J Inquiry (2016) 50:631–647 DOI 10.1007/s10790-016-9547-8

Ethical Intuitionism: A Structural Critique

Danny Frederick1

Published online: 8 February 2016 Ó Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2016

1 Introduction

Recent years have seen attempts by many philosophers to rehabilitate, with some modifications, a traditional doctrine of ethical intuitionism (henceforward ‘‘intu- itionism’’). Contemporary intuitionists claim that moral knowledge consists of those propositions that are known by intellectual reflection (), by moral observation or by moral emotion, or which are capable of being cogently inferred from propositions which are items of moral knowledge. Some intuitionists, such as , admit only intuition (of particular or of general propositions) as a non-inferential source of moral knowledge; but others, such as , allow also moral observation and moral emotion. I offer a critique of contemporary intuitionist theories that depends upon their common structure: analysis of the abstract features of the approach show it to be an inadequate account of moral knowledge. I use Huemer and Audi as representative intuitionists. The differences between their views, and between their views and those of other intuitionists, are incidental at the level of generality of my argument. In section 2, I outline the contemporary intuitionist approach to moral knowledge. In sections 3, 4 and 5, I show that the problem of inter-cultural conflict undermines the claims that moral intuition, moral observation and moral emotion, respectively, are sources of non-inferential moral knowledge. I also explain the inadequacy of the intuitionist attempt to solve the problem by invoking bias or intellectual or moral failings. In section 6, I argue that the intuitionist attempt to solve the problem of conflict by attenuating the content of intuitive knowledge does not succeed. It also generates the further problem of explaining how insubstantial

& Danny Frederick [email protected]; https://independent.academia.edu/DannyFrederick

1 Slate House, Hunstan Lane, Old Leake, Boston PE22 9RG, UK 123 632 D. Frederick moral premises can yield substantial moral knowledge. In section 7, I show that intuitionist appeals to with mathematics and with empirical science are unsuccessful in solving that further problem. In section 8, I explain why Huemer’s defence of intuitionism by appeal to the of phenomenal conservatism fails. In section 9, I conclude.

2 Intuitionism

The general account of moral knowledge offered by intuitionists is along the following lines (the deviations of some intuitionists from this general scheme are immaterial here). Let ‘‘p’’ stand for the expression of an evaluative proposition. If a person, A, knows that p, then, either the proposition represented by ‘‘p’’ can be inferred, cogently, from other knowledge of A,orA has intuitive knowledge that p. Intuitive knowledge is not dependent on inference from other beliefs: it is what seems true to a person independently of arguments for or against it. The sources of intuitive moral knowledge are intellectual reflection (intuition), or moral emotion, or observation of the moral properties of actions or of people. Intuitive moral knowledge is only prima facie justified: it may be overturned by conflicting moral knowledge which has stronger prima facie justification. Such conflicting moral knowledge is either intuitive or it is inferred, ultimately, from intuitive knowledge. The strength of prima facie justification depends upon how clearly the proposition seems true and how well it coheres with other intuitively known propositions, where a collection of propositions is more coherent the more it is systematic and unified and the greater the degree to which some propositions in the collection can explain others. Normally, an intuitive belief with which only a few people agree has weaker prima facie justification than a conflicting intuitive belief which nearly everyone shares. Moral , emotions or observations should be discounted if they are tainted by bias or by intellectual failings, such as confusion, inattention, distraction or cognitive impairment, or by moral failings, such as amorality or moral insensitivity. There are serious flaws in this account of moral knowledge. Only those which are most relevant here are explained in what follows.

3 Intuition

An intuition is a state in which it seems that p, independently of inference, which results from reflection on, or an adequate understanding of, the proposition that p, and which, according to intuitionists, grounds intuitive knowledge that p (Huemer 2005, pp. 99–102, 124–25; Audi 2004, 45–54; 2013, pp. 83–100). It is sometimes objected that intuitions reflect prior beliefs, but according to Huemer: the view that intuitions are or are caused by beliefs fails to explain the origin of our moral beliefs. Undoubtedly some moral beliefs are accounted for by inference from other moral beliefs. But since no moral belief can be derived from wholly non-moral premises, we must start with some moral beliefs that

