Non-cognitivism

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-cognitivism

Non-cognitivism is the meta-ethical view that ethical sentences do not express propositions (i.e., statements) and thus cannot be true or false (they are not truth-apt). A noncognitivist denies the cognitivist claim that "moral judgments are capable of being objectively true, because they describe some feature of the world". If moral statements cannot be true, and if one cannot know something that is not true, noncognitivism implies that moral knowledge is impossible.

Non-cognitivism entails that non-cognitive attitudes underlie moral discourse and this discourse therefore consists of non-declarative speech acts, although accepting that its surface features may consistently and efficiently work as if moral discourse were cognitive. The point of interpreting moral claims as non-declarative speech acts is to explain what moral claims mean if they are neither true nor false (as philosophies such as logical positivism entail). Utterances like "Boo to killing!" and "Don't kill" are not candidates for truth or falsity, but have non-cognitive meaning.

Varieties

Emotivism, associated with A. J. Ayer, the Vienna Circle and C. L. Stevenson, suggests that ethical sentences are primarily emotional expressions of one's own attitudes and are intended to influence the actions of the listener. Under this view, "Killing is wrong" is translated as "Killing, boo!" or "I disapprove of killing."

A close cousin of emotivism, developed by R. M. Hare, is called universal prescriptivism. Prescriptivists interpret ethical statements as being universal imperatives, prescribing behavior for all to follow. According to prescriptivism, phrases like "Thou shalt not murder!" or "Do not steal!" are the clearest expressions of morality, while reformulations like "Killing is wrong" tend to obscure the meaning of moral sentences.

Other forms of non-cognitivism include Simon Blackburn's quasi-realism and Allan Gibbard's norm-expressivism.

Arguments in favour

As with other anti-realist meta-ethical theories, non-cognitivism is largely supported by the argument from queerness: ethical properties, if they existed, would be different from any other thing in the universe, since they have no observable effect on the world. People generally have a negative attitude towards murder, which presumably keeps most of us from murdering. But does the actual wrongness of murder play an independent role? Is there any evidence that there is a property of wrongness that some types of acts have? Some people might think that the strong feelings we have when we see or consider a murder provide evidence of murder's wrongness. But it is not difficult to explain these feelings without saying that wrongness was their cause. Thus there is no way of discerning which, if any, ethical properties exist; by Occam's razor, the simplest assumption is that none do. The non-cognitivist then asserts that, since a proposition about an ethical property would have no referent, ethical statements must be something else.

Universal prescriptivism

Arguments for prescriptivism focus on the function of normative statements.

Prescriptivists argue that factual statements and prescriptions are totally different, because of different expectations of change in cases of a clash between word and world. In a descriptive sentence, if one premises that "red is a number" then according to the rules of English grammar said statement would be false. Since said premise describes the objects "red" and "number", anyone with an adequate understanding of English would notice the falseness of such description and the falseness of said statement. However, if the norm "thou shalt not kill!" is uttered, and this premise is negated (by the fact of a person being murdered), the speaker is not to change his sentence upon observation of this into "kill other people!", but is to reiterate the moral outrage of the act of killing. Adjusting statements based upon objective reality and adjusting reality based upon statements are contrary uses of language; that is to say, descriptive statements are a different kind of sentence to normative statements. If truth is understood according to correspondence theory, the question of the truth or falsity of sentences not contingent upon external phenomena cannot be tested (see tautologies).

Some cognitivists argue that some expressions like "courageous" have both a factual as well as a normative component which cannot be distinguished by analysis. Prescriptivists argue that according to context, either the factual or the normative component of the meaning is dominant. The sentence "Hero A behaved courageously" is wrong, if A ran away in the face of danger. But the sentence "Be brave and fight for the glory of your country!" has no truth value and cannot be falsified by someone who doesn't join the army.

Prescriptivism is also supported by the actual way of speaking. Many moral statements are de facto uttered as recommendations or commands, e.g. when parents or teachers forbid children to do wrong actions. The most famous moral ideas are prescriptions: the Ten Commandments, the command of charity, the categorical imperative, and the Golden Rule command to do or not to do something rather than state that something is or is not the case.

Prescriptivism can fit the theist idea of morality as obedience towards god. It is however different from the cognitivist supernaturalism which interprets morality as subjective will of god, while prescriptivism claims that moral rules are universal and can be found by reason alone without reference to a god.

According to Hare, prescriptivists cannot argue that amoralists are logically wrong or contradictory. Everyone can choose to follow moral commands or not. This is the human condition according to the Christian reinterpretation of the Choice of Heracles. According to prescriptivism, morality is not about knowledge (of moral facts), but about character (to choose to do the right thing). Actors cannot externalize their responsibility and freedom of will towards some moral truth in the world, virtuous people don't need to wait for some cognition to choose what's right.

Prescriptivism is also supported by imperative logic, in which there are no truth values for imperatives, and by the idea of the naturalistic fallacy: even if someone could prove the existence of an ethical property and express it in a factual statement, he could never derive any command from this statement, so the search for ethical properties is pointless.

