Ethical Intuitionism: The Meaning of Meaning Senior Thesis Presented to The Faculty of the School of Arts and Sciences Brandeis University Undergraduate Program in Philosophy (original) (raw)
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A Critique of Ethical Intuitionism as the Foundation of Knowledge
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Scholars claim that there are different sources of knowledge. These sources have come to be thought of as foundations for knowledge. Cognitivists are not united on the foundation of knowledge but they agree that knowledge is possible as against the skeptics. Intuitionism is a cognitive theory which states that knowledge is attainable through the mental faculty of intuition. Our concern in this paper centres on what might be called ethical intuitionism. Although there are variants of this theory, intuitionists believe that there are objective moral facts which are self-evident or known through intuition. In this form, it has been classified as ethical non-naturalism because it does not depend on empirical verification of its principles or truths. We shall argue that there are serious objections to ethical intuitionism. Moreover, we shall show that ethical intuitionism does not take cognizance of important findings in psychology and biology regarding human dispositions which are capab...
Rescuing Ethical Intuitionism from Disagreements [revised version]
In the present thesis my purpose is to investigate whether contemporary intuitionism can rebut recent criticism that builds on the phenomenon of moral disagreement. I argue that it can. In chapter one I specify in what sense do I use the terms ‘intuitionism’ and ‘intuition’. In chapter two I describe the intuitionists’ theories of how intuitions are justified. In chapter three I explain how present-day intuitionists answered some problems coming from disagreement. Having presented the intuitionist theory, I turn to new criticisms in chapter four and five. Firstly, I introduce Walter Sinnott-Armstrong’s challenge. He argues that since moral beliefs are often subjects to various defeaters, including being subject to disagreements, moral intuitions cannot enjoy the justification that intuitionists claim they do. I point out that Sinnott-Armstrong’s characterization of intuitionism is misleading. I argue that using a more appropriate characterization and the theories about justification that intuitionists put forward his challenge can be answered satisfactorily, and even without these since it cannot fulfil its own requirements. Secondly, I introduce Roger Crisp’s challenge. He argues that in case of peer disagreement regarding a moral belief the believer who does not suspend that particular belief is in error. I argue in the contrary and show that the one who does suspend belief can just as well be in error. In the concluding chapter I summarize the results of my investigations and point out what kind of significance they ascribe to moral disagreement.
Ethical intuitions: What they are, what they are not, and how they justify
American Philosophical Quarterly, 2008
There are ways that ethical intuitions might be, and the various possibilities have epistemic ramifications. This paper criticizes some extant accounts of what ethical intuitions are and how they justify, and it offers an alternative account. Roughly, an ethical intuition that p is a kind of seeming state constituted by a consideration whether p, attended by positive phenomenological qualities that count as evidence for p, and so a reason to believe that p. They are distinguished from other kinds of seemings, such as those which are content driven (e.g., the sensory experience that a stick in water seems bent) and those which are competence driven (e.g., the intellectual seeming that XYZ is not water, or that one of DeMorgan's laws is true). One important conclusion is this: when crafting a positive theory of justification ethical intuitionists have fewer resources than intuitionists in other domains, not because of the subject matter of ethical intuitions, but because of the their structure. A second conclusion is that the seemings featured in substantive ethical intuitions deliver relatively weak justification as compared to other seeming states.
Book Review: Intuition, Theory, and Anti-Theory in Ethics
In this volume, editor Sophie Grace Chappell has compiled an impressive collection of essays exploring the role of intuition and theory in ethics. Chappell explicitly makes no attempt to impose working theoretical definitions of intuition, theory, or anti-theory. Instead, the contributors range free, investigating various and at times contradictory accounts of these phenomena. On balance, this purposely unsystematic approach yields positive results, and each essay adds something important to the ongoing exploration of intuition and theory in ethics, however defined. While the whole volume is probably not a must-read, Intuition, Theory, and Anti-Theory in Ethics has something new for just about every metaethicist.
Oxford Handbook of the History of Ethics, 2013
A survey of the main strands of ethical intuitionism
2020
While intuitions have always played an important role in philosophy, more recent developments have called into question their reliability and, consequentially, their use in moral inquiry. Hence, my goal in this paper is to answer three questions: (1) whether we can use intuitions in moral inquiry, (2) how we can figure out which of our intuitions are reliable, and (3) how we can utilize our intuitions to find moral knowledge.
Perceptual Intuitionism without Ethical Perception
In recent years, there has been a renewed interest in Perceptual Intuitionism. A significant portion of the literature on the topic has focused on the ethical perception defense, the supposition seeming to be that one must defend Perceptual Intuitionism by showing that one can have ethical experiences which immediately and non-inferentially justify one’s beliefs about the rightness or wrongness of particular actions. This thesis rejects this thought by proposing an alternative defense of Perceptual Intuitionism which employs the Wittgensteinian concept of criteria and an understanding of principles of prima facie duties as “grammatical propositions”.
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