ABSTRACT
The first thing to note is the presence of what has been called the ceteris paribus clause, or at any rate, the presence of a premise equivalent to it in effect. Any attempt to suppress consideration of such counter-evidence from judgment of the conclusiveness of the argument commits the fallacy of special pleading. Of course, the sort of contingency under discussion here has nothing to do with whether or not a moral principle 'established' by these means is or is not universalizable or 'categorical'. Well, of course, there is 'countervailing valuation' in the case of premises asserting a particular value for a conduct option. As for the issues raised by the distinction between categorical and hypothetical principles, the procedures outlined here do not prejudice the outcomes one way or another. The relevance of the generalization argument is directly proportional to how much generalizing the behavior in question would affect the balance between its goods and bads.
