Normativity, Moral and Epistemic

[@KaneB]

My Patreon: www.patreon.com/kanebaker91

[@philosophe5319]

Another great video. Thanks Kane B. You’re a legend.

[@ahmedbellankas2549]

1-john wants to p; 2- if x then p and only by x someone can p; 3- if (1 and 2) then obligatory (if john wants to p then john performs x) All 1,2,and 3 constitute a should- reason for john to x; So there's no querness in hypothetical reasons.

[@squatch545]

Another good book for this is: Companions in Guilt: Arguments for Ethical Objectivity by HALLVARD LILLEHAMMER

[@naturalisticallyinclined7702]

yesss it's time for Kane B and chill

[@ahmedbellankas2549]

Epistemic normativity proponents,i think they confuse epistemic reasons from which p follows logically or is infered with should-reasons to believe what follows from the argument,so: If we have: 1) x+3= ? 2) x=4 C) x+3=7 If 1 and 2 then c; 1 and 2; Therefore c. There's a difference between this argument and should-reasons (you should believe this argument ). I can say if i want to have true beliefs then i should believe what logical arguments conclude,so it seems that we don't need to claim that epistemic should-reasons are categorical.

[@geraldharrison5787]

Good video. I hold a variation on Bedke's view. Bedke thinks normative reasons are favouring relations. That, I think, is true (indeed, I think it is a conceptual truth). But what Bedke overlooks is that favouring relations require a favourer; that is, they require a source. Bedke thinks that, typically, normative reasons have a tripartite structure: there's the person who is favoured doing something. Then there's what they are favoured doing. And then there's the basis upon which they are favoured doing it. But what's doing the favouring in that relation? Not the person who is being favoured doing something, for they have reason to do what is right (or believe what is true) even if they do not favour themselves doing so. Nor is it the act that they are being favoured performing, for acts cannot favour anything (the idea is incoherent). And the same applies to the basis upon which they are favoured performing the act. 'The fact the act will cease her pain" is not the sort of thing that can favour anything. Facts don't favour things (that's as insane as thinking that facts can fall in love with one another). Normative reasons are favouring relations that typically have a quadripartite structure. There is the source of the favouring relation - which needs to be a mind (as only minds can adopt attitudes towards things) - then there's the object of the favouring relation (the person who is favoured doing or believing something) - and then there's the act or belief they are favoured doing or believing - and then there's the basis upon which they are favoured doing or believing it. Different sorts of normative reason can then be characterized in terms of their different relata. Hypothetical reasons are normative reasons. They're as normative as categorical ones. The difference between a categorical and a hypothetical normative reason is not a difference in normativity, but rather in the basis upon which the person is favoured doing or believing something. There can be hypothetical commands: shut the window if you're cold, for instance. That's a command - and so it expresses a favouring attitude (I favour you shutting the window if you're cold). And there can be categorical commands: shut the window. Both are commands - both require a commander. There's no difference in what they require to exist; they both require there to be a source. And they're both going to have the same source - Reason (a mind) - and thus whatever one requires in terms of ontology, so does the other. If one rejects moral reasons on the grounds that they require reality to contain something exotic, then one is going to have to reject all normative reasons, including hypothetical reasons and epistemic reasons. Of course, there may be other grounds for rejecting moral reasons that do not apply to epistemic or hypothetical reasons. But if the basis for rejection is specifically that moral reasons come with ontological commitments that reality doesn't satisfy, then that applies to hypothetical and epistemic reasons as well.

[@avaevathornton9851]

To me at least it seems pretty intuitively obvious that the statement "We should try to gain true beliefs and get rid of false beliefs." represents a value judgement, not a fact about the universe.

