## 1. Intuitionist epistemology


### 1.1 Intuition


 

One of the most distinctive features of Ethical Intuitionism is
its epistemology. All of the classic intuitionists maintained that
basic moral propositions are self-evident--that is, evident in
and of themselves--and so can be known without the need of any
argument. Price distinguishes intuition from two other grounds of
knowledge--namely, immediate consciousness or feeling on the one
hand, and argumentation, on the other. Argumentation, or deduction, is
knowledge that is ultimately derived from what is immediately
apprehended, either by sensation or by the understanding. Immediate
consciousness, or feeling, is the mind's awareness of its own
existence and mental states (Price, 1758/1969, 159). It shares
immediacy with intuition, but unlike intuition does not have as its
object a self-evident proposition. Such immediate self-consciousness
is immediate apprehension by sensation. Intuition is immediate
apprehension by the understanding. It is the way that we apprehend
self-evident truths, general and abstract ideas, "and anything
else we may discover, without making any use of any process of
reasoning" (1758/1969, 159).




The claim that intuition is immediate apprehension by the
understanding suggests a notion of intuition in Price that is more
akin to current accounts of intuitions as intellectual seemings or
presentations (Bealer 1998; Chudnoff 2013). Intellectual seemings are
the intellectual analogue of perceptual seemings. Just as certain
things can seem perceptually to be a certain way, e.g., coloured, or
straight, so certain propositions can seem to be true, or present
themselves to the mind as true. These seemings are not beliefs, for
something can seem true even though one does not believe it, e.g., it
may seem true that there are more natural numbers than even numbers,
but we know that is false, so do not believe it.




Similarly, on Price's view, an intuition isn't a belief
with certain characteristics, such as being pre-theoretical,
non-derivative, firmly held, etc. Beliefs aren't immediate
apprehensions of anything, though they may be based on such
apprehensions. One might be tempted to think that perceptual beliefs,
such as the belief that there is a cat asleep in front of me, are
immediate apprehensions, but that would be to confuse the perceptual
apprehension of the cat with the belief based on that apprehension.
Beliefs like this, perceptual beliefs, are based on the immediate
experience (sensory intuition) I have of a cat sleeping in front of
me; they are not the sensory intuition itself. As Price understands
it, then, an intellectual intuition is something closely akin to an
experiential presentation, or seeming.




The main difference between early intuitionists' notion of intuition
and intellectual seemings is that the latter is standardly regarded as
non-factive--that is, an intuition that *p* in this sense does
not entail that *p*. An apprehension that *p* does sound factive,
however. One cannot apprehend something that is not there to be
apprehended. What is present to the mind in apprehension is the thing
itself, not our representation of it. So whereas modern
epistemologists regard intuition, understood as an intellectual
seeming or presentation, as something analogous to the non-factive
notion of a perceptual *experience*, it looks like some classic
intuitionists regarded intuition as analogous to the factive notion of
a *perception*. The virtue of the modern, more modest notion of
intuition is that it allows that intuition is fallible. But in doing
this it loses the appeal of the direct realist account Price seems to
work with of certain propositions or facts being immediately present
to the mind.




There is scope for intuitionists to be disjunctivist about such
intuitions. They could maintain that some intuitions are
apprehensions, and some are intellectual seemings. Subjectively we
cannot tell one from the other, but they are, one might argue, very
different states. But it is not evident that anyone has defended such
a view of intuition.




It is not clear that all intuitionists understand intuitions on this
perceptual or quasi-perceptual model, as many do not use this notion
at all. W. D. Ross, for example, uses the notion of apprehension, but
he tends to base his moral theory largely on our considered moral
convictions. "[T]he moral convictions of thoughtful and
well-educated people are the data of ethics, just as sense-perceptions
are the data of natural science" (1930/2002, 41). Convictions
are, however, a certain type of belief rather than an intellectual
apprehension, or seeming. So it looks like we can find two notions of
intuition in intuitionist thought--one understood as an
intellectual seeming or apprehension, and the other as a
 pre-theoretical, non-inferred, firmly held belief or
 conviction.[2]
 Which one they opt for makes a difference to their epistemology.




Like other epistemic foundationalists, Price insists that all
reasoning and knowledge must ultimately rest on propositions that are
not inferred from other premises. For ethical intuitions this
 non-inferred basis of knowledge is self-evident truth grasped by
 intuition.[3]
 It is, however, important to keep intuition and self-evidence separate
for a number of reasons. First, a conscious intuition is a certain
mental state, either a non-inferential belief or an intellectual
seeming. But a self-evident proposition is not a conscious mental
state. Second, intuition is a way in which we are aware of
self-evident propositions, whereas self-evident propositions are the
things that can be known in this way. Such propositions could (pace
Price) be believed without an intuition of them. As I will explain
later, one might have some argument that leads one to believe a
self-evident proposition, or one may believe it on the basis of
authoritative testimony. Thirdly, it may turn out that things other
than self-evident propositions can be grasped by intuition. For
instance, we may have moral intuitions about concrete cases, such as
various trolley cases (see below) and various anti-consequentialist
counter-examples. But it is not obvious that the contents of these
intuitions are self-evident propositions; whether they are may depend
on how self-evidence is understood.




Price claims that self-evident truths are "incapable of
 proof" (1758/1969,
 160).[4]
 Most classical intuitionists endorse this view,
although Ross is arguably an exception. This is easily missed, for he
states at one point that self-evident moral propositions 
"cannot be proved, but ... just as certainly need no proof" 
(1930/2002, 30). But elsewhere in *The Right and the Good* he 
makes only the more restricted claim that such propositions do not
 *need* any
 proof,[5]
 and
despite the fact that he sometimes makes the further claim that they
*cannot* receive any proof by means of argument, this further
 claim does not seem to reflect his considered
 view.[6]
 Evidence that it does not can be found in an
article written three years before the publication of *The Right and
the Good* where he explicitly states that "the fact that
something can be inferred does not prove that it cannot be seen
intuitively" (1927, 121). If he thinks that some proposition can
be inferred from (justified by) other propositions and be self-evident,
he clearly thinks that its being self-evident does not rule out the
possibility of a proof. In any case there is nothing in the notion of a
self-evident proposition that rules out justification or argument for
that proposition. A self-evident proposition is one that we can be
justified in believing without an argument, but this does not rule out
the possibility that there may be such an argument, or justification,
 or that the proposition may be believed on that
 basis.[7]
 Since such arguments are not needed for us to be justified in
believing a self-evident proposition, they are what may be called
'epistemically supererogatory'.




