Moral Applicability of Agrippa’s Trilemma

Croatian Journal of Philosophy 13 (1):109-128 (2013)
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Abstract

According to Agrippa's trilemma, an attempt to justify something leads to either infinite regress, circularity, or dogmatism. This essay examines whether and to what extent the trilemma applies to ethics. There are various responses to the trilemma, such as foundationalism, coherentism, contextualism, infinitism, and German idealism. Examining those responses, the essay shows that the trilemma applies at least to rational justification of contentful moral beliefs. This means that rationalist ethics based on any contentful moral belief are rationally unjustifiable.

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Moral Skepticism and Justification.Walter Sinnott-Armstrong - 1996 - In Walter Sinnott-Armstrong & Mark Timmons (eds.), Moral knowledge?: new readings in moral epistemology. New York: Oxford University Press.
Can Empirical Knowledge Have a Foundation?Laurence Bonjour - 1978 - American Philosophical Quarterly 15 (1):1-14.
Human knowledge and the infinite progress of reasoning.Peter Klein - 2007 - Philosophical Studies 134 (1):1 - 17.
Coherentist Epistemology and Moral Theory.Geoffrey Sayre-McCord - 1996 - In Walter Sinnott-Armstrong & Mark Timmons (eds.), Moral knowledge?: new readings in moral epistemology. New York: Oxford University Press.

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