Moral Expertise and Moral Testimony

The idea of moral expertise and moral testimony is often met with skepticism. And many think that even if there were moral experts, as the existence of ethics committees suggests, deferring to them is problematic. The aim of the workshop is to discuss whether these widespread convictions are justified. If there are no moral experts, the resulting contrast to non-moral domains needs to be explained. If there are moral experts, we need to know what makes them experts, how they can be identified, and which role they can play.
More specifically, we are interested in examining whether there are epistemic or moral reasons (not) to defer to possible moral experts. Can we acquire and justify moral knowledge by deferring to experts? And if so, is this is also the case for more demanding epistemic goods such as moral understanding? If there should be experts whose moral beliefs are more likely to be true than those of non-experts, do we have moral reasons (not) to defer to them? Can actions performed on the basis of moral testimony have moral worth? Does trusting moral testimony have a negative influence of the moral character of the acting person?
The workshop addresses these questions by bringing together opponents as well as proponents of moral expertise and moral testimony.

Registration is free, Please send an e-mail to Christoph Baumberger
Programm:

• Julia Driver (St. Louis): TBA 
  Comment by Georg Brun (Berne)
• Paulina Sliwa (Cambridge): Moral Understanding as Knowing Right from Wrong
  Comment by Christoph Baumberger (Zurich)
• Michel Meliopoulos, (Zurich): What Does the Credentials Problem Tell us About the Nature of Moral Judgement?
• Christian Budnik (Berne): Moral Testimony in Trust Relationships
• David Enoch (Jerusalem): A Defense of Moral Deference
  Comment by Peter Schaber (Zurich)

Organized by: Christoph Baumberger, Georg Brun, Michel Meliopoulos and Peter Schaber

Programm.(pdf) (PDF, 139 KB)