Zetetic norms are norms of inquiry—norms governing what one ought to do when pursuing the end of ‘figuring out Q?’, where Q? is the question under investigation. I borrow this characterization from Friedman (2020), who identifies the zetetic as a normative domain.
Consider two cases. First: inquiring excellently into trivial question Q requires killing an innocent person. Compare this to inquiring into Q*, where successfully figuring out Q* will save one million lives—and this inquiry also requires killing. The zetetic reason to kill seems far stronger in the second case. More generally, zetetic reasons appear to scale with the strength of moral reasons to pursue the inquiry. Second: return to trivial Q. Zetetically, you ought to kill—doing so is necessary for inquiring well. But all things considered, you ought not kill. The zetetic reason is outweighed by the moral reason against killing. More generally, zetetic reasons appear to be commensurable with moral reasons and can be overridden by them.
Call these two phenomena—scaling and override—the moral sensitivity of zetetic norms. I take these to be genuinely zetetic features: they concern the strength and defeasibility of reasons as reasons of inquiry, not merely features of the all-things-considered practical ‘ought’ once reasons from different domains are pooled. The claim is that zetetic reasons themselves scale with moral reasons and are overridable by them.
What explains moral sensitivity? Three candidate explanations present themselves: zetetic norms are grounded in moral norms (E → Z), zetetic norms are grounded in epistemic norms (E → Z) or zetetic norms constitute a sui generis normative domain. Friedman’s own resolution—identifying epistemic and zetetic norms—fits naturally with E → Z. This paper argues for pressure in the opposite direction: M → Z explains moral sensitivity better than E → Z, and this explanatory advantage gives us pro tanto reason to prefer M → Z. The comparison here is between pure M-monism and pure E-monism about zetetic grounding; I address hybrid views briefly in §2.
Zetetic norms also exhibit epistemic sensitivity—their strength appears to track the epistemic value of their ends. I set this aside for future work. The argument here concerns moral sensitivity alone.
The paper proceeds as follows. §1 explains the grounding relation and articulates how M → Z works. §2 states the argumentative strategy. §3 argues that M → Z explains moral sensitivity using only independently motivated assumptions. §4 argues that E → Z requires assumptions that lack independent motivation or are positively counterintuitive. In §5 I give concluding remarks.
The Grounding Relation
To say that N norms ground R norms (N → R) is to say that N norms explain the categorical normative force of R norms. A norm is categorical if its force does not depend on the agent’s contingent ends; it is hypothetical if its force is conditional on the agent’s having adopted some end. (Categorical reasons can still be overridden by stronger reasons; ‘categorical’ means not dependent on contingent ends, not ‘indefeasible.’) Grounding explains how norms that are hypothetical in form can nevertheless bind categorically.
M → Z works in three steps. First, S has a moral reason to pursue the end of figuring out Q? —call this reason m and the end itself ‘Q?’ for short. Second, if S were to pursue Q?, she would have hypothetical zetetic reasons to perform various actions: to gather evidence, consider hypotheses, avoid premature conclusions, and so forth. Third, by a transmission principle, the moral reason m confers categorical force on these zetetic reasons.
If S has a categorical reason to adopt end E, then S has categorical reason to follow the norms governing competent pursuit of E.
Transmission is intuitive across domains. Suppose you promised your teammates you would play football with them today. You thus have a moral reason to play; it would be wrong to break your promise. Given this moral reason to pursue the end of playing football, it would be very odd if it were not also wrong of you to throw the game by flouting the norms that specify what one ought to do when one’s end is to play football well: intentionally fumbling, walking rather than running with the ball, refusing to tackle. Your teammates could reasonably object that you are behaving wrongly toward them in virtue of the fact that you promised you would play—and playing means following football norms. The moral reason to pursue the end transmits categorical force to the norms governing that pursuit.
Similar cases yield similar results in other domains. If you have moral reason to cook dinner for your family (they depend on you), you have categorical reason to follow cooking norms—to wash your hands, not to cross-contaminate. If you have moral reason to obey the law (it is just, or you have consented), you have categorical reason to follow legal norms. In each case, the hypothetical norms governing the activity acquire categorical force from the moral reasons to engage in that activity.
One might worry that M → Z collapses zetetic norms into moral norms—that there is nothing distinctively zetetic left. But this conflates source of authority with content. Two cases illustrate the distinction.
