November 28, 2021

Moral Error as Estrangement from the Good Part One - Setting up the Problem

In the next two posts I want to consider the suitable account of error, given a certain kind of moral cognitivism. I am going to explore whether it makes sense to think of moral error in terms of estrangement or alienation (although this is not in any sense meant to be a technical term in the sense it is employed by Marxists and Critical Theorists). Before I approach this idea, however, I need to say a bit more about the considerations that make it necessary to think about an adequate conception of moral error.

I am a direct realist about knowledge and true judgments. I believe that, when someone knows something to be the case, say, that milk is in the fridge, this person is in a direct contact with the fact that milk is in the fridge. If we think and judge correctly, our thinking latches onto the world, and there is no gap between thought and reality. In order to understand what this means, let us contrast this claim with another conception of knowledge and our relation to the world.

According to this conception, our experience is always a bit less than the reality that is experienced. There is a world ‘out there’ which somehow interacts with our perceptual apparatus. This interaction brings about a sense-impression, an ‘image in the head’ which we are then held to interpret and express in a judgment. If everything goes right, the judgment is structurally isomorphic with the piece of reality and therefore true. If I have an image in the head of a container of milk in the fridge and I come to believe that there is milk in the fridge, my believe is correct if it mirrors that which has caused the image. But, importantly, there is always a gap that cannot be bridged between the piece of reality and my impression of it. I never come to apprehend the milk, only its appearance.

This seems like common-sense account of perception but I think it is ultimately incoherent. Because, suppose that it is actually not the milk that I apprehend but only an appearance of the milk. How, then, am I supposed to know that ‘behind’ this appearance there is the ‘real’ milk? Wouldn’t this require the exact access to the ‘real’ object ‘behind’ the ‘mere’ appearance that the conception has ruled out? The difference between appearance and reality only makes sense if it is possible to distinguish between the two.

And this is precisely why I reject this representationalist conception in favor of the direct realism I sketched above. If the notion of an inaccessible ‘in-itself’ is incoherent, we are free to say that the entire reality is in principle capable of being known. This has important implications for the adequate conception of error. If we think of our pursuit of the truth as attempts to approximate our beliefs to a reality that is by definition out of reach, it becomes hard to see how it happens that, sometimes, our beliefs do actually represent reality correctly. Representationalism is therefore epistemically pessimistic. Because of this it has an easy and straightforward account of error. If the reality behind the appearances that we experience is inaccessible, it is hardly surprising that our attempts to make sense of those appearances sometimes fail.

Direct realism, on the other hand, is epistemically optimistic. If reality is in principle open to being known, success is the rule, failure the exception. Usually, we apprehend things as they really are, and only sometimes we fail to do so. But if failure is the exception, it needs explanation. If in thinking and insofar our thinking is true, ‘we do not stop short anywhere of the facts’1, how does it happen, that we sometimes belief what is not the case?

So far, my discussion of direct contact with reality as opposed to an inaccessible in-itself and appearances has only touched on empirical knowledge. For reasons that I cannot explain here2, I think the issue is not fundamentally different when it comes to moral knowledge. I think there is a moral reality just as there is an empirical reality, and if we think and judge correctly about questions of morality, we directly apprehend this moral reality.

So much for the background that gives rise to the question. As I said, if we are epistemic optimists who believe that knowledge is the rule and error the exception, we need to explain said exception. In the next part I will consider the idea that, in moral perception, error is explained as the result of estrangement from the Good.