Knowing Right From Wrong

Can we have objective knowledge of right and wrong, of how we should live and what there is reason to do? The thought that we can is beset by sceptical problems. In the face of radical disagreement, can we be sure that we are not deceived? If the facts are independent of what we think, is our reliability a mere coincidence? Can it be anything but luck when our beliefs are true? In Knowing Right From Wrong, Kieran Setiya confronts these questions in theirmost compelling and articulate forms: the argument from ethical disagreement; the argument from reliability and coincidence; and the argument from accidental truth. He argues that we should not be disturbed bymoral disagreement, and that we need not defend our beliefs to the sceptic on independent grounds. Furthermore, in order to make sense of ethical knowledge as non-accidental truth, we must give up the independence of ethical fact and belief and recognize that those facts are bound to us through the natural history of human life. If there is objective ethical knowledge, human nature is its source.