Sinnott-Armstrong’s Moral Skepticism: A Murdochian Response

摘要

Walter Sinnott-Armstrong has recently criticized moral intuitionism by bring-ning to light some compelling empirical evidence indicating that we are unreli-nable at forming moral judgments non-inferentially. n1 The evidence shows that nour non-inferentially arrived-at moral convictions are subject to framing n effects; that is, they vary depending on how the situation judged is described. n2 nThomas Nadelhoffer and Adam Feltz, following in Sinnott-Armstrong’s foot-nsteps, have appealed to research indicating that such judgments are also subject nto an actor-observer bias; that is, they vary depending on whether the situation njudged includes the judger as an actor in, or an observer of, the situation. n3 The naccuracy of this empirical evidence will not be challenged in what follows. nWhat will be called into question is its purported relevance for moral intuition-nism. To that end we will consider a version of moral intuitionism developed nby Iris Murdoch that not only accommodates but essentially relies on the nexistence of various kinds of distorting factors including framing effects and nactor-observer biases.