Case one: You, a doctor, are morally obligated to diagnose your patient correctly. Your moral reason to inquire into the question ‘What is my patient’s diagnosis?’ gives zetetic norms governing that inquiry categorical force. Suppose the patient’s symptoms would provide extremely strong evidence for a particular diagnosis if the patient had a certain blood type, but would provide no evidence if the patient lacked that blood type. You have zetetic reason to test the patient’s blood type since doing so is required to inquire excellently into the diagnosis.
Case two: Same setup, except the evidential strength of the symptoms does not depend on blood type. Here, you may instead have zetetic reason to check for disconfirming evidence before issuing the diagnosis, rather than to test blood type.
In both cases, the authority of the zetetic reasons derives from the moral reason to give a correct diagnosis. But the content of each reason derives from sui generis zetetic properties: in case one, you ought to test blood because doing so is required to inquire excellently given the evidential structure of the situation; in case two, you lack this reason because testing blood is not required for excellent inquiry given the different evidential structure. The content of each reason is given by sui generis zetetic norms, even as their categorical force is morally derived.
Argumentative Strategy
The argument appeals to a principle of theoretical parsimony:
If theory T explains datum D using only independently plausible assumptions, while rival theory T* explains D only by adding assumptions that lack independent motivation, then (all else equal) we have pro tanto reason to prefer T to T*.
An assumption is independently plausible when there is reason to accept it apart from its role in explaining D. If the only reason to accept an assumption is that it allows T* to predict D, the assumption is ad hoc.
Parsimony is a reasonable principle, consistent with widely accepted views about explanation and theoretical virtue. Explanations that require fewer independent assumptions are, all else equal, preferable to those that require more—this is a standard commitment of inference to the best explanation. Parsimony does not claim that simpler theories are always correct, only that the need for additional, otherwise unmotivated assumptions counts against a theory. This modest claim has broad support in philosophical methodology.
The comparison here is between pure M-monism and pure E-monism about zetetic grounding. Hybrid views that invoke both moral and epistemic grounding face a dilemma: either they concede moral priority by letting moral reasons do the explanatory work for moral sensitivity, or they posit epistemic grounding where M → Z alone suffices, which is less parsimonious. I focus on the pure views; the argument against E → Z applies to the epistemic component of any hybrid.
The argument:
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M → Z explains moral sensitivity using only independently plausible assumptions.
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E → Z explains moral sensitivity only by adding assumptions that lack independent motivation.
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By Parsimony, we have pro tanto reason to prefer M → Z to E → Z.
I defend (1) in §3 and (2) in §4.
Moral Grounding
To explain moral sensitivity, M → Z requires two assumptions beyond Transmission: Commensurability and Inheritance.
Moral reasons can be compared and weighed against one another. This involves two claims. First, moral reasons have comparative strengths—one can be stronger than another. Second, when moral reasons conflict, these comparisons determine all-things-considered verdicts: the stronger reason prevails.
Grounded reasons inherit the normative properties of their grounds. This also involves two claims. First, the strength of a grounded reason varies with the strength of its ground—stronger grounds yield stronger grounded reasons. Second, when a grounding reason is overridden, so too are the reasons it grounds.
Deriving Moral Sensitivity
Let m be the moral reason to pursue Q?, with strength s(m). By Transmission, S has categorical zetetic reasons to follow inquiry norms. By the first aspect of Inheritance, these zetetic reasons have strength that varies with s(m). As s(m) increases, so does the strength of the zetetic reasons. Hence scaling. Note that this is scaling of zetetic reasons qua zetetic: the zetetic reasons themselves are stronger, not merely weighted more heavily in an all-things-considered calculus.
To illustrate: suppose a doctor has moral reason to diagnose a patient, and excellent diagnosis requires performing a mildly unpleasant test. The doctor has zetetic reason to perform the test. Now suppose the patient’s condition is life-threatening rather than minor. The moral reason to diagnose correctly is stronger; by Inheritance, the zetetic reason to perform the test is stronger too. The zetetic reason scales with the moral reason.
Now suppose S faces a competing moral reason m*—say, a reason not to kill—with strength s(m*) > s(m). By Commensurability, m* overrides m: S ought not pursue Q? given what it requires. By the second aspect of Inheritance, when m is overridden, so are the zetetic reasons grounded in m. Hence override.
