Academic Moral Skepticism

Document Type : pajoohesh

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Abstract

Epistemological moral skepticism as a meta-ethical view intends to examine, know, and justify moral believes. Academic moral skepticism and Pyrrhonic moral skepticism are two subclasses of epistemological moral skepticism. Through some reasons such as retrogressive process and skeptical suppositions, an academic moral skeptic presents this dogmatic judgment that since none of human's believes is positively and epistemologically perfect and reasonable, nobody can ever have moral knowledge. But, regarding the reasonable belief,  a Pyrrhonic skeptic suspends the judgment and believes that nobody is capable of knowing whether his believes are reasonable or not because either approving of the existence of reasonable belief or rejecting it has some defects that human cannot correct them. In the following article, which is actually the translation of Moral Skepticism by Walter Sinout Armstrong, the author, firstly, translates different parts of the book; and then particularlyreviews the issue of academic moral skepticism. Besides, she is going to point out the other kinds of moral skepticism and also the criticisms which have been leveled at them. One of the important findings of this study is that the criticism of academic moral skepticism is set forth together with the criticism of other views about morality and moral propositions which have been debated in west.

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