The first chapter anchors the debate in it epistemological foundations, and shows that the Ashʿarī-Muʿtazilī disagreements did not stem from a pre-conceived commitment to reason or revelation, but from an epistemological tension between skeptical and naturalist views. Whereas Muʿtazilīs argued that knowledge of values and norms was possible based on empirical and primary knowledge alone, Ashʿarīs insisted that norms formulated based on individual experience alone remain agent-specific and contingent. Revelation, for Ashʿarīs, was an interruption of experience that made general norms possible.