Overview
Ethical Intuitionism is usually understood as a meta-ethical theory that embraces the following theses:
- Moral realism, the view that there are objective facts about value,
- Ethical non-naturalism, the view that these evaluative facts cannot be reduced to natural facts, and
- The thesis that we sometimes have intuitive awareness of value, or intuitive knowledge of evaluative facts, which forms the foundation of our ethical knowledge.
Sometimes the term "ethical intuitionism" is associated with a pluralistic, deontological position in normative ethics, a position defended by W.D. Ross.
The Notion of Intuition
Some intuitionists characterize "intuitions" as a species of beliefs, beliefs which are self-evident in the sense that they are justified simply by virtue of one's understanding of the proposition believed.
Others characterize "intuitions" as a distinct kind of mental state, in which something seems to one to be the case (whether one believes it or not) as a result of intellectual reflection. All ethical intuitionists agree in characterizing intuitions as cognitive mental states that do not depend on observation or inference.
History
Ethical Intuitionism was popular in the early twentieth century, particularly among British analytic philosophers.
H.A. Prichard gave an early defense of the view in his (1912) "Does Moral Philosophy Rest on a Mistake?", wherein he contended that moral philosophy rested chiefly on the desire to provide arguments starting from non-normative premises for the principles of obligation that we pre-philosophically accept, such as the principle that one ought to keep one's promises or that one ought not to steal. This is a mistake, Prichard argued, both because it is impossible to derive any statement about what one ought to do from statements not concerning obligation (even statements about what is good), and because there is no need to do so since common sense principles of moral obligation are self-evident.
Prichard influenced G.E. Moore, whose Principia Ethica (1903) argued famously that goodness was an indefinable, non-natural property of which we had intuitive awareness. Moore originated the term "the naturalistic fallacy" to refer to the (alleged) error of confusing goodness with some natural property, and he deployed the Open Question Argument to show why this was an error. Unlike Prichard, Moore thought that one could derive principles of obligation from propositions about what is good; Moore believed that what one ought to do is always determined by what will produce the most good.
Ethical intuitionism suffered a dramatic fall from favor by the middle of the century, probably due in part to the influence of logical positivism, in part to the rising popularity of naturalism in philosophy, and in part to philosophical objections based on the phenomenon of widespread moral disagreement.
Further Reading
Following are some important works by ethical intuitionists.
G.E. Moore, Principia Ethica (Cambridge University Press, 1903).
W.D. Ross, The Right and the Good (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1930).
Michael Huemer, Ethical Intuitionism (Palgrave Macmillan, 2005).
External Links
Ethical Intuitionism, a contemporary defense of the theory.