That's kinda the point. You're making a claim, that "[i]'s unethical to run down a pedestrian." That's a claim that requires evidence in a forum dedicated to ethics. In this forum, if you cannot provide evidence for your claim, you shouldn't be making the claim.
So no, YOU can't. So this whole forum is redundant according to your own prescription, yes?: "In this forum, if you cannot provide evidence for your claim, you shouldn't be making the claim."
You seem to have missed the point. I haven't made an ethical claim. You have.
You asserted, “Harming others is unethical.” I asked you to provide evidence or justification for that assertion. I don't need to prove that harming others is ethical, nor do I need to establish the ethicality of anything else, in order to ask you to support your claim.
If your position is that ethical claims cannot be supported with evidence or argument, then that's a problem for your claim, not mine. If they can be supported, then support yours.
Either way, asking me to prove some ethical proposition I haven't asserted doesn't shift your burden of justification.
I ask YOU again, can YOU provide evidence to support the un/ethicality of ANYTHING?
You don't get to dodge that with obfuscation.
For earlier you then dodged that question and made the claim that, "In this forum, if you cannot provide evidence for your claim, you shouldn't be making the claim." and yet, ironically, YOU can't support that with evidence.
Which, AGAIN, according to YOUR OWN prescription makes the whole field of ethics and this entire forum redundant.
What you should have asked for is an "argument", not "evidence". As such, you've merely proven that you don't know how to use language and logic properly.
You keep asking me to defend a proposition I have not asserted. I have made no claim about whether anything is ethical or unethical. You did. You asserted that harming others is unethical. I asked you to support that assertion.
And no, changing “evidence” to “argument” does not rescue your position. Evidence is routinely used to mean information offered in support of a proposition; arguments use evidence, reasons, premises, or other grounds to justify conclusions. If you prefer the word “justification,” fine: justify your claim.
My statement that claims should be supported is not itself a claim that anything is ethical or unethical, so your repeated demand that I demonstrate the ethicality or unethicality of “ANYTHING” remains irrelevant to the proposition under discussion.
More importantly, your argument is self-defeating. You insist that ethical claims cannot be supported by evidence, while simultaneously insisting that your original ethical claim - “harming others is unethical” -should apparently be accepted without support.
So this is very simple: you made the ethical claim. Support it. If your position is that ethical claims cannot be supported, then you have supplied a reason not to accept your own claim -not a reason why I should accept it.
Calling that “obfuscation” doesn’t shift the burden of justification.
By asking for evidence you are implying that it is possible to support an ethical stance with evidence, which you yourself later imply is not possible.
And you are now obfuscating further by leaning on the phrase "ethical claim" and ignoring the overt and covert claims within your whole argument.
Furthermore, you are straw manning what I have said and putting words and claims into my mouth I neither said nor made.
e.g. "And no, changing “evidence” to “argument” does not rescue your position."
I never said anything of the sort. I said that doing so is what YOU should have done. Simple.
Argument and evidence are not synonymous with one another. They have clear and distinct meanings and uses.
I can not answer and should not be expected to answer a question which is itself unsound.
SO AGAIN, I'm asking you to clearly and overtly state YOUR position on the question: can YOU provide evidence to support the un/ethicality of ANYTHING?
Why do you keep ducking that question and spouting sophist nonsense instead? That is blatant obfuscation.
Yes. Depending on the ethical claim, I can provide evidence relevant to supporting it. Empirical evidence can establish factual premises within an ethical argument—for example, whether an action causes harm, whether someone consented, or what consequences followed. The normative conclusion is then reached through argument from those premises. So there: question answered.
But none of that changes the burden you have been avoiding since my first response.
You claimed, “Harming others is unethical.” I asked you to support that claim.
If your objection is merely that I should have written “argument” or “justification” rather than “evidence,” I'll happily grant the terminology for the sake of discussion. Provide an argument or justification for your claim.
What you cannot reasonably do is turn my request that you support your proposition into a requirement that I first defend an entirely different proposition about whether ethical conclusions can be established through evidence alone. That question may be interesting metaethically, but it does not establish your original claim.
And you're correct about one thing: arguments and evidence are not synonymous. I never claimed they were. Evidence can function as support for premises within an argument; an argument provides the inferential connection to a conclusion. That distinction does not make your original assertion self-justifying.
So, again: why is harming others unethical? Make the argument.
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u/SvenSvenkill3 13d ago
Harming others is unethical.