Ways of Seeing

Abstract

In the last chapter, I introduced the important place of the spontaneous intuitions and conceptual resonances of ordinary people when facing ordinary situations, as contrasted with the theoretical conclusions of moral philosophers. I admitted that my approach seemed too intuitionist, and this led to the problem of accounting for and resolving ethical disagreement. In the first section of this chapter, therefore, I would like to examine the phenomenon of ethical disagreement directly. As with the first chapter, this chapter will continue to lay important groundwork for the more applied discussions in Parts II and III, and for that reason will seem to move some distance away from the more familiar topics of medical ethics.