Ethical Intuitionism Ethical Intuitionism Michael Huemer palgrave macmillan © Michael Huemer 2005 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2005 978-1-4039-8968-0 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the * Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, 90 Tottenham Court Road, London WH 4LP. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The author has asserted his right to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First published 2005 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS and 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N. Y. 10010 Companies and representatives throughout the world PALGRAVE MACMILLAN is the global academic imprint of the Palgrave Macmillan division of St. Martin's Press, LLC and of Palgrave Macmillan Ltd. Macmillan® is a registered trademark in the United States, United Kingdom and other countries. Palgrave is a registered trademark in the European Union and other countries. ISBN 978-1-349-73956-1 ISBN 978-0-230-50317-5 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-0-230-50317-5 This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Huemer, Michael, 1969- Ethical intuitionism/Michael Huemer. p.cm. Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index. ISBN 978-1-349-73956-1 (cloth) 1. Ethical intuitionism. 2. Ethics. 3. Intuition. I. Title. BJ1472.H842005 170' .42-dc22 2005052289 10 9 8 7 6 543 2 1 14 13 12 11 10 09 08 07 06 05 Transferred to digital printing 2007 For my students The only real valuable thing is intuition. ALBERT EINSTEIN Contents Analytical Contents ix Preface xxii 1 Introduction 1 PART I Alternative Metaethical Theories 15 2 Non-Cognitivism 17 3 Subjectivism 48 4 Reductionism 66 PART II Ethical Intuitionism 97 5 Moral Knowledge 99 6 Disagreement and Error 128 7 Practical Reasons 155 8 Further Objections 199 9 Conclusion 224 Notes 255 References 285 Index 297 vii Analytical Contents 1 INTRODUCTION 1 1.1 The field of metaethics 1 Metaethics addresses questions about the nature of evalua­ tive statements and judgments, including questions about the meaning of evaluative discourse, our knowledge of value, the objectivity of value, and how value judgments provide reasons for action. 1.2 What is objectivity? 2 An objective property of a thing is one that does not consti­ tutively depend on observers' attitudes towards that thing. 1.3 Five metaethical theories 4 There are exactly five metaethical theories: non-cognitivism, subjectivism, nihilism, naturalism, and intuitionism. 1.4 An alternative taxonomy of metaethical views 7 Metaethical theories may divided into monistic and dualistic theories. Monistic theories may be further divided into reductionist and eliminativist theories; but these theories differ from one another only semantically. Only intuitionism is dualistic and differs fundamentally from all other theories. 1.5 A rationalist intuitionism 9 I will defend a form of intuitionism according to which terms such as 'good' refer to objective, irreducible value properties, which we know about on the basis of rational intuition, and our evaluative judgments give us reasons for action independent of our desires. 1.6 Background assumptions 11 I assume that there are objective facts and knowledge outside the area of ethics. I shall argue that ethics is no different. ix x Analytical Contents PART I: ALTERNATIVE METAETHICAL THEORIES 2 NON-COGNITIVISM 17 2.1 Classical non-cognitivism 17 Non-cognitivists hold that evaluative statements do not assert propositions; instead, they are more like imperatives or expressions of emotion. 2.2 How can we tell if cognitivism is tme? 18 Non-cognitivism should be tested empirically, by examining how we use evaluative language. 2.3 The linguistic evidence for cognitivism 20 In ordinary language, evaluative statements behave in every discernible way like cognitive statements. Non-cognitivists have difficulty making sense of many ordinary statements involving evaluative terms. *2.4 Hare on moral tmth 2S Hare unsuccessfully tries to explain why we can call evalua­ tive statements 'true' and 'false'. *2.5 Gibbard's factual-normative worlds 30 Gibbard's notion of factual-normative worlds offers no solution to the Frege-Geach problem. *2.6 Blackburn's solutions 34 Blackburn's solution to the Frege-Geach problem rests on misinterpretations of language and fails to address several related problems for non-cognitivism. *2.7 Timmons' assertoric non-descriptivism 38 Timmons' theory cannot account for moral error and cannot explain the distinction between realism and anti-realism. 2.8 The introspective evidence 44 Introspectively, moral judgments seem just like beliefs, and unlike emotions, desires, or other non-cognitive states. 