Ethical intuitionism and the linguistic analogy

It is a central tenet of ethical intuitionism as defended by W. D. Ross and others that moral theory should reflect the convictions of mature moral agents. Hence, intuitionism is plausible to the extent that it corresponds to our well-considered moral judgments. After arguing for this claim, I discuss whether intuitionists offer an empirically adequate account of our moral obligations. I do this by applying recent empirical research by John Mikhail that is based on the idea of a universal moral grammar to a number of claims implicit in W. D. Ross’s normative theory. I argue that the results at least partly vindicate intuitionism

A Theistic Critique of Secular Moral Nonnaturalism

This dissertation is an exercise in Theistic moral apologetics. It will be developing both a critique of secular nonnaturalist moral theory (moral Platonism) at the level of metaethics, as well as a positive form of the moral argument for the existence of God that follows from this critique. The critique will focus on the work of five prominent metaethical theorists of secular moral non-naturalism: David Enoch, Eric Wielenberg, Russ Shafer-Landau, Michael Huemer, and Christopher Kulp. Each of these thinkers will be critically examined. Following this critique, the positive moral argument for the existence of God will be developed, combining a cumulative, abductive argument that follows from filling in the content of a succinct apagogic argument. The cumulative abductive argument and the apagogic argument together, with a transcendental and modal component, will be presented to make the case that Theism is the best explanation for the kind of moral, rational beings we are and the kind of universe in which we live, a rational intelligible universe

A Feminist Defense of Moderate Moral Intuitionism

The three integrated articles of this dissertation are concerned with the epistemic status of moral intuitions. The first article argues in favour of moderate moral intuitionism, the view that while any successful moral epistemology must be intuitionist to at least some extent, it must also take intuitions to be fallible. This is accomplished by synthesizing work by Robert Audi and George Bealer into a view of moral intuitions which is capable of overcoming some major contemporary objections against intuitionism, particularly from Sharon Street and Peter Singer. The next article raises a more powerful objection to intuitionism, applying feminist ethics and moral epistemology to suggest that powerful social forces impair our ability to distinguish mistaken intuitions from reliable ones. This objection is addressed with an argument, based on work by Michele Moody-Adams and Cheshire Calhoun, to the effect that the possibility of moral knowledge and resultant responsibility allow us to retain the capacity for making this important distinction between intuitions. Nevertheless, as George Sher argues, there is still reason to think that the intuitions we rely on to shape and justify our moral beliefs contains important mistakes which negatively impact the reliability of our resulting moral judgements. This major problem, that of distinguishing helpful from harmful moral intuitions, is the topic of the third article. Henry Sidgwick attempted to develop a decision procedure for this purpose in The Methods of Ethics, positing four major criteria, the fulfilment of which would confer the highest possible level of certainty on an intuition. Sidgwick\u27s four tests are evaluated primarily with reference to contemporary feminist scholarship, and though they constitute a promising start to a rigorous intuitionist moral epistemology, they are also wanting in a number of ways. The article improves the epistemic status of Sidgwick\u27s tests with a hybrid Sidgwickian-feminist theory, reinterpreting his tests as values to be respected but which allow flexibility and even tension. While this approach may not be able to confer the same level of certainty as Sidgwick\u27s, it is more respectful of the complexities and nuances of a more reliable moral epistemology

The evidential weight of considered moral judgments

The input objection to reflective equilibrium (RE) claims that the method fails as a method of moral justification. According to the objection, considered moral judgments (CMJs) are not truth-conducive. Because the method uses inputs that are not credible, the method does not generate justified moral beliefs. The objection is solved by reinterpreting RE using contemporary developments in ethical intuitionism. The first half of the thesis sets up the input objection, explores potential responses to the objection, and uncovers the best way to solve the objection. The second half of the thesis solves the input objection by defining key terms, detailing the revised RE procedure, reinserting the notion of a competent moral judge into the method, using intuitionist criteria for identifying genuine moral intuitions, creating three filters capable of sorting good from bad CMJs, and showing how it is possible to assign evidential weight to CMJs so that they can be used as standards against which moral principles can be measured and a justified moral theory realized