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are not inferred from any other beliefs. Where do these starting moral beliefs come from? Do we just adopt them entirely arbitrarily? No; this is not the phenomenology of moral belief. We adopt fundamental moral beliefs because they seem right to us; we don’t select them randomly (2005, p. 103). However, it seems that ‘‘this is not the phenomenology of moral belief’’ either. We do not adopt our starting moral beliefs because they seem right to us; we do not adopt them consciously at all. By the time a person is able to do anything so sophisticated as to consider whether to adopt a moral belief, she has spent years being inducted into a culture in which she has been trained to behave in ways that her immediate community deems acceptable, and to see things largely as her immediate community sees them, and she has been taught, in part by explicit instruction, an elaborate set of evaluative propositions. She has a panoply of moral beliefs that seem obvious to her, independently of any arguments, simply because they have been long induced in her via the varied processes of cultural transmission, often since before she can remember. She has not inferred those beliefs and she has not adopted them because they seem right. She finds that she simply has them. It is those beliefs that generate her initial intuitions, which are therefore cultural or sub-cultural artefacts. Her elders similarly inherited their starting moral views from their elders, though each generation makes modifications to the inherited fabric, which brings about cultural evolution. One might ask: how did our remote ancestors ever arrive at any moral views, if they could not have inferred them from their non-moral views? The answer seems to be that we evolved biologically as creatures with an inborn disposition to develop and use moral concepts (Pinker 2002, pp. 53, 168–69, 242–44), so we interpret the world in evaluative terms. Humans are creatures who expect the world to contain moral rules and who search for them, often mistaking evolved local regularities of behaviour for objective moral rules (Piaget 1929, chapter 7). Huemer objects (2005, pp. 103–104) that our intuitive judgements about real or imagined cases may run counter to previously held moral beliefs, such as act- . He concludes that our intuitions do not simply conform to our moral beliefs and that this gives intuition a role in adjudicating between rival moral theories. However, that reply is vitiated by a failure to distinguish two kinds of moral views. First, there are culturally inherited moral views, which generate our ethical intuitions, which are only in part articulated propositions, being in large part ways of seeing things that people learn from observing and imitating the behaviour of others, and which do not form an integrated system even within the same culture, but contain various internal conflicts (Hayek 1960, pp. 56–65). Second, there are articulated and systematic theories, such as act-utilitarianism, which are typically propounded by reformers who want to replace our culturally inherited views with something they take to be better. It is no surprise that our culturally inherited moral views generate intuitions at variance with the theories of reformers; and it would be pointless or invidious to test such theories against our intuitions. Many of our moral intuitions conflict with those of people from other cultures or sub-cultures, and these conflicting moral views are not always traceable to differences over factual matters (Doris and Stich 2005, pp. 129–37). For example, social-psychological research (Nisbett and Cohen 1996) has revealed that America’s

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South differs from its North in having a strong honour culture which gives rise to people from the South having different moral intuitions to those of people from the North concerning whether violence is appropriate in some types of given (factually identical) situations. Such conflicting intuitions may seem to be equally clear to the people who hold them, though there does not appear to be any objective way of measuring that as yet; and they may also cohere equally well with the other propositions accepted by the respective people. The intuitions may also be widely shared within their respective cultural groups. Such conflicting intuitions appear to have equal strength of ‘‘prima facie justification’’ for their respective adherents, which undermines the intuitionist claim that intuitions ground moral knowledge. It is worth noticing that it is not the fact that moral intuitions are cultural artefacts that undermines their epistemic status. Scientific knowledge is a cultural artefact. Further, it is not the case that conflict between the intuitions of people from different cultures is sufficient to discredit the epistemic status of all the conflicting intuitions. What the conflict between the moral intuitions of people from different cultures does undermine is the claim that moral intuitions are sources of non-inferential moral knowledge. A brief comparison of morals with empirical science and mathematics should make that clear. Intuitions about how the external world works differ between cultures. The animistic intuitions of people in tribal cultures conflict with the mechanistic intuitions typically found amongst the people of Western cultures; but, insofar as the truth of the mechanistic intuitions is implied by accepted scientific theories, the conflict undermines the epistemic status only of the animistic intuitions. What makes the mechanistic intuitions knowledge is not their non-inferential or intuitive character, which they share with the animistic intuitions, but the fact that they can be inferred from mechanistic theories that have an independent claim to be knowledge. The mechanistic theories, rather than their animistic rivals, count as knowledge not merely because of their greater explanatory scope but because they better stand up to testing against observation-statements about physical things and because such observation- statements can be agreed between people of different cultures (this point is developed in more detail in section 7, below). It is the agreement on observation-statements that makes scientific knowledge possible; and observation counts as a source of non- inferential knowledge of the external world only because it makes such agreement possible. If we could not reach general agreement on observation-statements, we could not sensibly regard observation as giving us knowledge of an external world. Mathematical knowledge is comparable: it is possible only because there is general cross-cultural agreement on intuitive propositions such as ‘‘2 ? 2 = 4’’ and ‘‘3 9 4 = 12.’’ More sophisticated mathematical theories are tested by their consistency with such propositions and appraised according to how great a body of mathematical propositions they systematise (Russell 1924, p. 325; Lakatos 1962, 1963–64, 1967). If we could not reach general agreement on the low-level intuitive propositions of mathematics, we could not sensibly regard mathematical intuition as giving us non-inferential knowledge of an objective reality (whether it be an abstract realm, or abstract features of the concrete world, or the transcendental preconditions of cognition). In contrast, the rampant cross-cultural disagreement over intuitive moral propositions debars them from being sources of non-inferential moral knowledge. 123 Ethical Intuitionism: A Structural Critique 635

Intuitionists make two different responses to such conflicts; one is considered here, the other in section 6. The first response is to claim that some apparent intuitions are tainted by bias or by intellectual failings and must be discounted (Huemer 2005, pp. 137–41, 144). However, such claims can be substantiated only in some cases (Doris and Stich 2005, pp. 132–37), which means that in other cases such intuitionist claims seem arbitrary. For example, Huemer says that the following seem intuitive to people only because of bias:

(i) polygamy is wrong; (ii) incest is wrong; (iii) killing humans for food is gravely wrong but killing members of other species for food is not wrong at all.

