THE EMPIRICAL BASES OF MORAL SCEPTICISM

Ctudents in philosophy often begin with ^ the view that certain empirical claims are grounds for scepticism about morality. One such empirical claim is cultural relativism, the claim that basic beliefs, and even concepts, differ from culture to culture. Other claims involve certain psychological or sociological accounts of experience, beliefs, and associated moral phenomena. These might involve mechanisms such as conditioning, socialization, identification, rationalization, and so on. We teachers of philosophy are quick to disabuse our students. The mere fact of diversity of belief about a subject matter shows nothing scep? tical about that subject matter. Disagreement is con? sistent with one side's being correct and the other mistaken. Again, we point out to our students that the genesis of a belief is not to be confused with the justification of a belief. The question of the exact mechanism of beliefs and experiences is an entirely different one from the question of the nature and justification of judgements. Our students seem to commit the genetic fallacy. And there is this further point too. Empirical claims about man and society do not seem to have much bearing on metaethics (the study we often teach). Meta-ethics, after all, is pretty much an armchair (i.e. a priori) study. It is concerned with the correct analyses of notions (or, more linguistically, with the meanings of terms) or else with the nature of judgements (or, more linguistically, with discourse). Possibly certain claims, which look a bit a posteriori, have a bearing on meta-ethics (e.g. claims about what people ordinarily say or claims about whether one would regard a certain question as open in Moore's sense). But surely the empirical claims about diversity or about the genesis and mechanisms of analysis of notions and judgement would remain the same whatever we went on to discover about the diversity, genesis, or mechanisms of experience. Now I think we experts are right that empirical claims about the diversity and mechanisms of experience do not bear much, if at all, on meta ethics. However, I also think the basic instincts of the beginners are correct, even if they rarely can explain why. The reason I think the beginners have something is that I think the interesting issue, scepticism, is not a meta-ethical issue at all. Fol? lowing J. L. Mackie I take scepticism to be the view that there are no facts (and no properties).1 I, like Mackie, want to claim this is not a meta-ethical thesis at all. Certainly it is not the same as non-cognitivism. Moral scepticism is as consistent with cognitivism as it is with non-cog? nitivism. Consider this analogue. Terms such as witch, unicorn, God, spirit possession, phlogiston are descriptive terms (and the typical claims made in terms of them are cognitive). But I, at least, do not think there are witches, unicorns, etc. Even more, I don't really think the notions corresponding to these terms have a part to play in the conceptual framework, theories, and beliefs which are most suitable for explaining and describing the world as it is. But none of this requires me to deny that these terms are So, likewise, the sceptic can easily grant that language is descriptive. It may aim, in part at least, at describing. What the sceptic denies is that there are any facts. And that is a quite different matter. While, as we shall see, cetain armchair philosophical claims do bear on scepticism at specific points, scepticism cannot be supported by armchair consid? erations alone. Indeed the empirical claims which our beginning students naively bring into the lecture room are very important. Moral scepticism, nevertheless, does not amount to, what I call, moral nihilism. Even if