Mike Huemer is a great philosopher and a star of philosophy YouTube, and I loved this chat with him about whether morality is objective. I like to chat both to people who agree with me and to people who disagree with me. This was a mix of both.
We are both moral objectivists, so in the first hour we are of one mind in building the case for moral objectivity. But in the final half hour there was disagreement. I feel most moral objectivists don’t face up to their epistemological obligations to explain how we know about morality, and Mike fits into this category IMHO.* I tried out on Mike the new solution I’m working on, connecting moral knowledge to mystical experiences (see this post), and he had some interesting responses that I’ll reflect on further.
Some Questions
Which of the positions in meta-ethics Mike outlines at the start is the most plausible?
Am I right that objectivists like me and Mike need to give more of an explanation of how moral knowledge is possible?
Is my (admittedly still very sketchy) proposal for explaining moral knowledge plausible?
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Further Resources
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Here’s a prior debate Mike and had on whether taxation if theft (spoiler: it’s not):
The analogy I gave in support of the need for a deeper explanation of moral knowledge is from this paper.
*More specifically, I think robust moral realists face this challenge.