Although there can be an argument for a self-evident or an intuitive proposition, if
intuitions are understood as intellectual seemings, then intuitions
cannot be justified. This is easily missed, as we tend to identify
intuitions with the beliefs based on them, rather than with the
intellectual seemings on which those beliefs are based. But if we take
an intuition to be an intellectual seeming, then intuitions cannot be
justified any more than a perceptual seeming can. Take a perceptual
seeming, such as it's seeming that the wall is green. This
perceptual seeming could be *explained* in various ways, but it
is odd to suppose that this experience could be justified by anything
(which is not to rule out the possibility that the belief based on it
could be justified). This is because we are in a certain sense passive
in relation to such seemings. Similarly, if some proposition presents
itself to the mind as true, then this presentation cannot be justified,
although the belief based on it can be (and we might add, the
proposition intuited can be), for its seeming to be true is not a
conclusion we could arrive at: it's just how certain propositions
present themselves to the mind.




It may be that the reason that Ross switches between making the
stronger claim that self-evident propositions *cannot* be
justified, and the weaker claim that they need no justification, is
that he had in mind a belief in some self-evident proposition when he
said they could be justified, and our intuition (apprehension) of that
proposition when he said that they could not.


### 1.2 Self-evidence




The notion of a self-evident proposition is a term of art in
intuitionist thought, and needs to be distinguished from certain
common sense understandings with which it may easily be conflated. The
first thing to note is that a self-evident proposition is not the same
as an obvious truth. To begin with, obviousness is relative to certain
individuals or groups. What is obvious to you may not be obvious to
me. But self-evidence is not relative in this way. Although a
proposition may be evident to one person but not to another, it could
not be self-evident to one person, but not to another. A proposition
is just self-evident, not self-evident *to* someone. Secondly,
there are many obvious truths that are not self-evident. Certain
well-known empirical truths, for example, that if I drop a heavy
object it will fall, or that the world is bigger than a football, are
obvious but not self-evident. There are also self-evident propositions
that may not be obvious to everyone, at least prior to reflection,
e.g., that if all *A*s are *B*s and no *B*s are *C*s then no *C*s are
*A*s, or that one man can be the father and grandfather of the same child. 


 

What then is it for a proposition to be self-evident? Locke says that
a self-evident proposition is one that "carries its own light
and evidence with it, and needs no other proof: he that understands
the terms, assents to it for its own sake" (1969, 139). Price
tells us that a self-evident proposition is immediate, and needs no
further proof, and goes on to say that self-evident propositions need
only be understood to gain assent 1758/1969, 187). Ross writes, a
self-evident proposition is "evident without any need of proof,
or of evidence beyond itself" (1930/2002, 29), and Broad
describes self-evident propositions as being "such that a
rational being of sufficient insight and intelligence could see it to
be true by merely inspecting it and reflecting on its terms and their
mode of combination" (1936, 102-3). These passages may
have led to the standard understanding of a self-evident proposition
that one finds in Shafer-Landau (2003, 247) and Audi (2001, 603; see
also Audi 2008, 478). Audi, for instance, writes that self evident
propositions are "truths such that (a) adequately understanding
them is sufficient justification for believing them ..., and (b)
believing them on the basis of adequately understanding them entails
knowing them" (2008, 478).




One should distinguish knowing a self-evident proposition from knowing
that that proposition is self-evident. The former does not imply the
latter. Someone might know some self-evident proposition, such as that
if *A* is better than *B* and *B* is better than *C* then
*A* is better than *C*, but lack the concept of self-evidence, so
couldn't know that that proposition is self-evident. One might even
know a self-evident proposition whilst endorsing a theory according to
which no propositions are self-evident.




But given that a proposition may seem to be self-evident when it is not,
it is useful to have a way of discriminating the merely apparent from
the real ones. Sidgwick's criteria may be regarded as helping us do
this. According to Sidgwick, to be sure that a proposition is self-evident it must:


1. be clear and distinct
2. be ascertained by careful reflection
3. be consistent with other self-evident truths
4. attract general consensus (1874/1967, 338)




If some apparent self-evident proposition does not have all of these
features then we should reduce our confidence that it is a genuine
self-evident proposition. It is, however, a striking feature of Sidgwick's own
principles that they do not pass this test. But whether we can come to
know that some proposition is self-evident in this, or some other way,
the point is that we do not need to know that some proposition is
self-evident to know that it is true.




According to the standard account, a self-evident proposition is one
which an adequate understanding of the proposition justifies us in
believing it. But all that Locke and Price say is that we need an
understanding of a self-evident proposition in order to believe it,
and presumably to be justified in believing it. They do not say that
our understanding provides that justification, or that when we believe
it, we believe it on the basis of our understanding. Indeed the idea
that it is our understanding of a self-evident proposition that
justifies us in believing it may sound odd to many people. Certainly
if one assumes that if *p* justifies belief in *q*, then *p* is
a reason to believe *q*, it is hard to see how our understanding
justifies us in believing the proposition understood, for no one can
claim that their understanding of a proposition gives them a reason to
believe it. One explanation of this is that the sort of thing that can
provide reasons to believe that *p* are either evidence that *p*
or, more controversially, pragmatic considerations, such as that
believing that *p* will have certain good consequences. An adequate
understanding of a proposition is neither of these things. The fact
that I understand some proposition is not something that would make
believing that proposition have any good consequences, and my
understanding is not evidence for the truth of the proposition
understood. Evidence is standardly understood as something that makes
the proposition it is evidence for more probable. But an adequate
understanding of a proposition does not make that proposition more
probable, so is not evidence for it. Since an understanding of a
proposition is neither a pragmatic nor an evidential consideration, it
seems it is not the right sort of thing to give us a reason to believe
that proposition, and so not the right sort of thing to justify that
belief. Robert Audi has, however, recently offered an account of
adequate understanding that attempts to deal with this kind of
objection. He does not claim that adequate understanding of a
proposition is evidence for that proposition, but claims that adequate
understanding puts us in touch with the truth-makers of the
self-evident proposition, and it is this that makes it the right sort
of thing to justify belief (Audi, 2019, 379-380) 




But the oddity of supposing that it is our understanding that
justifies us in believing a self-evident proposition does not rest on
the assumption that justification is to be defined as *reason to
believe*, or that what gives us reason to believe that *p* is
evidence for the truth of *p* or some benefit of believing this. If you
ask someone why they believe some apparently self-evident proposition,
such as that agony is bad, it would be very surprising if they replied
by saying "I believe it because I understand it".




Given these worries about whether our understanding can justify us in
believing the proposition understood, we should ask whether there is
anything else that might justify us in believing a self-evident
proposition. If intuitions are beliefs, then our intuition that p
cannot justify us in believing *p*. The same is true if intuitions are
inclinations to believe, as Williamson (2000), Sosa (2007) and Earlenbaugh and Molyneux, 2009) claim, for the fact that I am
inclined to believe some proposition is no justification for believing
it. But if intuitions are intellectual seemings, then they may be able
to justify the beliefs based on them. For with this understanding of
an intuition we can say that what justifies our belief in a
self-evident proposition is that it seems true, just as we might say
that what justifies us in having some experiential belief is that
perceptually, the world seems to be that way. Why do you believe the
wall is green? Because it seems green. Why do you think that agony is
bad? Because it seems bad.




