Moral Testimony Is Okay—But so What? On the Limits of Moral Testimony

Abstract

This paper critically examines what I call the “okayness of moral testimony” (OMT), namely the view that deferring to morally reliable testimony is generally unproblematic whenever agents experience moral uncertainty. I argue that contemporary defences of moral testimony often overestimate its practical significance. Even when moral testimony is epistemically respectable, reliable, and well-intentioned, it frequently fails to resolve the practical and evaluative difficulty that motivates agents to seek testimony in the first place. Through a discussion of examples drawn primarily from Paulina Sliwa’s work, I argue that testimony-seekers often suffer not from straightforward moral ignorance, but rather from practical uncertainty, value conflict, or lack of confidence in their own evaluative perspective. I further suggest that moral expertise itself may distort judgment through moral overattentiveness and overdemandingness. The paper concludes that although moral testimony can possess heuristic or reflective value, its utility in the resolution of moral problems is often overstated.