Abstract

While some of our deepest moral intuitions are consequentialist in nature, others are decidedly not. This difference at the intuitive level is reflected at the theoretical level by two equally venerable traditions of moral philosophy, consequentialism and deontology. One of the main problems of theory selection in ethics is that neither tradition appears fully able to account for both kinds of intuitions. ;To solve this problem, the thesis posits an epistemological connection between moral intuition and moral theory. The general human capacity for making impartial judgements is characterized as a moral competence, of which the general rules of the two competing kinds of theories are considered alternative representations. To show that it is such a competence which leads us to have the intuitions that we do, two tests of this hypothesis are developed. ;The first test has two stages: do our intuitions best achieve the aim our competence would give us, if it were correctly represented by the rules of one of the two kinds of theories; given this competence, together with other relevant epistemological factors, could we have arrived at the intuitions which we in fact have? The second test presupposes a negative response to , and asks whether we might not have arrived at intuitions which fail to best achieve our competence-based aim because of some fault in the combination of our competence with the other relevant epistemological factors. ;The thesis argues that while one kind of theory promises to pass the first test, the other promises to fail both. Given the equally fundamental nature of the two kinds of intuitions and the differential results of the two tests, the thesis concludes that it is reasonable to suppose that our moral intuitions are informed by a rule-governed moral competence