[@Ansatz66]

It's not so obvious. When people say that someone should do something, they aren't usually talking about a mere matter of opinion. For example, suppose Alice owns slaves and we say "Alice should release her slaves." When we say that, we don't mean that we would feel better if she did that, though we would. We don't mean that doing so would help achieve Alice's goals, though it probably would. What we're really thinking about is the slaves and how their lives would be dramatically improved, along with an improvement in all the lives connected with those slaves and a general improvement in society when there is less slavery. There's no value judgement here; what we think of the situation is beside the point; the point is the objective consequences of taking this action, and that's what we're trying to communicate when we say that she should do this thing. With that in mind, we should examine what we mean by "We should try to gain true beliefs and get rid of false beliefs." We might mean that it is just a preference we have, but more likely we have something more meaningful in mind than a mere value judgement. In many ways false beliefs might be a detriment to society. It's not just a personal opinion that false beliefs are bad if false beliefs are actually hurting people. A classic article on this topic is _The Ethics of Belief_ by William K. Clifford where he expounds at length about how terrible it is to have false beliefs. It's freely available on the web and it is a fun read.

[@Elisha_the_bald_headed_prophet]

Even though the premise is left unstated, this is an example of a _hypothetical imperative_ . Holding true beliefs makes sense for reasons beyond objective moral truth (which the moral anti-realist denies anyway; by the same token, she should reject Clifford's argument). The upshot of holding true beliefs comes in the form of assorted benefits in everyday activities, reflecting favorably on the odds of survival, happiness, etc. In the same vein, the advice to take a sweater with you makes sense given the unforeseeable risk of chilly weather. That end is what justifies the normative claim. The full import of the original statement thus looks something like, " _if we want to improve our chances of accomplishing our goals_ , we should try to gain true beliefs and get rid of false beliefs." As ever, some people commit an unnecessary leap of faith and take it as a categorical duty instead: the "search for knowledge" and the simultaneous "fight against ignorance and superstition" become their utmost goal in life, trumping all other human values, and they believe everyone else should agree with them. Meanwhile, the preference for true beliefs over false ones does not appear to be universal. In some instances, it might be desirable to forgo ascertaining the whole truth of the matter, or to hold a false belief altogether, e.g. in order to feel better and worry less, and it might come across as altruistic to foster ignorance and false convictions. Some examples: - lying is generally frowned upon, but white lies are commonly seen as an acceptable exception; - meat eaters might wilfully turn a blind eye to farming conditions; - and a friend might try to stop you from hiring a private detective and advise you to trust your spouse. Living in denial like this obviously has its tradeoffs. It's a useful exercise to look for the hidden premises of every normative claim. When it looks like it can only be valid "just because", it's probably because it's grounded in irrationality. Unfortunately, even someone who apparently cares about you will occasionally tell you to trust some authority (some writer, preacher, expert, etc.), even though they'll fail to provide a premise for such a normative claim to justify exactly how it's supposed to be in your interest. (Cynics will claim they do it in their own interest, which might indeed be the case sometimes.) That's because it's rarely the case that they've reached their conviction through a thorough reasoning process. Instead, they've themselves often been the victims of similar unfounded advice on the part of their own group.

[@mega1chiken6dancr9]

@@Ansatz66 I don't care. Whatever people 'think they mean' doesn't mean anything metaphysically. Your intuitions won't prove anything metaphysical. There are no objective morals grounded in reality independent of our thought and the same with reasons.

[@je-nas]

“we should try to gain true beliefs” is EITHER false, if taken as categorical, for we “should” nothing in this sense, the same as with morality (yeah, I'm with Error Theory).... OR it’s just hypothetical, that is, IF and to the extent we care about truth, then yes, we should try to gain true beliefs. That’s just like “if we care about our health, we should try to be healthy”. CIG argument is so obviously a failed tu quoque, no substance at all.

