Brink, David - Principles and Intuitions in Ethics: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives

2014/08/22

Ethics, Vol 124 No 4 (July 2014)

This paper sets out to revisit the contrast between Mill's moral naturalism and Sidgwick's Intuitionism from the 19th century and see how today's Intuitionism is more akin to Mill's naturalism. Author fist reviews the various historical -isms:
-Intuitionism: 19th and 20th century position that moral knowledge rests on precepts that are self-evident after proper reflection (pg666). Except for Sidgwick, mostof them had deontologist/teleological values.
-Naturalism, in contrast, is harder to define. Author takes an extended discussion about utilitarianism as, in Mill's case, the standard for right conduct, even if it isn't always a guide for action (pg667-8). The guides to action, at least according to Mill, can be "Secondary principles" such as honesty, fidelity, fairness. They may seem instrumental, but author argues Mill saw them as more important than that. These sorts of principles can be established when 1) following them generally leads to optimal results and 2) it can't be reliably determined when following the rule would lead to sub-optimal results (pg668).
When discussing the contrast between Naturalism and Intuitionism, author uses Sidgwick's tripartite discussion of moral judgment: particular actions (perceptual), action types (dogmatic), and, finally principles (philosophical) (pg669-70); Mill focuses on and rejects perceptual and dogmatic. Mill's critique is rooted in denying innate or infallible judgments to moral knowledge: the (dogmatic) acceptance of action types is rooted in their heretofore "acceptance value", which is actually justified by past utility (pg670-1). Mill's strategy here is to subsume intuitionist deontology or values into mid-level moral action types, which then get final justification from the first principle of utility (pg670-1,674). Finally, a general outline of Naturalist moral principles are: fallible, brought out by dialectically, and empirical a posteriori (pg671).
Sidgwick criticizes both perceptual and dogmatic forms of Intuitionism, but ultimately accepts philosophical Intuitionism, claiming that first principles are objects of genuine intuition (pg671-2). So the debate among Sidgwick and Mill comes down to whether first principles are matters of intuition (self-evidential, axiomatic) or some other way of knowing. Author replies that if the first principles are axiomatic, how could one decide which principles to adopt? The possible Naturalistic reply would be: adopt the principles that seem to account for (justify) more type and token moral judgments (pg673-5). This is considered "bottom-up epistemic justification" of "top-down metaphysical dependence"; Sidgwick and Mill both agree that utilitarianism gives the best "fit" for common sense morality. 
Author moves on to the more modern day, and claims that the "contemporary heir" to Mill's naturalism about first principles is Rawls' method of reflective equilibrium. Author does not want the considered judgments, when reached during reflective equilibrium, to be considered rational intuitions because they are not innate or infallible (pg676-7). However, Rawls believes the best "fit" is his theory of justice, not utilitarianism. However, the naturalist quest for "fit" of philosophical principles can get complicated by the scope of the project. Should the principles pass a "publicity test", or be psychologically real, or fit with human nature? (pg678-9). Here, author discusses various biases that can enter into the moral judgment and discusses the difficulties with a "broad equilibrium" (pg680).
The next discussion seeks to distinguish the fitting of moral intuitions using Naturalism from Rational Intuitionist commitments. For this, author claims "it might be instructive to look at strands in recent empirical moral psychology". The idea here is that experimental work on moral intuitions uncovers a variety of biases and outcomes that cannot wholeheartedly underwrite moral principles. Instead, author argues, intuitions will have to be taken to be defeasible, or fallible, which will make a new Intuitionism look more like Naturalism. Author discusses Cass Sunstein's use of moral heuristics which are prone to error in tough cases, Jonathan Haidt's empirical work about supposed recalcitrant intuitions, and Kahneman & Tversky's work with the effects of framing on moral questions (pg681-691).