Link Search Menu Expand Document

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.

If the video isn’t working you could also watch it on youtube. Or you can view just the slides (no audio or video).

This recording is also available on stream (no ads; search enabled).

If the slides are not working, or you prefer them full screen, please try this link. The recording is available on stream and youtube.

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

Kozhevnikov, M., & Hegarty, M. (2001). Impetus beliefs as default heuristics: Dissociation between explicit and implicit knowledge about motion. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 8(3), 439–453. https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03196179
Railton, P. (2014). The Affective Dog and Its Rational Tale: Intuition and Attunement. Ethics, 124(4), 813–859. https://doi.org/10.1086/675876