However, his reasons for imputing bias seem arbitrary (2005, p. 220). He says that people who endorse (i)–(iii) are typically ‘‘unable to advance any credible reasons for’’ them. But that is not surprising if (i), (ii) and (iii) are genuinely intuitive, accepted because they seem true on reflection, independently of argument. He says that (i) and (iii) are not the sort of proposition we would expect to be a fundamental evaluative truth, incapable of further explanation. But that is just a deliverance of his own intuition. Why should Huemer’s intuitions be privileged over other people’s intuitions which deliver (i)–(iii)? Perhaps (iii) seems too complex to be a fundamental truth; but that is only because it is a conjunction of two simpler propositions each of which does seem fundamental to many people. Huemer claims that in most cultures (i) was not considered true. That claim not only seems arbitrary but is also doubtful. It is doubtful because, even supposing that we know how to count cultures (or sub-cultures), cultures change and new cultures form; and, since we cannot know what future cultures will endorse, the total number of cultures that endorse a particular proposition will always be unknown to us. It seems arbitrary because there seems to be no reason to count cultures rather than the people who belong to them, which may give a different answer, and because, given substantial disagreement, it is not clear why the numbers should matter. What is clear is that, because Huemer does not like (i), (ii) and (iii), he attributes their apparent intuitiveness to bias; but he is ‘‘unable to advance any credible reasons for’’ that attribution. That leaves his accusation of bias open to an accusation of bias from the proponents of (i), (ii) and (iii). The attempt to resolve the problem of conflict between the intuitions of people from different cultures by imputing bias threatens to transform rational debate into mutual name-calling.

4 Observation

Here is a modification of Gilbert Harman’s (1977, p. 4) now standard example of a moral observation:1 if you round a corner and see a group of youths kill a tethered bird by playing very roughly with it, you do not need to conclude that what they are

1 Harman’s example involved youths setting fire to a cat. 123 636 D. Frederick doing is wrong; you do not need to figure anything out; you can see that it is wrong. The representation of the moral property in such an observational experience is part of its phenomenal content, but not part of its sensory content: the moral feature is an input from our background moral views. That is similar to the way in which we can perceive that someone is upset: the property of being upset is not part of the sensory content of the perception, but it is part of its phenomenal content in of our background views concerning the (Audi 2013, pp. 33–45). In moral observation, the observer’s background moral views may be inchoate, what Audi (2013, p. 39) calls a ‘‘felt sense of connection’’ between moral properties, such as wrongness, and non-evaluative properties, such as youths physically harassing a bird to death. The observer does not infer the moral property from the observed non- evaluative base-properties with the aid of a background moral view but, rather, sees the moral property in virtue of a background moral view (Audi 2013, pp. 38–41). Intuitionists claim that moral observations ground intuitive moral knowledge (Audi 2013, pp. 45–46). However, moral observations run into the problem that a person’s background moral views depend upon his particular cultural inheritance. Suppose, for example, that when you encountered the youths playing with the bird you were being guided around a settlement of Hopi Indians by an adult member of the tribe. The people of that tribe hold that there is nothing amiss with such rough and terminal treatment of pet birds, even though they believe birds to be conscious, sentient and capable of feeling pain, and even though they do not believe that birds are rewarded for martyrdom in an afterlife: their different moral view is not traceable to a difference in relevant factual views (Doris and Stich 2005, p. 130, citing the research of Brandt 1954). Given his background moral views, your guide does not see the youths’ act as wrong; he sees it as or even right. The stark cross-cultural conflicts between moral observations parallels the stark cross-cultural conflicts between intuitions; and it impugns the intuitionist claim that moral observations ground intuitive moral knowledge. Intuitionists respond by discounting moral observations they do not like, by attributing the relevant background views to bias or to intellectual or even moral failings (Audi 2004, p. 67; 2013, pp. 74–83); but, as in the case of intuitions, and for the same reasons, that is liable to generate sectarian mutual abuse.