If intuitions rather than our understanding of their content justify
us in believing that content, then intuitionists should understand a
self-evident proposition as follows:




A self-evident proposition is one of which a clear intuition is
sufficient justification for believing it, and for believing it on the
basis of that intuition (see Stratton-Lake, 2016, 38).




An adequate understanding is necessary for one to be justified in this
way, but this is not because understanding provides justification;
rather, it is because it is needed to get the proposition clearly in
view, and so enables a clear intuition of it. But it is the intuition
that justifies, not the understanding.




Whether this account helps intuitionists will depend on a more general
metaphilosophical debate about the role of intuitions in philosophy,
and whether intuitions justify. There is a difference, though. The
more general debate is about whether intuitions provide evidence for
believing or rejecting certain theories, whereas the intuitionist
needs intuitions to justify beliefs with the same content. Secondly,
there might be reason to think that although intuitions can provide
justification in other areas of philosophy, they cannot do that in
morality. For instance, one might think that people's moral
intuitions vary too much to be reliable indicators of truth, or that
in morality emotions can distort our intuitions (see
Sinnott-Armstrong, 2006), or that we only have the moral intuitions we
do because having those beliefs has survival value (Street, 2006).


 Some recent intuitionists have shied away from the view that
certain moral propositions are self-evident and have, instead, argued
that all the intuitionist needs is the claim that intuitions,
understood as intellectual seemings, provide non-inferential
justification for some of our moral beliefs (Huemer 2005, 106 and
Bedke 2008--though Bedke rejects intuitionism). As these authors
view things, claiming that some at least of the propositions intuited
are self-evident does not gain intuitionists anything.


### 1.3 Disagreement




Many philosophers think that pervasive moral disagreement casts doubt
on the intuitionists' claim that certain moral propositions are
self-evident. If there were certain moral propositions that can be
known if adequately understood, then, it is argued, people with an
adequate understanding of them would believe them, and there would be
universal assent amongst mature, comprehending people. But there is no
such universal assent. So there are no self-evident moral
propositions.




Sidgwick took disagreement seriously, and thought that if there was
significant disagreement about the truth of some apparently
self-evident moral proposition, then that casts doubt on whether that
proposition really is self-evident. Intuitionists could defend
themselves from this objection by downplaying the amount of moral
disagreement. They might claim that a lot of moral disagreement stems
from disagreement about non-moral facts, such as what the consequences
of a certain act will be. For instance, two people might disagree
about whether it is permissible to boil lobsters alive just because
they disagree about whether lobsters can feel pain. Since the basis of
their moral disagreement is this disagreement about the relevant
neurological fact, if they agreed on this non-moral fact, we could
expect them to agree about the permissibility of boiling lobsters
alive.




Furthermore, although people might disagree about the permissibility
of boiling lobsters alive, we may assume that they agree that pain is
a bad thing, and the infliction of undeserved pain is prima facie
wrong. If this assumption is correct, then the disputants agree about
the moral facts here. They disagree only about the empirical,
non-moral facts.


 

Another factor that might explain moral disagreement is
disagreement about the strength of certain moral reasons. Many
disputants might agree about the non-moral facts, and about what is
morally relevant, but disagree about the weight that should be given
to the different moral considerations. So, for example, two people
might disagree about whether they ought to push a large man onto the
rail tracks to derail a trolley that would otherwise kill five people,
but this is quite consistent with them agreeing that the fact that
this act would save five people counts in favour of pushing the man
off the bridge, and that the fact that he would die if this were done
counts against doing it. In such a case there is agreement about what
is relevant, and how it is relevant, but disagreement about the weight
of the competing moral considerations--one person regards the
evil of killing one person as weightier than the good of saving five,
while the other regards the evil of killing one as outweighed by the
good of saving the five. There is still moral disagreement here, but
it is simply a difference in judgement about the application of agreed
moral principles.




This fits with the intuitionist view held, e.g., by Ross, that causing
good outcomes is prima facie right, and that causing harm is prima
facie wrong, for Ross held that both of these propositions are
self-evident. He denied, however, that the stringency, or weight, of
these different prima facie duties is self-evident (1939, 188). About
this, he maintained, we could only have a probable opinion.




It is worth noting that moral disagreement does not imply that people
have different intuitions. Ross, for example, had the strong intuition
that it is permissible to miss an opportunity to enjoy some innocent
pleasure, but at the time he wrote *The Right and the Good* he
did not believe this. (Later, in the *Foundations of Ethics*, he
changed his mind.) He believed it would be wrong to pass up such an
opportunity because pleasure is good, and we ought to maximise the
good. So although he would disagree with someone who believed that it
is permissible to pass up an opportunity to enjoy some innocent
pleasure, he would share their intuition that this is permissible.
Similarly, it is plausible to suppose that many act consequentialists
still have the intuition that it is wrong to harvest organs from a
healthy but non-consenting donor to save five other lives. But because
they have persuaded themselves of the truth of act consequentialism,
they would not believe this act is wrong.


 

One of the theoretical advantages of thinking of intuitions as
intellectual seemings is that we can allow for this mismatch between
our intuitions and our beliefs. Just as something can seem
perceptually to be a certain way while we don't believe it is that
way, as in Muller-Lyer cases, so a proposition can seem
intellectually to be true even though we do not believe it. Since such
seemings are not beliefs, this does not commit intuitionists to the
view that a conflict between our intuitions and beliefs entails contradictory beliefs.




Intuitionists like Ross could still allow that their non-believed
intuitions provide pro-tanto justification for believing them. It's
just that this justification is outweighed by opposing intuitions, and
the theory based on them. A consequentialist with non-consequentialist
intuitions could think the same. She may regard her deontological
intuitions as giving her some justification for believing that it
would be wrong to harvest the organs to save five, but presumably
would regard the appeal of the consequentialist theory as a whole as
outweighing this justification. She may even regard her deontological
intuition as providing sufficient reason to believe that such acts are
wrong, even though she thinks that on balance she has more reason to
believe that such acts are permissible.




