I’m now pretty confused about whether normative claims can be used as evidence in empirical disputes. I generally believed no, with the caveat that for humans, moral beliefs are built on a scaffolding of facts, and sometimes it’s easier to respond to an absurd empirical claim with the moral claim that has the gestalt sense of empirical beliefs if there isn’t an immediately accessible empirical claim.
I talked to a philosopher who disagreed, and roughly believed that strong normative claims can be used as evidence against more confused/less certain empirical claims, and I got a sense from the conversation that his view is much more common in academic philosophy than mine.
I haven’t really thought about it, but it seems to me that if an empirical claim implies an implausible normative claim, that lowers my subjective probability of the empirical claim.
I’m now pretty confused about whether normative claims can be used as evidence in empirical disputes. I generally believed no, with the caveat that for humans, moral beliefs are built on a scaffolding of facts, and sometimes it’s easier to respond to an absurd empirical claim with the moral claim that has the gestalt sense of empirical beliefs if there isn’t an immediately accessible empirical claim.
I talked to a philosopher who disagreed, and roughly believed that strong normative claims can be used as evidence against more confused/less certain empirical claims, and I got a sense from the conversation that his view is much more common in academic philosophy than mine.
Would like to investigate further.
I haven’t really thought about it, but it seems to me that if an empirical claim implies an implausible normative claim, that lowers my subjective probability of the empirical claim.