Reasoning with Comparative Moral Judgements: An Argument for Moral Bayesianism

Abstract

The paper discusses the notion of reasoning with comparative moral judgements (i.e. judgements of the form “act a is morally superior to act b”) from the point of view of several meta-ethical positions. Using a simple formal result, it is argued that only a version of moral cognitivism that is committed to the claim that moral beliefs come in degrees can give a normatively plausible account of such reasoning. Some implications of accepting such a version of moral cognitivism are discussed.