My dissertation is written under the supervision of Mark Timmons (chair), Steve Wall, and Jonathan Weinberg. My dissertation, Rescuing Moral Empiricism, defends a moderate form of moral empiricism—the view that empirical facts can and do serve as evidence for moral judgments and principles. While few would deny a minimal moral empiricism (e.g., acknowledging that how much whiskey one has drunk before ethical reasoning matters), many reject the idea that empirical facts can play a substantial role in ethical evidence. This rejection is shared by, among others, rationalist realists like G.A. Cohen and Stratton-Lake, quietists such as Scanlon, Parfit, and Sepielli, and constructivists like Rawls. Furthermore, entire areas of philosophical inquiry, such as moral testimony and Rawlsian constructivism, often carry anti-empirical commitments. My contribution is to investigate when and how empirical facts justifiably influence moral reasoning and judgment. I do this in a way that remains epistemically focused, allowing my arguments to stay metaphysically neutral and broadly applicable. The scope of empirical influence on ethics I propose extends beyond minimal moral empiricism, hence I label my position “moderate” moral empiricism.
In the chapter “Rescuing Moral Empiricism,” I argue that empirical evidence, especially of a positive and ordinary kind, is not only compatible with but essential to the method of reflective equilibrium—a tool many philosophers use to justify moral principles.
A major part of my work addresses resistance to moral empiricism, which often stems from the desire for firm, foundational justifications similar to those in mathematics. In “Two Methods of Ethics” (dissertation chapter), I challenge the necessity of such grounding in ethics and argue that moderate moral empiricism provides a more practical and plausible account of how we justify moral beliefs. In “Rescuing Cohen,” I rebut Cohen’s influential rationalist argument against moral empiricism but defend his narrower objection against Rawlsian constructivism.
In “(Non)moral Deference,” I explore the debate over moral deference, arguing that the commonly assumed asymmetry between moral and non-moral deference is not as stark as is often believed. By drawing parallels between moral and nonmoral cases, I show how empirical insights can deepen our understanding of both. In “Are Ethics Consults Fundamentally Problematic?” I apply insights from the previous chapter regarding (non)moral deference to show that not only are ethics consults unproblematic by the standards of care that define the medical profession, but any ethical theorizing that condemns moral deference in the medical field is problematic.