A prospect of developing epistemology of moral intuitions by analogy with mathematical knowledge
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Abstract
In the first part, this article deals with the idea of supporting Moral Intuitionism by drawing an analogy with conceptual mathematical knowledge. The analysis shows that arguments of pro and contra to the above idea are rather aimed toward assumptions and expectations of moral epistemologists; the arguments miss the essence of mathematical conceptual thinking. The image of mathematical thinking exemplified in the epistemological discussion is probably afflicted by implicit biases. The second part of the article applies a very tentative model of mathematical thinking to several cases, or thought experiments, that have been bothering analytical philosophers, practical philosophers, and moral epistemologists. As a result, one can find that the considered thought experiments look very undefined even from a point of view of an imaginary applied mathematician.
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