5 Emotion

A situation represented in observation or thought may prompt an emotion. That emotion may have a content which accurately represents an evaluative property of the situation. For example, one may feel fear when experiencing a dangerous situation. Intuitionists claim that moral emotions can ground intuitive moral knowledge (Audi 2004, pp. 56–57; 2013, pp. 121–56). However, that claim seems to clash with the fact, which intuitionists acknowledge (Audi 2013, pp. 133–138), that moral emotions are linked to background moral views. Recall the bird-torturing youths. A person who thinks it wrong to torment birds to death for fun may feel the emotions of indignation and disgust at the youths and despair over the situation. But the Hopi, whose culturally inherited view is that it is 123 Ethical Intuitionism: A Structural Critique 637 good to torture birds for fun, may feel affection and approval for the youths and elevation at the spectacle. Similarly, in connection with an instance of legal abortion, the moral emotions of those who think that all abortion is wrong conflict starkly with those of people who think that abortions conducted under the legally permissible conditions are unobjectionable or on the whole good, even though the people on each side may agree on all the non-evaluative features of the case (for example, their disagreement, when articulated, may focus on the issue of whether the foetus has a right to life). It seems that emotions depend upon background views (Popper 1994, pp. 112–13) and moral emotions vary with variation in background moral views. As with observations and intuitions, moral emotions differ starkly between people from different cultures or sub-cultures, which undermines the intuitionist claim that moral emotions ground intuitive moral knowledge. Intuitionists may respond by discounting moral emotions they deem inappropri- ate as tainted by background views that are products of bias or intellectual or even moral failings; but, as in the cases of intuitions and moral observations, and for the same reasons, that will tend to sectarian mutual name-calling.

6 Etiolation

A different response that intuitionists make to the problem of stark conflict over intuitive propositions is to try to restrict epistemically genuine moral intuitions, observations or emotions to those the content of which is generally and cross- culturally agreed. Huemer says that disagreement over ‘‘foundational moral claims’’ is relatively rare (2005, pp. 130–31, 142–43). His examples of such claims are the wrongness of ‘‘killing a store owner during an armed robbery so that one cannot later be identified…of indiscriminate lying, stealing, and breaking of promise- s…[of] killing people for fun, torture, typical cases of theft’’ (2005, p. 130). He says: ‘‘there are no serious disputes about the desirability of such things as murder, rape, and armed robbery’’ (2005, p. 237). However, in most of those examples, pro-tanto wrongness seems to be indicated by the descriptions used, namely, ‘‘robbery,’’ ‘‘lying.’’ ‘‘stealing,’’ ‘‘breaking a promise,’’ ‘‘theft,’’ ‘‘murder,’’ ‘‘rape,’’ so the propositions that such things are wrong seem more verbal than moral, and far from ‘‘foundational.’’ Huemer also offers the following list of intuitive propositions (2005, p. 102):

(a) enjoyment is better than ; (b) if A is better than B, and B is better than C, then A is better than C; (c) it is unjust to punish a person for a crime he did not commit; (d) courage, benevolence, and honesty are ; (e) if a person has a right to do something, then no person has a right forcibly to prevent him from doing that thing.

Again, (b), (c) and (d) appear to be what some philosophers call ‘‘analytic.’’ It seems that (a) and (e) are also intended to be of that kind, except that they seem confused or false. Some people, for instance, enjoy suffering, which seems to make a 123 638 D. Frederick nonsense of (a); and (e) seems false (Thomson 1990, chapter 6). Huemer may intend (e) as (part of) an implicit definition of the term ‘‘right,’’ but that would again indicate that he deems the content of intuitions to be ‘‘analytic.’’ Indeed, in Huemer (2008) the propositions which are the content of intuitions are restricted to those, such as (b), which constitute merely formal constraints on ethical theories. Other intuitionists cite the Rossian of ‘‘prima facie obligation’’ (Audi 2004, pp. 165–66; 2013, pp. 146–53) which say that we should, ceteris paribus, keep our promises, make amends for wrong-doing, repay debts, see that people are rewarded according to their merit, help others, improve ourselves, and refrain from injuring others (Ross 1930, pp. 21–22). Although intuitionists deny that the Rossian principles are ‘‘analytic,’’ the propositions are still insubstantial, for two indepen- dent reasons. First, the ‘‘prima facie’’ nature of the obligations means that they are defeasible and that the conditions under which they are defeased are not specifiable in advance (Ross 1930, pp. 19–20, 23–24). Two people could agree that they have the listed ‘‘prima facie obligations’’ while disagreeing in case after case about whether this promise should be kept, that wrong-doing recompensed, those debts repaid, and so on. Second, the morally-loaded nature of the terms in which the obligations are expressed elicits agreement to them from people who disagree radically over the cases to which those morally-loaded terms apply. The substantive questions concern what constitutes a promise, making amends, a debt, a merit/de-merit, assistance, self-improvement, injury. Here are just two real-life examples (the names have been changed). Alf kills Bert for drawing a cartoon of Mohammed. Carole thinks that Alf did wrong because he did not refrain from injuring (indeed, murdering) another. Deborah disagrees: she thinks that Alf did right because he brought it about that Bert got his just deserts. The underlying dispute concerns whether people have an obligation not to draw cartoons of Mohammed, breach of which can be expiated only by death. Ernie has sex with his wife, Fiona, despite her protests and struggles. Gail thinks that Fiona did wrong because, by protesting and struggling, she broke the wife’s marital promise (whether or not explicitly given) not to deny her husband sex. Henry disagrees: he thinks that marriage involves no such promise and that Ernie did wrong because he injured Fiona by having sex with her against her will. The underlying dispute concerns whether wives have a right to deny sex to their husbands. In short, the application of the Rossian ‘‘prima face obligations’’ presupposes a background of ‘‘foundational’’ moral and obligations, and people generally, and especially people from different cultural backgrounds, hold conflicting views about what those ‘‘foundational’’ rights and obligations are. Thus, agreement on Rossian ‘‘prima face obligations’’ is little better than a verbal agreement that disguises very real disagreements about what our specific obligations are. There are two difficulties with the intuitionists’ etiolation of the content of epistemically genuine intuitions, observations or emotions. The first is that it does not get the intuitionist out of the impasse of sectarian ad hominem attacks. The person who thinks that it is an intuitive moral truth that polygamy, or incest, or abortion, or bird-torturing is wrong will hardly be persuaded to give up that contention simply because someone else has the intuition that such propositions 123 Ethical Intuitionism: A Structural Critique 639 cannot be ‘‘foundational;’’ and if the latter person accuses the former of bias or intellectual or moral failing, it would be understandable if the insult were returned. The second difficulty is that, if epistemically genuine intuitions, observations or emotions have a content which is insubstantial, then ethical intuitionists seem unable to explain how there can be knowledge of substantial moral propositions, that is, propositions that say which circumstances, non-evaluatively described, give rise to rights or obligations or other moral properties, and when one right or obligation overrides another. Such propositions concern, for example,

