Intuitionism: How we Come to Gain Moral Knowledge

Abstract

Intuitionism is a theory about what we know and about how we come to know in morals. We need now to consider this latter aspect of it, namely, how we come to gain moral knowledge. The usual intuitionist answer, and that which I suggest is the right answer, is that we discover general truths about goods and obligations by direct insight, by rational apprehension of them. These truths are self-evident in the sense that they may be directly apprehended by reason and their truth discovered without proof. We may and do make mistakes but our knowledge, where we have it, is based on direct insight. It is general truths such as ‘Pleasure is good’, ‘Elimination of suffering is obligatory’, ‘Killing for its own sake is evil’ which are self-evident, not our absolute duties in concrete moral situations. These truths are apprehended by reason. Hume and others have denied that there is such a capacity of reason and have rejected the claim to intuitive moral knowledge on this among other grounds. They are to be refuted by examining the nature of reason and determining its powers, and also by noting what goes on in moral deliberation, in particular, how we come to accept new moral insights and to reject old ones.