Document Type
Thesis
Degree
Master of Arts
Major
Philosophy
Date of Defense
4-24-2024
Graduate Advisor
William Dunaway
Co-Advisor
Eric Wiland
Committee
Jon McGinnis
Abstract
Intellectual humility, an epistemic virtue, requires us to own our limitations of knowledge when we don’t know an answer. In this paper, I argue that intellectual humility requires us to acknowledge our ignorance as to the question of what moral sentences are because we do not have any adequate answer to it. This is because the available answers, both cognitivism and noncognitivism, suffer from serious shortcomings. While cognitivism mainly struggles to resolve the problem of disagreement, noncognitivism falls short of finding a proper response to the embedding problem. The objections I present have mostly been raised by contemporary philosophers, and my goal is to show that these objections against moral cognitivism and noncognitivism are plausible. To conclude, I argue that, due to the serious shortcomings of cognitivism and noncognitivism, we should embrace metaethical agnosticism. My account is analogous to the account of agnosticism prevalent in the metaphysical discussions relating to the existence of God. I believe there should be a middle way in metaethics where we can simply admit that we do not know what moral sentences are.
I provide reasoning as to why embracing metaethical agnosticism is the most compatible way to exercise intellectual humility. I argue that the alternative, inference to the best explanation, is not a viable option because there is no reliable way to weigh the shortcomings of cognitivism and noncognitivism and decide which explanation is better than the other. I also compare metaethical agnosticism with metaethical quietism to show how the former is distinct from the latter and more compatible with intellectual humility.
Recommended Citation
Sabera, Tashmia, "In Defense of Metaethical Agnosticism: An Approach from Intellectual Humility" (2024). Theses. 457.
https://irl.umsl.edu/thesis/457