ABSTRACT
Moral intuitions suffer a bad press among many philosophers due to guilt-by-association with the intuitionist moral epistemologies provided by Plato, the Cambridge Platonists, Henry Sidgwick, G. E. Moore, and W. D. Ross. As a metaethical subjectivist I reject all claims of objective moral knowledge, whether the claims are supposed to be a priori, noninferential, incorrigible, infallible, or epistemically privileged in any way. Rather, I regard moral intuitions as guides to moral reasoning that (fallibly) reveal the way persons think (‘feel’) about moral questions. For example, ‘Lying in this example would be morally permissible.’ And ‘Keeping all the food for your family in this example would be impermissible.’ I view moral intuitions as on a par with intuitions in other areas of
philosophy. For example, in the philosophy of language philosophers rely on their intuitions to decide whether they believe Martian-built remote-controlled artifacts would be cats, and in the problem of personal identity philosophers ask whether under such and such conditions, they would believe that S would be the same person over time. John Rawls likens moral intuitions to linguistic intuitions of grammatically untutored speakers about the grammaticality of statements in their native languages (1971, p. 47). This modest use of intuitions stands in sharp contrast to the knowledge claims of classic intuitionists. Nonetheless, I assign moral intuitions a crucial role in my argument for metaethical subjectivism. Thus, I devote this brief chapter to defending my use of moral intuitions. In my view, moral intuitions are bedrock evidence for and against
moral claims by default. Although moral intuitions are subject to being overruled by theories that better explain other more numerous or more strongly felt moral intuitions, they remain an indispensable test of the acceptability of all moral claims and theories. They are imperfect indicators of the defects of moral theories, but they are the best game in town. Moral intuitions reveal our moral feelings, attitudes, and convictions.
Feelings, attitudes, and convictions motivate us to care about moral issues in the first place: Without these emotional states we would have no interest in moral matters. Persons with no moral intuitions of their own either would have to unfeelingly use those of others to build a moral theory or treat the theory they build as merely an analytical, rule-