Extending the example: suppose excellent diagnosis now requires not a mildly unpleasant test but killing an innocent bystander. There is moral reason m to diagnose the patient and moral reason m* not to kill. If m* is stronger than m—as it surely is when the diagnosis concerns a minor ailment—then m* overrides m. By Inheritance, the zetetic reason to kill, which was grounded in m, is also overridden. All things considered, the doctor ought not kill. The zetetic reason does not survive the defeat of its ground.
Independent Motivation
Both Commensurability and Inheritance are independently motivated by cases having nothing to do with inquiry.
Commensurability captures widespread patterns of moral deliberation. You promised to meet a friend but encounter a drowning stranger en route. There is moral reason to keep the promise and moral reason to save the stranger. We judge that you ought to save the stranger since the reason to save is stronger. The first aspect of Commensurability, that reasons have comparative strengths, accounts for why the reason to save the stranger is stronger than the reason to keep the promise. The second aspect, that the stronger reason determines the all-things-considered verdict, explains why the stronger reason to save overrides the weaker reason to keep the promise, yielding the judgment that you ought to save the stranger. Some moral theorists contest universal comparability, but the assumption captures ordinary deliberative practice. The argument here is conditional on a broadly comparativist picture.
Inheritance is intuitive for grounded norms generally. Suppose you promised your teammates you would play in Saturday’s match. You have moral reason to play and thus, by Transmission, categorical reason to follow football norms, including reason to make a hard tackle when the situation demands it. Now suppose making the tackle would injure a bystander who has wandered onto the field. There is moral reason not to injure the bystander, and this reason overrides your moral reason to play (keeping a casual promise does not justify injuring an innocent). By the second aspect of Inheritance, when your moral reason to play is overridden, so is your football-derived reason to make the tackle. All things considered, you ought not tackle. This is the intuitive result. The first aspect is also illustrated: if your promise were more solemn, your reason to play would be stronger, and your football-derived reasons would be stronger too. The grounded reasons do not float free of their grounds.
Transmission, Commensurability, and Inheritance are thus independently motivated. M → Z explains moral sensitivity without ad hoc assumptions.
Against Epistemic Grounding
E → Z holds that epistemic norms ground zetetic norms. To explain moral sensitivity, E → Z requires epistemic analogues of the assumptions above: epistemic Transmission, epistemic Commensurability, and epistemic Inheritance. I argue that each faces difficulties its moral counterpart avoids.
Epistemic Transmission
Epistemic Transmission would hold: if S has a categorical epistemic reason to adopt end E, then S has categorical reason to follow the norms governing competent pursuit of E. Grant this principle for the sake of argument. To do explanatory work, it requires cases where epistemic reasons to pursue an end transmit categorical force to the norms governing that pursuit.
What ends do we have epistemic reasons to pursue? Epistemic goods. These divide into two categories: veridical goods (truth, knowledge, understanding) and justificatory or process goods (justified belief, rational credence). Pursuit of veridical goods is most naturally described as inquiry itself: to seek truth about Q just is to inquire into Q. Pursuit of justificatory goods is a byproduct of excellent inquiry, since excellent inquiry demands adherence to epistemically correct reasoning and deliberation, which are constitutive of justificatory goods. In either case, the central motivating cases for epistemic Transmission are cases of inquiry; the very cases we are trying to explain.
This creates a problem. Moral Transmission is motivated by football, law, and cooking—domains that are not themselves moral. We have moral reasons to engage in these activities, and Transmission explains how their internal norms acquire categorical force. But epistemic Transmission cannot be motivated analogously. There are no epistemic reasons to play football, obey the law, or cook dinner. These are not epistemic ends.
One might object that non-epistemic ends can be instrumental to epistemic ends. Perhaps one has epistemic reason to play football insofar as playing generates understanding of what football is like, or provides evidence bearing on some question. But this objection does not resolve the basic issue. If non-epistemic ends are pursued for their instrumental role in promoting epistemic ends, and the pursuit of epistemic ends is most naturally understood as inquiry, then epistemic reasons to pursue non-epistemic ends in virtue of their instrumental role are in fact zetetic reasons—reasons arising from the activity of inquiry. The motivating cases remain zetetic.
A further objection: what about non-inquiry epistemic reasons? Consider passive perception, automatic belief-updating, or responding appropriately to evidence outside any explicit interrogative pursuit. Such epistemic activity exists and is not itself inquiry.
