15. Franklin (1787, 18).
16. The nature of consistency is discussed in chapter 3, section 2, chapter 4, section six, and especially chapter 5, section 2.
17. Although actions can be inconsistent with each other, ultimately, this reflects an inconsistency at a theoretical level or between at least one of the inconsistent actions and a belief. See chapter 5, section 2, especially note 19 of that chapter.
18. I am not claiming that “reality” is overall less constraining of rational “factual” beliefs than it is of rational practical principles. Insofar as factual beliefs must be most responsive to a narrower range of reality than principled belief, factual beliefs have it easy. But that range tends to be far less fluid than the realities practical principles are most sensitive to, so the candidates for rational factual belief are more fixed than those for rational belief of practical principles. In the sections on pragmatic justification and objectivity, I discuss the sense in which all rational belief must be sensitive to all of reality. In chapter 2, section 6, and chapter 4, sections 4–7, I argue that nonetheless some aspects of reality will be more influential in determining various domains of belief.
19. Hempel (1962).
20. For those with a stomach for more details and examples: I voted for Barack Obama in 2008. An Initial Justification (IJ) of my act may go as follows:
IJ a. It is right to vote for the candidate most likely to respect human rights and bring peace and prosperity to the nation by constitutional means.
IJ b. Barack Obama was the candidate most likely to respect human rights and bring peace and prosperity to the nation by constitutional means.
IJ c. Therefore, it was right to vote for Barack Obama.
But perhaps we are less interested in a justification of my vote than we are in an explanation of it. Here is an Initial Explanation, the one I like to think is true:
IE a. I accept the principle that it is right to vote for the candidate most likely to respect human rights and bring peace and prosperity to the nation by constitutional means.
IE b. I believed that Barack Obama was the candidate most likely to respect human rights and bring peace and prosperity to the nation by constitutional means.
IE c. As a result I voted for Barack Obama.
Although similar, and easily conflated, the IE and the IJ are quite different. The latter makes no reference to the acceptance of any principles, only to a principle itself, nor does the IJ refer to belief in any facts, only to the facts themselves. And unlike the IE, the IJ suggests no causal relationships. While my acceptance of certain principles and my belief in certain facts may have caused me to vote as I did, the principle and the fact adduced in the IJ do not cause the rightness of my vote, they imply it.
Now it is true that the D-N model of scientific explanation also has the “explaining statements” serve as premises that imply the statement explained (the “explanandum”). So isn’t this explanation the same inferential form I am claiming for justification? Yes, but it has a different deep inferential structure because it is trying to get at causation. In an explanation, we are not trying to prove the explanandum true. We assume it is true, and claim to show how it, in fact, came to be true. A good formal explanation doesn’t simply involve true premises that imply the explanandum. The explanation also asserts (in that “as a result”) that if the premise with the law were not true, the explanandum wouldn’t be either. If IEa were false, we are meant to infer that I would not have voted for Obama, for it claims to be part of the explanation of my voting for Obama, not just evidence that I did. But if IJa were false, my voting for Obama might still have been justified on other grounds.
There are other possible justifications and explanations, besides IE and IJ of my vote. An alternative explanation (AE) might go as follows:
AE a. I am a baby boomer, New Left veteran, humanities Ph.D., Newton Massachusetts’ resident, and secular Jew, with a microscopic Wall Street portfolio.
AE b. All such baby boomer, New Left veteran, humanities Ph.D., Newton Massachusetts residents, secular Jews, with a microscopic Wall Street portfolios vote for the liberal candidate.
AE c. Obama was the liberal candidate
AE d. So I voted for Obama.
Whether AE or IE is the correct or a better explanation of my vote is immaterial to the justification offered as IJ. The justification of the act stands apart from any explanation of it. Perhaps political scientists and sociologists would be inclined to think that the AE is the better explanation of my vote. We may ask them to explain why I offered the IE as to account for my vote. In other words, how would they explain my explanation. Perhaps they would offer us a the following “social science” explanation, SSE, of IE:
SSE a. All people want to believe that their acts are motivated by principles and a correct understanding of the facts.
SSE b. Silver is a person.
SSE c. IE claims that Silver’s vote was motivated by principles and a correct understanding of the facts.
SSE d. So Silver believes that IE explains his 2008 Obama vote.
I am partial to a different explanation of IE. My “personal explanation” of IE is
PE a. People offer explanations they believe to be true.
PE b. I believe that my acceptance of the principle that it is right to vote for the candidate most likely to respect human rights and bring peace and prosperity to the nation by constitutional means along with my belief that Barack Obama was the candidate most likely to respect human rights and bring peace and prosperity to the nation by constitutional means led me to explain my voting for Obama by referring to that acceptance and belief.
PE c. As a result, I explained my vote for Barack Obama with IE.
We now have two competing explanations (SSE and PE) of my initial explanation (IE) of why I voted for Barack Obama in 2008. We can go on to attempt to explain SSE or PE, or shift modes and try to justify one of them, that is, try to show that its premises, for example, SSEa, SSEb, SSEc, are true, and that its conclusion, SSEd, follows from the premises. The justification would be subject to explanation or justification. And so it goes.
21. I am using “skeptic” to mean a denier of objective morality rather than just one who is doubtful about it. The primary school of skeptics in the morality “says nothing” category are emotivists/expressivists, for example, Stevenson (1944), and Ayer (1936), who hold that moral statements make no claims, but rather give voice to attitudes or feelings—a sort of “Boo” or “Hooray.” Expressivists do not neatly fit into my division of moral skeptics into relativists and amoralists. Like amoralists, they maintain that there are no, indeed cannot be, true moral claims. Like relativists they believe that morality actually exists as a variety of effects of various groups or individuals. The “metaphysically false” view of moral principles is held by amoralists.
1. Categorizing Theories OF Truth
Philosophers might do well to follow Jesus’ example and remain silent when asked “What is truth?” Truth resists a fully satisfying analysis, and the most plausible efforts have an air of circularity that reinforces belief in the concept’s unanalyzable, primitive centrality. But silence is a poor strategy for a defender of morality if it leaves in place a misleading notion of truth that casts doubt on the possibility of rational action and just conduct.
Insofar as my project requires a theory of truth, it is mostly a partial theory, a theory of how truth can be recognized—a theory of justification. All theories of justification are implicitly question begging;1 at best we can say that a theory