On “Ethical Intuitionism”

8 min readAug 16, 2022

These are some notes I took from Micheal Huemers’ book Ethical Intuitionism. Here I outline his Phenomenal Conservatism, his Ethical Intuitionism, and his Moorean argument.

Phenomenal Conservatism

Phenomenal Conservatism can be characterized in two ways

If it seems to S that P, then, in the absence of defeaters, S thereby has at least some justification for believing that P.
Other things being equal, it is reasonable to assume that things are the way they appear.

An “Appearance” is a type of mental state.

a state that we assert when we say such things as ‘It seems to me that p’, ‘It appears that p’, or ‘p is obvious’, where p is some proposition.

Appearances have propositional contents.

things they represent to be the case — but they aren’t beliefs, as can be shown from the coherence of, “The arch seems to be taller than it is wide, but I don’t think it is”. However, appearances normally lead us to form belief.

‘Appearance’ is a broad category that includes mental states involved in perception, memory, introspection, and intellection.

“This line seems longer than that one”(Perceptive), “I seem to recall reading something about that” (Memory), “It seems to me that I have a headache”(Introspective), and “It seems that any two points can be joined by a single straight line”(Intellective). All of those statements make sense, using the same sense of ‘seems’

“Initial Appearances” are ways things seem prior to reasoning.
Initial appearances can be overruled by other appearances (this does not mean the initial appearance goes away, but only that we don’t believe it), and only by other appearances.
Some appearances are stronger than others

Some things are ‘more obvious’ than others — and in a conflict, this defines what we cling to and what we reject.

Logical Judgments rest upon intellectual appearances.

Socrates is a man.
All men are inconsiderate.
Therefore, Socrates is inconsiderate.

We think the first is valid but the next one invalid:

Socrates is inconsiderate.
All men are inconsiderate.
Therefore, Socrates is a platypus.

This is because we ‘see’ this with our reason or intellect, and it intellectually seems to be the case that the first is valid and the second invalid.

All judgments are based upon how things seem to the judging subject:

a rational person believes only what seems to him to be true, though he need not believe everything that seems true.

Intellectual inquiry presupposes Phenomenal Conservatism,

In that such investigation assumes that things are as they appear until evidence (also derived from appearances) emerges to refute this.

Skepticism about Phenomenal Conservatism is self defeating.

Even the arguments of a philosophical skeptic who says we aren’t justified in believing anything rest upon the skeptic’s own beliefs, which are based upon what seems to the skeptic to be true.

Appearances sometimes fail to correspond to reality, as in the case of illusions, hallucinations, false memories, and mistaken intuitions.

Phenomenal conservatives do not subscribe to the notion that appearances are a reliable source of information in all circumstances. Phenomenal conservatives only assert that making the assumption that things are as they seem is a reasonable default attitude, which one should hold onto unless and until reasons to reject them (referred to as “defeaters”) arise.

First, there might be rebutting defeaters, that is, evidence that what appears to be the case is in fact false.

For instance, one might see a stick that appears bent when half-submerged in water. But one might then feel the stick, and find that it feels straight. The straight feel of the stick would provide a rebutting defeater for the proposition that the stick is bent. Note here that the feel itself is still a seeming, it’s a perceptual seeming.

Second, there might be undercutting defeaters, that is, evidence that one’s appearance (whether it be true or false) is unreliable or otherwise defective as a source of information.

For instance, suppose one learns that an object that appears red is in fact illuminated by red lights. The red lighting is not by itself evidence that the object isn’t also red; however, the red lighting means that the look of the object is not a reliable indicator of its true color. Hence, the information about the unusual lighting conditions provides an undercutting defeater for the proposition that the object is red.

An initial, intellectual appearance is an ‘intuition’.

That is, an intuition that p is a state of its seeming to one that p that is not dependent on inference from other beliefs and that results from thinking about p, as opposed to perceiving, remembering, or introspecting.

Ethical Intuitionism

An ethical intuition is an intuition whose content is an evaluative proposition

Enjoyment is better than suffering.
If A is better than B and B is better than C, then A is better than C.
It is unjust to punish a person for a crime he did not commit.
Courage, benevolence, and honesty are virtues.
If a person has a right to do something, then no person has a right to forcibly prevent him from doing that thing.

These propositions seem to be true, in each case the appearance is intellectual, and they are evaluative, so the relevant mental states in this case are ethical intuitions.