[@ac4740]

Lovely video! I wanted to offer an anti-realist response to the claim that they cannot say that Frank, who doesn't aim at truth, is irrational for believing the Earth is flat. While I certainly agree Frank is strange for having this goal, and may not count as an "inquirer", I want to flesh out the response. When I, as an anti-realist, claim that Frank / flat-earthers are irrational, I simply mean that they have failed to apply truth-maximizing inference procedures (logic, abduction) to their available evidence. I don't insert any hypothesis about their actual desires into my claim. So for me, it is still true that Frank is being irrational. Now, when I say "one ought be rational", I am articulating a hypothetical imperative + a supposition about goals: "If one's goals are truth-seeking, one ought be rational so as to achieve them, and I assume one's goals include truth-seeking". So for me, "Frank ought be rational" is only partly true. The hypothetical part is true, but the supposition is false. If that means "It's not the case that Frank ought be rational" is something I'm committed to, that seems fine to me (although is highly counter-intuitive, like many outcomes of anti-realism, say, those applied to Aliens who desire to vivisect humans or destroy the human race).

[@Ansatz66]

Cuneo's first objection to Epistemic Error Theory seems to be pure madness. 12:54 "If the EETist claims that there are reasons to believe EET, then her position is obviously self-defeating. If she claims that there are no reasons to believe EET, then her position is toothless since nobody could be convicted of making a mistake by rejecting it." It is almost impossible to imagine an epistemic error theorist who would take the first option, and it is similarly difficult to imagine how any EETist would hesitate to accept the second option. Plainly the EET position is merely that EET is true, and no epistemic error theorist would ever claim that there is reason to believe EET. If an EETist thought that there could to be reason to believe things then she wouldn't be an EETist, so who is Cuneo trying to convince with this objection? The real problem with EET and moral error theory is that they are abdications of their duties as theories. We're supposed to be explaining the meaning of epistemic and moral statements, and to make a blanket assertion that all such statements are false is to completely ignore whatever meaning anyone has in mind while making these statements. Plainly people who make these statements think they mean something true and we're trying to determine what that is. Once we've determined what people are trying to say, then we might assess whether it is actually true or false. When an error theorist declares these statements to be nonsense, that gets us no closer to determining the meaning of the statements. 24:39 "Suppose that Frank believes that the Earth is flat. I point to all the evidence suggesting that his belief is false. He replies that he agrees that there is good evidence that his belief is false, but he simply doesn't care about have true or false beliefs." The reasons for people to hold beliefs are far more complicated than we're suggesting here. Frank doesn't need to not care about the truth of beliefs in order to willfully ignore evidence. It would be perfectly plausible that Frank simply doesn't care about the whether _this particular belief_ is true or false. Frank could still care about the truth of all sorts of other beliefs, even though those concerns have been overridden by greater concerns in this case. The shape of the Earth is especially useless to most people, so long as they are not trying to navigate a ship or launch something into space, but some people can find a use for it in creating a community and building social bonds around a shared belief. If believing that the Earth is flat will allow Frank to make friends and feel special, then Frank has no good reason to care whether it is true. There is no universal obligation for everyone to aim for true beliefs, especially when false beliefs might sometimes serve us better.

[@jolssoni2499]

Error theory doesn't say that moral discourse is nonsense? It's representational, the intension/meaning of moral statements is quite obvious (x is F), it's just that the truthmakers (Fs) for the claims don't exist. Witch discourse isn't nonsense, just false. God discourse isn't nonsense, just false.

[@Ansatz66]

@@jolssoni2499 That does make more sense. That implies that the error theorists has already determined some meaning for the statements and based on that meaning it has been determined that the statements are false. So for example, an error theorist might be a deontologist or a consequentialist when determining the meaning of ethical statements. The deontologist would say that all ethical statements are false due to their being no rules we are morally obligated to follow. The consequentialist would say that all ethical statements are false due to all consequences being ethically equivalent, so no action could ever be better or worse than any other. Perhaps the confusion came from the way the argument from queerness seems to suggest that the error theorist is uncertain about what ethical statements refer to. Mackie said, "They would be entities or qualities or relations of a very strange sort, utterly different from anything else in the universe." That doesn't sound like the words of someone who has a clear understanding of the entities of which he is speaking, though that impression is probably misleading.