Finally, Ethical Intuitionists allow that various other factors can
lead to disagreement. Clarke, for instance, allowed that stupidity,
corruption, or perverseness may make one doubt self-evident
propositions (1706/1969, 194). John Balguy also acknowledges that
self-evident moral principles, like many other plain and evident
truths, may be, and have been, doubted, "even by philosophers
and men of letters" whom, presumably, he did not regard as
stupid or corrupt (1728/1969, 406). And Price maintained that all
forms of knowledge, including intuitive knowledge, may be evident in
different degrees (1758/1969, 160). Intuition may be clear and
perfect, but may sometimes be faint and obscure. Such variance in
degrees of clarity allows that a self-evident proposition may be
imperfectly and obscurely grasped, and this may lead someone to deny
its truth. Similarly, Moore claimed that "every way in which it
is possible to cognise a true proposition, it is also possible to
grasp a false one" (1903/1993, 36), and Ross notes that
self-evident propositions may only be evident to us once we reach a
certain moral maturity (1930/2002, 29). Given all these ways in
which the truth of a self-evident proposition may be missed, it is no
 surprise that there is no universal
 assent.[8]
 But the absence of
universal assent is quite consistent with self-evidence, as long as
 one does not regard 'self-evidence' to mean, or imply,
 obviousness.[9]




But despite what has been said above, critics of intuitionism can
claim that the fact that there is disagreement between moral
philosophers and even between intuitionists themselves undermines the view
that certain propositions are self-evident. These philosophers will
have thought long and hard about the relevant propositions, and (we
would hope) have a very clear understanding of them. One would,
therefore, expect that if there were certain moral propositions the
truth of which could be apprehended by intuition, then moral
philosophers would converge on these truths. Persistent disagreement
amongst reflective, thoughtful, and comprehending moral philosophers
may cast doubt on the view that any of these propositions are
self-evident.




Furthermore, if intuitions are intellectual seemings, one might ask
why certain moral propositions seem true whereas others do not. If
moral facts are non-natural facts, as intuitionists maintain, and
non-natural properties lack causal powers, then moral intuitions
cannot be caused by the corresponding moral facts, as, e.g., certain
perceptual seemings are caused by certain natural facts. Critics would
argue that certain things seem right and good to us, not because of
some inherent value they have, but because we have evolved to react to
certain types of act with approval or disapproval (Singer 2005; Street
2006; and Joyce 2007, ch. 6).




We have evolved to feel instant approval of acts that benefit our
group, such as those that exemplify reciprocal trust, and honesty, and
thus enhance our chances of survival, and to feel disapproval of acts
such as deceit, and betrayal, that undermine trust and the benefits
that brings. Intuitionists need to find some way of responding to this
sort of objection without abandoning their non-naturalism.


### 1.4 Trolley cases and the reliability of moral intuitions




Empirical psychology has recently cast doubt on the reliability of at
least some of our moral intuitions. Since a self-evident proposition
is one of which a clear intuition justifies us in believing it, these
doubts call into question the claim that our moral intuitions justify
us in believing them, and thus whether there are any self-evident
moral propositions. The experiments that cast doubt on our intuitions
tend to focus on our intuitions about trolley cases. Consider the
following three cases:



**Switch:** there are five people on the rail track,
and an out of control trolley that will kill all five of them. There is
a lever that would divert the trolley onto a different track. But there
is a single person on that track who would be killed if you pull the
lever and divert the trolley.



**Bridge:** there are five people on the rail track,
and an out of control trolley that will kill all five of them. There is
a large man standing on the bridge over the track. If you pushed him
off the bridge onto the track, he would be killed. But he would derail
the trolley and so the five people on the track would be saved.



**Trap door:** there are five people on the rail track,
and an out of control trolley that will kill all five of them. There is
a man standing on the bridge over the track. If he fell onto the track
he would be killed, but would derail the trolley thus saving the five
people on the track. He is standing on a trap door that would open and
drop him onto the track if you pulled a lever.




People tend to say that they should pull the lever in Switch, but
that they ought not to push the man off the bridge in Bridge. Bridge
looks similar to Switch in that you would be killing one person to save
five. So why the different intuitions? One could try to explain away
these apparently conflicting intuitions with the doctrine of double
effect. According to this doctrine, we may produce some good that
involves a bad outcome, so long as the bad outcome is not intended. If the
bad outcome is a means to the good end, then it is intended (as a
means), and is not merely foreseen. So such acts are wrong according to
the doctrine of double effect.




Switch seems to be a case where the bad outcome is foreseen, but not
intended. Bridge seems to be a case where the bad outcome is intended
as a means of saving the five. So one way to explain the different
intuitions in Switch and Bridge is with reference to the doctrine of
double effect. But this explanation is unsettled by a variant of
Switch, according to which the large man is on the spur track, and that
track now loops back onto the main one. Here it looks like by pulling
the lever we would be using the large man merely as a means to saving
the five, for unless he stops the trolley it will loop round and kill
the five from the other direction. But it still seems permissible to
pull the lever, yet wrong to push the man off the bridge.




Furthermore, this explanation of people's different intuitions is
called into question by Trap Door. For Trap Door is like Bridge in the
sense that the bystander is killed as a means of saving the five, but
many more people tend to have the intuition that it is permissible to
pull the lever in Trap Door (Greene et al. 2009).


 The difference in people's intuitions between Bridge and Trap Door
casts serious doubt on the deontologist's explanation of the
difference in their intuitions about Switch and Bridge. An alternative
explanation of the difference is that the Bridge case is 'up
close and personal' in the sense that it involves physical
contact, whereas in Switch and Trap Door the agent is remote from the
person they have to kill to save the five (Singer, 2005). But this
difference is morally irrelevant, so if this explanation is right,
then our intuitions are distorted by at least one morally irrelevant
factor.




Also it seems that our intuitions are subject to framing effects. For
instance, our intuitions seem to be affected by whether we word our
scenario in terms of killing or saving, and by the order in which the
trolley examples are considered. If people are asked to consider
Switch first, and Bridge second, they tend to say that it is
permissible to pull the lever in Switch but not permissible to push
the man onto the track in Bridge. If, however, they are given the
Bridge case first a higher percentage say that it would be wrong to pull the
lever in Switch. So it looks like the order in which the cases are
given affects people's intuitions about the cases. But the order in
which one considers the cases is morally irrelevant. So it looks like
 our intuitions can be distorted by a second
 source.[10]


 

One thing worthy of note is that these cases test intuitions about
our overall moral judgements--that is, about what we should, or
may do in certain circumstances. But not all intuitionists claim that
principles about what we ought to do are self-evident. W. D. Ross for
example claimed that only principles of prima facie duty are
self-evident, and principles of prima facie duty are, roughly,
principles stating that certain facts count in favour of an act and
others count against. So these principles state, for instance, that 
the fact that one's act would produce some good, or the fact that it 
would be the keeping of a promise, or the expression
of gratitude, etc., counts in favour of it, and the fact that, for
example, it would involve the infliction of harm on someone counts
against it. What we ought to do is determined by all of these facts,
and how they weigh up against each other. Ross denied that we can ever
know what we ought to do, and rejected the view that there could be
strictly universal, self-evident principles specifying what we ought
to do.