Emotivism

Arguments for emotivism focus on what normative statements express when uttered by a speaker. A person who says that killing is wrong certainly expresses her disapproval of killing. Emotivists claim that this is all she does, that the statement "killing is wrong" is not a truth-apt declaration, and that the burden of evidence is on the cognitivists who want to show that in addition to expressing disapproval, the claim "killing is wrong" is also true. Emotivists ask whether there really is evidence that killing is wrong. We have evidence that Jupiter has a magnetic field and that birds are oviparous, but as yet, we do not seem to have found evidence of moral properties, such as "goodness". Emotivists ask why, without such evidence, we should think there is such a property. Ethical intuitionists think the evidence comes not from science or reason but from our own feelings: good deeds make us feel a certain way and bad deeds make us feel very differently. But is this enough to show that there are genuinely good and bad deeds? Emotivists think not, claiming that we do not need to postulate the existence of moral "badness" or "wrongness" to explain why considering certain deeds makes us feel disapproval; that all we really observe when we introspect are feelings of disapproval. Thus the emotivist asks why not adopt the simple explanation and say that this is all there is, rather than insist that some intrinsic "badness" (of murder, for example) must be causing feelings when a simpler explanation is available.

Arguments against

One argument against non-cognitivism is that it ignores the external causes of emotional and prescriptive reactions. If someone says, "John is a good person," something about John must have inspired that reaction. If John gives to the poor, takes care of his sick grandmother, and is friendly to others, and these are what inspire the speaker to think well of him, it is plausible to say, "John is a good person because he gives to the poor, takes care of his sick grandmother, and is friendly to others." If, in turn, the speaker responds positively to the idea of giving to the poor, then some aspect of that idea must have inspired a positive response; one could argue that that aspect is also the basis of its goodness.

Another argument is the "embedding problem" in which ethical sentences are embedded into more complex sentences. Consider the following examples:

• Eating meat is not wrong.
• Is eating meat wrong?
• I think that eating meat is wrong.
• Mike doesn't think that eating meat is wrong.
• I once thought that eating meat was wrong.
• She does not realize that eating meat is wrong.

Attempts to translate these sentences in an emotivist framework seem to fail (e.g. "She does not realize 'Boo to eating meat!'"). Prescriptivist translations fare only slightly better ("She does not realize that she is not to eat meat"). Even the act of forming such a construction indicates some sort of cognition in the process.

According to some non-cognitivist points of view, these sentences simply assume the false premise that ethical statements are either true or false. They might be literally translated as:

• "Eating meat is wrong" is a false statement.
• Is "eating meat is wrong" a true statement?
• I think that "eating meat is wrong" is a true statement.
• Mike doesn't think that "eating meat is wrong" is a true statement.
• I once thought that "eating meat is wrong" was a true statement.
• She does not realize that "eating meat is wrong" is a true statement.

These translations, however, seem divorced from the way people actually use language. A non-cognitivist would have to disagree with someone saying, "'Eating meat is wrong' is a false statement" (since "Eating meat is wrong" is not truth-apt at all), but may be tempted to agree with a person saying, "Eating meat is not wrong."

One might more constructively interpret these statements to describe the underlying emotional statement that they express, i.e.: I disapprove/do not disapprove of eating meat, I used to, he doesn't, I do and she doesn't, etc.; however, this interpretation is closer to ethical subjectivism than to non-cognitivism proper.

A similar argument against non-cognitivism is that of ethical argument. A common argument might be, "If killing an innocent human is always wrong, and all fetuses are innocent humans, then killing a fetus is always wrong." Most people would consider such an utterance to represent an analytic proposition which is true a priori. However, if ethical statements do not represent cognitions, it seems odd to use them as premises in an argument, and even odder to assume they follow the same rules of syllogism as true propositions. However, R.M. Hare, proponent of universal prescriptivism, has argued that the rules of logic are independent of grammatical mood, and thus the same logical relations may hold between imperatives as hold between indicatives.

Many objections to non-cognitivism based on the linguistic characteristics of what purport to be moral judgments were originally raised by Peter Glassen in "The Cognitivity of Moral Judgments", published in Mind in January 1959, and in Glassen's follow-up article in the January 1963 issue of the same journal.

Moral relativism

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_relativism

Moral relativism or ethical relativism (often reformulated as relativist ethics or relativist morality) is used to describe several philosophical positions concerned with the differences in moral judgments across different peoples and cultures. An advocate of such ideas is often referred to as a relativist for short.

Descriptive moral relativism holds only that people do, in fact, disagree fundamentally about what is moral, with no judgment being expressed on the desirability of this. Meta-ethical moral relativism holds that in such disagreements, nobody is objectively right or wrong. Normative moral relativism holds that because nobody is right or wrong, everyone ought to tolerate the behavior of others even when large disagreements about morality exist. Said concepts of the different intellectual movements involve considerable nuance and aren't absolute descriptions. Descriptive relativists do not necessarily adopt meta-ethical relativism. Moreover, not all meta-ethical relativists adopt normative relativism.