[@maximusgarahan2066]

Yeah, the first ("self-defeating") objection does seem rather bizarre. It's moral realism that's epistemically self-defeating, not antirealism. Realists come to various moral beliefs in virtue of "rational" intuition. However, the metaphysics of realism precludes intuition from tracking moral truth. Moral facts aren't conceptually necessary--there's no contradiction in denying them. They aren't pragmatically justified--the usefulness of believing that X is categorical doesn't conduce to X's being categorical. Even supposing categorical moral norms were coherent, there's no empirical methodology to establish whether the X-norm, the Y-norm, or whatever norm is the genuine categorical norm. But, those are the only means of tracking truth--consequently, moral realism entails radical normative skepticism, where one's moral intuitions are in all likelihood vastly at variance from the real categorical norms. Moral realism is self-defeating since it's posited to account for the seeming bindingness of certain normative practices but it undermines the very practices it sought to explain in the first place.

[@Ansatz66]

@@maximusgarahan2066 "Realists come to various moral beliefs in virtue of 'rational' intuition." A realist might do that, but that wouldn't be cause to say that realism is self-defeating, unless realism somehow requires that people use intuition. The mistakes of some few realists are not relevant to the philosophy of realism. "The metaphysics of realism precludes intuition from tracking moral truth." Intuitions aren't totally disconnected from reality. Intuitions are functions of a mind and minds exist within reality. Presumably our brains evolved based on what helped people survive, and accurate intuitions about morality might be very helpful for survival. For example, suppose a shepherd has an intuition about the number of sheep in her flock. Would we say that sheep realism precludes intuition from tracking sheep truth? Maybe her intuition has been well trained by evolution and experience so that it actually does allow her to track her flock without counting. "Moral facts aren't conceptually necessary--there's no contradiction in denying them." That's true of any real thing. The height of the Eiffel tower is real, and because of that there is no contradiction in denying that the Eiffel tower is 324 meters tall. When there's a contradiction in denying something, that means it's not real. For example, if we denied that bachelors were unmarried, that would imply a contradiction thanks to the definition of the word _bachelor,_ but bachelors being unmarried isn't a real thing in the world; it's just a definition. "They aren't pragmatically justified--the usefulness of believing that X is categorical doesn't conduce to X's being categorical." Certainly no moral realist would suppose that our beliefs about a moral claim make that claim true. Any moral realist must think that moral claims are made true by some facts about the real world independent of opinions. "There's no empirical methodology to establish whether the X-norm, the Y-norm, or whatever norm is the genuine categorical norm." That depends on what real world facts determine whether a norm is a genuine categorical norm. If the realist thinks that the relevant facts are supernatural and determined by God, then it's going to be troublesome to study that empirically, but that's not true of all realists.

[@maximusgarahan2066]

@@Ansatz66 Interesting points. Albeit there's some confusion by virtue of the truncated form of my argument. I'd be delighted to expound further how robust moral realism is incoherent if you have the time & patience?

[@michaelmoran9020]

My immediate response to companions in guilt is just that epistemic Norms aren't categorical. Id contend ive only ever said. "You should believe in the moon if you care about being correct"

[@mega1chiken6dancr9]

exactly, it seems so stupid this is such a debate, idk tho i need to read up

[@koopag8]

Empty distinction

[@aslan2709]

You’re begging the question by phrasing it as “if you want to be correct.” The more accurate phrasing of the problem would be: “You should believe in the moon because you ought to trust your eyesight.” In other words, you are presupposing an objective norm that “you should trust your sense perception.”

[@je-nas]

​@@aslan2709 there’s no obligation to “trust your eyesight”, real or imagined (in the case of morality, there’s an imagined obligation to do or refrain from certain actions). You just trust it or not, as a matter of fact, according with whatever evidence managed to reach you (whether you cared to pursue that evidence, whether you were indifferent or actively tried to blind yourself from the evidence). In any case, SOME evidence or seeming evidence reached you, and you will believe accordingly - for belief isn’t voluntary. Perhaps you were exposed to reasons to think you are looking at an optical illusion, or that you are hallucinating, or that your senses can be trusted. Whatever is the case, you will believe accordingly. There’s no obligation. No “ought”.

