Correspondence between beliefs and their typical causes is both a more plausible explanation of what makes beliefs true, and closer to what I take to be the best account of how we recognize the truth. However, a causal correspondence theory remains unconvincing. In a causal correspondence theory reality is supposed to cause experiences which in turn cause belief, and beliefs are true if they are induced by experiences that were caused by the typical causes of just those experiences. A true belief then is one caused by the circumstances which usually lead to that belief.13
This story leaves us unable to have common false beliefs. The flat earth belief becomes true, as do all beliefs that arise naturally from experience, for surely there is something about reality which causes those common beliefs to become common. But systematic error is not transmuted into truth by virtue of being systematic. Causal connections between belief and reality are indeed involved in justifying our beliefs, but not because there is a uniquely correct correspondence between particular causes and particular beliefs. Causes are the most promising prospect for any correspondence account, but neither typical causes, nor isomorphism, stipulated connection, nor historical association confers truth on belief by transforming belief into a stand-in for an aspect of reality. 14
Rejecting this implausible view of truth does not yet qualify moral principles as candidates for truth, it merely prevents summary disqualification. But we need not provide an alternative theory of truth, if by that we mean some definition or analysis of truth’s necessary and sufficient conditions, in order to defend the possible truth of moral principles. Rather, we require a theory of justification, a theory of what counts toward holding a belief true. And this can be done without specifying what truth is. One need not be able to define love in order to justify the claim that Robert Browning loved Elizabeth Barrett. Indeed, a theory of justification presumes an understanding of truth’s meaning. The meaning of “truth,” however, does not require knowing its necessary and sufficient conditions. I make no commitment to a particular analysis of truth by claiming I know what “truth” means. Nor does a theory of justification—a theory of when we can be confident a belief is true—require we possess an analysis of truth.
Before offering a conception of justification that can render the moral truth we seek, we will note the many strengths of moral relativism, the ancient adversary that the champions of undiminished moral truth must confront.
3. Moral Relativism
A thoroughgoing general relativism would hold that there is no truth except in relation to a particular believer or group of believers, a view that I will later endorse in a modified version. But moral relativism usually makes a more specific claim: moral truth is relativistic even if general relativism is false.
A number of related but distinct doctrines get called moral relativism. One is a doctrine rooted in linguistic theory. It is the claim that the truth of any moral statement depends on who is making it; moral language must be evaluated in light of who is speaking. The view has an initial plausibility because linguistic relativism is clearly true of some statement types: I truly assert “I was born October 4, 1950,” and you, with equal truth (at least for most readers) say “I was not born on October 4, 1950.”
Is something like this going on in all moral statements? “Yes” argues the moral relativist: my claim “torture is wrong” and your claim “torture is not wrong,” may both be true in spite of the apparent contradiction. The “I” in each of the birthday sentences is readily understood as speaking of different people. The relativist sees a far more subtle equivocation in the “wrong” attributed and denied in the two torture sentences, but no less equivocal for being obscured. What counts as “wrong” depends on an implicit standard, and the relativist argues that underlying our torture claims are different standards leading to our divergent evaluations of torture. This does not mean we are adducing different evidence on which to base our statements, but rather that our statements are about different things. The statements may broadly both be about torture, but they are specifically about different aspects of torture. My claim that torture is wrong may be about whether it causes pain; yours may be about whether it effectively elicits information. Were this equivocation made manifest the appearance of contradiction disappears. Just as our birthday sentences may both be true because it is logically possible for me to have been born October 4, 1950, and for you not to have been, our torture sentences may both be true because it is logically possible for torture to cause pain and to elicit information. I am not you, and causing pain is not eliciting information. 15
What is usually meant by “moral relativism,” begins as a corollary of the above linguistic claim: if moral statements are implicitly (and unconsciously) referring to different moral principles, and thereby make different statements, then a set of moral statements may all be true in spite of their apparently conflicting surface grammar. My “torture is wrong” really asserts “by my standards torture is wrong,” and your “torture is not wrong” should be interpreted as “by your standards torture is not wrong.” Here we find no disagreement, only a use of different principles.
The next step to moral relativism declares each standard as “good,” or “correct,” or “true,” as any other moral standard. Because the relativist assumes the correspondence theory of truth, and finds no transcendent moral standard with which to evaluate our historically formed principles, the principles are alethic as well as ontological equals. No moral principle is more correct or more justified than any other moral principle. One morality is just as good as another. So concludes the relativist.
The most persuasive framing of this line of relativist thought speaks of perspectives. Moral judgments, like all judgments, are formed in and emerge from a perspective. To re-purpose an image of Thomas Nagel’s16 —there is no judgment from nowhere. Nor is there evaluation from nowhere. Whether a moral judgment is true depends on the principles of the judger, which are constituents of her perspective. Again, moral claims are true (or false) only when judged from a particular perspective. Different perspectives will result in different, potentially conflicting, truth evaluations, and no supreme perspective serves as the final court of appeals.
That there are a variety of moral principles the moral relativist thinks an established fact. While I have some sympathy with the anti-relativist claim that this appearance is a result of diverse empirical and metaphysical beliefs rather than evidence of fundamental moral disagreement, I’m willing to concede that there may indeed be different basic moral principles employed by different agents, and it is beyond question that on important moral issues there is disagreement, whatever the grounds of that disagreement may be.
The tendency of moral disagreement to resist resolution even upon extensive inquiry needs explanation.17 The relativist’s explanation is that there are many true principles, and each principle decides the issue a different way. Perhaps the resort to different standards is not the only possible explanation of moral disagreement, but it is an explanation.
Not only does the relativist have a ready account of moral disagreement, she is certainly correct that whatever moral standards human beings have, be it one or many, that standard is a result of our biology and history. Our moral beliefs are a contingent matter. Even if it is the case that there is a single human moral standard, it might have been a different one had we been wired differently or had our cultural evolution taken a different path. If many moral standards don’t exist, they might have. Whether a moral standard is one shared by all humans, or one being used and defended by a particular human, the fact that it could have been other than it is shakes confidence in its truth: “there but for fortune I might have been a rule-utilitarian.” The relativist’s confidence that she has the correct answer isn’t merely shaken;