American philosopher Richard Rorty in particular has argued that the label of being a "relativist" has become warped and turned into a sort of pejorative. He has written specifically that thinkers labeled as such usually simply believe "that the grounds for choosing between such [philosophical] opinions is less algorithmic than had been thought", not that every single conceptual idea is as valid as any other. In this spirit, Rorty has lamented that "philosophers have... become increasingly isolated from the rest of culture."

Moral relativism has been debated for thousands of years across a variety of contexts during the history of civilization. Arguments of particular notability have been made in areas such as ancient Greece and historical India while discussions have continued to the present day. Besides the material created by philosophers, the concept has additionally attracted attention in diverse fields including art, religion, and science.

Variations

Descriptive

Descriptive moral relativism is merely the positive or descriptive position that there exist, in fact, fundamental disagreements about the right course of action even when the same facts hold true and the same consequences seem likely to arise. It is the observation that different cultures have different moral standards.

Descriptive relativists do not necessarily advocate the tolerance of all behavior in light of such disagreement; that is to say, they are not necessarily normative relativists. Likewise, they do not necessarily make any commitments to the semantics, ontology, or epistemology of moral judgement; that is, not all descriptive relativists are meta-ethical relativists.

Descriptive relativism is a widespread position in academic fields such as anthropology and sociology, which simply admit that it is incorrect to assume that the same moral or ethical frameworks are always in play in all historical and cultural circumstances.

Meta-ethical

Meta-ethical moral relativists believe not only that people disagree about moral issues, but that terms such as "good", "bad", "right" and "wrong" do not stand subject to universal truth conditions at all; rather, they are relative to the traditions, convictions, or practices of an individual or a group of people. The American anthropologist William Graham Sumner was an influential advocate of this view. He argues in his 1906 work Folkways that what people consider right and wrong is shaped entirely—not primarily—by the traditions, customs, and practices of their culture. Moreover, since in his analysis of human understanding there cannot be any higher moral standard than that provided by the local morals of a culture, no trans-cultural judgement about the rightness or wrongness of a culture's morals could possibly be justified.

Meta-ethical relativists are, first, descriptive relativists: they believe that, given the same set of facts, some societies or individuals will have a fundamental disagreement about what a person ought to do or prefer (based on societal or individual norms). What's more, they argue that one cannot adjudicate these disagreements using any available independent standard of evaluation—any appeal to a relevant standard would always be merely personal or at best societal.

This view contrasts with moral universalism, which argues that, even though well-intentioned persons disagree, and some may even remain unpersuadable (e.g. someone who is closed-minded), there is still a meaningful sense in which an action could be more "moral" (morally preferable) than another; that is, they believe there are objective standards of evaluation that seem worth calling "moral facts"—regardless of whether they are universally accepted.

Normative

Normative moral relativists believe not only the meta-ethical thesis, but that it has normative implications on what we ought to do. Normative moral relativists argue that meta-ethical relativism implies that we ought to tolerate the behavior of others even when it runs counter to our personal or cultural moral standards. Most philosophers do not agree, partially because of the challenges of arriving at an "ought" from relativistic premises. Meta-ethical relativism seems to eliminate the normative relativist's ability to make prescriptive claims. In other words, normative relativism may find it difficult to make a statement like "we think it is moral to tolerate behaviour" without always adding "other people think intolerance of certain behaviours is moral". Philosophers like Russell Blackford even argue that intolerance is, to some degree, important. As he puts it, "we need not adopt a quietism about moral traditions that cause hardship and suffering. Nor need we passively accept the moral norms of our own respective societies, to the extent that they are ineffective or counterproductive or simply unnecessary". That is, it is perfectly reasonable (and practical) for a person or group to defend their subjective values against others, even if there is no universal prescription or morality. We can also criticize other cultures for failing to pursue even their own goals effectively.

The moral relativists may also still try to make sense of non-universal statements like "in this country, it is wrong to do X" or even "to me, it is right to do Y".

Moral universalists argue further that their system often does justify tolerance, and that disagreement with moral systems does not always demand interference, and certainly not aggressive interference. For example, the utilitarian might call another society's practice 'ignorant' or 'less moral', but there would still be much debate about courses of action (e.g. whether to focus on providing better education, or technology, etc.).

History

While Scottish philosopher David Hume did not espouse relativist views of morality per se and held nuanced opinions, his thinking has been widely influential in the development of relativism.

Moral relativism encompasses views and arguments that people in various cultures have held over several thousand years. For example, the ancient Jaina Anekantavada principle of Mahavira (c. 599–527 BC) states that truth and reality are perceived differently from diverse points of view, and that no single point of view is the complete truth; and the Greek philosopher Protagoras (c. 481–420 BC) famously asserted that "man is the measure of all things". The Greek historian Herodotus (c. 484–420 BC) observed that each society regards its own belief system and way of doing things as better than all others. Sextus Empiricus and other ancient Pyrrhonist philosophers denied the existence of objective morality.

