it is not possible to know whether or not categorical imperatives exist

my opponent has misunderstood the special rule. I did not mean that I would have to prove the null hypothesis rather, I have to prove the 'not-x' claim and also have to criticize the 'x' claim while my opponent would do the opposite. we both share the burden of proof, as opposed to it being on just one side. I placed this rule because I have seen arguments in the past where people would not argue the positive claim because they felt that all they had to do was argue the null hypothesis against the negative claim, the special rule was placed as a way to avoid that state of affairs. I apologize to my opponent if the wording of the rule seemed ambiguous. defense:defense of p1)con has misunderstood my first premise. the term 'indistinguishable' should have been taken to mean 'unable to tell the difference'. though often used synonymously with the word 'identical' the nuances between the word are extremely important in this case. my opponent says that if two worlds are indistinguishable from one another then they have the same things in them. this is only the case if the term 'indistinguishable' is being used to mean 'identical', but its not. indistinguishable in this case means that an observer could not tell that they were different. however, the inability to discern whether or not two things are different does not mean they are not different. whilst it is true that to have the ability they must be different, the fact that they are different does not necessarily mean that you have the ability to tell that difference.also, the first premise does not say that [given the condition] the thing in those worlds does not exist (as con implies), it says [given the condition] the thing 'cannot be known to exist'. knowledge in this case, is being used as a sort of epistemic modality (and 'cannot' implies the modality of possibility).defense of p2)my opponent makes a rather unique claim " For things which have not been discovered, we do not yet know if they are knowable or unknowable". simplified, my opponent is saying that we cannot know whether or not something is unknowable. however, my opponent will remember that knowledge is justified true belief. so there are three ways something cannot be knowable. 1 its cannot be justified. (the case im advocating)in cases like these the way to find out whether or not something is knowable is to tell whether or not they have a criterion for justification. often times certain claims have no criterion for justification, and thus cannot be justified (and therefore cannot be known). an example would be in cases referring to the ability for something to break the laws of logic. if something can break the laws of logic, then the principle of explosion follows, and all statements become both true and false. (because the law of non contradiction doesn't apply to at least 1 case where the entity who can break the laws of logic exists). thus we cannot tell whether or not cups exist, or whether or not words exist, because the truth values of statements like 'this is a cup' or 'words exist', cannot be given reliably. another example is the one I gave, something having the property of imperceptibility. you cannot be justified in believing something exists if it is imperceptible.2 it cannot be believed put simply if there exists something that is impossible to believe, then it cannot be known due to the definition of knowledge.3 it is not trueagain I am advocating for something being unjustifiable, but if something is not true, even if you are somehow able to believe it justifiedly, (which I would contend is not possible, but that is not in the scope of this debate) then you cannot know it, since it is not true and therefore not knowledge.what I have to do is show that you cannot justify the belief that categorical imperatives exist. to do so, I need to show that there is no criterion by which you could justify that belief. I have done so in my original defense of the second premise. because all imperatives can be formulated as normative statements, there is a finite set of things you can use to justify them being true. the methods used to show a hypothetical imperative as true do not apply to categorical imperatives (since there is no condition for them to be true). as there exists no condition for truth, then there exists no method of discerning whether or not a given imperative is categorical. this is the point of both my second premise and my original defense of it. you cannot justifiedly belief that one premise is categorical over another. thus you cannot tell the difference between a world with categorical imperatives and a world without them, they are indiscernible. con also says that I must have seen a world without categorical absolutes and a world with categorical absolutes to tell the difference. con seems to misunderstand the possible worlds approach to argumentation. the point of hypothesising a possible world is to give an 'all things equal'(ATE for short) scenario. I gave the example of ATE except the existence of an imperceptible horse in a room, ATE except chairs in a room and ATE except the existence of categorical absolutes. I then described how a traveler would (or would not) be able to discern between the two worlds. there is a room that has chairs in one world and another room that does not. I used that as the base example to show how (hypotheticaly) a traveler could tell the difference between worlds if they were discernible. then I used the invisible horse example, and demonstrated how though there was something true about one world that wasn't true about the other, the fact that the worlds were ultimately indiscernible despite the given truth made it defintionaly impossible to know that truth. then I demonstrated that categorical imperatives, like the imperceptible horse, were similarly, imperceptible and thus any world wit categorical imperatives would be indiscernible to a world without them. counter argument:general:my opponents argument is reminiscent of Sam Harris' point of view regarding morality, which I (to a small extent) disagree with. I agree that given the hypothetical 'if we use well being as a metric, then we ought to perform certain actions' but that is a hypothetical set of imperatives, not a categorical one. that is my main criticism of Sam Harris' arguments, and I thought it necessary to note that it will be relevant to my criticism of my opponents argument.criticism of p1)I agree with the statement 'well being is an objective metric' but I do not agree that we use it to determine moral action. there are many people who use the word of god (or what they perceive to be the word of god) to determine moral action, and who would even say suffering is morally desirable (such as in fasting in Abraham religion, various extreme piercing and personal evisceration in African religions etc). that we can derive objective measurements from a metric like well being does not say anything about the objective nature morality, as there will still be vast groups of people who disagree with the definition of morality. a potential retort would be that since many people agree that harm and well being is the measure of morality that many agree upon, people who disagree are irrelevant; not unlike flat earthers who disagree with what it means for something to be in the field of physics. the problem with such a retort, is that there is no standard theory of morality, (like physics or biology). though there are vast secular moralities there are equally vast if not grander theistic moralities, like the moralities of Islam and Christianity which represent nearly 3/7s of the worlds population. at best, the differences between moralities are not comparable to standard scientific practices, but to mathematical practices, where there are different mathematics, like e Euclidian and parabolic geometries, but even that analogy is problematic, since the discrepancies between the axioms of those fields are not controversial like they are for morality.criticism of p2)premise 2 is problematic as it assumes premise 1. (that well being is the metric used for morality)whilst I have no issue with the idea that there are actions that are conducive to human well being, that moral actions are defined as actions that result in well being is a controversial claim that is inherent in p2. at best, I think this premise is ambiguous. I have no issue with the fact that human well being is an actual descriptor of reality, as my opponent draws attention to in his defense. whilst many people may agree that human well being is desirable, that does not mean they will agree that 'good' in the moral sense, is equateable to 'desirable'. again, the example of Abrahamic religions come to mind, sex outside of marriage may be 'desirable' but it is not 'good'. (at least from there perspective). as there is no metric that is agreed upon by which morality is to be considered, there can be no 'objectively good' state of affairs. further, even if we were to agree upon such a metric, that would only show that morality itself is a man made construct and thus 'subjective'. as there would always be the hidden conditional 'if it is agreed that moral good means well being then you ought to do things that are conducive to the well being of others'.