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Deductive Moral Knowledge

Declan Smithies

"It seems obvious that we know some moral facts, but it is not so obvious where this moral knowledge come from. For example, we all know that the Holocaust was immoral. But how exactly do we know this? Many philosophers explain our moral knowledge in the same way as our perceptual knowledge about the external world. According to this perceptual model we can know moral facts without inference based on experiences that represent moral facts, such as moral perceptions, moral emotions, or moral intuitions. This book argues against the perceptual model, and replaces it with a deductive model, according to which our most basic moral knowledge is based on deductive inference. More specifically, it argues for the anti-Humean thesis, which says that we can know moral facts by deducing them from our knowledge of the non-moral facts on which they depend. Among other things, this book promises to illuminate the nature of deductive knowledge as well as moral knowledge"-- Provided by publisher.

232 pages

English edition · First published 2026 by Oxford University Press · ISBN 9780197849477

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