 

It would be interesting to hear the outcome of experiments to see
whether people's intuitions about prima facie duty are subject
to change on morally irrelevant grounds. This is something that
requires empirical testing, but it is hard to imagine someone thinking
that the fact that one would have to kill an innocent person in order
to save five didn't count against doing this act, or that the
fact that their act would save five innocent people didn't count
in favour of it, regardless of their overall verdict about whether
they should kill the one or let the five die. That their act involved
physically pushing someone in front of the trolley, or pulling a lever
that would release a trap door dropping them onto the track would
plausibly make no difference to such intuitions. Nor would framing
effects introduced by the order of presentation of the cases. If such
a priori expectations are correct then empirical psychology would
raise no problems for a Rossian intuitionism that claims only that
principles of prima facie duty are self-evident.


 

James Andow (2018) has put these claims to the test, and it turns out
that a significant number of people (25%) do not accept that the fact
that someone would be killed by either pulling the lever or pushing
them off a bridge to save five counts against doing this, whether they
are imagining themselves doing the act or commenting on someone
else's action (121). He also discovered that people's
intuitions did change between the lever case and the bridge case in
relation to whether the fact that five lives would be saved counts in
favour of doing the act (121). So it seems that intuitions about
whether saving lives counts in favour of acting is vulnerable to
framing effects. 




Andow argues that we shouldn't dismiss these results on the
grounds that the responses did not reflect the participants'
intuitions about the moral relevance of killing (138ff). But it is
hard to accept that 25% of respondents really thought that the fact
that their act involves killing someone does not even count against
doing it. To believe this is not just to sincerely utter the words,
but involves certain counter-factual beliefs. For instance, if I did
not think that the fact that by pulling the lever I would be killing
someone counts against pulling the lever, then if I had a second lever
which would save the five without killing anyone, I would be
indifferent about which lever I'd pull. It is difficult to
believe that the respondents who claimed that killing did not matter
in trolley case scenarios would be indifferent in this counter-factual
scenario. Furthermore, thinking that killing does not count against
one's act commits one to the thought that there is absolutely
nothing to regret. But it is likely that if these people were put in a
real scenario where they could only save five by killing one, they
would regret deeply the fact that they could only save the five in
this way. None of this fits with the results of Andow's
experimental findings, and casts doubt on whether the
respondent's replies really reflect their intuitions about the
case. 




But even if Ross-style intuitions were not vulnerable to such
disagreement and framing effects, critics may object that in so far as
Ross's theory does not tell us what we ought to do, it does not
give us what we want from a moral theory. Being told that various
features count for or against certain actions, and that one just has
to decide for oneself in each case what one should do, may be a very
disappointing result even if it is self-evident which features count
for or against.




A further point about the findings of such experiments is whether the
subjects' answers to the experimenters' questions express
their intuitions (Bengson 2013). When subjects have considered Bridge
first, they are more likely to say that it would be wrong to pull the
lever in Switch. This is taken to show that their intuitions are
vulnerable to framing effects. But once we remember that one's
beliefs and judgements may conflict with one's intuitions it is
not at all clear that the subjects lack the intuition that it would be
permissible to pull the lever in the switch case when they say that it
would be wrong. A perfectly plausible alternative is that they have
reasoned that, because it would be wrong to kill someone to save five
in Bridge, it must be wrong to kill someone to save five in Switch.
That is quite consistent with their having the intuition that it would
be permissible to pull the lever in the switch case, since intuiting
is not believing. This point does not however explain James
Andow's findings.


### 1.5 Non-inferential justification?




Sinnott-Armstrong claims that results from empirical psychology
show that most of our moral beliefs are false, because they have been
formed by an unreliable process (2006, 353). The unreliable process is
basing them on intuitions that are systematically distorted by morally
irrelevant factors, such as order or wording. Sinnott-Armstrong
doesn't deny that some moral intuitions can justify moral
beliefs. But given that the default justification provided by so many
of them is undermined by distorting factors, we need to check that some
moral intuition is not one of the undermined ones before we can take it
to provide justification. But then, he argues, the intuitions that do
provide justification do so only inferentially. Since moral intuitions
either don't provide justification at all, or do so only
inferentially, there is no non-inferential justification for our moral
beliefs and intuitionism is false.




Nathan Ballantyne and Joshua C. Thurow (2013) maintain that this
argument does not work. They outline their point in terms of
undercutting defeaters and defeaters of those defeaters. The distorting
factors that Sinnott-Armstrong mentions are the undercutting defeaters
of the justification of most of our moral beliefs. If we have evidence
that a subclass of our moral beliefs is not subject to these
undercutting defeaters, then that evidence defeats the defeater, and
justification is restored.




With this jargon in hand they argue that Sinnott-Armstrong's argument
conflates the *belief's justification* being supported by an
inference with the *belief* itself being supported by an
inference. Let *U* signify the undercutting defeaters for a moral
belief, *D* the evidence that defeats these defeaters, and *B* the
moral belief. Sinnott-Armstrong argues that for *D* to defeat *U* and
thus restore the justification for *B*, *D* must provide the agent
with a reason to believe that *B* was formed reliably. But,
Ballantyne and Thurow maintain, *D* can defeat *U* independently of
the agent's ability to provide arguments for his belief. My belief is
justified only on the basis of the following argument:



*D*,   

*D* defeats *U*,   

 therefore, *U* is defeated.





So this inference supports *B*'s justification. But *B* itself is
not supported by that inference. *B* is, they claim, supported by the
relevant intuition alone. (414). Being able to argue that the original,
non-inferential justification for *B* has not been undermined, does not
entail being able to argue for *B*. All this argument does is restore the
original non-inferential justification for the belief.




Ballantyne and Thurow illustrate this point with the following
non-moral example.


 

McCoy visits the local widget factory and sees what seems to be a
red widget being carried along a conveyor belt. He believes that the
widget is red.... Soon enough, a stranger approaches McCoy and
says that the widgets are actually white but are illuminated by red
lights... Upon seeing this conversation, another
stranger--who seems to McCoy to be a factory employee--tells
McCoy not to listen to the other stranger: he is a trickster, McCoy is
told, who likes to mess around with visitors. (2013, 413)




Sinnott-Armstrong would say that in order for the undercutting
defeater (the 1st stranger's comment) to be defeated by the
factory worker's claim that the stranger is a trickster, the factory
worker's comment must provide McCoy with a reason to think that his
belief was formed reliably. But, Ballantyne and Thurow claim, all that
has happened is that the original, non-inferential justification has
been restored. "Whatever initially made *B* justified continues
to justify *B* once the defeater has been defeated. McCoy's belief
that the widget is red is justified by his perceptual experience or
seeming" (414). The same can be said of moral intuitions. I may
regard my moral belief as justified by an intuition with the same
content if I am justified in believing that potential undercutting
defeaters have been defeated (or are absent). In such a case I have an
inferential argument for the justification of my moral belief, but
that does not mean that I have an inferential justification for my
moral belief. All that has happened, is that the original,
non-inferential justification (provided by the intuition) has been
restored.