In the early modern era Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677) notably held that nothing is inherently good or evil. The 18th-century Enlightenment philosopher David Hume (1711–1776) serves in several important respects as the father both of modern emotivism and of moral relativism, though Hume himself did not espouse relativism. He distinguished between matters of fact and matters of value, and suggested that moral judgments consist of the latter, for they do not deal with verifiable facts obtained in the world, but only with our sentiments and passions. But Hume regarded some of our sentiments as universal. He famously denied that morality has any objective standard, and suggested that the universe remains indifferent to our preferences and our troubles.

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) believed that we have to assess the value of our values since values are relative to one's goals and one's self. He emphasized the need to analyze our moral values and how much impact they may have on us. The problem with morality, according to Nietzsche, is that those who were considered "good" were the powerful nobles who had more education, and considered themselves better than anyone below their rank. Thus, what is considered good is relative. A "good man" is not questioned on whether or not there is a "bad", such as temptations, lingering inside him and he is considered to be more important than a man who is considered "bad" who is considered useless to making the human race better because of the morals we have subjected ourselves to. But since what is considered good and bad is relative, the importance and value we place on them should also be relative. He proposed that morality itself could be a danger. Nietzsche believed that morals should be constructed actively, making them relative to who we are and what we, as individuals, consider to be true, equal, good and bad, etc. instead of reacting to moral laws made by a certain group of individuals in power.

One scholar, supporting an anti-realist interpretation, concludes that "Nietzsche's central argument for anti-realism about value is explanatory: moral facts don't figure in the 'best explanation' of experience, and so are not real constituents of the objective world. Moral values, in short, can be 'explained away.'"

It is certain that Nietzsche criticizes Plato's prioritization of transcendence as the Forms. The Platonist view holds that what is 'true', or most real, is something which is other-worldly while the (real) world of experience is like a mere 'shadow' of the Forms, most famously expressed in Plato's allegory of the cave. Nietzsche believes that this transcendence also had a parallel growth in Christianity, which prioritized life-denying moral qualities such as humility and obedience through the church. (See Beyond Good and Evil, On the Genealogy of Morals, The Twilight of the Idols, The Antichrist, etc.)

Anthropologists such as Ruth Benedict (1887–1948) have cautioned observers against ethnocentricism—using the standards of their own culture to evaluate their subjects of study. Benedict said that transcendent morals do not exist—only socially constructed customs do (see cultural relativism); and that in comparing customs, the anthropologist "insofar as he remains an anthropologist ... is bound to avoid any weighting of one in favor of the other". To some extent, the increasing body of knowledge of great differences in belief among societies caused both social scientists and philosophers to question whether any objective, absolute standards pertaining to values could exist. This led some to posit that differing systems have equal validity, with no standard for adjudicating among conflicting beliefs. The Finnish philosopher-anthropologist Edward Westermarck (1862–1939) ranks as one of the first to formulate a detailed theory of moral relativism. He portrayed all moral ideas as subjective judgments that reflect one's upbringing. He rejected G.E. Moore's (1873–1958) ethical intuitionism—in vogue during the early part of the 20th century, and which identified moral propositions as true or false, and known to us through a special faculty of intuition—because of the obvious differences in beliefs among societies, which he said provided evidence of the lack of any innate, intuitive power.

Arguments for meta-ethical relativism

Scientific

Morality and evolution

See also: Evolution of morality

Research within evolutionary biology, cognitive psychology, ethology, and evolutionary anthropology has claimed that morality is a natural phenomenon that was shaped by evolutionary mechanisms. In this case, morality is defined as the set of relative social practices that promote the survival and successful reproduction of the species, or even multiple cooperating species.

Literary

The literary perspectivism begins at the different versions of the Greek myths. Symbolism created multiple suggestions for a vers. Structuralism teaches us the polysemy of the poems.

Examples of relativistic literary works: Gogol's Dead Souls; The Alexandria Quartet by Lawrence Durrell; Raymond Queneau's Zazie dans le métro.

Criticisms of meta-ethical relativism

Philosophical

R. M. Hare

See also: Universal prescriptivism

Some philosophers, for example R. M. Hare (1919–2002), argue that moral propositions remain subject to human logical rules, notwithstanding the absence of any factual content, including those subject to cultural or religious standards or norms. Thus, for example, they contend that one cannot hold contradictory ethical judgments. This allows for moral discourse with shared standards, notwithstanding the descriptive properties or truth conditions of moral terms. They do not affirm or deny that moral facts exist, only that human logic applies to our moral assertions; consequently, they postulate an objective and preferred standard of moral justification, albeit in a very limited sense. Nevertheless, according to Hare, human logic shows the error of relativism in one very important sense (see Hare's Sorting out Ethics). Hare and other philosophers also point out that, aside from logical constraints, all systems treat certain moral terms alike in an evaluative sense. This parallels our treatment of other terms such as less or more, which meet with universal understanding and do not depend upon independent standards (for example, one can convert measurements). It applies to good and bad when used in their non-moral sense, too; for example, when we say, "this is a good wrench" or "this is a bad wheel". This evaluative property of certain terms also allows people of different beliefs to have meaningful discussions on moral questions, even though they may disagree about certain "facts".

Walter Terence Stace

"Ethical Relativity" is the topic of the first two chapters in The Concept of Morals, in which Walter Terence Stace argues against moral absolutism, but for moral universalism.

