Moral Knowledge and Moral Principles
If moral knowledge requires deductively assured conclusions about particular cases, then to block an infinite regress there must be intuitively evident first principles of complete generality to serve as the foundation for particular judgements. But if, with Peirce and Austin, this model of knowledge is rejected, it can be allowed that what is inferential knowledge and what is immediate varies with context. Then it can be explained how to use particular judgements of which are sure to be checked against proposed general principles, and use undoubted general principles, in other situations, to correct or complete knowledge in particular cases. No intuition of any context-independent foundation is needed.
Keywords: context, first principle, foundation, intuition, moral knowledge
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