Contra Winegard on Moral Expertise
Why I believe a high level of knowledge or skill in moral reasoning is possible
“Moral expertise is not possible, but a kind of moral wisdom is”
In a recent Quillette roundtable discussion regarding moral expertise, essayist Bo Winegard defends the position that moral expertise is not possible. Winegard begins by stating the Cambridge Dictionary definition of expertise as “a high level of knowledge or skill.” In his view, there is a rational form of knowledge that is conscious and can be articulated and a practical form of knowledge that cannot. Expertise in these forms of knowledge requires a “relatively objective criterion” that we can use to make comparisons between potential experts. Winegard rejects the possibility of this form of expertise in the domain of morality.
Winegard believes that “morality is too subjective and not variable enough to allow for expertise.” In his view, we cannot measure the accuracy of moral knowledge because it is “not objective enough.” Winegard seems to be suggesting that there are relative degrees of objectivity and subjectivity, which is in contrast to many philosophers who treat objective morality and subjective morality as binary. Winegard demonstrates this with a number of moral quandaries likely to cause disagreement.
Consider this example: John Sampson, a devout Christian, believes that abortion is a moral abomination. He quits his lucrative job at Google to write essays denouncing it. He works indefatigably, but because he quit his job, his family has to move from their beloved home in Northern California to a smaller house in Tennessee. His kids are distraught about leaving their high-school friends, but John contends that this is a small price to pay to end the abhorrent practice of abortion.
Did John do the right thing? The answer will depend upon one’s views of abortion. Those who reject the claim that “abortion is a moral abomination” would likely argue that John’s behavior was not morally laudable, whereas those who accept the claim in the introductory phrase may believe that what John did was praiseworthy.
This dependence upon perspective is not unique to a few supercharged moral issues; it is ubiquitous in the domain of moral judgement. Without taxing one’s imagination, one could probably forward hundreds or even thousands of similar examples. For instance: (1) a person divorces his wife because she voted for Trump; (2) a person sabotages a laboratory that conducts experiments on animals; (3) a person protests nightly and loudly in front of a store that sells pornography, driving it out of business. Moral judgements of each person would vary widely, which makes the objective measurement of moral knowledge nearly impossible.
Let’s say we devise a test of moral knowledge and give it to 20 liberals, 20 centrists, and 20 conservatives to score. My guess is that the correlation among their scores would be so low that the test would be completely worthless. From this we can conclude that we lack measurable, objective criteria against which to test and compare potential experts in morality. We can, of course, distinguish the morally obtuse from normal humans, but we cannot distinguish between moral experts and moral extremists because one tribe’s expert is another tribe’s extremist.
Winegard believes that the only way to avoid this subjectivity is to “make moral questions incredibly vague or broad.” He provides some examples of “Is it good to help people who are less fortunate than you are?” and “Is it bad to kill innocent people?” Only with questions of this nature would you have a large degree of agreement. However, if the questions are so simple, then it’s equivalent to being an “expert at tic-tac-toe” in that it is incredibly simple, and everyone can do it. While Winegard rejects moral expertise, he accepts what he calls moral wisdom—a type of practical wisdom which is “the ability to make good decisions.”
Defending Moral Expertise
I will defend the position that moral expertise, defined as “a high level of knowledge or skill” in the domain of moral reasoning, is possible. I am a moral realist rather than a relativist or nihilist. I believe that some ethical statements are objectively true regardless of individual attitudes or beliefs. For example, it is bad to kill innocent people. You could say that this is vague or broad, but it is not tautological; it conveys a meaningful value judgment. If Winegard is permitting the objective truth of statements such as this, he is a moral realist with regard to at least some moral facts. What I find odd is that he believes more complicated or precisely defined moral facts are subjective to some degree.
We could propose extremely specific—neither “broad” nor “vague”—moral questions that would garner near-total consensus. For example, “was it morally acceptable for al-Qaeda-affiliated hijackers to kill thousands of innocent people by flying airplanes into the World Trade Center and Pentagon on September 11th, 2001?” Almost everyone—apart from the unusual militant Islamist—would say that this is morally unacceptable. We do not need to be vague or broad to attain a near consensus.
Difficulty and disagreement regarding an issue do not change reality, nor are they a strong argument against the objectivity of certain facts. At one point in time, many people believed the sun revolved around the earth, but this had no bearing on the objectivity of the matter; at that point in time, someone who thought the earth revolved around the sun would’ve been correct because his belief corresponded with reality. The fact that people disagree about a complicated issue such as abortion doesn’t entail that abortion is merely a subjective matter. Extremely complicated and intricate problems can have objectively correct answers.
