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See Robert Audi, The Good in the Right: A Theory of Intuition and Intrinsic Value (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004); Jill Graper Hernandez (ed.), The New Intuitionism (London: Continuum, 2011); Michael Huemer, Ethical Intuitionism (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005); Sabine Roeser, Moral Emotions and Intuitions (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011); Russ Shafer-Landau, Moral Realism: A Defence (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2003); Philip Stratton-Lake (ed.), Ethical Intuitionism: Re-evaluations (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2002).
See Huemer, op. cit.
Robert Audi, “Self-Evidence,” Philosophical Perspectives, Vol. 13, (1999), p. 206.
It might not be correct to say that we “understand propositions.” Propositions are non-linguistic structures. We understand sentences, not propositions. Understanding a sentence may involve grasping, rather than understanding, the proposition it expresses.
G. E. Moore, Principia Ethica, Rev. ed. (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993); H. A. Prichard, “Does Moral Philosophy Rest on a Mistake?,” Mind, Vol. 21, No. 81, (1912); Henry Sidgwick, The Methods of Ethics, 7th ed. (London: Macmillan, 1907); W. D. Ross, The Right and the Good, New ed. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2002).
Ross, op. cit., p. 29; Sidgwick, op. cit., p. 382.
See Audi, The Good in the Right; Roger Crisp, Reasons and the Good (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2006), ch. 3; Derek Parfit, On What Matters, Vol. 2 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), ch. 32; Shafer-Landau, op. cit.
See Audi, op. cit., p. 32; Crisp, op. cit., p. 78; Parfit, op. cit., p. 490.
See Shafer-Landau, op. cit., ch. 3; and Elizabeth Tropman, “Naturalism and the New Moral Intuitionism,” Journal of Philosophical Research, Vol. 33, (2008).
Ross, op. cit., p. 30.
Related to this, one’s justification for believing self-evident truths is not indefeasible; one could lose one’s previously adequate understanding of the proposition or fail to base the belief on the good grounds one has. See Audi, “Self-Evidence,” pp. 219–221; Shafer-Landau, op. cit., pp. 256–258.
Ross, op. cit., pp. 31 and 39–40. See also Audi, The Good in the Right, pp. 29–30.
Ross, op. cit., p. 30. See Audi, op. cit., pp. 52–54; Shafer-Landau, op. cit., p. 248.
Roeser, op. cit., pp. xvi and 152.
See Sidgwick, op. cit., pp. 375 and 379; and Pekka Vayrynen, “Some Good and Bad News for Ethical Intuitionism,” Philosophical Quarterly, Vol. 58, No. 232, (2008), pp. 506–509.
See Ross, op. cit., p. 33.
For a development of this objection, see Roeser, op. cit.; and Elizabeth Tropman, “Renewing Moral Intuitionism,” Journal of Moral Philosophy, Vol. 6, No. 4, (2009).
Robert Audi, “Moral Perception and Moral Knowledge,” Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Supplementary Volume 84, No. 1, (2010). Audi refers to this class of moral judgments as “perceptual moral judgments.”
This example is Audi’s. Ibid., p. 90.
Ibid., pp. 90–92.
See ibid., pp. 90–94.
Roeser, Moral Emotions and Intuitions. She refers to her view as “affectual intuitionism.” Note that, while Jonathan Haidt’s social intuitionism shares some similarities with response intuitionism, it should be distinguished from the latter approach. Haidt agrees that moral beliefs are often grounded in affective responses, but for him, these responses are more like socially-informed gut reactions, and they do not offer us epistemic access to independent moral facts. See Jonathan Haidt, “The Emotional Dog and Its Rational Tail: A Social Intuitionist Approach to Moral Judgment,” Psychological Review, Vol. 108, No. 4, (2001).
Ibid., ch. 5.
Ibid., 151–152.
See Audi, “Moral Perception and Moral Knowledge,” pp. 93–95; Roeser, op. cit., pp. 156–158.
Huemer, op. cit.
For a discussion of the Müller-Lyer illusion, see Catherine Q. Howe and Dale Purves, “The Müller-Lyer Illusion Explained by the Statistics of Image-Source Relationships,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Science USA, Vol. 102, No. 4, (2005).
Huemer, op. cit., pp. 121–122.
While the way in which appearances are related to subsequent belief will be important for an answer to the non-inferentiality question, as I discuss below, this relation cannot fully account for the non-inferentiality of the target beliefs.
Huemer, op. cit., p. 232.
Michael Huemer, “Compassionate Phenomenal Conservatism,” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, Vol. 74, No. 1, (2007), p. 41.
Michael Huemer, Skepticism and the Veil of Perception (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2001), pp. 56–57. See also Huemer, Skepticism, pp. 93–98 for his discussion of the basing relation between perceptual appearances and belief.
Ibid., p. 102.
See Elizabeth Tropman, “Non-Inferential Moral Knowledge,” Acta Analytica, Vol. 26, No. 4, (2011).
Huemer, Ethical Intuitionism, p. 101.
Ibid., p. 102.
Ibid., p. 119.
This suggests another way in which appearance intuitionists could reply to my claim in section 5 that the basing relation between belief and appearance is inferential. Even if the basing relation is inferential, a belief could still count as non-inferential in the intuitionist’s sense provided that the appearance upon which it is based did not result from reasoning.
Huemer, Ethical Intuitionism, pp. 122–127.
Ibid., p. 125.
Ibid., p. 126.
Ibid.
For reference to intuitions about cases, see ibid., pp. 103–104, 109, and 117, and Michael Huemer, “Revisionary Intuitionism,” Social Philosophy and Policy, Vol. 25, (2008).
Huemer, Ethical Intuitionism, p. 102.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Once more, one’s grasp may turn out to be inadequate. This possibility would not undermine the psychological story of non-inferentiality at hand.
Huemer, Ethical Intuitionism, p. 102.
Huemer, “Revisionary Intuitionism.”
Ibid., pp. 383–385.
Ibid., p. 386.
Ibid., pp. 386–387.
Ibid., p. 388.
Ibid., pp. 380–381.
Huemer, “Compassionate Phenomenal Conservatism,” p. 37.
Further, even if some unreliable non-inferential moral beliefs are justified but undefeated, it is likely that the beliefs would be false and not rise to the level of knowledge.
Antti Kauppinen has developed a form of appearance intuitionism that eschews emphasis on a priori intellectual insight. See his “A Humean Theory of Moral Intuition,” Canadian Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 43, No. 3, (2013). Kauppinen agrees that moral beliefs are justified by how things appear, but suggests that moral appearances are constituted by certain emotional responses. Kauppinen pairs appearance intuitionism’s answer to the justificatory question with a response-intuitionist view about the importance of emotion to intuitionistic moral knowledge.
Matthew S. Bedke, “Ethical Intuitions: What They Are, What They Are Not, and How They Justify,” American Philosophical Quarterly, Vol. 45, No. 3, (2008).
Ibid., p. 255.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Ibid., p. 256.
Ibid.
Ibid. Bedke would probably deny that substantive moral principles are self-evident after all, since he thinks that people can disagree about such principles despite having an adequate grasp of the concepts involved. See ibid., pp. 261–265. The possibility of self-evident moral truths is a different issue, though, from the theoretical role that a successful appeal to self-evident truths could play in developments of intuitionism.
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I would like to thank Charlie Kurth, Sabine Roeser, and an anonymous referee for their helpful comments and suggestions.
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Tropman, E. Varieties of Moral Intuitionism. J Value Inquiry 48, 177–194 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10790-014-9423-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10790-014-9423-3