[@unhingedconnoisseur164]

22:57 seems like there's a relevant difference between "i will die in a car accident" (future) and "i have died in a car accident" (past) ? the probability that i will die in a car accident is higher if im driving, and someone could therefore say that this is (albeit weak) evidence that i will die in a car accident in the future i.e during this trip but the probability that i have died in a car accident is obviously lower if i am driving , so someone could say that this is evidence that i have not died in a car accident

[@jolssoni2499]

@Kane B Any plans to do a video on empirical/experimental philosophy research about moral reasoning, folk morality etc?

[@KaneB]

No... I do have a half-finished video on x-phi, but it doesn't focus much on moral reasoning, and I have no idea if or when I'll get it finished.

[@solomonherskowitz]

I'm in love with your channel

[@AlonzoFyfe]

Concerning the claim that it is irrational for Frank to believe that the earth is flat. For context, I deny the existence of categorical reasons - both epistemic and moral. However, I am a moral reasons. I deny that moral reasons are categorical. Similarly, I deny that epistemic reasons are categorical. With that context established, you mentioned a case in which Frank admits that there is evidence that makes it likely that "the earth is flat" is false, but he believes it anyway. The claim is that evidence that the earth is flat does not provide a normative reason to believe that the earth is flat. One objection to this that you raised concerns the absurdity of Frank's claim that he has no reason to have true beliefs. You mention that Frank certainly has a reason to reject the belief that he can fly. However, Frank can have a (purely hypothetical) reason to accept the evidence that he cannot fly, and yet not have a reason to accept the evidence that the earth is flat. Frank does not have a reason to accept the evidence that the earth is flat unless it serves a desire of his to adopt that evidence. Here, we have to distinguish the claim "Frank has a reason to do/believe X" from "There is a reason for Frank to do/believe X". Frank does not have a reason to do or believe X unless Frank has a desire that would be served by doing or believing X. In contrast, the claim that there is a reason for Frank to do or believe X merely requires that there is a desire that would be served by Frank doing or believing X. Now, take the desire in question to be a desire that people have (desire-dependent/hypothetical) reasons to promote using praise and condemnation. To say that breaking promises is wrong is to say that there is a moral reason not to break promises. This is to say that there is a desire that would be served by keeping promises. This is a desire that people generally have reasons to promote universally by praising those who keep promises and condemning those who break promises. We can give the same case for epistemic reasons. To say that Frank's rejecting the evidence that the earth is round is epistemically wrong is to say that there is a reason to accept the evidence. To say that there is a reason to accept the evidence is to say that there is a desire that would be served by accepting evidence. This is a desire that people generally have reasons to promote universally by praising those who base their beliefs on evidence and condemning those who fail to base their belief on evidence. This gives us moral and epistemic reasons that are independent of what the agent being praised or condemned desires. The fact that an agent has no desire that would be served by keeping a promise or basing beliefs on the evidence does not change the fact that people generally have reasons to promote universally desires that are served by keeping promises and basing beliefs on evidence.

[@yourfutureself3392]

Great explanation

[@tartarus1478]

I’ve always found it odd to separate hypothetical norms from categorical norms. The “if you desire x you ought…” comes with the categorical assumption that you ought do what it is you want to do. I don’t know why anyone would grant hypothetical reasons but object against categorical ones when the hypothetical reason seems to still contain a categorical norm.

[@KaneB]

I disagree. The reductionist account seems straightforward enough to me, and this does not involve the assumption that you ought to do what it is you want to do. I don't know why, in response to somebody giving that account, you would insist that they are really assuming a categorical reason. Though if somebody does insist on interpreting hypothetical reasons this way, then I think the antirealist should just accept that there are no hypothetical reasons either, at least per that definition. We don't lose anything of importance by losing hypothetical norms in that sense.

