According To Harman's Argument Is A Good One?

The philosopher Gilbert Harman argues for skepticism about morality, claiming that moral observations are not reliable and shouldn’t be trusted since the is no good reason to believe otherwise. By holding this view there is then a lack of evidence for or against moral disagreement. I will argue that Harman’s argument is a good one. In this essay I will explain Harman’s argument, I will then propose objections to show how it might fail and argue why as to why the criticisms wouldn’t succeed.

According to Harman observation requires belief and while physical facts can help explain the things we observe, moral facts don’t. On his paper he attempts to differentiate observations in science from those in ethics to support skepticism about moral facts. He explains that when we judge a situation in ethics we move directly to the moral judgement, we see a situation as wrong as a direct observation that the act itself is wrong with no required reasoning. Therefore, our judgements reflect our own moral framework, not the right or wrongness of the act.

As presented in class, Harman theorizes that we can have knowledge of moral facts only if we can test moral claims about observational evidence.

To do so, an observation must count as evidence by supporting the claim that P if the best explanation of what caused the observation includes the fact that P. So we can have knowledge of moral facts only if it is possible for there to be an observation such that the best explanation of what caused the observation includes a moral fact. It is not possible for there to be an observation such that the best explanation of what caused the observation includes a moral fact. Hence, we cannot have knowledge of moral

facts.
Harman’s argument appears to be valid, so the only way to show it fails would be to find fault on one of the premises which would affect how sound the argument is. The third premise which will be discussed is that which says that moral facts do not play a role in the explanation of our moral observations. An opposing argument could be that which considers that moral facts are not explanatorily irrelevant. Harman’s evidence requirement where the belief of the existence of moral facts is justified if and only if moral facts provide reasonable explanations of moral observations depends completely on the denial of the idea that moral facts have explanatory powers. For example, one might say slavery is immoral because it is immoral. That is, the wrongness of slavery forms part of the explanation for why we believe that they are wrong. So, the fact that a situation is wrong can explain why we think is wrong.
Another objection can be directed towards the clarity of the argument itself. In his paper Harman is not clear when presenting his ideas and when discussing moral explanations. In the topic of scientific observation and ethical observation, he explains in a manner how moral observations are not reliable because an observation must count as evidence by supporting the claim that P if the best explanation of what caused the observation includes the fact that P and moral observations do not. However, even if observation cannot help to explain moral beliefs does it follow that we can have no knowledge of moral facts. Harman’s opinions can be seen as being an absolutist claim where scientific observation is the only form of observation that exist and therefore leads all aspects of observation.