• when, if ever, injuring or killing animals is wrong • when, if ever, abortion, polygamy or incest is wrong • what, if any, are the rights that people (men, women, commoners, barbarians, etc.), or other creatures, have (or should have) • what, if any, specific duties of benevolence people have (or should have) • when, if ever, it is permissible to kill one person to save five.

It might be objected that I am conflating the meta-ethical task of saying what moral knowledge is and the ethical task of saying what is the right thing to do in particular situations. Intuitionism is concerned with the first task, not the second (Huemer 2005, p. 142). However, that objection misses my point. It is not that intuitionism fails to give us all the answers. It is that the account of moral knowledge given by intuitionism seems to make knowledge of any substantial moral propositions impossible.

7 Inference

If epistemically genuine moral intuitions, observations and emotions are restricted to those with insubstantial content, then intuitionists must claim that substantial moral knowledge is somehow acquired, or acquirable, by inference from insubstantial moral premises. How can that be so? Intuitionists usually invoke a comparison with mathematics (Huemer 2005, pp. 106, 123–24), which seems a priori, and in which surprising conclusions are often demonstrated from insubstan- tial premises. However, intuitionists have not been able to derive from their insubstantial premises any of the sort of substantial propositions indicated at the end of section 6. Until they do, it remains very doubtful that such a thing can be done, and the purported with mathematics remains a glib assertion. Huemer also offers a comparison with science: Science tells us that the sun is 1.3 million times larger than the Earth, that invisible force fields fill all of space, and that ordinary material objects are composed of tiny, colorless particles in rapid motion, with great spaces between therm. These conclusions are surprising and quite far from the way things appear to casual observation. Yet scientists do not possess some new cognitive faculty that common folk are deprived of; science is based, solely or primarily, on observation.

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Similarly, moral reasoning might lead to surprising and revisionary conclu- sions, despite that this reasoning must ultimately be based on intuition. An intuitionist will accept intuitions as a source of prima facie justification, but he should not accept intuitions uncritically, any more than a scientist accepts apparent observations uncritically (2005, pp. 219–20). Huemer is mistaken in thinking that science is based, solely or primarily, on observation and that scientists proceed by making inferences from what they already take themselves to know. Scientists proceed by studying and criticising articulated theories which are objectified in articles, books and so on. That enables them to discover implications and problems that were unknown to the authors of the theories. That spurs them to develop new conjectures to solve those problems (Kuhn 1970; Popper 1959, preface to 1934 edition; 1968a; 1968b). Those conjectures are typically counter-intuitive in that they contradict accepted theories and observation- statements, so they cannot be inferred from what we previously took ourselves to know. However, they imply unexpected predictions which can be tested by means of observation, and they may survive attempts to refute them, in which case they may overturn previously accepted theories with which they conflict, and engender a reinterpretation of past observations, thereby replacing previously accepted observation-statements with new ones (Kuhn 1970, pp. 6–7 and passim; Popper 1957; 1975, especially pp. 12–22). For example, Newton’s theory could not have been inferred from Galileo’s and Kepler’s theories, because it contradicted them (Popper 1957, 197–202). Indeed, the idea that matter could act at a distance through a vacuum was so counter-intuitive that even Newton himself thought it was absurd (Newton 1693, pp. 102–103). Newton’s theory even contradicted accepted observation-statements about the heavens; but Newton proposed counter-intuitive auxiliary hypotheses about the refraction of light which could explain why those accepted observation-statements were false (Lakatos 1978a, p. 216), and those auxiliary hypotheses were independently testable against other observation-statements. Similarly, General Relativity could not have been inferred from what we previously thought we knew: it contradicted both Newton’s theory and Special Relativity (Einstein 1954, chapters 21–22, appendix V). Further, its predictions were counter-intuitive because they described something contrary to what was previously expected to happen. Yet those predictions survived testing in crucial experiments in which the conflicting predictions of Newton’s theory were refuted. The intuitionist might give up her pedestrian picture of knowledge-acquisition by inference from what we already take ourselves to know and instead propose that moral knowledge may result from new counter-intuitive conjectures which survive testing. But that proposal will not work within the intuitionist structure. Any new counter-intuitive conjectures will lack ‘‘prima facie justification,’’ so they will be refuted by those of the intuitionist’s ‘‘prima facie justified’’ intuitive beliefs to which they are counter. In science, new counter-intuitive theories can survive testing only because they are not tested against intuitive beliefs, but are, rather, tested against new observation-statements prompted by sensory experience.

