Morally Serious Critics of Moral Intuitions

I characterize moral intuitionism as the methodological claim that one may legitimately appeal to moral judgments in the course of moral reasoning even when those judgments are not supported by inference from other judgments. I describe two patterns of criticism of this method: 'morally un serious' criticisms, which hold that 'morality is bunk', so appeals to moral intuitions are bunk as well; and 'morally serious' criticisms, which hold that morality is not bunk, but that appeals to moral intuition are nonetheless misguided. I consider morally serious criticisms of Kantian and Aristotelian provenance, but defend the intuitionist method from both.     

道德直觉加工机制的理论构想

认知和情绪因素在道德判断中的作用机制是社会认知神经科学研究中最具争议的热点问题之一。本文认为, 人类拥有一种普遍性的道德直觉, 它是一种可能同时包含道德知识和情绪情感的自动化加工系统, 决定人们对一个道德违反情境作出快速的判断。据此, 本文就如何深入揭示道德直觉的加工机制提出了研究构想, 研究将首先采用经颅磁刺激技术, 探索当认知功能受抑制后人们的道德加工的特点, 初步探索道德直觉存在的可能性; 然后采用事件相关电位技术, 从外显和内隐两个维度上探讨道德直觉的时程加工机制; 最后采用侧向化运动准备电位指标, 进一步探索道德直觉和基本厌恶情绪的分离。     

Ignorance,Knowledge, and Two Epistemic Intuitions

Philosophia - One of the most venerable and enduring intuitions in epistemology concerns the relationship between true belief and knowledge. Famously articulated by Socrates, it holds that true...     

Moral Knowledge Without Knowledge of Moral Knowledge

The Journal of Ethics - Most people believe some moral propositions are true. Most people would say that they know that rape is wrong, torturing people is wrong, and so on. But despite decades of...     

Moral Worth and Moral Knowledge

To have moral worth an action not only needs to conform to the correct normative theory (whatever it is); it also needs to be motivated in the right way. I argue that morally worthy actions are motivated by the rightness of the action; they are motivated by an agent's concern for doing what's right and her knowledge that her action is morally right. Call this the Rightness Condition. On the Rightness Condition moral motivation involves both a conative and a cognitive element—in particular, it involves moral knowledge. I argue that the Rightness Condition is both necessary and sufficient for moral worth. I also argue that the Rightness Condition gives us an attractive account of actions performed under imperfect epistemic circumstances: by agents who rely on moral testimony or by those who, like Huckleberry Finn, have false moral convictions.     

Can Consequentialism Be Reconciled with Our Common-Sense Moral Intuitions?

Philosophical Studies -     

Accounting for the Data: Intuitions in Moral Theory Selection

Reflective equilibrium is often credited with extending the idea of accounting for the data from its familiar home in the sciences to the realm of moral philosophy. But careful consideration of the main concepts of this idea—the data to be accounted for and the kind of accounting it is appropriate to expect of a moral theory—leads to a revised understanding of the “accounting for the data” perspective as it applies to the discipline of moral theory selection. This revised understanding is in tension with reflective equilibrium and actually provides more support for the alternative method of moral theory selection that has been termed ‘practical equilibrium’.     

Moral Knowledge and Moral Uncertainty1

Applying a broadly Wittgensteinian view of knowledge and its relation to the conditions in which the word “know” is ordinarily used, the paper defends the claim that there can be knowledge (and thus also truth) in moral matters and rejects the idea that a cross‐culturally homogeneous moral language is a necessary condition for this. However, the fact that moral knowledge is available sometimes does not imply that it is available always. Taking issue in particular with Ronald Dworkin, the paper also argues that where moral questions are a matter of judgement, there may well be no right answer to them and, further, that this is a feature by no means unique to moral discourse.     

