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How to explain pessimism about moral and aesthetic testimony

Conference by Michele Palmira (Complutense University of Madrid)

ABSTRACT
Moral expert testimony appears to be different from testimony about non-moral matters, such as the ones studied by biology or physics: while there’s nothing wrong about the latter, there’s a presumption against the former. The same presumption can be said to hold against aesthetic expert testimony. The paper clarifies which cases of expert testimony are indeed suspicious and explains them by saying that they are cases of epistemically impermissible deference to one’s epistemic peer. It is claimed that the proposed explanation isn’t available to robust realist views of morality and aesthetics.