Moral Intuition, by Jeff McMahan
1. Moral Inquiry
Moral inquiry, in general seems to suppose that some of our moral intuitions have moral authority. We often inquire into morality by looking at our moral beliefs, and generalizing from them.
2. Intuitions
A moral intuition is a spontaneous moral judgment. It is not the result of conscious inferential reasoning. However, it is possible that a fair amount of subconscious cognitive processing goes on to create the "spontaneous" judgment.
The idea that moral intuitions have normative authority has been associated with Intuitionism. Historically, two aspects of this have discredited the theories: 1) Intuitions are deliverances of a special organ or faculty of moral perception that provides access to a noumenal realm of moral values, and 2) Intuitions are indubitable and infallible.
Our spontaneous judgments can be a result of training -- they can have their source in malleable human nature, shaped by earlier education.
3. Theory
Some say that our moral intuitions have no normative authority -- we must base our judgments on how they conform to a preferred moral theory, which cannot be validated by conforming to our intuitions.
The Intuitive approach begins from our intuitions, and leads to theory. The Theoretical approach begins from theory, and leads to moral judgments.
4. Theory Unchecked by Intuition
Most Theoretical approach philosophers make appeals to common intuitions somewhere along the way, but this is ad hominem, not an argument against the theory. However, often intuitions compel belief more strongly than theory -- if so, can it be rational to abandon the more compelling belief for the less?
We recognize that our beliefs about the world are based on outmoded intuitions, and we accept scientific theories contrary to our intuitions. But no moral theory has the same validity or authority that a scientific theory does.
Are moral codes independent of our intuitions constitutive of a morality at all? Can they be called moral? How would we recognize that a theory was about morality?
5. Moral Epistemology
Coherentist epistemology seeks "reflective equilibrium" -- the state in which moral beliefs are in harmony with each other, and we reach it by weighing our intuitions and principles, dropping incoherent ones, trying new ones, and so continually balancing.
Foundationalist epistemology says that knowledge must be self-justifying, or be strongly inferred by a self-justified principle. Typically, coherentist beliefs are thought to be more conducive to intuitionism, but foundationalism can also allow intuitions a place, by either allowing for the possibility of self-justifying intuitions (that may be right or wrong), or for allowing them as sources of moral knowledge without them being foundational or self-justifying.
6. Sketch of a Foundationalist Conception of Moral Justification
Reflective equilibrium is the best or most fruitful method of moral inquiry. It need not be only allowed as a method for coherentist philosophy.
We typically justify our particular moral judgments by appealing to a more general principle. We try to find principles that unify or cohere with other principles and intuitions -- this is useful even for a foundationalist, because it can help weed out our beliefs based on self-interest, aberration, bad education -- and also because it helps illuminate our deeper values. This works for a foundationalist because it treats moral intuitions as ways to point back to more foundational principles.
The order of discovery is the reverse of the order of justification. We have intuitions about particular cases, and these are potential sources of knowledge about morals. We then generalize down, working from our intuition based on the details of the particular, to principles. But the principles have more epistemic power than the intuitions. The principles express deep dispositions of thought and feeling that operate subconsciously to regulate our intuitive responses to particular cases. Through examining the intuitive responses, we discover the regulating principles.
7. Challenges
Why should we expect that the theories we come up with at the end of reflecting will be credible?
At least some moral intuitions appear to be biological. But even then, we can ask if it's morally right or defensible to follow the principles deduced from these. If these have arisen out of natural selection, we might question if they relate to some natural moral law, or if they are just feelings within us with no correlation to a moral world outside us -- they are subjective.
"One has to suspect that the richness of moral life and experience will continue indefinitely to resist our efforts to reduce morality to a comprehensively unified system."
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Morality is not just a system of imperatives -- it is a system of imperatives whose goal is the ultimate end. There are systems of imperatives for how to perform a skill, but these are not moral. How do we determine what acts lead to the ultimate end, and which lead to subordinate ends? In other words, if we were to develop a theory independent of our moral intuitions, then it would lead us to beliefs about actions that might not have to do with morality -- the theory itself would have to have as its end the ultimate end.
If morality cannot be reduced to a comprehensively unified system, then we will probably have to place some normative value on our intuitions. Can morality have a comprehensively unified system that is based on our intuitions, if the intuitions themselves are conflicting? In the case of different intuitions which generalize to conflicting principles, how do we determine which intuition is more important?
Even the foundationalist account proposed by McMahan is based on intuitions as an important source of knowledge. If intuitions are not to be a source of moral knowledge, then what will be? How could theory, without recourse to intuition, be the source of moral judgment?
According to Kant, moral knowledge is knowledge of the system of imperatives that lead to the ultimate goal. In order for any imperative to be categorical, that means it cannot apply only in certain cases, or for certain people. Therefore, any moral code must be categorically imperative.
But if the conditions of any moral judgment are irreducibly complex, then the conditions that hold for one judgment will never be applicable to another. Therefore it would be impossible to generalize the imperative. So every action would be categorically imperative, because it could only apply to that particular situation. However, we have to draw a line. Our imperative, that must hold as a universal moral law, couldn't be so broad as "one should not kill." If it gets too narrow, though, incorporating too many of the complexities of the situation, "in this situation, with this life experience, one should not kill," then the idea of a categorical imperative is practically useless. The rule has to be somewhere between the impractically general and the particular that would make a categorical imperative useless. Our intuitions exist in this middle ground, but sometimes when we refer back to them and generalize from them, we find conflicts. Again, how do we choose one moral intuition over another?
If the moral faculty were purely logical, then it might not be moral -- how would we know that what it dealt with was morality, the ultimate goal of life?
If the moral faculty were purely emotional, it would be thoroughly inconsistent.