations and non‐normative relations (Parfir, , 324), and the behaviour of moral judgment in the context of cross‐community disagreement (Streumer, , p. 55). Again, it is argued that these apply equally in the epistemic domain (Cuneo, ; Das, ; Rowland, ; Streumer, ). I can't assess these claims in detail here.…”

“…Premise 2 has also been challenged: Some moral error theorists simply accept that the epistemic error theory is true (Olson, ; Streumer, ). Their argument relies on distinguishing between normative relations, such as that of being a reason for belief, and evidential relations .…”