INTRODUCTION

Realists believe that moral questions have objectively correct answers. According to one of the arguments that were discussed in the last chapter, if there exists radical disagreement over these issues, then a realist must assume, implausibly, that the correctness of those answers cannot be known. Given the problems of determining whether any radical moral disagreement actually exists, someone might be tempted to try to squeeze out the same conclusion from the weaker premise that it is at least possible. For example, Crispin Wright has argued that in order to account for the fact that radical moral disagreements cannot be ruled out a priori, a realist must assume that moral truths “transcend, even in principle, our abilities of recognition.” And that, he insists, is an unreasonable conclusion. Positing undetectable moral truths is as strange as saying that something could be funny even if its funniness evades even the most receptive person.

I call this argument “the argument from epistemic inaccessibility,” and it is to this argument the present chapter is devoted. I shall argue that a realist can respond to it. However, one of the responses makes him vulnerable to the argument that is examined in the next chapter (“the argument from ambiguity”). This means that a complete assessment of the argument from inaccessibility must await the discussion that is going to take place there.

COGNITIVE COMMAND

Crispin Wright is not the only advocate of the argument from inaccessibility.