This is correct, but these epistemic reasons are doxastic—they govern belief-attitudes, not actions. They are naturally characterized as evaluative: tracking objective norms of rationality and evidential support. They specify the correct doxastic attitude given one’s evidence. Crucially, they do not need to be cashed out in terms of epistemic goods; they simply track what evidence supports. The question is not whether such doxastic reasons exist, but whether there are practical epistemic reasons, reasons to perform actions, that aim at epistemic goods outside of inquiry.
Positing such non-inquiry practical reasons of epistemic good is an additional commitment. It is not absurd, but it is controversial. The narrow conception of epistemic reasons, standard in epistemology, is doxastic and evidentialist. Expanding ‘epistemic’ to include practical reasons concerning epistemic goods takes us toward the territory that ‘moral’ or ‘axiological’ already occupies.
The upshot: epistemic Transmission either (a) draws its motivation only from zetetic cases, making it circular as an explanation of zetetic normativity, or (b) requires the controversial commitment to practical epistemic reasons of epistemic good outside inquiry—a commitment that that blurs the boundary between epistemic and moral reasons.
Epistemic Commensurability
To explain moral sensitivity, E → Z requires that epistemic reasons be commensurable with moral reasons—that they can be weighed against one another, and that epistemic reasons can sometimes override moral reasons to determine all-things-considered verdicts. Call this cross-domain commensurability.
Moral Commensurability is deeply embedded in everyday moral deliberation: promise versus rescue, honesty versus kindness, self-interest versus obligation. We routinely compare moral reasons and arrive at verdicts. Cross-domain commensurability—epistemic reasons overriding moral ones—is a more specialized philosophical commitment, less embedded in ordinary deliberative practice.
Consider: you have epistemic reason to investigate an interesting hypothesis and moral reason to keep a promise. If the hypothesis is merely interesting but the promise is serious, we judge that you ought to keep the promise. If the hypothesis is groundbreaking and the promise is trivial, we might judge otherwise. This latter case seems to provide genuine support for cross-domain commensurability since it appears that epistemic reasons can override moral ones.
But the case is less clear than it appears. If the hypothesis is groundbreaking, there is a natural explanation of the verdict that does not invoke epistemic reasons overriding moral ones: groundbreaking discoveries have moral significance: they benefit humanity, advance welfare, fulfill obligations to the scientific community. On this reading, the moral significance of the discovery overrides the moral reason to keep the trivial promise; the epistemic reasons do not do the overriding work themselves.
Suppose we stipulate that the hypothesis, though epistemically important, has no moral value whatsoever: it will not increase welfare, is not required by any duty, is not virtue-enhancing, and satisfies no preferences. Does the epistemic reason to pursue it still override the moral reason to keep even a trivial promise? Intuitions here are contested. There is some pull to the view that, absent any moral significance, you ought to keep the trivial promise.
A further asymmetry tells against epistemic Commensurability. Doxastic reasons do not seem to be commensurable with each other in the way moral reasons are. Suppose believing A given evidence E is correct, but believing A will cause me to believe B on the basis of E’, which is incorrect. Suppose further that believing B on E’ is a greater epistemic bad than believing A on E is an epistemic good. Does this mean the all-epistemic-things-considered correct attitude toward A is disbelief? That seems wrong. E supports believing A; the correct attitude toward A is still belief. The badness of the downstream belief about B does not defeat the reason to believe A. Doxastic reasons do not aggregate and override each other the way moral reasons do. This asymmetry makes the epistemic analogue of Commensurability more ad hoc than the moral version, since epistemic commensurability would require positing a new sort of epistemic reason, one which aggregates and overrides, and lacks independent motivation.
Cross-domain commensurability is not incoherent, and there may be genuine intuitive support for it in some cases. But this support is contested in a way that support for moral Commensurability is not, and doxastic reasons exhibit structural features that resist the aggregative logic Commensurability requires. The assumption is costlier than its moral analogue.
Epistemic Inheritance
Epistemic Inheritance would hold that zetetic reasons inherit their normative properties from their epistemic grounds: strength varies with epistemic strength, and override of epistemic grounds transmits to zetetic reasons.