3 SUBJECTIVISM 48 3.1 What is subjectivism? 48 Subjectivists hold that evaluative statements report the attitudes of observers towards the objects of evaluation. Different forms of subjectivism invoke, respectively, the attitudes of individuals, society, God, or hypothetical ideal observers. Analytical Contents xi 3.2 Individualist subjectivism 49 Individualist subjectivism implies that Nazi moral statements are true, that moral disagreement is impossible, that I am morally infallible, and that arbitrary attitudes generate obligations. 3.3 Cultural relativism S 1 Cultural relativism suffers from analogous problems. 3.4 The divine command theory S4 The divine command theory of ethics suffers from some of the same problems. In addition, there are questions about whether God exists and how we can know what he wants if he does. *3.5 The ideal observer theory 60 If we are careful to make the theory non-circular, the ideal observer theory faces analogous problems to those facing individual subjectivism and cultural relativism. 3.6 The subjectivist fallacy 63 The most common arguments for subjectivism rest on transparent confusions between belief and truth, and between what causes a belief and the content of the belief. 4 REDUCTIONISM 66 4.1 What is reductionism? 66 Reductionists believe (i) that what it is for a thing to be good can be explained using non-evaluative expressions, and (ii) that we know moral truths on the basis of observation. 4.2 Analytic reductionism 67 Analytic reductionists believe that some non-evaluative expression is synonymous with 'good'. This is refuted by G. E. Moore's Open Question Argument. 4.3 The is-ought gap 72 4.3.1 Hume's Law: an initial statement 72 It is impossible to validly deduce an evaluative statement from non-evaluative premises. *4.3.2 Searle's challenge 74 Searle's attempted counter-example fails due to equivoca­ tion. xii Analytical Contents *4.3.3 Geach's challenge 76 Geach's attempted counter-example fails because it is invalid and one of its premises is evaluative. *4.3.4 Prior's challenge 78 Prior's counter-example is uninteresting since it cannot provide a plausible model of how typical ethical knowl­ edge is gained. *4.3.5 Kanno's proof 79 Karmo has proven in general that there is no sound derivation of a non-trivial evaluative proposition from non-evaluative premises, where an evaluative proposition is one whose truth, once all the natural facts have been fixed, depends on which value system is correct. 4.4 Synthetic reductionism 83 Synthetic reductionists hold that, although the meaning of 'good' cannot be given using non-evaluative expressions, one can explain what goodness is using non-evaluative expres­ sions. 4.4.1 Can moral facts be known by observation? 84 Even if moral properties are reducible, it would be falla­ cious to infer that we can know moral truths by observa­ tion. We cannot observe that a thing is good, because there is no distinctive way that good things look, sound, smell, taste, or feel. 4.4.2 Can moral facts be known by inference to the best explanation? 88 Even if some moral facts are explanatory, we cannot know moral truths by inference to the best explanation, because moral facts do not explain any observations that could not be explained as well by non-moral facts. *4.4.3 Can moral claims be tested? 90 Moral theories do not generate any testable predictions without relying either on ad hoc posits or on the assump­ tion that conscious beings have some independent access to moral truths. *4.4.4 The unifying power of moral explanations 92 Moral explanations of some observations might offer the advantage of unifying seemingly disparate phenomena. But competing explanations of the same phenomena that either invoke different moral properties or posit unified Analytical Contents xiii non-moral properties can achieve the same advantage. 4.5 The argument from radical dissimilarity 94 The Simplest argument against reductionism is that moral properties just seem, on their face, radically different from natural properties. 4.6 Explaining moral beliefs 95 Reductionist accounts of how moral beliefs might be justified fail to apply to nearly anyone's actual beliefs. PART II: ETHICAL INTUITIONISM 5 MORAL KNOWLEDGE 99 5.1 The principle of Phenomenal Conservatism 99 It is reasonable to assume that things are as they appear, in the absence of grounds for doubting this. Judgment in general presupposes this principle. 5.2 Ethical intuitions 101 Intuitions are defined as initial, intellectual appearances. Ethical intuitions are intuitions with evaluative contents. They are not merely beliefs or products of beliefs. Not all intuitions are equally credible.