 The debate over the moral status of individuals with the most severe cognitive disabilities also raises difficult methodological issues concerning the reliance on intuitions, convictions, and considered judgments in assessing moral arguments. Some philosophers would deny that any argument should persuade us to abandon our conviction that it would be terribly wrong to subject a human being cognitively incapable of consent to painful and dangerous experimentation of no possible benefit to him (e.g., Kittay 2008). Two philosophers have adapted G.E. Moore’s “proof” of the existence of the external world (see Entry on  George Edward Moore)  to claim that we are more confident of the truth of the proposition that all human beings are morally equal, and morally superior to other animals than of the validity of the arguments denying it (Curtis and Vehmas, 2016a, 2016b). Other philosophers reject the application of Moore’s argument to moral status (Lachlan, 2016; Roberts forthcoming); more broadly, they insist that even firm convictions about moral status cannot be immune from critical scrutiny, especially if they appear to conflict with other deeply held convictions (McMahan 2007). Still others deny such convictions any presumptive weight or authority (Singer 2005).