Philosophical poverty

Critics propose that moral relativism fails because it rejects basic premises of discussions on morality, or because it cannot arbitrate disagreement. Many critics, including Ibn Warraq and Eddie Tabash, have suggested that meta-ethical relativists essentially take themselves out of any discussion of normative morality, since they seem to be rejecting an assumption of such discussions: the premise that there are right and wrong answers that can be discovered through reason. Practically speaking, such critics will argue that meta-ethical relativism may amount to moral nihilism, or else incoherence.

These critics argue specifically that the moral relativists reduce the extent of their input in normative moral discussions to either rejecting the very having of the discussion, or else deeming both disagreeing parties to be correct. For instance, the moral relativist can only appeal to preference to object to the practice of murder or torture by individuals for hedonistic pleasure. This accusation that relativists reject widely held terms of discourse is similar to arguments used against other "discussion-stoppers" like some forms of solipsism or the rejection of induction.

Philosopher Simon Blackburn made a similar criticism, and explains that moral relativism fails as a moral system simply because it cannot arbitrate disagreements.

Other criticism

Some arguments come when people question which moral justifications or truths are said to be relative. Because people belong to many groups based on culture, race, religion, etc., it is difficult to claim that the values of the group have authority for the members. A part of meta-ethical relativism is identifying which group of people those truths are relative to. Another component is that many people belong to more than one group. The beliefs of the groups that a person belongs to may be fundamentally different, and so it is hard to decide which are relative and which win out. A person practicing meta-ethical relativism would not necessarily object to either view, but develop an opinion and argument.

Religious

Protestantism

See also: Protestantism

Roman Catholicism

See also: Relativism § Catholic Church and relativism

Catholic and some secular intellectuals attribute the perceived post-war decadence of Europe to the displacement of absolute values by moral relativism. Pope Benedict XVI, Marcello Pera and others have argued that after about 1960, Europeans massively abandoned many traditional norms rooted in Christianity and replaced them with continuously evolving relative moral rules. In this view, sexual activity has become separated from procreation, which led to a decline in the importance of families and to depopulation. The most authoritative response to moral relativism from the Catholic perspective can be found in Veritatis Splendor, an encyclical by Pope John Paul II. Many of the main criticisms of moral relativism by the Catholic Church relate largely to modern controversies, such as elective abortion.

Buddhism

Bhikkhu Bodhi, an American Buddhist monk, has written: "By assigning value and spiritual ideals to private subjectivity, the materialistic world view ... threatens to undermine any secure objective foundation for morality. The result is the widespread moral degeneration that we witness today. To counter this tendency, mere moral exhortation is insufficient. If morality is to function as an efficient guide to conduct, it cannot be propounded as a self-justifying scheme but must be embedded in a more comprehensive spiritual system which grounds morality in a transpersonal order. Religion must affirm, in the clearest terms, that morality and ethical values are not mere decorative frills of personal opinion, not subjective superstructure, but intrinsic laws of the cosmos built into the heart of reality."

Views commonly confused with moral relativism

Moral relativism vs ethical subjectivism

Moral relativism is a distinct position from ethical subjectivism (the view that the truth of ethical claims are not mind independent). While these views are often held together, they do not entail each other. For example, someone who claims "something is morally right for me to do because the people in my culture think it is right" is both a moral relativist (because what is right and wrong depends on who is doing it), and an ethical subjectivist (because what is right and wrong is determined by mental states, i.e. what people think is right and wrong).

However, someone who thinks that what is right and wrong is whatever a deity thinks is right or wrong would be a subjectivist (morality is based on mental states), but not a relativist (morality is the same for everyone). In contrast, someone who claims that to act ethically you must follow the laws of your country would be a relativist (morality is dependent on who you are), but not a subjectivist (morality is based on facts about the world, not mental states).

Moral relativism vs moral anti-realism

Depending on how a moral relativist position is constructed, it may or may not be independent of moral realism. Moral realists are committed to some version of the following three claims:

1. Semantic thesis: Moral statements have meaning, they express propositions, or are the kind of things that can be true or false.
2. Alethic thesis: Some moral propositions are true.
3. Metaphysical thesis: The metaphysical status of moral facts is robust and ordinary, not importantly different from other facts about the world.

While many moral relativists deny one or more of these claims, and therefore could be moral anti-realists, a denial is not required. A moral relativist who claims that you should act according to the laws in whatever country you are a citizen of, accepts all three claims: moral facts express propositions that can be true or false (you can see if a given action is against the law or not), some moral propositions are true (some actions abide by the laws in someone's country), and moral facts are ordinary (laws are not mental states, they are physical objects in the world). However, this view is a relativist one as it is dependent on the country you are a citizen of.

