The Phenomenology of Moral Intuition

Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 25 (1):53-69 (2022)
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Abstract

Moral judgment commonly depends on intuition. It is also true, though less widely agreed, that ethical theory depends on it. The nature and epistemic status of intuition have long been concerns of philosophy, and, with the increasing importance of ethical intuitionism as a major position in ethics, they are receiving much philosophical attention. There is growing agreement that intuition conceived as a kind of seeming is essential for both the justification of moral judgment and the confirmation of ethical theories. This paper describes several importantly different kinds of intuition, particularly the episodic kinds often called seemings. This is done partly by sketching numerous examples of intuition. Intuitive seemings and moral judgments based on them differ in content, basis, epistemic authority, and phenomenology. The paper explores these four dimensions of intuition and, in doing so, compares moral intuition with moral perception. The overall aim is to clarify moral phenomenology both descriptively and epistemologically and to support the view that intuitions are often discriminative responses to experience and have justificatory power analogous to the power of sense-perceptions.

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Robert N. Audi
University of Notre Dame

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References found in this work

Groundwork for the metaphysics of morals.Immanuel Kant - 1785 - New York: Oxford University Press. Edited by Thomas E. Hill & Arnulf Zweig.
Critique of practical reason.Immanuel Kant - 1788 - New York,: Liberal Arts Press. Edited by Mary J. Gregor.
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Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals.Immanuel Kant - 1785/2002 - In Practical Philosophy. Cambridge University Press. pp. 37-108.

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