Nonetheless, Ballantyne and Thurow do not question the first part of
Sinnott- Armstrong's argument--that is, the claim that
because of partiality, bias, emotion and disagreement, we have good
reason to think that most of our moral beliefs are false. If it is
true, as Sinnott-Armstrong claims, that most of our moral beliefs are
false, then intuitionists' trust in our ordinary moral thought
will look undermined regardless of whether they can salvage a few sound
moral beliefs from the wreckage. So intuitionists would not only have
to argue that some intuitions justify non-inferentially, but that there
is a significantly large group of reliable intuitions to validate their
methodology, and Ballantyne and Thurow's argument does not help
with that.


## 2. Intuitionist metaphysics


### 2.1 Indefinable, non-natural properties




Along with its moral epistemology, a distinctive feature of
intuitionist thought is its non-naturalist realism. Intuitionists
maintain that moral judgements are cognitive states, and that some at
least of these judgements are true. They are true when the things
referred to have the moral property that is ascribed to them by the
judgement. The moral properties that intuitionists tended to focus on were
the thin moral properties of goodness and rightness. These properties
are, they maintained, simple, non-natural properties. It is not always
clear how they understood the notion of a non-natural property (more on
this below), but for now we can say that they denied that moral
properties can be defined wholly in terms of psychological,
sociological, or biological properties. Some intuitionists allowed that
goodness can be defined in terms of rightness (Sidgwick and Ewing) or
rightness in terms of goodness (early Moore). But all intuitionists
maintained that at least one of these moral properties is simple, or
indefinable.




Although their view is about the nature of moral properties, they
often put their point in terms of moral concepts or ideas, and
maintained that these concepts are either unanalysable, or if
analysable, not analysable wholly in terms of natural concepts. It
seems they assumed that if a concept was indefinable then its
corresponding property would be indefinable, and vice versa. Many
philosophers today would deny this assumption.




The simplicity of moral properties, such as rightness and goodness,
and our ideas of them, was important for early intuitionists such as
Price, as he accepted the empiricist doctrine that simple ideas cannot
be invented but must be acquired by immediate intuition, as all simple
ideas must "be ascribed to some power of *immediate*
perception in the human mind" 1758/1969, 141), i.e., either
sensibility or the
 understanding.[11]
 Consequently, the ideas of right and
wrong must be immediate perceptions of either sensibility or the
 understanding.[12]





If right and wrong are just feelings of approval or disapproval caused
in us by natural properties or objects, then the idea of right and
wrong will be given by our senses, for these ideas will be merely the
effect that the perception of certain things has on sensibility. If,
however, right and wrong were real properties of actions, then they
could not be apprehended by any empirical sense, for we have no such
sensation of right and wrong when we apprehend right or wrong actions.
Rather, what we see is that these actions are right, or
 wrong.[13]
This seeing still counts as
intuition, as it is an immediate apprehension, but it is intellectual
rather than sensible
 intuition.[14]



> 
> 
> It is scarcely conceivable that anyone can impartially attend to the
> nature of his own perceptions, and determine that, when he thinks
> gratitude and beneficence to be *right*, he perceives nothing
> *true* of them, and *understands* nothing, but only
> receives an impression from *sense*. (Price, 1758/1969,
> 144-5)
> 




Price concedes that certain feelings may attend our apprehension of
right and wrong, but these impressions are merely the consequence of
our perception of right and wrong. They are not what is perceived. For
Price I approve of some act because I see that it is right or good.




But even if Price is right that the ideas of right and wrong are
simple, and are grasped by the understanding, that does not imply that
they are non-natural. For he allows that there are simple ideas of
natural properties, and that some of these, such as causality and
equality, are grasped by the understanding rather than sensibility. So
a separate argument is needed for the non-natural nature of moral
properties.




Moore is the intuitionist who laid most stress on the non-natural
nature of moral properties, though his focus was on goodness rather
than rightness. In *Principia Ethica* Moore defines a natural
property as one that can exist by itself in time and not merely as a
property of some natural object (1903/1993a, 93). The idea is, then,
that natural properties, such as the pleasantness or squareness of an
object, can exist independently of that object, whereas the goodness
of a good thing cannot exist independently of that thing.


 

This definition can be understood in terms of particular instances
of some property or in terms of the universal--the property
itself. Either way it does not distinguish natural from non-natural
properties as Moore thought. It does not seem that the particular
instance of redness in some particular red object could exist apart
from that object any more than the particular instance of goodness of
some good thing could. A particular instance of any property is a way
that something is, and the way that some particular thing is cannot be
separated from the particular thing that is that way.




But things are no better if we understand Moore's definition in
terms of universals, for on a Platonist theory of properties the
universal could exist independently of any particular instance of it.
If this is true, it will be true of any property. This does not,
therefore, pick out what distinguishes the natural from the
non-natural. So if we are talking of property instances then no
properties can be separated from the things that instantiate them, and
if we are talking of property types (properties as universals), then,
at least on some views, all of them can be separated.




Moore himself later abandoned this definition of the distinction
between natural and non-natural properties, and described his earlier
account of a natural property as "utterly silly and
preposterous" (1942, 582). In the Preface to the second edition
of *Principia* Moore offers an alternative definition that is
suggested in chapter two of *Principia.* According to this
definition, a natural property is one "with which it is the
business of the natural sciences or of Psychology to deal" (13).
Since the term to be defined ('natural') appears in the
definition, this definition may not seem very informative. But we can
replace the term 'natural sciences' with 'empirical
sciences' (understood to include psychology and sociology) to
get a useful and workable epistemological definition of a natural
property. On this account, then, natural facts can be known by purely
empirical means, whereas non-natural moral facts cannot be known in
this way. Such facts involve an essentially a priori element.




Intuitively the intuitionists seem right. Empirical investigation can
tell us many things about the world, but it does not seem that it can
tell whether certain acts are right or wrong, good or bad. This is not
to say that our moral views are not revisable in the light of
empirical findings. For instance if science told us that a
lobster's neurological system is sufficiently advanced for it to
feel pain, we'd revise our view about the permissibility of
boiling them alive. But all that science would have told us is that
lobsters feel pain when boiled alive. Science does not inform us that
boiling them alive is wrong. That seems to be something that cannot
be known empirically.




Moore's open question argument can be regarded as giving form to this
intuition. If the moral property of being good, for instance, could be
defined in wholly psychological, biological, or sociological terms,
then moral truths would turn out to be either psychological,
biological or sociological truths, which could then be discovered by
empirical research by the appropriate science. But, Moore argues, all
such definitions must fail, for it is always an open question whether
the thing that has the relevant empirical property is good. Moore's
argument can be captured as follows:


1. If some property *F*
could be defined in terms of some other property *G*, then the
question "is something which is *G*, *F*?" would be
closed.
2. For any naturalistic
definition of goodness, it would always be an open question whether
something that has the relevant natural property is good.
3. Therefore, goodness
cannot be naturalistically defined.