There are questions such as the seven Millennium Prize Problems which are extraordinarily difficult. At present, only one problem—Poincaré conjecture—has been successfully answered. The remaining six questions have not been successfully solved by anyone. This does not mean that they are unanswerable or subjective. It also does not mean that we are all equal in terms of expertise regarding these questions. Even if few laypeople can verify this expertise, it is still expertise. Despite the fact that no one can answer them at the moment because of how difficult and complex they are, hardly anyone would dispute that there are relative degrees of expertise.
If Winegard permits certain widely held intuitions such as “helping the unfortunate is good” and “killing innocents is bad,” then why can’t there be an objective solution to more complicated ethical problems? Moral reasoning—like reasoning with empirical evidence—should involve considering various intuitions and their relative weights in relation to one another. Sometimes this is difficult, but not always. If I asked whether it is okay to lie to prevent an ax murderer from killing an innocent person, most people would say yes. Presumably, they would think lying is bad but that the death of an innocent person is worse.
A bit more complicated ethical dilemma would be whether or not it is acceptable to dodge the draft to avoid fighting in an unjust war. Someone could believe that “you have a duty to help your country,” “you shouldn’t flee from duties,” “you shouldn’t lie to others to escape duties,” and “you ought to follow the law,” but the actions taking place in the war could be morally reprehensible. They could include killing innocent people, including children. Perhaps, we could find that it is sometimes justified to kill an innocent person if the cause is extremely worthy, but if this war is for land conquest, then the killing of innocents might not be justified. Fighting for the United States during WWII might be regarded as morally obligatory, while fighting for the Nazis might be regarded as morally impermissible.
There are some people that are moral experts because they make moral arguments that are well-considered and premised on empirically true facts. If I attempt to justify baby torture on the grounds that babies cannot feel pain, I am demonstrating less morally-relevant knowledge compared to someone who knows that babies feel pain. Someone could argue that it is unethical to purchase animals, and stuffed animals are animals, therefore, it is unethical to purchase stuffed animals. This would reflect a lack of moral reasoning skills. This person is likely demonstrating some confusion between words and the underlying objects. If someone had an immense knowledge of morally relevant information and engaged in sophisticated moral reasoning that weighed relevant intuitions in a reasonable manner, we could say that he has some degree of expertise.
Let’s imagine that we believe there are no objectively true moral facts and that all moral statements are either false or not truth-apt. Surely, we could imagine that there is still the possibility for “a high level of knowledge or skill” in the area of moral reasoning. Imagine a researcher that dedicated her entire life to the study of extraterrestrial life. She made substantive contributions to the study of every parameter in the Drake equation and has the most in-depth knowledge of the potential biology of extraterrestrial life. Is this person an expert in extraterrestrial life? I believe that almost everyone would say yes, even if we have yet to discover extraterrestrial life.
I do not believe we have demonstrated with absolute certainty that moral realism is false, and so we cannot outright reject the existence of moral expertise. There is some agreement about what moral obligations would look like if realism was true, and this provides some motivation to behave ethically (Huemer, 2013). We have some room to reason about the correct moral actions we should engage in if realism is true, similar to how the scientist investigating aliens would know how aliens would look or where they would be if they did exist.
In practice, we should seek out people who are well-informed and are careful thinkers to inform our thinking on difficult moral topics. Winegard could be regarded as having some moral expertise in the domain of reasoning about controversial research; I have seen him thoughtfully discuss this on his and Cory Clark’s Antisocial Psychologists podcast. Likewise, I would also regard him as “morally wise”—to use his own terminology—in that he is morally laudable in his courageousness in pursuing controversial research despite hostility and major negative career consequences. Hopefully, I have persuaded him of his own expertise.
Very interesting, and well written.
I see two gaps I think could be addressed, and if I either manage to stop procrastinating and get some work done today, or just super procrastinate and don’t do it at all, I will try and elaborate further today.
The first is that abstract moral questions don’t line up well with practical reality. Is it ok to kill 100 innocent people makes a big assumption about innocence that someone acting in the real world could easily deflect with “sure killing a innocent people is wrong, but are they innocents?” Often in reality the debate is over the details assumed in the questions. To me that’s a point against moral expertise.
However, I would say there is room for process expertise, how you approach answering the questions, if not answering the correctly. Does one’s process involve thinking things through from different perspectives, considering the outcomes, considering eg what would happen if everyone behaved like this, what information is needed to change one’s mind about the validity of the outcome, etc. this is more analogous to expertise at doing math, where you don’t know what the variables are all the time, and so don’t know what the statement evaluates to necessarily, but you can be expert in moving things around and analyzing how different values should affect the outcome.
You can't pin down the Drake equation without any evidence of extraterrestrial life. If you have zero evidence of life outside Earth, you would still have not narrowed down the standard error of the Drake equation to anything 'scientific,' ie, testable. In the same way, you can't say that directing energy policy top down, or via the market, is better. While simple costs and benefits are easy to calculate, the 'externalities' or 'long run costs' can vary by a factor of 100 and aren't testable.