Topics Rationality

Question What grounds does a non-expert have for taking a position on an issue that the experts don't agree on? More specifically, how can I be justified aligning myself with a particular ethical theory, explicitly or implicitly (e.g. when I make a reasoned ethical decision), when there isn't a consensus among philosophers, and when I have spent comparatively so little time thinking about it?

Accepted:
April 25, 2014

Comments

If we only talked about things we are expert on, very little would be discussed. In any case, there is no reason to think that experts know more about many topics, especially those in ethics, than anyone else. The sort of knowledge involved here is not like the factual and technical knowledge one needs to fix something, for example. Obviously my doctor knows more about what ails me than I do, in most cases, but even that does not show that my views are of no significance at all, since I may have a good grasp of how it feels like to have a particular medical issue and that might be relevant to treatment and cure. I may know what worked in the past and what did not, while he or she may have little information about that.

I remember a curator of an art exhibition saying that she did not only include work in the exhibition that she liked, but she had to respect it. That is a useful expression here. If someone has thought a bit about their ethical stance that is enough for their views to be respected. To come to an ethical decision one does not need a degree in moral philosophy, and there is no evidence that those who have such a degree are any better moral actors than anyone else. One does need though to have thought about it and not just landed willynilly on a particular view. That does not involve a lot of effort, and there are limits in what we can do here given our competing interests and duties. But it does involve some intellectual effort and fortunately most human beings do think quite acutely on many of these issues, despite what those who take a superior attitude frequently assume.