Moral realism

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_realism 

Moral realism (also ethical realism) is the position that ethical sentences express propositions that refer to objective features of the world (that is, features independent of subjective opinion), some of which may be true to the extent that they report those features accurately. This makes moral realism a non-nihilist form of ethical cognitivism (which accepts that ethical sentences express propositions and can therefore be evaluated as true or false) with an ontological orientation, standing in opposition to all forms of moral anti-realism and moral skepticism, including ethical subjectivism (which denies that moral propositions refer to objective facts), error theory (which denies that any moral propositions are true); and non-cognitivism (which denies that moral sentences express propositions at all). Within moral realism, the two main subdivisions are ethical naturalism and ethical non-naturalism.

Many philosophers claim that moral realism may be dated back at least to Plato as a philosophical doctrine, and that it is a fully defensible form of moral doctrine. A survey from 2009 involving 3,226 respondents found that 56% of philosophers accept or lean towards moral realism (28%: anti-realism; 16%: other). Another study in 2020 found 62.1% accept or lean towards realism. Some notable examples of robust moral realists include David Brink, John McDowell, Peter Railton, Geoffrey Sayre-McCord, Michael Smith, Terence Cuneo, Russ Shafer-Landau, G. E. Moore, John Finnis, Richard Boyd, Nicholas Sturgeon, Thomas Nagel, Derek Parfit and Peter Singer. Norman Geras has argued that Karl Marx was a moral realist. Moral realism has been studied in the various philosophical and practical applications.

Robust versus minimal moral realism

A delineation of moral realism into a minimal form, a moderate form, and a robust form has been put forward in the literature.

The robust model of moral realism commits moral realists to three theses:

• The semantic thesis: The primary semantic role of moral predicates (such as "right" and "wrong") is to refer to moral properties (such as rightness and wrongness), so that moral statements (such as "honesty is good" and "slavery is unjust") purport to represent moral facts, and express propositions that are true or false (or approximately true, largely false, and so on).
• The alethic thesis: Some moral propositions are in fact true.
• The metaphysical thesis: Moral propositions are true when actions and other objects of moral assessment have the relevant moral properties (so that the relevant moral facts obtain), where these facts and properties are robust: their metaphysical status, whatever it is, is not relevantly different from that of (certain types of) ordinary non-moral facts and properties.

The minimal model leaves off the metaphysical thesis, treating it as matter of contention among moral realists (as opposed to between moral realists and moral anti-realists). This dispute is not insignificant, as acceptance or rejection of the metaphysical thesis is taken by those employing the robust model as the key difference between moral realism and moral anti-realism. Indeed, the question of how to classify certain logically possible (if eccentric) views—such as the rejection of the semantic and alethic theses in conjunction with the acceptance of the metaphysical thesis—turns on which model we accept. Someone employing the robust model might call such a view "realist non-cognitivism," while someone employing the minimal model might simply place such a view alongside other, more traditional, forms of non-cognitivism.

The robust model and the minimal model also disagree over how to classify moral subjectivism (roughly, the view that moral facts are not mind-independent in the relevant sense, but that moral statements may still be true). The historical association of subjectivism with moral anti-realism in large part explains why the robust model of moral realism has been dominant—even if only implicitly—both in the traditional and contemporary philosophical literature on metaethics.

In the minimal sense of realism, R. M. Hare could be considered a realist in his later works, as he is committed to the objectivity of value judgments, even though he denies that moral statements express propositions with truth-values per se. Moral constructivists like John Rawls and Christine Korsgaard may also be realists in this minimalist sense; the latter describes her own position as procedural realism. Some readings of evolutionary science such as those of Charles Darwin and James Mark Baldwin have suggested that in so far as an ethics may be associated with survival strategies and natural selection then such behavior may be associated with a moderate position of moral realism equivalent to an ethics of survival.

Advantages

Moral realism allows the ordinary rules of logic (modus ponens, etc.) to be applied straightforwardly to moral statements. We can say that a moral belief is false or unjustified or contradictory in the same way we would about a factual belief. This is a problem for expressivism, as shown by the Frege–Geach problem.

Another advantage of moral realism is its capacity to resolve moral disagreements: if two moral beliefs contradict one another, realism says that they cannot both be right, and therefore everyone involved ought to be seeking out the right answer to resolve the disagreement. Contrary theories of meta-ethics have trouble even formulating the statement "this moral belief is wrong," and so they cannot resolve disagreements in this way.

Proponents

Philippa Foot adopts a moral realist position, criticizing Stevenson's idea that when evaluation is superposed on fact there has been a "committal in a new dimension." She introduces, by analogy, the practical implications of using the word "injury." Not just anything counts as an injury. There must be some impairment. When we suppose a man wants the things the injury prevents him from obtaining, haven’t we fallen into the old naturalistic fallacy?

It may seem that the only way to make a necessary connection between 'injury' and the things that are to be avoided, is to say that it is only used in an 'action-guiding sense' when applied to something the speaker intends to avoid. But we should look carefully at the crucial move in that argument, and query the suggestion that someone might happen not to want anything for which he would need the use of hands or eyes. Hands and eyes, like ears and legs, play a part in so many operations that a man could only be said not to need them if he had no wants at all.

Foot argues that the virtues, like hands and eyes in the analogy, play so large a part in so many operations that it is implausible to suppose that a committal in a non-naturalist dimension is necessary to demonstrate their goodness.

