Philosophical Expertise

Submitted by Al on Sat, 27/10/2007 - 07:24.

Philosophers often undersell themselves. They say things like "Moral philosophers do not have opinions on moral matters that are any more likely to be true than the layman's". They want to say that they are not better at knowing how to live than other people.

But if that's true, then we're terrible at our subject! Given that our subject matter is aiming at better knowledge of moral truths, it's either the case:
1) That we utterly fail to achieve the aims we have set ourselves, or,
2) That we're better moral judges than others.

Am I missing something?

A few qualifications:
1) Humility is often a good thing, and bragging about how much you know would be pretty innapropriate.
2) Many "real life" moral dilemmas rely on a lot of factual information that philosophers don't study. We shouldn't claim to know more about these facts, only the uniquely moral aspect of the dilemma.
3) Our knowledge may be better, but it's obviously not infallible, or even likely to be correct. It's just less bad.

Bravely spoken!

Submitted by MDHinton (not verified) on Sat, 27/10/2007 - 22:42.

I have had many infuriating debates with 'amateurs' who think they are the first people in the history of mankind to consider moral questions and can solve all the problems of philosophy in 30 seconds. It's not that those who study the subject have a superior moral sense; simply that, just as in any other field, they know more about it. They know the objections to and flaws in all the easy solutions. This, I think, is more negative than positive knowledge in the sense that moral philosophers have a better notion of how not to live than laymen but it is knowledge nonetheless.