UC San Diego

Commonsense says that morality is objective. But skeptics deny that the normativity and fallibility that characterize this objectivity really exist. I disagree. I develop an account of moral facts that vindicates the objectivity of ethics. Moreover, I do this without relying on either the strong foundational claims of realism and constructivism, or the revisionary logic of expressivism. Instead, I build from a moral psychology that is modest and familiar--one that focuses on the distinctive, but well-known, anxiety that is provoked when we make a moral judgment. Drawing on empirical work, I argue that this anxiety is a universal feature of our social-psychological lives, one we've developed to promote social cohesion. Moral anxiety does this by altering our orientation to others: we become more sensitive to the consequences that our actions can have, and so tend to avoid them if we find that they are not justified. I argue further that this picture of the role that moral anxiety serves points to a broadly teleological account of moral facts: moral facts are the upshot of a validation procedure that alleviates moral anxiety in a manner consistent with the function that it serves. I then develop an account of the form of validity that is constitutive of moral facts. I argue that because moral anxiety is provoked by unease about the legitimacy of one's moral judgment, it will be properly alleviated only if that judgment (i) is not based on false non-moral beliefs, and (ii) uses principles that correctly assess the situations of those affected by the conflict in question. I argue that what counts as p̀roperly assessing the situation of the affected parties' is subjectively fixed in the sense that it is the upshot of what one would defend, on reflection and when pressed, given a motivation to resolve moral conflict in a manner that preserves social cohesion. Despite its subjective nature, my proposal captures the objectivity of ethics: fallibility is possible since the judgments we actually make can come apart from those that we would defend; normativity is explained by the sensitizing effects of moral anxiety