ABSTRACT
This chapter expresses that reasonable disagreement about morality presents a significant challenge to the enterprise of moral education. Reasonable disagreement is possible where the evidence and argument bearing on a matter is subject to more than one plausible interpretation. If people disagree on a matter because their plausible interpretations of the relevant evidence and argument conflict, their disagreement is a reasonable one. Reasonable disagreement about the application of moral standards – the kind of disagreement that arises from moral dilemmas and borderline cases of morally regulated actions – is an important feature of moral life and a proper focus of attention for moral educators. Beliefs into which one has been cajoled, bullied or seduced remain tied up with the psychological hold of the people doing the cajoling, bullying or seducing; to break free of that hold is to deprive those beliefs of their chief support, which not infrequently results in their abandonment.
