Conciliating to avoid moral scepticism

A common worry about moral conciliationism is that it entails at best uncertainty about many of our moral beliefs and at worst epistemological moral scepticism. Against this worry, I argue that moral conciliationism saves us from epistemological moral scepticism and enables us to be confident in many of our moral beliefs. First, I show that only taking disagreements seriously as a threat to our beliefs allows us to utilise agreements in support of our beliefs (call this symmetry). Next, I argue that utilising moral agreements as an epistemic resource allows moral conciliationism to resist the potentially worrisome reduction in confidence of our moral beliefs. Taking the relevance of moral agreement into account, I argue that it is anti-conciliationism that must meet the challenge of epistemological moral scepticism. For this, I suggest that moral inquiry is best understood as a collective endeavour. If so, then agreement on our moral judgments is required to justify the confidence we have in many of our moral beliefs. However, by symmetry, this appeal is possible only if one accepts the conciliatory attitude towards disagreements. Hence, accepting, rather than rejecting moral conciliationism, is the way out of moral scepticism.Publisher PDFPeer reviewe

Moral inquiry : we're all in this together

Moral inquiry is often thought of as an individualistic enterprise. This is in large part because morality not only seems to require doing the right thing, but being in touch with moral reality in the right way: to act well, it is necessary to ground our actions on an insight into moral reasons—reasons we can only understand when we inquire for ourselves. In this dissertation, I defend a picture of moral inquiry according to which such inquiry is fundamentally social: we are not alone when it comes to making moral decisions. In particular, I argue that the conception of moral inquiry as an individualistic enterprise wrongly delegitimises a central resource of moral inquiry, moral testimony. To this end, I first argue that moral agreement is of crucial justificatory value in moral inquiry. I then go on to address some worries connected to moral testimony, arguing that reliance on moral testimony is not intrinsically wrong and indeed oftentimes permissible if not required of us. I complement this with a discussion of moral expertise, arguing that the search for moral experts has often been too focused on theoretical knowledge. However, practical experience is a much more reliable way of identifying those we can rely on with respect to a particular moral issue. Lastly, I discuss one consequence this more social picture of moral inquiry has, namely that blame can not only be allocated to a wrongdoing agent, but also to those who guided the agent to that act. This concludes my contribution to the defence of a more social picture of moral inquiry. Overall, however, my aim is not to do away with the importance of being rightly connected to moral reality—it is just that the best connection to moral reality available is often not through ourselves, but through others."Throughout my enrolment in the PhD programme at the University of St Andrews and the University of Stirling, I received a generous stipend from the Philosophical Quarterly as well as travel bursaries from the Department of Philosophy and the Arché Philosophical Research Centre here in St Andrews. My stay at Harvard University was possible only due to its fellowship programme. I am grateful to all of these institutions for considering my endeavour worthwhile enough for their support."--Acknowledgment

An Analysis of the Sustainability of the Increasing Consumption of Bolivian and Peruvian Quinoa at University Canteens in Berlin

The THESys Discussion Paper “An Analysis of the Sustainability of the Increasing Consumption of Bolivian and Peruvian Quinoa at University Canteens in Berlin” represents the first report in this series compiled solely by bachelor’s and master’s students. It therefore adds an important new category to the series, one that provides a platform for innovative interdisciplinary research conducted by students. The authors are students at Humboldt-Universität’s Departments of European Ethnology, Geography, Philosophy and Physics, the Thaer-Institute of Agricultural and Horticultural Sciences as well as the School of Economics. They all are or have been members of the so-called Themenklasse Nachhaltigkeit & Globale Gerechtigkeit, (Themenklasse Sustainability & Global Justice), a year-long interdisciplinary study project at IRI THESys for fifteen students who receive a monthly scholarship from the German federal government’s Deutschlandstipendium programme. The scholarships, which reward academic excellence and social engagement, are provided by the Stiftung Humboldt-Universität, with co-funding from the Federal Ministry for Education and Research. The Themenklasse Nachhaltigkeit & Globale Gerechtigkeit has existed since 2013. Since its inception, the students of the Themenklasse have used their one year scholarship period to carry out interdisciplinary group work on questions of sustainability and global justice, under the supervision of IRI THESys scientists. In this work, which has always fallen under the larger topic of “Humboldt’s Footprint”, the students have addressed questions of great societal relevance while using the “cosmos” of their university as an area or object of study. Their work has included projects on subjects such as the sustainability of the Humboldt- Universität’s supply chains, student mobility, and official travel at the university’s geography department. The 2016/2017 cohort also decided to focus on Humboldt’s Footprint, this time addressing the question of sustainable food production and consumption. The students began by exploring and comparing different disciplinary approaches to the question of sustainability in a resource context. After determining the major differences in disciplinary approaches and perspectives, they then narrowed down the often broader, more general questions to the specific question of Quinoa consumption in university canteens. During many long meetings and discussions, and with only brief inputs from their supervisors, the students explored the multi-faceted problem of how to assess Quinoa as a product, including its production, transport and consumption. They took approaches to this question of sustainable quinoa consumption that ranged from empirical quantitative work to a normative approach. This report presents an initial summary and synthesis of the outcomes of this work. It is not a final report, as the work of the 2017/2018 cohort will continue to examine this topic. In a June 2017 workshop, the group presented their work to fellow students and explored how this topic could be further refined and developed, e.g. to regionally differentiate the economic and social impacts of the diffusion of quinoa production. As the supervisors of this work, we are excited to learn about the next group of new ideas and to see the outcomes of the next steps in this analysis. We therefore want to express our gratitude to Stiftung Humboldt-Universität for their constant support, which has been essential to ensuring the continuity of the work of this group of talented and enthusiastic young researchers