Abstract

It has been argued that moral beliefs cannot be transmitted by testimony, and so that there cannot be any moral testimony. The thesis that moral beliefs cannot be transmitted by testimony seems thus to cast some doubts on the existence of moral experts, i.e., people whose moral testimony has to be accepted. The paper explores the interplay among moral expertise and moral testimony from a metaethical point of view. More specifically, we focus on moral understanding rather than on moral knowledge, in order to test whether there is a way to rethink moral expertise without embracing moral realism. On this alternative view, moral expertise follows increases in moral understanding rather than accumulations of moral knowledge. The main theoretical gain is that such a conception of moral expertise is able to accommodate the suspiciousness of moral testimony, while the standard account is not. In this respect, some points have to be considered: first, in order for an understanding- based account of moral expertise to really count as an alternative to realist accounts of moral expertise, understanding, unlike knowledge, cannot be transmitted by testimony; second, moral understanding needs to be understood as a partly non-cognitive state. Thus, it will be argued, although the understanding-based conception of moral expertise forces us to conclude that there are no moral experts, there is still some room for moral testimony. The paper ends with an overall assessment of the strategy presented here by discussing a case from the literature on the testimony of oppression.