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Moral skepticism divides into three subclasses: moral error theory (or moral nihilism), epistemological moral skepticism, and noncognitivism [1]. All three of these theories share the same conclusions, which are: (a) we are never justified in believing that moral claims (claims of the form "state of affairs x is good," "action y is morally obligatory," etc.) are true and, even more so (b) we never know that any moral claim is true. However, each "gets" to (a) and (b) by different routes.
Moral error theory holds that we do not know that any moral claim is true because (i) all moral claims are false, (ii) we have reason to believe that all moral claims are false, and so, because (iii) we are not justified in believing any claim we have reason to deny, we are therefore not justified in believing any moral claims.
Epistemological moral skepticism is a subclass of theory the members of which include Pyrrhonian moral skepticism and dogmatic moral skepticism. All members of epistemological moral skepticism share two things in common: first they acknowledge that we are unjustified in believing any moral claim, and second, they are agnostic on whether (i) is true (i.e. on whether all moral claims are false).
Pyrrhonian moral skepticism holds that the reason we are unjustified in believing any moral claim is that it is irrational for us to believe either that any moral claim is true or that any moral claim is false. Thus, in addition to being agnostic on whether (i) is true, Pyrrhonian moral skepticism denies (ii).
Dogmatic moral skepticism, on the other hand, affirms (ii) and cites (ii)'s truth as the reason we are unjustified in believing any moral claim.
Finally, Noncognitivism holds that we can never know that any moral claim is true because moral claims are incapable of being true or false (they are not truth-apt). Instead, moral claims are imperatives (e.g. "Don't steal babies!"), expressions of emotion (e.g. "stealing babies: Boo!"), or expressions of "pro-attitudes".
Moral error theory is a position characterized by its commitment to two propositions: (i) all moral claims are false and (ii) we have reason to believe that all moral claims are false. The most famous moral error theorist is J. L. Mackie, who defended the metaethical view in Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong (1977). Mackie has been interpreted as giving two arguments for moral error theory.
The first argument people attribute to Mackie [2], holds that moral claims imply motivation internalism (the doctrine that "It is necessary and a priori that any agent who judges that one of his available actions is morally obligatory will have some (defeasible) motivation to perform that action" [3]). Because motivation internalism is false, however, so too are all moral claims.
The other argument often attributed to Mackie [3] maintains that any moral claim (e.g. "Killing babies is wrong") entails a correspondent "reasons claim" ("one has reason not to kill babies"). Put another way, if "killing babies is wrong" is true then everybody has a reason to not kill babies. This includes the psychopath who takes great pleasure from killing babies, and is utterly miserable when he does not have their blood on his hands. But, surely, (if we assume that he will suffer no reprisals) this psychopath has every reason to kill babies, and no reason not to do so. All moral claims are thus false.
All versions of Epistemological Moral Skepticism hold that we are unjustified in believing any moral proposition. However, in contradistinction to moral error theory, epistemological moral skeptical arguments for this conclusion do not include the premise that "all moral claims are false." For example, Michael Ruse [4] gives what Richard Joyce [3] calls an "evolutionary argument" for the conclusion that we are unjustified in believing any moral proposition. He argues that we have evolved to believe moral propositions because our believing the same enhances our genetic fitness (makes it more likely that we will reproduce successfully). However, our believing these propositions would enhance our fitness even if they were all false (they would make us more cooperative, etc.). Thus, our moral beliefs are unresponsive to evidence; they are analogous to the beliefs of a paranoiac. As a paranoiac is plainly unjustified in believing his conspiracy theories, so too are we unjustified in believing moral propositions. We therefore have reason to jettison our moral beliefs.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_s...ral_skepticism
Analogy:
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Rationalist: "It is always wrong to lie. This is true because we can rationally conclude that our wills could not will such a maxim permitting lying.
Skeptic: "You are making several assumptions; I cannot accept your claim that 1) 'It is always wrong to lie' can be said to exist as knowledge; 2) I cannot accept the groundings of your argument that assumes something peculiar about reason allowing it access to such information; 3) that we may have any definitive knowledge regarding the will or its role in moral experiences.
Rationalist: "1) Perhaps we cannot "know" these to be true, but this is only a problem of semantics. You are generalizing a definition of knowledge that is too strict for practical purposes; and thus should be rejected. 2) Then you must be willing to reject reason's other prominent roles in human life - and by doing so it follows then that there is no real moral difference between beast and man, but that is absurd because we could not see ourselves as reduced solely to natural causes. We would undeniably reject such a claim out of necessity. 3) Even if we cannot know we have a will (which I only concede to you for the sake of argument) why would we not assume (if it exists) that it is free?"
