Online research in philosophy

Intuitions are often thought of as inputs to theoretical reasoning. For example, you might form a belief by taking an intuition at face value, or you might take your intuitions as starting points in the method of reflective equilibrium. The aim of this paper is to argue that in addition to these roles intuitions also play action-guiding roles. One form this takes is internal to theoretical reasoning: in addition to serving as inputs to theoretical reasoning, intuitions also guide it, enabling the transmission of justification through inference. They play a similar role in guiding practical reasoning, enabling an action to be done for a reason. After making a case for assigning intuitions these additional action-guiding roles, I consider what it is in virtue of which an intuition can play such roles. I conclude by exploring the implications intuition’s playing these roles might have for two philosophical debates, one about the viability of moral intuitionism, and one about the epistemology of inference.

Recently, a new movement of philosophers, called 'experimental philosophy', has suggested that the philosophers' favored armchair is in flames. In order to assess some of their claims, it is helpful to provide a theoretical background against which we can discuss whether certain facts are, or could be, evidence for or against a certain view about how philosophical intuitions work and how good they are. In this paper, I will be mostly concerned with providing such a theoretical background, and I will start discussing in which way experimental philosophy challenges the reliability of philosophical intuitions and how its challenge fits into some more theoretical considerations that also point towards a reliability problem for intuitions. The paper attempts to argue that a certain account of intuitions—the imaginationist account—is available which is well-suited for explicating the expertise reply to the challenge of experimental philosophy.

Crossing the border into the moral domain changes moral thinking in two ways: (1) the facts at hand become “anthropocentric” facts not easily open to revision, and (2) moral reasoning is often the servant of moral intuitions, making it difficult for people to challenge their own intuitions. Sunstein's argument is sound, but policy makers are likely to resist.

It is sometimes alleged that “the reliability challenge” to moral realism is equally compelling against mathematical realism. This allegation is of interest. The reliability challenge to moral realism is increasingly taken to be the most serious challenge to moral realism. However, the specific considerations that are said to motivate it – such as considerations of rational dubitability and evolutionary influence – are widely held not to motivate an analogous challenge to mathematical realism. If it turned out that, in fact, they do, then one might have to choose between moral realism and mathematical realism.

Nevertheless, the relevant allegation has never been clarified, let alone evaluated. In this paper, I clarify and evaluate it. I argue that the allegation is plausible, but depends on theses in the philosophy of mathematics that are widely doubted. One upshot of the discussion is that mathematical realism faces challenges that have not been widely appreciated. Another is that the reliability challenge to moral realism may not be the most interesting epistemological challenge to moral realism.
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Various theories have been put forward in an attempt to explain what makes moral judgments justifiable. One of the main theories currently advocated in bioethics is a form of coherentism known as wide reflective equilibrium. In this paper, I argue that wide reflective equilibrium is not a satisfactory approach for justifying moral beliefs and propositions. A long-standing theoretical problem for reflective equilibrium has not been adequately resolved, and, as a result, the main arguments for wide reflective equilibrium are unsuccessful. Moreover, practical problems that arise in using the method of wide reflective equilibrium undermine the idea that it is a viable approach for justifying moral judgments about cases and policies. Given that wide reflective equilibrium is the most prominent version of coherentism, these considerations call into question the coherentist approach to justification in bioethics.

A common objection to utilitarianism is that it clashes with our common moral intuitions. Understanding the role that heuristics play in moral judgments undermines this objection. It also indicates why we should not use John Rawls' model of reflective equilibrium as the basis for testing normative moral theories.

The input objection to reflective equilibrium (RE) claims that the method fails as a method of moral justification. According to the objection considered moral judgments(CMJs) are not truth‐conducive. Because the method uses inputs that are not credible the method does not generate justified moral beliefs. I solve the input objection by reinterpreting RE using contemporary developments in ethical intuitionism. In the first half of the thesis I setup the input objection, explore potential responses to the objection and uncover the best way to solve the objection. The second half of the thesis solves the input objection by defining key terms, detailing the revised RE procedure, reinserting the notion of a competent moral judge into the method, using intuitionist criteria for identifying genuine moral intuitions, creating three filters capable of sorting good from bad CMJs, and showing how it is possible to assign evidential weight to CMJs so that they can be used as standards against which moral principles can be measured and a justified moral theory realized.

Ethical theory often starts with our intuitions about particular cases and tries to uncover the principles that are implicit in them; work on the ‘trolley problem’ is a paradigmatic example of this approach. But ethicists are no longer the only ones chasing trolleys. In recent years, psychologists and neuroscientists have also turned to study our moral intuitions and what underlies them. The relation between these two inquiries, which investigate similar examples and intuitions, and sometimes produce parallel results, is puzzling. Does it matter to ethics whether its armchair conclusions match the psychologists’ findings? I argue that reflection on this question exposes psychological presuppositions implicit in armchair ethical theorising. When these presuppositions are made explicit, it becomes clear that empirical evidence can (and should) play a positive role in ethical theorising. Unlike recent assaults on the armchair, the argument I develop is not driven by a naturalist agenda, or meant to cast doubt on the reliability of our moral intuitions; on the contrary, it is even compatible with non-naturalism, and takes the reliability of intuition as its premise. The argument is rather that if our moral intuitions are reliable, then psychological evidence should play a surprisingly significant role in the justification of moral principles.

Practical equilibrium, like reflective equilibrium, is a way of deciding what to think about morality. It shares with reflective equilibrium the general thesis that there is some way in which a moral theory must, in order to be acceptable, answer to one’s moral intuitions, but it differs from reflective equilibrium in its specification of exactly how a moral theory must answer to one’s intuitions. Whereas reflective equilibrium focuses on a theory’s consistency with those intuitions, practical equilibrium also gives weight to a theory’s approval of one’s having those intuitions.

In a recent paper, Peter Singer suggests that some interesting new findings in experimental moral psychology support what he has contended all along—namely that intuitions should play little or no role in adequate justifications of normative ethical positions. Not only this but, according to Singer, these findings point to a central flaw in the method (or epistemological theory) of reflective equilibrium used by many contemporary moral philosophers. In this paper, we try to defend reflective equilibrium from Singer’s attack and, in part, we do this by discussing Singer’s own favoured moral methodology as outlined in his Practical Ethics . Although basing ethics solely on (certain kinds of) intuitions certainly is problematic, we argue, basing it solely on ‘reason’ gives rise to similar problems. The best solution would arguably be one which could strike a balance between the two—but, we suggest, this is precisely what reflective equilibrium is all about.