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Debunking Arguments

A debunking argument aims to use

facts about why people accept a certain judgement

together with

facts about which factors are morally relevant

in order to

undermine the case for accepting the judgement.

Do not cover (already did these in previous lecture; just here for students looking up the cases).

Near Alone

I am walking past a pond in a foreign country that I am visiting.

I alone see many children drowning in it, and I alone can save one of them.

To save the one, I must put the $500 I have in my pocket into a machine that then triggers (via electric current) rescue machinery that will certainly scoop him out’

(Kamm, 2008, p. 348)

Far Alone

I alone know that in a distant part of a foreign country that I am visiting, many children are drowning, and I alone can save one of them.

To save the one, all I must do is put the $500 I carry in my pocket into a machine that then triggers (via electric current) rescue machinery that will certainly scoop him out’

(Kamm, 2008, p. 348)

Here is an example of a debunking argument. (It’s actually an argument we considered previously, but we did not consider it as a debunking argument.)

‘the whole way we look at moral issues—our moral conceptual scheme—needs to be altered’

(Singer, 1972, p. 230).

1. On reflection, many people judge that not acting in Near Alone is worse than not Acting in Far Alone.

We saw these last time; I have included slides but am not going to redo them. Details do not matter. They are just cases that contrast someone suffering nearby and someone suffering far away.

2. The difference in judgements is due to the difference in distance between the agent and the victim.

3. The difference in distance is not morally relevant.

4. Therefore, at least one of the judgements about Near Alone or Far Alone is wrong.

Conclusion changed from lecture 6 where this occured previously; now illustrating a different point.
Here is the fact about why we actually make the judgement.
And here is the fact about what is morally relevant.
We have seen that premise 2 is actually wrong (last lecture: Nagel & Waldmann (2013) on distance). But for the sake of illustration, I want to pretend that it is true.
Will be important that you get the general form of a debunking argument. Can you think of another debunking argument (∞quiz?)

‘To say that a particular psychological process
does not track moral truth is to say that the process generates judgments which are not subjunctively sensitive to *certain* moral properties.

cannot say this without making somejudgments ourselves’

(Rini, 2016, p. 682, my emphasis).

‘nearly any attempt to debunk a particular moral judgment on grounds of its psychological cause risks triggering a regress, because a debunking argument must involve moral evaluation of the psychological cause—and this evaluation is itself then subject to psychological investigation and moral evaluation, and so on’ (Rini, 2016, p. 676).

Can you make Rini’s observation into an objection to Singer’s argument?

‘the whole way we look at moral issues—our moral conceptual scheme—needs to be altered’

(Singer, 1972, p. 230).

1. On reflection, many people judge that not acting in Near Alone is worse than not Acting in Far Alone.

2. The difference in judgements is due to the difference in distance between the agent and the victim.

3. The difference in distance is not morally relevant.

4. Therefore, at least one of the judgements about Near Alone or Far Alone is wrong.

Rini’s argument is that we cannot tackle this. And actually we already saw by studying Kamm that Rini’s claim appears to be correct.
[UPDATE: I’ve gone backwards and forwards on this. If you look on the handout, I'm now tempted to think that Rini’s regress argument does not apply to this argument (which is not super exciting because the second premise is false, but still.)]
Who am I to say whether or not distance is a morally relevant factor?
Important to taylor this to what Greene actually claims. He’s careful ...
source is comment comment q9uU7K4lRgm0lfQVSF+OTA (∞todo link does not work)

"experiments identify factors to which our moral judgments are sensitive.

This information may be combined with independent normative assumptions concerning the kinds of things to which our judgments ought to be sensitive.

This combination can lead us to new, substantive moral conclusions.

[... Thus] scientific information can allow us to trade in difficult 'ought' questions for easier 'ought' questions"

Greene (2014, p. 711) quoted in Raia 2025, Chapter 2.

Debunking arguments aim to show that our moral judgements are not sensitive to moral truth.

Rini: they lead to a regress

Greene: they swap harder for easier questions

Everyone: Debunking cannot be done merely by invoking discoveries in moral psychology: the arguments also require knowing what factors are morally irrelevant.

This is a potential essay question.

a different kind of argument

For my part, I do not know which factors are morally relevant. So I want a different kind of argument—not a debunking argument.