Skeptic: You are committing a grave error. What you are arguing is nothing more than dogmatic metaphysics. By dogmatism I'm referring to your instance that what you believe must be accepted as necessary truth - and from this follows that your premises must be correct. You have only argued in a circle. Now I will demonstrate your error; 1) the problem is not one of semantics, but a problem of attributing a dogmatic stance to your own positions. Your argument is circular when you affirm the positive existence of truth, for which you make it your priority to determine; however, you silence the efforts towards truth by taking a dogmatic position to metaphysical questions without undertaking the limitations of your own boundaries. Hence, your argument is neither sound nor valid, but only dogmatic. 2) There is not a problem in denying the over-estimation given to human reasoning; reasoning can only be said to have practical concerns as to our actions as it relates to the physical world. Thus, we do not have to reject reason altogether (nor its role). However, we must reject the role of reason as it pertains to generating any such knowledge about the non-physical world as an illegitimate use of reason. And, we must deny access to reason to a metaphysical component of morality as having a causally-determined impact on our "will." Thus, we're not denying reason as it exists to the physical world of taking practical actions; I am only denying reason's use as necessitating moral behavior - an illegitimate extension of reason's use beyond its empirical boundaries. 3) By assuming the will is free we are committing another dogmatic error. This dogmatic error, which posits our moral experiences as being guided and determined by our rational wills - we are again attributing something as knowledge that by its nature has no reciprocating example in experience."
Rationalist: "You have only presented an argument against the possibility of knowledge against the will. This can lead us nowhere, and you only assume that our experiences of the will exist independent of experience because you are assuming some particular account of experience. Can it not be said that we experience our freedom to choose on morally trivial issues? When I decide to wear a red-shirt, is that not the action being chosen on behalf of my free-will?"
Skeptic: "It can only be an assumption that asserts the choosing of one's clothing to put on a red-shirt instead of a white one (or any other color). But this does not prove the grounding for knowledge in the free-will; rather, it is only attributing a false-cause to a morally trivial effect. In other words, how do you know that it was your free-will that chose the red-shirt? Also, the fact that can be deduced from your choosing a red-shirt is not an experiential account of the free-will, for you have no committed an error by your own definitions of the free-will. When you see someone else wearing a red-shirt, are you anymore justified in assuming he did so out of the autonomy and freedom of his will? The answer is obviously no. The determination of the free-will is not something that can be experienced in the free-world."
This brief dialogue only serves to illustrate the point about skepticism as it relates to moral rationalism and moral realism and the respective belief regarding moral truths. The moral skeptic denies the possibility of knowledge that anybody could make regarding moral claims, or that moral claims are the types of claims that could be true or false to begin with (however this latter differentiation could be said more of moral nihilism).
http://www.associatedcontent.com/art...?page=3&cat=47
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Moral nihilism, also known as ethical nihilism, is the meta-ethical view that objective morality does not exist; therefore no action is preferable to any other. For example, a moral nihilist would say that killing someone, for whatever reason, is not inherently right or wrong.
Moral nihilism must be distinguished from ethical subjectivism, and moral relativism, which do allow for moral statements to be true or false in a non-objective sense, but do not assign any static truth-values to moral statements. Insofar as only true statements can be known, moral nihilists are moral skeptics.
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Non-cognitivism in ethics is the view that moral statements lack truth-value and do not assert genuine propositions. This involves a rejection of the cognitivist claim, shared by other moral philosophies, that moral statements seek to "describe some feature of the world" (Garner 1967, 219-220). This position on its own is logically compatible with realism about moral values themselves. That is, one could reasonably hold that there are objective moral values but that we cannot know them and that our moral language does not seek to refer to them. This would amount to an endorsement of a type of moral skepticism, rather than nihilism.
Typically, however, the rejection of the cognitivist thesis is combined with the thesis that there are, in fact, no moral facts (van Roojen, 2004). But if moral statements cannot be true, and if one cannot know something that is not true, non-cognitivism implies that moral knowledge is impossible (Garner 1967, 219-220).
[edit] Error theory
Error theorists combine the cognitivist thesis that moral language consists of truth-apt statements with the nihilist thesis that there are no moral facts. Like moral nihilism itself, however, error theory comes in more than one form.
[edit] Global falsity
The first, which one might call the global falsity form of moral nihilism, claims that moral beliefs and assertions are false in that they claim that certain moral facts exist that do not exist. J. L. Mackie (1977) argues for this form of moral nihilism. Mackie, for example, argues that moral assertions are only true if there are moral properties that are intrinsically motivating, but there is good reason to believe that there are no such intrinsically motivating properties (see the argument from queerness and motivational internalism).
[edit] Presupposition failure
The second form, which one might call the presupposition failure form of moral nihilism, claims that moral beliefs and assertions are not true because they are neither true nor false. This is not a form of non-cognitivism, since moral assertions are still thought to be truth-apt. Rather, this form of moral nihilism claims that moral beliefs and assertions presuppose the existence of moral facts that do not exist. This is analogous to presupposition failure in cases of non-moral assertions. Take, for example, the claim that the present king of France is bald. Some argue that this claim is truth-apt in that it has the logical form of an assertion, but it is neither true nor false because it presupposes that there is currently a king of France, but there is not. The claim suffers from "presupposition failure." Richard Joyce (2001) argues for this form of moral nihilism under the name "fictionalism."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_nihilism
