Reason and Intuition in the Moral Life: A Cognitivist Defense of Moral Intuitions

It is common in moral philosophy to appeal to so-called “moral intuitions” about cases as a means of building and defending moral theories. Intuitions are often taken as the starting point for theories, and intuitions are tested against moral theories until reflective equilibrium is achieved. The process of reflective equilibrium is supposed to provide rational justification for moral theories and moral intuitions, but any explanation of how moral intuitions could be rationally grounded faces two distinct challenges. The first is that of moral dumbfounding, which seems to show that moral intuitions are arational emotional responses to situations that we then try to rationalize by appeal to socially accepted rules. The second challenge comes from the twosystems theory of reasoning, which generally holds that intuitions are not corrigible to explicitly reasoned theories, and therefore not subject to rational revision. This paper addresses both of these challenges, and draws upon a recent model of the mental architecture subserving norms to show “how possibly” the two-systems theory of rationality can actually support the view that moral intuitions can be subject to rational criticism and modified by explicit reasoning. This model, suitably filled out, demonstrates how reflective equilibrium can be psychologically realized, and thus, how moral intuitions can be rationally grounded. It is a well-established phenomenon in moral philosophy that there are times when moral judgments seem to appear fully formed in the conscious mind, without any prior thought or reflection. Although it may not be commonly put this way, philosophers regularly appeal to this understanding of moral judgments when presenting artificial case studies, like the trolley problem, and attempting to elicit our moral intuitions about the situation. Such intuitions are often taken as the starting point for elucidating theory. For example, Thomson uses her intuitions about the trolley problems and its variants to draw the theoretical conclusion that deflecting harm is morally permissible, whereas causing harm by the direct laying on of hands is not. (Thomson, 1976.) However, for those who hold that moral judgments must somehow be rationally grounded, the existence of pre-theoretic moral intuitions poses a serious prima facie challenge, because intuitions do not appear to be a product of any rational process. Intuitions come easily and automatically to mind, with an almost perception-like quality, which is quite different from the slow and deliberative process that characterizes carefully reasoned judgments. Furthermore, when we reason through a judgment, assuming it is not too complicated, we know how we arrived at the judgment, the logical inferences we made, etc. Intuitions, on the other hand, just seem to appear in the mind, and it takes some real philosophical work to figure out what principles, if any, underlie them. To further complicate the picture, moral intuitions are not novelties that arise from time to time within an overall schema of carefully reasoned moral judgments. Rather, ordinary online