[@tartarus1478]

@@KaneB it’s fine to reject hypothetical norms too. My objection is that if there are no categorical norms then p1 of any hypothetical norm is just false. “If you want x you ought do y” does in fact assume you ought do what it is you want to do. It’s quite literally what the premise is saying I’ve just reversed the words. If the reason being given why I ought do y is not because I desire x then why ought I do y at all?

[@KaneB]

​@@tartarus1478 They're false if you reject the reductionist account, which would say that "you ought to do y" is, in the context of a hypothetical norm, just a way of expressing that y satisfies certain desires of the agent. I dunno, maybe we should reject it. There are plenty of philosophers who think that this kind of view has fatal problems. It seems reasonable enough to me though.

[@tartarus1478]

@@KaneB I don’t personally think this solves the issue. If “you ought do y” is just a way of expressing that “y satisfies the desires of an agent” then it seems to just follow that the thing being expressed by the ought here is that we ought do what satisfies the desire of the agent which is exactly the thing I’m asking why I ought do. I don’t see how these two accounts are distinct. It just strikes me as kicking the can down the road an extra step. I think all actions fall into one of three categories… rational, irrational, or arational. If we reject all normativity then I think that makes actions (including things like belief) either irrational or arational. It’s not incoherent, it’s just a rejection of rational enterprises. But if your criterion for rejecting a position is whether or not something is coherent and coherence is a rational enterprise but you reject rational enterprise… it’s not a contradiction it’s just peculiar. The anti realist wants to circumvent this issue by trying to grant a hypothetical norm like “if i desire to be rational then I ought…” but that’s just to grasp at normativity (the thing being rejected) as the solution for their folly. If there are no issues with rejecting rational enterprise then follow the antirealist to their conclusions.

[@tartarus1478]

@@KaneB also sorry to write a book. I seriously love your videos and your willingness to interact with your audience. It’s amazing

[@ahmedbellankas2549]

It seems that there's nothing incoherent in saying john disapproves of the method of neoclassical economics,neoclassical economics is truth-apt and my disapproval is not. And also,suppose that there's something called sensus veritatis (sv) and sv is responsible for distinguishing good methods from bad ones by invoking in the individual the approval or the disapproval of the method. So i think that objection doesn't work.

[@codinginsights122]

How does one get to your level of knowledge and philosophical analysis? Will you please do a video in which you explain what you do when you read books, and what's your method of making this material? Do you read alot before, do you summarize it in a very simple way step by step? I would appreciate it, since I want to apply at a philosophical university soon enough.

[@KaneB]

Unfortunately, I'm not sure I can say anything particularly helpful here. I'm not good at offering advice on this stuff because to be honest, I don't really know what my own methods are. Basically, I just read lots of books and articles, and I make notes on them as I go. I try to summarize the argument of each piece and also note potential objections to the argument. That's all really. Then if I'm writing a script for a video, instead of doing bullet point notes, I'll write out the summary in prose. For the videos, it's also better I think to focus on a few specific articles - for example, when I was reading about the companions-in-guilt argument, I read (or skimmed) something like 15 essays, but in the video I presented only 4 or 5. As for improving your philosophical knowledge... it's primarily a matter of reading and writing. The more you read, and the more you write, the better you'll be at philosophy. In particular, if you're serious about philosophy, I would advise you to write two things: (1) Standard philosophical essays. Choose an essay question (e.g. "does the companions-in-guilt objection refute moral antirealism?") and write 2000 words on it. Try to come up with your own original ideas, rather than just report what others have said. If you study philosophy at university, you'll be doing this kind of writing anyway. Google Jim Pryor's "Guidelines on Writing a Philosophy Paper" for some good advice on how philosophy essays should be structured. (Having said that, I don't agree with everything in Pryor's guide. In particular, Pryor suggests that you begin by writing an outline, and even says that the outline is "80% of the work of writing a good philosophy paper". I never bother writing outlines; instead, I tend to make lots of notes, and then I elaborate on the more interesting ones, and then the argument in my paper develops organically. That's just how I personally work; not everybody works the same way. But Pryor is absolutely right about what the finished product should look like.) (2) Introductions aimed at laypersons. You don't have to actually get anybody to read these introductions. Just imagine that you've been asked to explain a topic to somebody else, who has no knowledge of the topic in question. What would you say? Something I strongly believe, and that motivated me to start this channel, is that you don't understand something until you can explain it to somebody else. So try to write such explanations for the topics that you find most interesting, or that you need to learn.

