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Proving the existence of epistemic normativity might pose issues for some arguments for antirealism, like the queerness argument, but it doesn't seem like sufficient proof. There is one ground on which to reject moral realism and not epistemic realism that CGAs don't account for, and that is the amount of proof.

To me, CGA feels like saying that as horses exist, unicorns must. They have a similar profile, and if you reject the existence of unicorns because they have four legs, you would also have to reject the existence of horses. What it ignores is that we have evidence for the existence of horses and not for unicorns.

They don't seem to give me any actual reason to believe moral realism, they only help me fail to reject it when making active arguments for why morals don't exist, but these arguments are not needed to take an antirealist position, because the burden of proof lies on the realist.

So what would the response to this critique be? Can someone show that companions in guilt arguments don't assign the burden of proof wrongly to the antirealist?

Edit: to be clear, I do consider epistemic norms to be a form of moral norm, but I don't have reason to believe in moral normativity in other domains.

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  • How can we talk of a wrongly assigned burden of proof without talking normatively? One might say, "But it's not moral normativity," but it seems like an ethics-of-belief matter, or a socially normative matter, etc. so it is hard to see what substance there is to the denial that it's a moral matter.
    – Kristian Berry
    Commented Dec 20, 2023 at 13:33
  • @KristianBerry To be clear, I do consider epistemic normativity to be moral, but I have no reason to believe in moral normativity outside of epistemic normativity. I will add that to my post.
    – edelex
    Commented Dec 20, 2023 at 13:50
  • If, "How ought I to think?" is an acceptable question, why not, "How ought I to behave?" Is there so much of a gap between the mind and the body that the former would not lead into the latter as a matter of course? If I conduct a debate with violence, am I not violating a parameter of justified thought as well as of justified behavior?
    – Kristian Berry
    Commented Dec 20, 2023 at 13:58
  • @KristianBerry Concluding is a behaviour so the former is a form of the latter. But no, you are not. Epistemic norms are about reaching conclusions, and you can think the right way while being violent to solve an intellectual dispute. If you mean in the sense that it is a violation of epistemic norms to conclude that you ought to be violent in that situation, or that violence is morally neutral there, I think that would apply to all normative judgements other than epistemic ones.
    – edelex
    Commented Dec 20, 2023 at 14:04
  • @edelex Please explain the abbreviation CGA. Also a short explanation of its content would be helpful; thanks.
    – Jo Wehler
    Commented Dec 20, 2023 at 15:13

1 Answer 1

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The companions-in-guilt argument (CGA) should be read more in the direction of, "Unicorns exist, but horses (or goats) don't."𝔘 The metaepistemological version goes something like:

  1. If moral facts do not exist, then epistemic facts do not exist.
  2. Epistemic facts exist.
  3. So, moral facts exist.
  4. If moral facts exist, then moral realism is true.
  5. So, moral realism is true (Cuneo 2007: 6)

The argument is deductively valid (assuming modus ponens, anyway), so the soundness of (1) is, let us assume, what is at stake in the CGA, here. But we must distinguish between instrumental and categorical epistemic reasoning, and then question the categorical value of the instrumental principle in itself. It is easy to accept a hypothetical imperative such as, "If your goal is to believe validly deduced conclusions, then conform your reasoning to the principles of validity," but then we will wonder what those principles are, whether they are "realistic" or not. And what if one's goal is to believe on the basis of other principles of validity? One will object that there are no such things: that truth is true, but ought to we to accept the truth? "If you don't accept the truth, your plans will go awry": perhaps, perhaps not. Foolish and dishonest people have a remarkable success rate in this world, after all. And if everyone has a problem with being self-deceptive, then anyone who is successful is so despite their self-deceptions, and we will wonder all the more whether commitment to believing the truth is more than instrumentally valuable?

𝔘If unicorns are impossible, this might not be the most perspicuous analogy anyway, though.

ADDENDUM: the knowability principle and metaepistemic normativity, and the puzzle of epistemic obligation

Suppose that knowledge is normative, to wit if t is any truth, then t → OBKt.D If it is obligatory that all truths are known, then it is possible that they all are, but then we have the knowability principle such as Fitch's result tells against.

Or then consider the puzzle of epistemic obligation in general. If there are truths that we are obligated to not know, what becomes of epistemic normativity then, as a species (the only living one, you have said) of moral normativity? We should like to find a way to talk about an obligation to know that something wrong has been done without there being an obligation to do the wrong thing (that it would be known), but so far a conclusive formalization of this discrepancy escapes us. Is epistemic normativity a default companion in that guilt, though, then?

DHowever, we might try out a different principle instead, here. For example, we might say that if it is possible to know whether t, then it is obligatory to know whether t: ◊Kwhethert → OBKwhethert. Yet in the quest for knowledge, then, it seems we will end up being obligated to do certain things to know whether t, for example if we ought to know whether someone is suffering, then we will be obligated to empathize with them, etc. When epistemology is socialized, the normativity of sociability will be a part of the normativity of knowledge (c.f. Kant's maxim of reason: "Think oneself into the place of others").

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  • I accept categorical epistemic normativity. The issue is, I don't see knowledge as normative, just the actual act of concluding.
    – edelex
    Commented Dec 20, 2023 at 18:10
  • @edelex how is it categorically normative that I aim to conclude with true beliefs? What does that mean?
    – Kristian Berry
    Commented Dec 20, 2023 at 18:35
  • you ought to reach conclusions based on the evidence, for example, regardless of whether you want to reach the right conclusions. Wanting something isn't a reason that you ought to do it.
    – edelex
    Commented Dec 20, 2023 at 19:47
  • @edelex what proof is there that we ought to reach this or that conclusion? Doesn't logical pluralism undermine our sense that some consequence relations are strictly the correct ones to use?
    – Kristian Berry
    Commented Dec 20, 2023 at 19:56
  • I get it from the idea that logic and epistemology are normative. For conclusions to be justified over other conclusions there must be a normative element that any evaluation of behaviour implies. I don't subscribe to logical pluralism in the sense of methods of derivation and epistemic standards, only really in the sense of systems of formal logic and maths from a formalist POV.
    – edelex
    Commented Dec 20, 2023 at 20:33

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