PHLA11H3 Lecture 13: Detailed Lecture #13 Notes
Document Summary
Week 8 lecture #13: tuesday february 23, 2016. Unit 2: challenges to morality - moral disagreement & morality. There is much variation across cultures and time periods in views about right and wrong. But disagreement does provide excellent evidence for skepticism, esp if the range of disagreement is very wide and the nature of the disagreement very deep. (sl, p. 68) The problem is not, or not just, the quantity of disagreement, but whether there are reliable methods that can be used to resolve them. Of course we cannot settle ethical debates empirically. Philosophical questions cannot be settled by observation and experiment. But this does not mean that there are no objective answers to any philosophical questions. There are no moral claims that are objectively true. It cannot be established by empirical investigation. The skeptic cannot without undermining her own position say that if a claim cannot be established empirically, then it cannot be objectively true.