 

An open question is one that is not closed, and a closed question
is one the asking of which betrays a lack of understanding of the
concepts involved. For instance, if I asked "Jones is a widow,
but was she ever married?", this would show that I don't really
understand the term "widow". So this question is closed.
Moore claims that we can test any naturalistic definition of goodness
by asking whether something that has those natural properties is good,
and then seeing whether this question is open or closed. If the
definition is true, then the question must be closed, so if it is
open, the definition must be false. 




Suppose, for instance, someone proposes that goodness can be defined
in terms of causality and pleasure. To be good, they claim, is just to
cause pleasure. Moore's view is that if this definition were
correct, it would be a closed question whether something that causes
pleasure is good. For in effect one would be asking whether something
that causes pleasure causes pleasure, and that is clearly a closed
question. But, Moore insists, the question "is something
that causes pleasure good?" is an open question. One could,
without conceptual confusion, debate whether something that causes
pleasure is good. So goodness cannot be defined as causes pleasure.




Moore assumes that this will be true of every putative naturalistic
definition of goodness, whether it be in terms of second-order desires,
social approval, being more evolved, or whatever. All of these
naturalistic definitions would fail the open question argument. If he
is right, and goodness cannot be defined wholly with reference to
concepts from the empirical sciences, then goodness is a sui generis
notion, i.e., is one that can only be understood in its own, evaluative
terms.




Moore's argument has a great deal of intuitive force, but has
been subject to various objections, and it is not clear that all of
them can be answered. One of the first was that it just begs the
question against the naturalist. Moore only considers a few very crude
naturalistic definitions of goodness, and concludes from these that all
naturalistic definitions will fail the open question argument. Frankena
(1939) objected that this was premature. We cannot know in advance that
every naturalistic definition will fail this test. We just have to wait
and consider the proposals. To conclude from a few crude examples that
all naturalistic definitions will fail is just bad induction.




Another objection is that the open question argument does not tell us
anything distinctive about the concept of goodness, but is simply an
instance of the paradox of analysis. According to this paradox any true
analysis will be uninformative, because it will be reducible to a
tautology, and any informative analysis will be false, because it
can't be reduced to a tautology. According to earlier versions of
what Moore called 'the open question argument', and on one
interpretation of Moore's argument, the reason that good cannot
be analysed in naturalistic terms is that it turns what sounds like a
substantive moral claim, e.g., that pleasure is good, into the empty
tautology that pleasure is pleasure. But then this looks like a
particular instance of the paradox of analysis. To see this, consider
the following analysis of the concept 'mammal':



(M)
A mammal is a member of a species of which the 
 females suckle their young.



This looks informative as it can tell us why whales and duck-billed
platypuses are mammals when they are so different in seemingly
significant ways from other mammals. But if the analysis is true, and
'mammal' just means 'member of a species of which the
females suckle their young', then (M) means:



(T)
A member of a species of which the females suckle their
young is a member of a species of which the females suckle their
young



(T) is, however, just an uninformative tautology. This is a quite
general problem in the theory of analysis, so if it applies to
seemingly informative analyses of goodness, then that would reveal
nothing distinctive about naturalistic analyses of moral terms.




Furthermore, some analyses are not obvious. The analysis of the concept
of a mammal is an example of a non-obvious analysis. It is for that
reason that the question "*A* is a member of a species the female
of which suckle their young, but is *A* a mammal?" will seem open,
even though it is a true analysis. Similarly, a non-obvious
naturalistic definition of good may fail the open question test even
though it is true.


### 2.2 Analyses of concepts and property identity claims.




A naturalist might accept that the open question argument works in
relation to moral concepts, but deny that we can make any inferences
 about the way the world is from the fact that we think of it in certain
 ways.[15]
 For the way in which
we think about the world is determined by our understanding of the
concepts we use to describe it, and we cannot reliably infer that the
world is a certain way from the fact that we conceive of it in that
way. To think that one can make such inferences is to confuse
 predicates or concepts with
 properties,[16]
 analytical identities with synthetic identities.
We know what we mean by certain concepts by a priori reflection, but
the nature of the things to which these concepts refer can only be
discovered by empirical investigation. We did not discover that water
is H2O or that heat is mean kinetic molecular energy by a priori
reflection on what we mean by 'water' and
'heat', but by empirical investigation. Furthermore, we
could not object to the view that heat is mean kinetic energy on the
ground that this is not what we mean when we think of something as hot.
But the intuitionists seem to object to naturalistic accounts of moral
properties in precisely this way.




There is, however, reason to think that intuitionists such as Moore and
Ross did not confuse concepts and properties. For they were careful to
distinguish an elucidation of the meaning of words and an account of
the nature of the world with their distinction between proper verbal
definitions and the sort of definitions they are interested in (viz.,
 metaphysical
 ones).[17]
 A proper verbal definition of 'good' is simply an account of
how most people use the word, whereas a metaphysical definition is one
that tells us the nature of the thing of which the concept is a
 concept.[18]
 This is not
quite the distinction between an analysis of a concept and an account
of the nature of a corresponding property, but it is close enough to
give us reason to suppose that intuitionists such as Moore and Ross
were aware of the distinction between concepts and properties that many
think they simply conflate.




But although intuitionists may not have confused concepts and
properties, they did seem to believe that there is a certain
isomorphism between the structure of our concepts and the nature of the
world, such that a proper analysis of our concepts would reveal to us
the nature of the corresponding property or thing. This belief is not
obviously confused, but the examples of heat and water seem to show
that it cannot be accepted as it stands. Intuitionists need not,
however, rest their view about the property of goodness on a general
thesis about the relation of concepts and properties. All they need do
is identify what it is about certain concepts, like the concepts of
water and heat, that provides us with reasons to think that the
corresponding properties are different, and then argue that these
reasons do not apply to the concept of goodness.




With concepts of natural properties and substances like heat and water
we have two reasons for thinking that the corresponding properties may
be different. First, the concept of heat seems metaphysically
superficial and incomplete. It is the concept of a property that has
certain characteristic effects on us and on other things, but does not
aim to tell us about the nature of the property that has those effects.
The concept of water seems superficial in the same way. This concept
only picks out certain surface features of water, such as its being
clear, odourless, tasteless, etc. It does not, however, tell us
anything about the nature of the substance that has these features. In
both cases empirical science seems well-suited to complete this picture
by investigating the property or substance that has these distinctive
effects, or surface features. In doing this, empirical science provides
us with an account of heat and water which is metaphysically deeper
than the one provided by the corresponding concepts.




Secondly, even if the concept of heat were not incomplete or
superficial, in so far as it is a concept of a natural property we have
good reason to think that the empirical sciences are much better
equipped to discover the nature of heat than a priori reflection. The
same is true of the concept of water. In so far as this is a concept of
a natural substance, the empirical sciences are far better suited to
tell us the nature of this substance than a priori reflection.