Two Potential Problems with Philosophical Intuitions: Muddled Intuitions and Biased Intuitions

One critique of experimental philosophy is that the intuitions of the philosophically untutored should be accorded little to no weight; instead, only the intuitions of professional philosophers should matter. In response to this critique, “experimentalists” often claim that the intuitions of professional philosophers are biased. In this paper, we explore this question of whose intuitions should be disqualified and why. Much of the literature on this issue focuses on the question of whether the intuitions of professional philosophers are reliable. In contrast, we instead focus on the idea of “muddled” intuitions—i.e. intuitions that are misdirected and about notions other than the ones under discussion. We argue that the philosophically untutored are likely to have muddled intuitions and that professional philosophers are likely to have unmuddled intuitions. Although being umuddled does not, by itself, establish the reliability of the intuitions of professional philosophers, being muddled is enough to disqualify the intuitions of the philosophically untutored. We then turn to the charge that, despite being unmuddled, professional philosophers still have biased intuitions. To evaluate this charge, we switch focus from the general notion of biased intuition to the more specific notion of theory-laden intuition. We argue that there is prima facie evidence—in the form of the presence of conflicts of intuition—for thinking that at least some of the intuitions of professional philosophers are theory-laden. In summary, we conclude that that there is no clean and easy answer to the question of whose intuitions should matter.     

I—Moral Perception and Moral Knowledge

This paper presents a theory of how perception provides a basis for moral knowledge. To do this, the paper sketches a theory of perception, explores the sense in which moral perception may deserve that name, and explains how certain moral properties may be perceptible. It does not presuppose a causal account of moral properties. If, however, they are not causal, how can we perceive, say, injustice? Can it be observable even if injustice is not a causal property? The paper answers these and other questions by developing an account of how moral properties, even if not causal, can figure in perception in a way that grounds moral knowledge.     

Humean Moral Knowledge

I develop resources from Hume to account for moral knowledge in the qualified sense developed by Bernard Williams, according to which the proper application of thick ethical terms constitutes moral knowledge. By applying to moral discernment the criteria of the good aesthetic critic, as explained in Hume's “Of the Standard of Taste”, we can see how Humean moral knowledge might be possible. For each of these criteria, an analogous trait would contribute to moral discernment. These traits would enable moral judges to distinguish valid from invalid uses of thick moral terms. The deliverances of such judgments constitute mitigated moral knowledge, as opposed to knowledge in the stricter sense that Hume clearly says cannot be had of moral distinctions. This account has the potential to explain how moral judgments may be valid or invalid without appealing to unique operations of the understanding and how moral knowledge might escape the threat, identified by Williams, of reflective destruction.     

Ethics and Intuitions

For millennia, philosophers have speculated about the origins of ethics. Recent research in evolutionary psychology and the neurosciences has shed light on that question. But this research also has normative significance. A standard way of arguing against a normative ethical theory is to show that in some circumstances the theory leads to judgments that are contrary to our common moral intuitions. If, however, these moral intuitions are the biological residue of our evolutionary history, it is not clear why we should regard them as having any normative force. Research in the neurosciences should therefore lead us to reconsider the role of intuitions in normative ethics.     

Without Intuitions

This paper criticizes Analytic philosophy with its reliance on intuitions in pursuit of conceptual analysis. Rejecting naturalism as an alternative philosophical method, I offer in its place a pragmatic and revisionary conception of philosophical method. I explain the method of Analytic philosophy and show why reliance on intuitions is essential to that method, which is unable to provide substantive answers to philosophical problems. I further show that reflective equilibrium or wide analysis requires some criterion of intuition choice and that this criterion can be applied directly to definitions themselves.     

Intuitions for inferences

In this paper, I explore a question about deductive reasoning: why am I in a position to immediately infer some deductive consequences of what I know, but not others? I show why the question cannot be answered in the most natural ways of answering it, in particular in Descartes’s way of answering it. I then go on to introduce a new approach to answering the question, an approach inspired by Hume’s view of inductive reasoning.