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    Moral knowledge is impossible — Carmelics
    Statements
    321,452
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    Home/Skepticism
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    Moral knowledge is impossible

    SkepticismTruth & Knowledge
    ?Rate how convincing each reason is below to see the overall strength.
    2 reasons for
    1 reason against

    Reasons For

    2 perspectives
    Reason for 1 of 2
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    • 1.Moral facts, if they exist, would be metaphysically queer entities unlike anything else in the natural world (Mackie's argument from queerness).
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    • 2.Knowledge requires that our belief-forming faculties reliably track the relevant facts in the domain.
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    • 3.No credible evolutionary or naturalistic account explains why human cognitive faculties would reliably track non-natural moral facts rather than merely fitness-enhancing beliefs.
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    Reason for 2 of 2
    ?
    • 1.Persistent, deep disagreement among equally informed, rational, and reflective agents is strong evidence that the disputed domain lacks objective, knowable facts.
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    • 2.Moral disagreement is cross-cultural, historically persistent, and survives full exposure to relevant non-moral empirical facts, unlike disagreements in mathematics or science.
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    • 3.The best explanation for this irreducible moral disagreement is that moral judgments express non-cognitive attitudes rather than tracking knowable moral truths (as Blackburn's quasi-realism and Gibbard's expressivism argue).
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    Reasons Against

    1 perspective
    Reason against
    ?
    • 1.If moral knowledge is possible, then some moral judgments are beliefs
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    • 2.Moral judgments by themselves necessarily give us some motivation to act, even without the accompaniment of already existing desires
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    • 3.A belief by itself, unaided by already existing desires, can never give us any motivation to act
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    Topics

    SkepticismTruth & Knowledge

    Key Terms

    knowledge(Distinguished from mere true belief, which may be the product of indoctrination and need not exercise deliberative capacities.)
    Justified true belief — true belief that has been arrived at through the exercise of deliberative capacities, including comparison of and deliberation among alternatives.

    Connections

    1 topic

    Moral Responsibility3 linked

    Related

    A belief by itself, unaided by already existing desires, can never give us any m...If moral knowledge is possible, then some moral judgments are beliefsKnowledge requires that our belief-forming faculties reliably track the relevant...Moral disagreement is cross-cultural, historically persistent, and survives full...
    +5 moreShow less
    Moral facts, if they exist, would be metaphysically queer entities unlike anythi...Moral judgments by themselves necessarily give us some motivation to act, even w...

    Similar

    Perfect knowledge can only be knowledge of being82%Memory does not itself count as knowledge81%Psychology cannot ground the theory of knowledge.81%All knowledge is knowledge of something.81%

    Source

    AI-extracted1/3 agreementValid
    SEP: moral-epistemology
    View source passageHide passage
    An argument of David Hume provides a more direct threat to the possibility of moral knowledge based on the fact that morals excite our passions and motivate us to act. If morals are based on reason so that they consist in true or false ideas, they would have to be in themselves incapable of having this direct influence on our actions (Hume, Treatise, Book III, Part I, Section I, Paragraph 6.) As he famously said, it is not contrary to reason to prefer the destruction of the whole world to the sc
    Extraction notes

    Validity: Extracted via Max plan + API grounding/validity checks

    Details

    No credible evolutionary or naturalistic account explains why human cognitive fa...
    Persistent, deep disagreement among equally informed, rational, and reflective a...
    The best explanation for this irreducible moral disagreement is that moral judgm...
    Type
    claim
    Perspectives
    3 (2 for, 1 against)
    Edits
    1 edit