Higher-Order Evidence and Moral Epistemology

2020.12.01 : View this Review Online | View Recent NDPR Reviews
Michael Klenk (ed.), Higher-Order Evidence and Moral Epistemology, Routledge, 2019, 269pp., $160.00 (hbk), ISBN 9780367343200.
Reviewed by Joshua C. Thurow, The University of Texas at San Antonio
This timely collection of essays explores a bustling area of moral epistemology, namely, how higher-order evidence affects the rationality of moral beliefs. Arguments from disagreement between moral peers and evolutionary debunking arguments both employ higher-order evidence to try to establish that some/many/all of our moral beliefs are unjustified and do not amount to knowledge. Epistemology has also seen much discussion of higher-order evidence more broadly, and these essays each bring deep familiarity with this literature to moral epistemology. What results is a collection that discusses a buffet of arguments: various defenses of debunking arguments, various criticisms of debunking arguments, a debunking argument against objective consequentialism, arguments about how pessimism about the justificational force of moral testimony relates to higher-order evidence from disagreement, an...
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