This criterion also cannot pass its own test, it turns out. Though we quickly find the gray areas, very many duties are seldom caught in the gray. And just to talk about gray areas assumes assent to the general proposition of normative discourse. This does not open the floodgates of assent, but maintains a respect for varying degrees of plausibility. These assents tend to map back to experience, usually collective experience.
Collective experience comes to bear, usually, as the experience of trusted experts and authorities .
By remembering our ability to dissent when something seems fishy about the implications for other aspects of life. But since there is a scale of plausibility, we often find that assented values will conflict. We infer the intangible parts of the self that we call intentions , and we often can do this correctly. Furthermore, we often understand intention in terms of values . Though we also often infer intentions incorrectly, this is no worse than reasoning incorrectly or doing wrong science.