The Disunity of Moral Judgment: An Essay in Moral Psychology

Recently there has been great deal of interest in uncovering the psychological processes of moral judgment. Over the past 10 years, psychologists and neuroscientists have studied the psychology and neurology of moral judgment, and there are now several empirical models of the psychology of moral judgment that attempt to explain these empirical findings. I argue that current empirical models of moral judgment, however, are inadequate, because the psychological processes that they posit cannot explain some important characteristics of other features of our moral psychology. On the other hand, contemporary philosophical accounts of moral judgment do not fare any better, because they are not consistent with recent empirical findings. My diagnosis for these inadequacies is that contemporary philosophical and empirical models of moral judgment are implicitly committed to what I call the Unity of Process Thesis, which is the claim that all moral judgments are the products of a single psychological process. I argue that the Unity of Process Thesis must be abandoned, because it makes it impossible to account for some important features of our moral psychology. What is needed is a dual-process model of moral judgment, and by drawing on an empirically well-supported dual-process architecture of human judgment, I develop a framework for moral judgment that posits two distinct kinds of moral judgments, intuitive and deliberative, that have very different underlying psychologies that operate in different ways, using different cognitive resources, that are tied to motivation in different ways, and play different roles in our moral psychology. I call this framework the Two Kinds Hypothesis. The distinction between intuitive and deliberative moral judging and judgments is quite valuable in developing an overall psychological picture of moral judgment that captures important features of our moral psychology and that is consistent with current accounts of the general architecture of human judgment. This analysis also has upshots in illuminating some debates in metaethics as well, specifically the debate between moral particularists and generalists, and the debate between moral judgment internalists and externalists

Moral Competence and Foundations of Moral Judgment. An Empirical Exploration of Concepts and New Possibilities for Understanding

The present study examines the relation between the moral intuitions proposed by the ‘Moral Foundations Theory’ according to J. Haidt and the moral orientations in relation with moral competence, as described by the ‘Dual-Aspect Model of Moral Behaviour’ according to G. Lind.It is an empirical exploration of the relation between the five foundational domains (and/or the corresponding two higher-order clusters) and the moral orientations, as this results from the theoretical assumptions of both theories, and the influence on and of the moral competence on these aforementioned relations. The shared affective and, at the same time, habitual characteristics of moral intuitions and moral orientations, although based on different theories (intuitionism, respectively, cognitivism) should converge in a dynamic relationship. The basic motivation is the need to overcome the affective-cognitive disjunction in the study of moral judgment, which is artificial. The human (moral) reasoning is always a situated and situating one, in a symbolic narrative universe, in which the cognitive-affective dichotomy forms a dynamic unity. This overstated dichotomy is only a methodological necessity, but unfortunately hypostasized in an explanatory mechanism that leads to the impermissible simplification of the phenomenon that it seeks to understand.The empirical results confirm the limits of both cognitive and intuitions paradigms and advocates for a more nuanced and dynamic approach in understanding the moral judgment within a more comprehensive conception on human personality. Finally, the implications for the contemporary psychology’ paradigm are discussed

Intuitions and Experimental Philosophy

This thesis aims to defend the use of intuitions and intuition-based philosophy in light of the recent negative conclusions from the field of experimental philosophy. First, an account of intuitions and intuition-based philosophy will be given that is continuous with four questions from past conceptions of intuitions regarding their features and uses. The four questions are drawn from analyses of intuitions in Kant and in Aristotle (Chapter 2). The questions are concerned with whether intuition is best understood as (1) a special faculty, or a product of some faculty or capacity; (2) an immediate and noncognitive episode, or a more mediate and reflected-upon episode of understanding and competence; (3) a particular judgment only, or a generalizable judgment; (4) only correct in light of an appropriate level of expertise, or with a minimal level of competence. Following this, analogies will be made to the sciences and scientific method (Chapter 3), and to linguistic intuitions (Chapter 4), which will bring the four previous questions into contemporary understanding of intuitions and intuition use in standard philosophical methodology. Chapter 3 will focus more on the third and fourth points, while Chapter 4 will focus more on the first and second points. The science analogy will benefit from a more recent account of philosophical intuitions provided by George Bealer (1998), as well as from considerations of reflective equilibrium’s role in the third point, and a discussion on moral and more general expertise in light of the fourth point. Chapter 4 will then focus on a contemporary account of philosophical intuitions by Jaakko Hintikka (1999), drawing on the analogy with linguistics and providing a negative foil from which to argue against. Chapter 4 will also benefit from discussion on experimental psychology’s insights and confusions in their subject of 'intuitional thinking', which will be contrasted with a more philosophical account of intuitions and reflective thinking drawing from Robert Audi (1996). Both chapters 3 and 4 will end with a recapitulation of the two-part features of each of the four questions from Chapter 2 in light of the contemporary discussions and respective analogies. Chapter 5 will introduce thought experiments as one of the best tools of intuition-based philosophy that makes use of a four-model taxonomy from Roy Sorensen (1992). The tripartite movement of experimental philosophy will be then be introduced, with a review of one of the first papers of the movement: Jonathan Weinberg, Shaun Nichols and Stephen Stich’s (2001) 'Normativity and Epistemic Intuitions.' Criticisms and response will follow, based on the preliminary conclusions drawn by the divergences in intuitions across cultural and socio-economic divisions, as well as a criticism of the survey methodology employed by most experimental philosophers. Finally, the expertise defense from the armchairists will be made, in light of question 4 from Chapter 2, that also faces criticisms from the Experimental Restrictivists who attack intuition-based philosophy. With a broadened understanding of the prevalence of intuition in contemporary philosophy as provided in chapters 3 and 4, the attack will be seen as either premature, or as still allowing for progressive philosophical inquiry in the other camps of Experimental Descriptivism and Analysis

