Suppose that moral knowledge is unexceptional in the following way: any source of non-moral knowledge can also be a source of moral knowledge. What, then, explains skepticism about pure moral deference—the sense that something is amiss with the agent who outsources her moral judgments? The literature on moral deference takes this as a datum to be explained. Sliwa (2012) deflates the datum as an artifact of badly chosen cases. Williamson (2025) debunks the datum as a parochial preference for autonomy—a cultural contingency better suited to therapy than theoretical vindication.

In this talk, I defend my (2011, 2020) explanation of the datum—that pure deference leaves an agent unable to do the right thing for the reasons that make it right, an ideal at the heart of the moral worth literature—against these deflating and debunking alternatives, and argue that it fares better than recent authenticity-based accounts (Mogensen 2017; Skarsaune 2016) in a range of artificial moral advisor cases.

Sarah McGrath is professor of philosophy at Princeton. Her primary areas of interest are metaphysics and ethics; recent publications include “Moral Disagreement”, forthcoming in Russ Schafer-Landau, ed., Oxford Studies in Metaethics; “Causation by Omission” (2005) in Philosophical Studies; and “Moral Knowledge by Perception” (2004) in Philosophical Perspectives.