RATIONALIST ETHICAL INTUITIONISM

Rational intuition

The rationalist version of ethical intuitionism models ethical intuitions on a priori, non-empirically-based intuitions of truths, such as basic truths of mathematics.^[27]

Take for example the belief that two minus one is one.

This piece of knowledge is often thought to be non-inferential in that it is not grounded in or justified by some other proposition or claim.

Rather, one who understands the relevant concepts involved in the proposition that two minus one is one has what one might call an "intuition" of the truth of the proposition.

One intuits the truth of the proposition, rather than inferring it.

Likewise, the ethical intuitionist claims that basic moral truths—whether they are principles (such as don't kill people) or judgments (such as it is wrong to kill people)—are known without inference, and in particular they are known via one's rational intuition.

Some rationalist ethical intuitionists characterize moral "intuitions" as a species of belief (for example, Audi, 2005, pp. 33–6) that are self-evident in that they are justified simply by virtue of one's understanding of the proposition believed.

Others characterize "intuitions" as a distinct kind of mental state, in which something seems to one to be the case (whether one believes it or not) as a result of intellectual reflection.

Michael Huemer (2005), for example, defines "intuition" as a sort of seeming:

Reasoning sometimes changes how things seem to us. But there is also a way things seem to us prior to reasoning; otherwise, reasoning could not get started. The way things seem prior to reasoning we may call an 'initial appearance'. An initial, intellectual appearance is an 'intuition'.

That is, an intuition that p is a state of its seeming to one that p that is not dependent on inference from other beliefs and that results from thinking about p, as opposed to perceiving, remembering, or introspecting.

An ethical intuition is an intuition whose content is an evaluative proposition. (§5.2)

Regardless of one's definition of rational intuition, intuitionists all agree that rational intuitions are not justified by inference from a separate belief.