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The intuitionist might try to remedy this by insisting that new ethical conjectures are tested, not against intuitions, but against moral observation-statements. It is true that, as we saw in section 4, moral observations depend upon the observer’s background moral views; but, the intuitionist may point out, observations in the sciences are also theory-laden. However, there is a contrast between theory-laden observation-statements in science and those in . Suppose, for example, that an Aristotelian, a Galilean, a Newtonian and an Einsteinian are conversing when they all observe the same event. The Aristotelian says: ‘‘that apple left the tree-branch in search of its natural place.’’ The Galilean says: ‘‘that apple fell to Earth.’’ The Newtonian says: ‘‘that apple was pulled to the ground by the Earth’s gravity.’’ The Einsteinian says: ‘‘that apple took the easiest course through curved space-time.’’ These theorists’ observation-statements are inconsistent with each other. Each observer interprets what she sees in terms of her background views. Without making an inference, each may see what she says she sees; or, more accurately, the same event may be seen as a different type of event by each of the observers. However, there is a neutral observation-statement that all four can agree upon; perhaps, ‘‘that apple moved from the tree-branch to the ground in approximately a straight line.’’ The four conflicting views which generate the four conflicting observation-statements can be tested against observation-statements which are phrased neutrally with respect to the four views. We know the result: General Relativity is better than Newton’s theory, which is better than Galileo’s, which is better than ’s, even though it is Aristotle’s view that has a claim to be closest to our ‘‘natural’’ way of viewing things, given the animistic beliefs of children and of tribal peoples (Piaget 1929, chapters 5–7). An observation-statement which is neutral with respect to those four views will not be neutral with respect to some others. For example, a fifth person may say: ‘‘that was not an apple.’’ In that case, a neutral observation-statement may be: ‘‘that approximately-spherical object moved from the tree-branch to the ground in approximately a straight line.’’ A sixth person may have some startling new theory of motion which requires formulating a neutral observation-statement in a way which we cannot anticipate. There is no observation-statement describing the event which is neutral with respect to all views. Still, we expect that we can find a formulation that is neutral with respect to all the views in contention in a given discussion because we think that our observations are experiences which bring us into contact with aspects of an external world, so the alternative interpretations in contention can be stripped away, not to reveal some content which is free of interpretation, but to enable us, with effort, to find an interpretation on which we can agree. So far, I guess, we have not often been disappointed in that expectation, at least where the participants are co-operating with each other. The situation is different when we turn to moral observation-statements. Recall the two people viewing the youths torturing the tethered bird: because of their differing background moral views, one sees the action as wrong, the other as not wrong, but as good or even right. There is, of course, a neutral observation- statement that the two can agree upon; perhaps, ‘‘those youths treated that bird so roughly that they killed it.’’ However, that is not a moral observation-statement; and it does not seem that there will be a moral observation-statement that is neutral 123 642 D. Frederick between the two moral views. Once the moral interpretations in contention are stripped away, only a non-evaluative observation-statement remains. That is because the moral features of our observations are not part of their sensory content: they are an input, not from the external world, but only from our interpretative views. That is not to say that moral properties are not objective features of an independently existing world; it is simply to point out the absence of sensory interaction with moral features of an independently existing world. A counter-intuitive scientific theory is one which contradicts our current expectations or ‘‘intuitions.’’ However, it can survive testing because we can devise experiments to yield observations the content of which is currently unknown and a neutral description of which might, or might not, conflict with predictions derived from the theory. That, in turn, is possible because, it seems, the non-evaluative content of the observations involves an input not only from our interpretative views but also from an independently existing world. So, neutral observation-statements newly accepted in response to experiments suggested by a new theory can refute previously accepted views. In contrast, the fact that the moral features of our observations do not seem to involve a sensory input from the external world prevents such independent tests of moral views against moral observation- statements. Testing of moral views against moral observation-statements, it seems, will always be question-begging: a moral view, so long as it is consistent, will survive tests carried out by an adherent of the view, because the same moral view will be used to interpret the observations; but a moral view will fail tests carried out by an opponent of the view, because a rival moral view will be used to interpret the observations. Thus, the intuitionist attempt to explain how it can be possible to obtain substantial moral knowledge by inference from insubstantial premises by drawing an analogy with science breaks down at several points.