This is to say Ethical Intuitions are 4 parts, one seeming, two initial, three intellectual, and four evaluative.
Not all ethical claims are intuitive

Even while some people believe certain propositions to be true, the pertinent appearances do not qualify as “intuitions” because they rely on other beliefs. For instance, the idea that “The United States should not have invaded Iraq” rests on ideas like that the war was unavoidably going to result in thousands of deaths, that this is wrong, that Iraq lacked WMDs, and other similar ideas. Intuition is what makes us aware that killing people is prima facie wrong.

Intuition is also involved in the weighing of competing value

We might have feelings on whether it’s moral to eliminate a tyrant by killing lots of people.

Some think that intuitions are just beliefs, and thus that ‘intuition’ does not name a way of knowing anything, for we do not want to say that merely by believing something, I know it.
A more sophisticated worry is that what we think of as intuitions may be products of antecedently existing beliefs, perhaps via subconscious inferences.

First, the idea that intuitions originate from or are influenced by beliefs falls short of explaining how our moral views came to be. There is no question that some moral views can be explained by inference from other moral beliefs. But since no moral belief can be derived from wholly non-moral premises, we must start with some moral beliefs that are not inferred from any other beliefs.

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Second, moral intuitions are not typically driven by antecedent moral beliefs because they frequently either contradict or fail to account for our antecedently held moral ideas.

Our Moral Beliefs are countenanced by our initial moral intuitions

We adopt fundamental moral beliefs because they seem right to us; we don’t select them randomly.

Intuition being often independent of belief is important, since it enables intuition to provide the sort of constraint needed for adjudicating between competing moral theories.

Looking at certain moral dilemmas like the organ thought experiment and the trolley problem we can see even our moral beliefs can deviate from our intuitions about logical outcomes. Take for example that we are consequentialist (utilitarians), in the trolley problem it seems obvious that we would switch the lever to save 5 instead of one, but when thinking about the organ thought experiment it seems less obvious to kill one healthy patient to use their organs to save three others. This shows even though our moral position would logically entail us to choose the same consequence, we would still have differing intuitions even on our moral beliefs.

If intuition simply followed moral belief, then it could not help us decide which moral beliefs are correct.
The intuitive propositions we’ve been discussing are prima facie justified.

That is, until contradictory evidence should appear that is sufficiently compelling to overturn the initial presumption in their favor, we are justified in trusting them. Such discrediting evidence would either be evidence directly contradicting the hypothesis that seemed to hold true intuitively or proof that our initial intuition was false.

If one accepts the intuitions about perceptions, memory, and our intellect (non-moral ones) it seems arbitrary why one would reject moral seemings — at least prima facie, so it follows we are prima facie justified in believing/taking our moral intuitions to be true unless presented with defeaters.

Moorean Argument Against Moral Nihilism

Moral good and bad, if they exist, would be intrinsically motivating — that is, things that any rational being would necessarily be motivated to pursue (in the case of good) or avoid (in the case of bad).
It is impossible for anything to be intrinsically motivating in that sense.
Therefore, good and bad do not exist.

Given the nihilist conclusion in (3), one could validly infer such further conclusions as:

It is not the case that a nuclear war would be bad.
It is never the case that enjoyment is better than excruciating pain.

And so on. Now, just as someone who accepted (1) and (2) might be moved by the above reasoning to accept (4) and (S), a realist might argue against (1) and (2) as follows:

1'. A nuclear war would be bad.

2'. Enjoyment is sometimes (if not always) better than excruciating pain.

3'. Therefore, good and bad do exist.

4'. Therefore, either (a) or (b)

a. Good and bad need not be intrinsically motivating, or

b. It is possible for something to be intrinsically motivating.

One would charge this realist argument with ‘begging the question’ against nihilism, since premises (1') and (2') are precisely what the nihilist denies in his conclusion.

But this embodies a naive conception of the burdens of dialectic, granting a presumption to whichever argument happens to be stated first. For if the realist argument had been stated first, then we could presumably say that the nihilist argument ‘begs the question’ against the realist since its premises (1) and (2) (conjointly) are precisely what the realist denies in his conclusion.

The question that should be asked is ‘how should we decide between the two arguments?’
Of the two arguments, the better is the one whose premises are more initially plausible.

We take the realist premise that “Enjoyment is sometimes better than excruciating pain.” and compare it to the nihilist premise that “It is impossible for anything to be intrinsically motivating” and we see which one seems more plausible. The former seems more plausible than the latter, therefore it would be irrational to reject the former over the latter.