Value Disagreement, Action, and Commitment

AbstractThe problem of disagreement is a well-known tool in the arsenal of various anti-realist and skeptical views. Persistent disagreement is supposed to be evidence that our moral judgments do not track a realm of objective values. This chapter is concerned with a different form of skepticism that one might try to ground on the fact of value disagreement: namely, “commitment skepticism.” According to the commitment skeptic, the fact of value disagreement should, at least under certain circumstances, lower our confidence in our evaluative judgments. But such lowering of confidence, if taken seriously, leaves us with no way to move from our judgments to actions. According to this skeptic, we have justification neither for our usual moral commitments, nor for any particular course of action based on these evaluative judgments. This chapter argues that Kant’s view about our awareness of the moral law provides an important way of resisting commitment skepticism.