But moral sensitivity is sensitivity to moral features—scaling with moral reasons, override by moral reasons. For E → Z to explain this, the strength of epistemic reasons must itself track the strength of moral reasons. Why would this be so? The inquiry that saves a million lives is not, as such, more epistemically significant than the trivial inquiry because it is more morally significant. Epistemic significance concerns things like truth, depth, complexity, theoretical fruitfulness. Moral significance concerns things like welfare, duty, value. These can come apart: some questions are morally trivial but epistemically deep; others are morally urgent but epistemically shallow.
Consider a case that makes this vivid. Suppose inquiry Q is wellbeing-enhancing: pursuing it will make you happier, healthier, more fulfilled. Do you have epistemic reason to pursue Q? That seems clearly wrong. The reason to pursue wellbeing-enhancing inquiry is moral or prudential, not epistemic. But if zetetic reasons scale with wellbeing-enhancement, and the explanation must be moral grounding, then M → Z is doing the explanatory work. This generalizes: whenever zetetic reasons scale with value that is not narrowly epistemic, the explanation must be moral grounding.
The defender of E → Z might posit that epistemic and moral significance correlate. But this correlation lacks independent motivation, as we have clear cases where they diverge, and if the correlation held, it would be more parsimonious to explain it by moral significance grounding epistemic significance than by mere coincidence.
There is a further consideration. On many plausible theories of the Good, epistemic goods have intrinsic moral value. One class of such theories holds that obtaining epistemic goods is constitutive of wellbeing: one is better off for knowing, understanding, or having true beliefs. Another class holds that epistemic goods are good in themselves, not merely as constituents of some other good. On such views, epistemic goods are a subclass of moral goods just as wellbeing and preference satisfaction are subclasses of moral goods, each with sui generis features.
This brings the substantive contrast into focus. ‘Epistemic’ in the narrow sense that is standard in epistemology refers to doxastic reasons tracking evidential support relations. ‘Moral’ in a broad axiological sense refers to practical reasons concerning value. The question is whether zetetic norms are grounded in doxastic, evidentialist reasons or in practical, value-tracking reasons. The terminological point: ‘E → Z’ is only interesting if ‘epistemic’ means something narrow, but narrow epistemic reasons cannot do the explanatory work for moral sensitivity.
Locating epistemic goods within the moral has three advantages for explaining zetetic normativity. First, by moral Commensurability, reasons of epistemic good can be weighed against and potentially override other moral reasons. This is precisely what is hard to explain if epistemic goods are non-moral. Second, by the general practicality of moral reasons, reasons of epistemic good can be practical—having actions rather than belief-states as their object—without requiring the more controversial assumption that epistemic reasons are practical. Third, if zetetic norms are sensitive to both moral and epistemic features, locating epistemic goods within the moral gives a parsimonious explanation of both sensitivities: both are grounded in moral Commensurability and moral Inheritance.
This suggests a dilemma for the defender of E → Z. Either epistemic goods are non-moral, in which case the assumptions required for E → Z to explain moral sensitivity lack independent motivation. Or epistemic goods are moral goods, in which case E → Z collapses into M → Z —zetetic norms are grounded in moral reasons after all, because epistemic reasons of epistemic good just are a species of moral reasons.
Concluding remarks
E → Z requires epistemic analogues of Transmission, Commensurability, and Inheritance. Epistemic Transmission is either circular—drawing its motivation only from zetetic cases—or requires a controversial expansion of ‘epistemic’ to include practical reasons of epistemic good. Epistemic Commensurability has contested intuitive support and faces the asymmetry that doxastic reasons do not aggregate and override each other like moral reasons. Epistemic Inheritance requires epistemic strength to track moral strength, which is counterintuitive and unmotivated—or else locates epistemic goods within the moral, collapsing the view. Each assumption is either circular, contested, counterintuitive, or self-undermining. E → Z explains moral sensitivity only at significant theoretical cost.
M → Z explains the moral sensitivity of zetetic norms—their scaling with moral reasons and their overridability by moral reasons—using assumptions that are independently motivated by non-zetetic cases. E → Z can explain moral sensitivity only by invoking assumptions that lack independent motivation or are controversial, and in some cases, positively counterintuitive. By the principle of theoretical parsimony, we have pro tanto reason to prefer M → Z.
References
Friedman, Jane. 2020. “The Epistemic and the Zetetic.” Philosophical Review 129(4): 501–536.