These reasons do not apply to the concept of goodness. First, this
concept does not seem to be metaphysically superficial or incomplete in
the way that the concept of heat or water is. When we think of
something as good we do not think of it merely as having certain
effects on us, or as picking out certain surface properties the
property of goodness has, but think of it as having a distinctive
characteristic. Not all intuitionists agreed with Moore that nothing
could be said about the nature of this characteristic (though they all
agreed that this is a non-natural property). A. C. Ewing, for example,
maintained that the characteristic we have in mind when we think of
something as being good is the property it has of being the fitting
object of a pro-attitude. If this, or something like it, is correct,
then the concept of goodness does not merely describe certain
properties goodness has, but aspires to tell us what
goodness
 is.[19]
It does not, therefore,
call for a metaphysically deeper account from some other source in the
way that the concept of heat or water does.




It is not, however, clear that this argument will persuade critics of
intuitionism and nonnaturalism. They may want more from an analysis of
'good'. They might, for example, want an analysis that
helps explain why some things rather than others are good, and which
explains the connection between the properties that make something
good, and its goodness. Without these explanatory features they may
well regard the analysis of good offered by Ewing superficial and in
need of a metaphysically deeper account.




Indeed, as Robert Shaver points out (2007, 289) according to one
intuitionist account of good the analysis does call for a
metaphysically deeper account of the nature of the property. C. D.
Broad, for instance, analyses good as meaning 
"there is one and
only one characteristic or set of characteristics whose presence in any
object that I contemplate is necessary to make me contemplate it with
approval" (1985, 283). Critics may claim that this analysis is
just as plausible as Ewing's, and leaves room for an alternative,
naturalist account of the property that explains my approval.




Shaver also points out that it is a mistake to assume that synthetic
identities can only be established by empirical means. This is a
mistake, because one could arrive at the conclusion that two different
notions refer to the same property by a priori reflection. So even if
no empirical investigation can show that a moral and a non-moral term
pick out the same property, this might still be shown by a priori
reflection.


### 2.3 Queerness




Some philosophers think that there could be no moral facts as
intuitionists understand these. This is because such facts would be
unlike any other facts of which we know. Such philosophers think of
non-natural facts and properties as 'queer' (see, Mackie
1977; Joyce 2001; Olson 2014). This queerness is probably at the heart of many
philosophers' uneasiness about the idea of a non-natural
property. But we need to be clear about what it is that is supposed to
be so queer about the non-natural nature of goodness as intuitionists
understand it.




The intuitionist conception of goodness may be regarded as
mysterious because it is alleged to be unanalysable or indefinable. But
that wouldn't pick up on the non-natural nature that
intuitionists claim moral properties have. This objection would apply
to any notion that philosophers claim is primitive in the sense that no
informative definition in other terms can be offered, be it the notion
of explanation, knowledge, or pain. It expresses rather a certain
philosophical disappointment that a definition can't be offered.
It is often said that "One person's primitive is another
person's mystery", but this supposed sense of mystery
attaches to the unanalysability claim rather than the non-naturalness
claim.




Furthermore, some intuitionists did not think that goodness is
unanalysable. For instance, Sidgwick thought that good could be
analysed as what ought to be desired, and Ewing maintained that it
could be analysed as the fitting object of a pro-attitude. If the sense
of mystery of the intuitionist notion of goodness stems from its
unanalysability, then this sense of mystery will not apply to these
intuitionists' concept of goodness, even though it is still a
non-naturalist conception. But critics might respond that these
definitions really only move the mysterious notion elsewhere, e.g., to
the unanalysable terms 'ought' and
'fittingness'.




John Mackie maintained that moral properties, understood broadly
along intuitionist lines, are queer because they are inherently
motivational, in the sense that when we come to see that some act is
good, we are motivated to do it. No other property we know of has
such inherent motivational force. If such properties could be
understood naturalistically, e.g., as being such as to elicit desire in
those who perceive them, then the inherent motivational force of moral
properties would not be queer. For if something's goodness were
identical with its being such as to elicit desire when perceived, it
would be no surprise that we come to desire it when we perceive
it. But intuitionists' non-naturalism rules out this
explanation of the intrinsic 'to be pursuedness' of moral
properties.




Intuitionists may respond to this objection by drawing on a recent
version of Ewing's fitting attitude analysis of goodness. Ewing
thought that to be good is to be the object of a fitting pro-attitude.
T. M. Scanlon has argued that goodness is to be understood as
something's having properties that give us reason to have a
pro-attitude towards it (1998, 95), and like the intuitionist view
about goodness and rightness, he thinks that the notion of a reason
cannot be understood in other, non-normative terms (1998, 17). So his
view is something intuitionists can accept. If they do, then there
would seem to be no mystery about the magnetism of the good. If coming
to see that something is good is coming to see that we have reason to
have a pro-attitude towards it, then it would be no surprise if
rational individuals come to have a pro-attitude towards perceived
goods, any more than it would be surprising if rational beings come to
do what they judge they ought to do. If one has Humean leanings
one might want an explanation of how a judgement that one has reason to
have an attitude, or that one ought to do something, can by itself
motivate. But then the problem is not with the non-natural nature of
moral properties, but is one within moral psychology, and involves the
debate between those who endorse a Humean theory of motivation, and
those who deny this.




But the mystery may be normative rather motivational if we assume,
following Kant, that moral reasons are categorical reasons. Categorical
reasons are ones that apply to us independently of what we care
about. One might doubt that there are any such reasons. One
argument for such a view is that normative practical reasons must be
the sort of thing from which we can act. So they must be able to
motivate us to act, and they can only do that by latching onto
something we care about. But if all practical reasons must be able to
latch onto something we care about, then no reasons are categorical in
the Kantian sense. So the very idea of a moral reason may be quite
mysterious and queer.




A final mystery is epistemic. It may be maintained that it is quite
unclear how we can know of moral facts. This mystery may stem from the
idea that non-natural properties lack causal powers. So the mystery is
how we could know of something that is causally impotent. Intuitionists
might respond by asking why a property must be causally efficacious if
we are to be able to know which things have that property. They may
point out that, on some views, dispositional properties such as warmth,
fragility, or colour properties, lack causal powers. These powers are
located in the non-dispositional base properties on which the
dispositional properties supervene, rather than in the dispositional
properties themselves. If this view were true, that would not imply
that we could not know whether something was warm, fragile, or
coloured. And if that could be true of non-causal, dispositional
properties, then it could be true of causally impotent moral
properties.




It may, however, be pressed that the causal impotency of moral
properties causes problems for the analogy of intellectual seemings
with perceptual seemings. Perceptually things seem to be a certain way,
say red or square, because those things and their properties causally
interact with our perceptual system. But if moral properties are
causally impotent, then causal interaction could not explain why
certain things seem to the intellect to be true.