Wedgwood, Ralph Merton College, University of Oxford
Print publication date: 2007 (this edition)
Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: April 2008
Print ISBN-13: 978-0-19-925131-5
doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199251315.003.0011
 

Ralph Wedgwood
Part III of the book is devoted to epistemological issues. If there are objective normative truths, then how could we ever know them? How could we even have any rational or justified beliefs in normative propositions? This chapter argues that the idea that the ‘intentional is normative’ supports a new solution to these epistemological problems: it allows us to give a new account of where a thinker's so-called ‘normative intuitions’ come from, and why (and under what conditions) it is rational for the thinker to trust them. It is argued that this account is preferable both to the rival versions of intuitionism about normative beliefs, and to those epistemological accounts that are incompatible with intuitionism.
Keywords: epistemology, knowledge, rational belief, justified belief, intuitionism
doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199251315.003.0011
Quick Search Form
 
scroll up fast
scroll up
 
scroll down
scroll down fast
Part I The Semantics of Normative Thought and Discourse
Part II The Metaphysics of Normative Facts
Part III The Epistemology of Normative Belief