Skip to content
Carmelics
TopicsThinkersChangesContributorsLoading account…

    Carmelics

    A reasoning platform. Break down any belief into clear reasons, explore both sides, and weigh the evidence honestly.

    Navigate

    • Topics
    • Search
    • Recent Changes
    • Contribute
    • How It Works
    • Glossary
    • Thinkers
    • Contributors
    • About
    • Statistics
    • Terms
    • Privacy

    Database

    Statements
    —
    Perspectives
    —
    Topics
    —

    Press ? for keyboard shortcuts

    LoyalLoyalJusticeJustice
    Made withinDC&Austin
    Statements
    321,452
    Perspectives
    108,905
    Topics
    42
    Home/Original/inverse
    See Original
    Inverse View

    It is not the case that Moral knowledge cannot be based solely on experience of the natural world.

    ?Set your confidence on the premises below to see your aggregate.

    Reasons For

    1 perspective
    Reason for
    ?
    • 1.If we have moral knowledge at all, we must know a general moral truth from which we can deduce specific moral conclusions.
      ?

      Think about whether this reason is strong or weak

    • 2.We could know a general moral truth on the basis of experience only by generalizing from specific examples of right and wrong encountered in experience.
      ?

      Think about whether this reason is strong or weak

    • 3.To know whether a specific act (e.g., deliberate cruelty done for fun) is wrong, we must infer it from a general moral truth.
      ?

      Think about whether this reason is strong or weak

    Reasons Against

    2 perspectives
    Reason against 1 of 2
    ?
    • 1.Hume's guillotine establishes that no set of purely descriptive 'is' statements can logically entail a normative 'ought' statement without a suppressed normative premise.
      ?

      Think about whether this reason is strong or weak

    • 2.Any empirical generalization from observed natural facts (e.g., 'causing pain reduces flourishing') remains descriptive until supplemented by a non-empirical evaluative bridge principle.
      ?

      Think about whether this reason is strong or weak

    • 3.Therefore, moral knowledge requires at least one foundational normative premise that cannot itself be derived from natural-world observation alone.
      ?

      Think about whether this reason is strong or weak

    Reason against 2 of 2
    ?
    • 1.G.E. Moore's open-question argument shows that any proposed natural property N leaves it genuinely intelligible to ask 'X has N, but is X good?', indicating goodness is not identical to any natural property.
      ?

      Think about whether this reason is strong or weak

    • 2.If moral predicates were reducible to natural properties discoverable through experience, the question 'this maximizes pleasure, but is it good?' would be as trivially closed as 'this is a bachelor, but is it unmarried?'
      ?

      Think about whether this reason is strong or weak

    • 3.Since the question remains substantively open for every candidate natural property, moral knowledge must access a non-natural normative domain unavailable to purely empirical inquiry.
      ?

      Think about whether this reason is strong or weak

    Next step

    Based on where you are in your exploration

    Strongest counterpoint
    Explore the most compelling reason on the other side.