Grounds for doubt about the practice of making moral claims

Students' doubts about the moral claims that we make and defend in political philosophy typically stem from one of three main sources.

The first source is scepticism about the point of making and discussing those moral claims. For one reason or another, you might think that there's just no real point to any of this. The most common ways of expressing this thought are:

• People are basically selfish underneath
• The kinds of claims that political philosophers make are totally unrealistic
• Political philosophers just ignore the way the world actually is
• You can't change people's behaviour

If you have your doubts about the kind of things we talk about in political philosophy, and your reasons for those doubts are more or less captured by one of these ways of putting it, then click on the 'I'm sceptical about the point' link below.