Philosophers who have supposed that actual action was required if 'good' were to be used in a sincere evaluation have got into difficulties over weakness of will, and they should surely agree that enough has been done if we can show that any man has reason to aim at virtue and avoid vice. But is this impossibly difficult if we consider the kinds of things that count as virtue and vice? Consider, for instance, the cardinal virtues, prudence, temperance, courage and justice. Obviously any man needs prudence, but does he not also need to resist the temptation of pleasure when there is harm involved? And how could it be argued that he would never need to face what was fearful for the sake of some good? It is not obvious what someone would mean if he said that temperance or courage were not good qualities, and this not because of the 'praising' sense of these words, but because of the things that courage and temperance are.

W. D. Ross articulates his moral realism in analogy to mathematics by stating that the moral order is just as real as "the spatial or numerical structure expressed in the axioms of geometry or arithmetic".

In his defense of Divine Command Theory and thereby moral realism, C. Stephen Evans comments that the fact that there are significant moral disagreements does not undermine moral realism. Much of what may appear to be moral disagreement is actually disagreement over facts. In abortion debates, for example, the crux of the issue may really be whether a fetus is a human person. He goes on to comment that there are in fact tremendous amounts of moral agreement. There are five common principles that are recognized by different human cultures, including (1) A general duty not to harm others and a general duty to benefit others; (2) Special duties to those with whom one has special relations, such as friends and family members; (3) Duties to be truthful; (4) Duties to keep one's commitments and promises; (5) Duties to deal fairly and justly with others.

Criticisms

Several criticisms have been raised against moral realism. A prominent criticism, articulated by J.L. Mackie, is that moral realism postulates the existence of "entities or qualities or relations of a very strange sort, utterly different from anything else in the universe. Correspondingly, if we were aware of them it would have to be by some faculty of moral perception or intuition, utterly different from our ordinary ways of knowing everything else." A number of theories have been developed for how we access objective moral truths, including ethical intuitionism and moral sense theory.

Another criticism of moral realism put forth by Mackie is that it can offer no plausible explanation for cross-cultural moral differences— ethical relativism. "The actual variations in the moral codes are more readily explained by the hypothesis that they reflect ways of life than by the hypothesis that they express perceptions, most of them seriously inadequate and badly distorted, of objective values".

The evolutionary debunking argument suggests that because human psychology is primarily produced by evolutionary processes which do not seem to have a reason to be sensitive to moral facts, taking a moral realist stance can only lead to moral skepticism. The aim of the argument is to undercut the motivations for taking a moral realist stance, namely to be able to assert there are reliable moral standards.

Ethical intuitionism

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethical_intuitionism

Ethical intuitionism (also called moral intuitionism) is a view or family of views in moral epistemology (and, on some definitions, metaphysics). It is foundationalism applied to moral knowledge, the thesis that some moral truths can be known non-inferentially (i.e., known without one needing to infer them from other truths one believes). Such an epistemological view is by definition committed to the existence of knowledge of moral truths; therefore, ethical intuitionism implies cognitivism.

As a foundationalist epistemological position, ethical intuitionism contrasts with coherentist positions in moral epistemology, such as those that depend on reflective equilibrium.

Despite the name "ethical intuitionism", ethical intuitionists need not (though often do) accept that intuitions of value (or of evaluative facts) form the foundation of ethical knowledge; the common commitment of ethical intuitionists is to a non-inferential foundation for ethical knowledge, regardless of whether such a non-inferential foundation consists in intuitions as such.

Throughout the philosophical literature, the term "ethical intuitionism" is frequently used with significant variation in its sense. This article's focus on foundationalism reflects the core commitments of contemporary self-identified ethical intuitionists.

Sufficiently broadly defined, ethical intuitionism can be taken to encompass cognitivist forms of moral sense theory.^[4] It is usually furthermore taken as essential to ethical intuitionism that there be self-evident or a priori moral knowledge; this counts against considering moral sense theory to be a species of intuitionism. (see the Rational intuition versus moral sense section of this article for further discussion).

History

Early intuitionism

While there were ethical intuitionists in a broad sense at least as far back as Thomas Aquinas, the philosophical school usually labelled as ethical intuitionism developed in Britain in the 17th and 18th centuries. Early intuitionists like John Balguy, Ralph Cudworth, and Samuel Clarke were principally concerned with defending moral objectivism against the theories of Thomas Hobbes. Later, their views would be revived and developed by Richard Price and pitted against the moral sense theory of Francis Hutcheson, himself sometimes considered a sentimentalist intuitionist. Immanuel Kant's moral philosophy would be received in Britain as a German analog to Price, though according to R. M. Hare it is questionable whether Kant is an intuitionist.

