The epistemic and moral points of moral philosophy

Book section : Chapter

In this chapter I explore two puzzling features of moral philosophy and consider what these tell us about the ‘points of moral philosophy’, understood as the goals that moral philosophers are pursuing when they do moral philosophy. The first puzzling feature is that, rather than even-handedly and dispassionately reporting the evidence for and against a hypothesis, moral philosophers quite often seek instead to offer a persuasive defence of their preferred view. The second is that moral philosophers sometimes defend views they do not believe to be true or even to be best supported by the evidence, and are not always transparent about this. My question is: how can we explain these puzzling features in a way that is charitable to moral philosophers? More specifically, what goals do we need to attribute to moral philosophers in order to charitably explain them? Drawing on Ingmar Persson’s insightful 2018 essay ‘The Fundamental Problem of Moral Philosophy: It’s Point’, I will posit a range of goals and subgoals, some epistemic and some moral. I will end the chapter by commenting on some tensions between these goals and calling for greater philosophical attention to be given to these tensions.

Authors: Douglas, T

• Publication status: Published
• Publisher: Routledge
• Host title: What is the Point of Moral Philosophy
• Pages: 96-109
• Chapter number: 7
• Publication date: 2025-07-16
• DOI: 10.4324/9781003496090-8
• EISBN: 9781003496090
• ISBN: 9781032802558
• Language: English
• Subtype: Chapter