8 Phenomenal Conservatism

Huemer thinks that the truth of intuitionism is implied by the principle of phenomenal conservatism (2005, pp. 107–8, 231–33) and that any denial of the latter is self-defeating (pp. 99–101). He formulates the principle in five different ways, each of which is problematic:

(P1) it is reasonable to assume that things are as they appear, in the absence of grounds for doubting this (2005, p. xiii); (P2) other things being equal, it is reasonable to assume that things are the way they appear (2005, p. 99); (P3) appearances are rationally presumed true, until evidence of their falsity or unreliability appears (2005, p. 146); (P4) if it seems to one that p, then one has at least prima facie justification for believing that p (2001, p. 99; 2005, p. 232); (P5) if it seems to one that p, then, in the absence of defeaters, one thereby has at least some degree of justification for believing that p (2007, p. 30). 123 Ethical Intuitionism: A Structural Critique 643

Even if (P1) is true, it is irrelevant to us because our fallibility means that there is always a ground for doubting what appears to us to be the case. Given that it does not say which other things must be equal, (P2) has negligible content: it says little more than that it is reasonable to assume that things are the way they appear, except when it is not reasonable to do so. Given that there are always grounds for doubt, (P3) seems arbitrary: it seems equally rational to presume that appearances are false until evidence of their truth or reliability appears. Consequently, (P4) and (P5) seem plainly false: given one’s fallibility, its seeming to one that p, even in the absence of ‘‘defeaters,’’ does not provide any kind of epistemic justification for believing that p. Huemer says that an appearance is a mental state in which it seems or appears to one that something is the case, as in perception, memory, introspection or intellection (2005, p. 99). He says that an initial appearance can be overruled only by other appearances which are stronger (2005, p. 100). Even if that is so, we just noted that an initial appearance can be undermined by doubt. Huemer goes on to say that the function of arguments is to change the way things seem to one’s audience, by presenting other propositions (premises) that seem true and seem to support something (the conclusion) that may not initially have seemed true to the audience. He also says that an argument has force only to the extent that its premises seem true and seem to support its conclusion (p. 101). Both statements are false. First, persuasion is only one function of argument; another is the discovery of what a proposition or theory entails, another is to discover whether two theories are inconsistent with each other, another is to show how one proposition may be derived from a set of other propositions, another is to irritate people who dislike ratiocination, and so on. Second, it is false that an argument has force only to the extent that its premises seem true and seem to support its conclusion. In a reductio ad absurdum the premise is shown to be false by deducing a contradiction from it; so long as the argument is valid, it has great force despite its apparently false premise and insupportable conclusion. Huemer continues: Intellectual inquiry presupposes Phenomenal Conservatism, in the sense that such inquiry proceeds by assuming things are the way they appear, until evidence (itself drawn from appearances) arises to cast doubt on this. Even the arguments of a philosophical skeptic who says we aren’t justified in believing anything rest upon the skeptic’s own beliefs, which are based upon what seems to the skeptic to be true. This indicates in brief why I take any denial of Phenomenal Conservatism to be self-defeating (2005, p. 101; see also 2001, pp. 105–8, and 2007, pp. 39–42, 49–50). Huemer’s attempted refutation of the sceptic is mistaken. The consistent sceptic’s arguments invoke no beliefs of his own; indeed, given his scepticism he should suspend belief entirely (at least, insofar as that is psychologically possible). His argument against justified belief uses no premises of his own: he uses the premises of his opponent in his argument that justified belief is impossible. His argument is a reductio ad absurdum. He may even doubt the validity of his argument: it is enough

123 644 D. Frederick that his opponent accepts it. Such sceptical arguments are not self-defeating; but if they are valid, justificationism is self-defeating (Bartley 1990, pp. 243–51). Huemer is also mistaken in maintaining that intellectual inquiry proceeds by assuming that things are the way they appear, until evidence (itself drawn from appearances) arises to cast doubt on that. At least, it is false that intellectual inquiry must proceed in that way. As Karl Popper (1959) showed, all that is needed is a class of ‘‘basic statements’’ to which agreement can generally be obtained (in the empirical sciences, observation-statements) and agreement on procedures governing the testing of speculative theories against basic statements and the acceptance of statements generally. Accepted statements, including accepted ‘‘basic statements,’’ are not accepted as true or as ‘‘prima facie justified;’’ their acceptance is just one step in ‘‘the game of science’’ (Popper, 1959, section 11). That seems to be a game worth playing because it seems to have produced astounding advances in our understanding of the world. Even the sceptic, who doubts that things are as they appear, can play the game, though he will make it clear that he doubts that any accepted statements, whether observation-statements or scientific theories, are true. Indeed, Erwin Schro¨dinger played the game and made substantial contributions to quantum physics, despite believing that things are not as they appear, and that all accepted observation-statements and scientific theories are literally false, because the whole spatio-temporal world as it appears to us, both physical and mental, is an illusion (Schro¨dinger 1960). Schro¨dinger arrived at his metaphysical views as a result of inquiry, but even someone brought up in a Buddhist community, who believed such prior to inquiry, could play the game of science and contribute to the growth of knowledge by accepting observation-statements that can be agreed generally to describe how things appear (even though he believes those statements to be false) and adhering to the rest of Popper’s procedures (or something like them), procedures that partly constitute the institution of science. Therefore, the principle of phenomenal conservatism is false or otherwise problematic (depending on its formulation), denying it need not be self-defeating, and it is not needed for intellectual inquiry. The question of whether or not it entails intuitionism need not detain us.

