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Conclusion: Guesses Aren’t Evidence

Discoveries in moral psychology reveal that not-justified-inferentially premises about particular moral scenarios cannot be used in ethical arguments insofar as the arguments aim to establish knowledge of their conclusions.

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Notes

We have been exploring whether a loose reconstruction of an argument (as outlined in Greene contra Ethics (Railgun Remix)) succeeds in establishing that not-justified-inferentially premises about particular moral scenarios cannot be used in ethical arguments insofar as the arguments aim to establish knowledge of their conclusions.

It does.

Glossary

not-justified-inferentially : A claim (or premise, or principle) is not-justified-inferentially if it is not justified in virtue of being inferred from some other claim (or premise, or principle).
Claims made on the basis of perception (That jumper is red, say) are typically not-justified-inferentially.
Why not just say ‘noninferentially justified’? Because that can be read as implying that the claim is justified, noninferentially. Whereas ‘not-justified-inferentially’ does not imply this. Any claim which is not justified at all is thereby not-justified-inferentially.

References

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Endnotes

  1. ‘If, by any means whatsoever, it is possible to determine the slit through which the particle passes, the interference pattern will be destroyed’ (Goldstein, 2017). ↩︎