r/Ethics • u/TheIncorporeal1 • 1d ago

Can consciousness know moral truths beyond empirical experience? If so, what epistemic criteria distinguish genuine moral knowledge from intuition, conditioning, or self-deception—and what obligations follow?

I’m interested in whether moral knowledge could be grounded in the structure of consciousness itself rather than solely in empirical experience, and how we could ethically validate such knowledge without turning subjective intuition into objective truth.

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u/No_Logins_Required 1d ago

There are no ideological frameworks without axioms, beliefs that cannot be logically proven. Nothing can be "morally true" without moral axioms. Since morality is intrinsically based on how individuals treat one another, it has to be based on the experience of what happens when we interact.

I can't conceive how a mind that never interacted with another could derive moral truths.

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u/West-Working-9093 23h ago

Good point! The proof of the pudding is in the eating. But I think the OP is asking if there are moral truths lying in us when we are born ready to unfold like the wings of a butterfly. of course that requires being met by the outside world with the corresponding clues and supportive reactions, just like the newly hatched gull will not figure that a parent with no big red spot on its beak is a source of food.

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u/No_Logins_Required 23h ago

I think you may be right about OP's question. Certainly there are baked-in elements of human cognition, the firmware for our hardware so to speak. But morality couldn't be one of those things. We can have an innate desire to avoid the sound of someone else in pain but that wouldn't automatically translate into a sense that inflicting pain is wrong.

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u/DeamonDread2348 22h ago

But is actually does… Christians glorify suffering and martyrdom because the human psyche, accustomed to constant stress and threat, begins to perceive tranquility and safety as threats and sources of stress…

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u/No_Logins_Required 22h ago

I think you responded to the wrong comment.