9 Conclusion

Ethical intuitionists maintain that moral knowledge consists of intuitive moral beliefs grounded in reflection or observation or emotion, and beliefs that are inferred from those, directly or indirectly, subject to a coherence constraint which eliminates ‘‘prima facie justified’’ beliefs which conflict with others which have stronger ‘‘prima facie justification,’’ and which favours more unified systems of beliefs over less unified ones. However, moral intuitions, moral observations and moral emotions differ starkly from one culture or sub-culture to another, which undermines the claim that they are sources of non-inferential knowledge about an objective moral reality. The intuitionist attempt to attribute intuitions, observations or emotions that she does not like to bias, or to intellectual or moral failings, seems arbitrary and likely to lead to mutual name-calling. Her attempt to restrict 123 Ethical Intuitionism: A Structural Critique 645 epistemically genuine intuitions, observations or emotions to those which are cross- culturally agreed does not solve that problem and also confines the content of intuitive beliefs to propositions which are too insubstantial to provide an inferential route to substantial moral knowledge concerning, for example, what rights, or what specific duties of benevolence, people have. Even if intuitionists were to allow a process of testing bold counter-intuitive conjectures, in addition to a process of inference from propositions that we already accept, any daring new theories which promised to teach us something new by overturning previously accepted moral views would be rejected because of their lack of ‘‘prima facie justification’’ and their conflict with ‘‘prima facie justified’’ intuitive beliefs; and testing such theories against moral observation-statements would be question-begging. The prospect presented by ethical intuitionism is one of sectarian name-calling, or worse, between intellectually stagnant groups of people who cling to their inherited views and whatever can be derived from them, and who use those views to rule out any surprising new ideas. The only progress permitted is the removal of inconsistencies from a group’s set of inherited views and greater coherence in the group’s overall system of accepted propositions. That sort of progress can be achieved by a novelist constructing a romance. Genuine progress in moral theory, the growth of moral knowledge, requires a different approach. The first requirement must be to eschew concern with justification, even ‘‘prima facie justification,’’ as being an obstacle to progress, since it discourages the development of imaginative, counter-intuitive moral theories which may teach us something new. Instead of attempting to justify our views we should try to improve them or to replace them with better ones. The second requirement is to supplant intuitionist inter-group verbal abuse with inter- theoretic criticism: the question of whether the adherents of a view are biased, or guilty of intellectual or moral failings, is irrelevant so long as we are able to test the view. That generates the third requirement, which is to find a way of testing moral views objectively. As we have seen, testing moral views against moral intuitions or observations (or emotions) is question-begging. We could, however, follow the path of science if we were able to test moral views against non-evaluative observation- statements on which agreement can be reached. That generates the fourth requirement: we need a meta-ethical postulate linking moral and non-evaluative matters. One possibility, on which it may be possible to secure wide agreement, from theologians, contractarians, contractualists, evolutionary theorists and rule- consequentialists, is the meta-ethical postulate that the point or function of is to promote general human fulfilment. Acceptance of such a postulate would enable us to compare rival moral theories according to the consequences for human fulfilment if they were universally acted upon. However, the development of that proposal requires a separate paper. Suppose, counterfactually, that there existed broad cross-cultural agreement on moral intuitions with substantial content. Under that condition, we might have been able to develop a body of moral theory that we could count as objective knowledge. We might even have achieved progress in knowledge insofar as we were able to develop imaginative theories that we could test against generally agreed substantial intuitions. But such a system of knowledge, it seems, would not be characterised by 123 646 D. Frederick the leaps in understanding that have been achieved in the empirical sciences, because moral intuitions cannot plausibly be supposed to generate the sorts of novelties that can turn up in observations of the physical world. Further, that system of moral knowledge would be defective if there were a different system, discoverable only by empirical investigation, universal compliance with which would have greater benefits for general human fulfilment. So, even under the supposed counterfactual condition, an approach to moral knowledge that rendered moral theories empirical should be attempted.

Acknowledgements I thank Mark D. Friedman for helpful discussion of an early draft of this paper, and a referee for this journal for acute queries, objections and suggestions that enabled me to improve the paper significantly.

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