[@codinginsights122]

@@KaneB Concrete and honest answer!! Thank you for the reply!

[@carnivorous_vegan]

Is this a correct understanding of the companions in guilt argument: First we establish two things: 1. When we make truth claims, there are _reasons_ for why the claim is true. For example, the reason why the claim "There is a tree in my lawn" is true is because it is objectively verifiable, corresponds to reality, etc. A sort of 'truthmaker' is the reason why propositions are true. - If there are no reasons for why any propositions is true, then by necessity there is no such thing as truth. Truth claims need to have reasons why they're true. If there are no reasons, there is no truthmaker, there is no truth. 2. The moral anti realist claims that there are no such thing as true moral statements, meaning that there are no reasons for why moral claims are true. There is no 'truthmaker' for moral claims that provide reason for why a certain moral claim is true, therefore there are no true moral claims. Then we try to connect the two together: When it comes to belief, there are necessary preconditions of belief that we necessarily need to follow in order to have them (laws of logic, the limitations of experience, and reasons to believe something is true). This is doxastic behavior that we must engage in by virtue of having any type of belief. When we believe something, we must necessarily have reasons for that belief. The reason for belief is that we accept it as true, meaning there are a true state of affairs that act as a truthmaker to a certain claim, and that is the reason we believe it is true. However, if there are no categorical reasons, then there are no reasons for any type of behavior we engage in, meaning there is no truthmaker to moral claims. But we necessarily have beliefs, and beliefs necessarily presuppose reasons for that belief. In order for the anti realist to be consistent, they must claim that there are no reasons for belief. If there are no reasons for belief, then there is no truthmaker to our beliefs, meaning that the there is no such thing as truth. The moral anti realist then implicitly denies truth, which is incoherent. Is my understanding correct ?

[@carnivorous_vegan]

The only issue that I struggle with is the claim that the behavior our minds engage in is on the same field as the behavior we physically engage in. For the behaviors in our mind, it is by necessity that we do so, we have no choice in the matter. When it comes to behavior in our everyday lives, we do have choices. Perhaps the ability to choose does not matter when it comes to categorical normativity, rather it relates to any progress towards an objective end goal, which can be attributed to both epistemological and physical behavior.

[@pascalbro7524]

My argument against CIG is that it's reliant on the principle of bivalence, which fails due to vagueness. There's no unit of justice, love etc. Epistemology and belief are also abstracts that suffer the same fate, therefore using 'if it's not x then it must be y' is invalid.

[@dominiks5068]

the Cowie argument against the CIG argument might be one of the worst philosophical argument I've ever seen.

[@KaneB]

Why?

[@SorenReaper7339]

@@KaneB lmao he just said that and left, what a giga chad

[@squatch545]

When Cuneo says "It seems the moral anti-realist is not targeting simply moral normativity, but categorical normativity in general". I disagree. Most moral anti-realists I've read do not imply anything more than moral normativity in their objection to categorical moral imperatives in their arguments. I think Cuneo gets off to a bit of a straw man start here.

[@shannon8111]

He does, if I recall correctly, give example the example of Mackie and maybe another moral anti-realists explicitly saying that there positions will have larger implications. As well the whole point of his argument is that moral anti-realist follows to rejecting categorical normativity, so this does not seem to be straw man, it is just laying out the thing he would arguing for.

[@jonasbulota7789]

this is hard as fuck to understand LOL

[@alexandeur]

Thanx so much!!