Seeing Right from Wrong: A Defense of A Posteriori Ethical Intuitionism

This dissertation develops and defends the claim that our epistemic access to moral properties is grounded in a posteriori perceptual experiences. It is divided into two parts. In part I, I present the epistemic access problem for realist moral epistemology, and then argue against several a priori attempts to resolve the problem. I begin by defending an understanding of evolutionary debunking arguments according to which the problem is grounded in a lack of epistemic access to sui generis, non-causal moral facts. Next, I argue that even the most sophisticated versions of reflective equilibrium fall victim to the “garbage in, garbage out” objection which besets coherentist theories more generally. I then survey the most influential other a priori approaches to epistemic access. I conclude that each of them is victim to some variation of the same dilemma: Either they fail to ensure epistemic access, or they succeed by providing epistemic access to the wrong properties—viz. not the robustly normative ones. In part II, I defend a wholly a posteriori moral epistemology according to which our epistemic access to the moral properties is via perceptual experience. I begin with a positive argument that moral properties figure in the contents of perceptual experience, making use of the “method of contrast” found in the philosophy of perception literature. Next, I defend the foundationalist credentials of the perceptualist view in light of the objection that moral experiences will be epistemically dependent on prior background (moral) beliefs. I claim that the epistemic dependence of these moral experiences depends on the nature of influence the prior beliefs have and that the influence is not of the problematic sort. I then discuss the role of emotions in generating moral perceptions. I argue that emotions play an essential role in moral perceptual experiences, but that this is compatible with foundationalism and perceptualism. Finally, I return to the issue of epistemic access, arguing that the perceptual view provides an explanation of our epistemic access to the moral properties

Intuition, perception, and emotion: A critical study of the prospects for contemporary ethical intuitionism

This thesis is a critical study of the prospects for contemporary accounts of ethical intuitionism. Ethical intuitionism is an epistemological theory about the nature of our justified ethical beliefs, whose central claim is that we have at least some non-inferentially justified beliefs. Having been out of favour for much of the latter-part of the twentieth century, ethical intuitionism is enjoying something of a renaissance. Contemporary proponents of the view have shown that ethical intuitionism need not fall foul of the main objections previously brought against it. Furthermore, developments in epistemology have helped to make the notion of non-inferential justification (and the associated view, epistemological foundationalism) more philosophically respectable. As I will suggest, non-inferentially justified belief paradigmatically involves a belief that is justified by a non-doxastic state. In this thesis I will consider four accounts of ethical intuitionism which each claim that a particular kind of non-doxastic state can ground justified ethical beliefs: understandings, intellectual seemings, perceptual experiences and emotional experiences. Note that contemporary ethical intuitionists do not commit themselves to there being a distinctively ethical non-doxastic state. Rather, contemporary ethical intuitionists adopt a sort of innocence by association strategy, suggesting that that we gain non-inferential justification in ethics in much the same way as we get non-inferential justification in other domains. It is my purpose in this thesis to subject each of these four accounts of contemporary ethical intuitionism to sustained philosophical criticism. Although I do not think that ethical intuitionism is implausible, it is my view that the current enthusiasm for the position ought to be seriously tempered, and that much work will need to be done in order to make it acceptable as a meta-ethical view. Firstly, with regard to the understanding (self-evidence) account I argue that there are serious problems with the view that the substantive Rossian principles are non-inferentially justifiably believed on the basis of an adequate understanding of their content. Secondly, I go on to suggest, inter alia, that proponents of the intellectual seemings account of intuitionism cannot appeal to their favoured general epistemological principle in order to ground their ethical epistemology. Given this, much work needs to be done on their part in order to show why we ought to think that intellectual seemings with an ethical content that is substantive get to justify. Thirdly, against the ethical perception account I suggest that even if it is true that ethical agents have perceptual experiences which represent ethical properties, it is not at all obvious that this supports ethical intuitionism, since insofar as such experiences get to justify, it seems plausible that they will ground inferentially or mediately justified beliefs. I do, however, suggest that a related perceptual view may be able to ground a plausible account of non-inferentially justified ethical beliefs. Finally, I consider the ethical emotions account. Given that this is a relatively new view on the philosophical scene I spend much of my time defending it against some serious recent objections brought against it. However, I will also suggest that there are question marks surrounding the epistemological credentials of emotional experiences and that much work will therefore need to be done in order to make the view that emotional experiences do in fact non-inferentially justify ethical beliefs acceptable