Dear Soupers,
Do you enjoy puzzles? Yeah? Well then, let me share one with you. John Basl (Northeastern University) and I have had some fruitful conversations about it; and we have some views about how to address it (and some views about how not to); but in the spirit of collective inquiry and intellectual theft let me take this opportunity to solicit your initial responses.
The puzzle might be construed either in terms of rationality or theoretical justification, but it is roughly as follows:
Why are we permitted to revise our moral/normative/evaluative beliefs in light of non-moral beliefs but not vice versa?
Indeed, while it’s clear we are often guilty of sub-consciously shaping the facts to fit our evaluative commitments (e.g. the powerful correlations between political ideology “climate skepticism”, 911 conspiracy theories, and beliefs about the president’s religion and birthplace), we all disavow this a proper way to form our non-moral beliefs.As obvious as this may seem, the puzzle is how to best explain why this is so and then sorting out what the implications may be for meta-ethics, moral epistemology, and even epistemology more generally....
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