Henry Sidgwick

In the 19th century, ethical intuitionism was considered by most British philosophers to be a philosophical rival of utilitarianism, until Henry Sidgwick showed there to be several logically distinct theories, both normative and epistemological, sharing the same label. For Sidgwick, intuitionism is about intuitive, i.e. non-inferential, knowledge of moral principles, which are self-evident to the knower. The criteria for this type of knowledge include that they are expressed in clear terms, that the different principles are mutually consistent with each other and that there is expert consensus on them. According to Sidgwick, commonsense moral principles fail to pass this test, but there are some more abstract principles that pass it, like that "what is right for me must be right for all persons in precisely similar circumstances" or that "one should be equally concerned with all temporal parts of one’s life". The most general principles arrived at this way are all compatible with utilitarianism, which is why Sidgwick sees a harmony between intuitionism and utilitarianism. There are also less general intuitive principles, like the duty to keep one's promises or to be just, but these principles are not universal and there are cases where different duties stand in conflict with each other. Sidgwick suggests that we resolve such conflicts in a utilitarian fashion by considering the consequences of the conflicting actions. Inspired by Sidgwick, 20th century philosopher C.D. Broad would coin the term "deontological ethics" to refer to the normative doctrines associated with intuitionism, leaving the phrase "ethical intuitionism" free to refer to the epistemological doctrines.

Intuitionism in analytic philosophy

Ethical intuitionism was popular in the early twentieth century, particularly among British analytic philosophers. H.A. Prichard gave a defense of the view in his "Does Moral Philosophy Rest on a Mistake?" (1912), wherein he contended that moral philosophy rested chiefly on the desire to provide arguments starting from non-normative premises for the principles of obligation that we pre-philosophically accept, such as the principle that one ought to keep one's promises or that one ought not to steal. This is a mistake, Prichard argued, both because it is impossible to derive any statement about what one ought to do from statements not concerning obligation (even statements about what is good), and because there is no need to do so since common sense principles of moral obligation are self-evident.

Prichard was influenced by G.E. Moore, whose Principia Ethica (1903) argued famously that goodness was an indefinable, non-natural property of which we had intuitive awareness. Moore originated the term "the naturalistic fallacy" to refer to the (alleged) error of confusing goodness with some natural property, and he deployed the Open Question Argument to show why this was an error. Unlike Prichard, Moore thought that one could derive principles of obligation from propositions about what is good.

W. D. Ross's intuitionism was influenced both by Prichard and Moore. He holds that we can know moral truths through intuition, for example, that it is wrong to lie or that knowledge is intrinsically good. Intuitions involve a direct apprehension that is not mediated by inferences or deductions: they are self-evident and therefore not in need of any additional proof. This ability is not inborn but has to be developed on the way to reaching mental maturity. But in its fully developed form, we can know moral truths just as well as we can know mathematical truths like the axioms of geometry or arithmetic. This self-evident knowledge is limited to general principles: we can come to know the prima facie duties this way, e.g. that, generally speaking, one should keep one's promises and refrain from harming others. But intuition is unable to reveal one's absolute duty in a particular situation: what one should do all things considered. All we can do is consult perception to determine which prima facie duty has the highest normative weight in this particular case, even though this usually does not amount to knowledge proper due to the complexity involved in most specific cases.

Ethical intuitionism suffered a dramatic fall from favor by the middle of the century, due in part to the influence of logical positivism, in part to the rising popularity of naturalism in philosophy, and in part to philosophical objections based on the phenomenon of widespread moral disagreement. C. L. Stevenson's emotivism would prove especially attractive to Moorean intuitionists seeking to avoid ethical naturalism. In the later parts of the 20th century, intuitionism would have few adherents to speak of; in Bernard Williams' words: "This model of intuition in ethics has been demolished by a succession of critics, and the ruins of it that remain above ground are not impressive enough to invite much history of what happened to it."

Contemporary developments

Some recent work suggests the view may be enjoying a resurgence of interest in academic philosophy. Robert Audi is one of the main contemporary supporters of ethical intuitionism. His 2005 book The Good in the Right claims to update and strengthen Rossian intuitionism and to develop the epistemology of ethics. Michael Huemer's book Ethical Intuitionism (2005) also provides a recent defense of the view. Furthermore, authors writing on normative ethics often accept methodological intuitionism as they present allegedly obvious or intuitive examples or thought experiments as support for their theories.

Definitional issues

Because it was not until Sidgwick that it was clear there were several distinct theses sharing the label "ethical intuitionism", the term has developed many different connotations. This is liable to cause confusion; for example, G.E. Moore's Principia Ethica is often considered a locus classicus defense of ethical intuitionism, yet Moore explicitly refuses the label because of the large number of differences between his own views and traditional intuitionists.

Inessential connotations

Traditionally, intuitionism was often understood as having several other commitments:

1. Moral realism, the view that there are objective facts of morality (as held by Mark Platts).
2. Ethical non-naturalism, the view that these evaluative facts cannot be reduced to natural fact.
3. Classical foundationalism, i.e., the view that intuited moral beliefs are: infallible (indefeasible), indubitable (irresistibly compelling), incorrigible, certain, or understandable without reflection.
4. The view that moral properties are "simple" (as held by G.E. Moore).
5. The view that moral truths are knowable only by intuition.

However, none of these positions are essential to the view; most ethical intuitionists (such as G.E. Moore and W.D. Ross) simply happen to have held those views as well.

Furthermore, intuitionists are often understood to be essentially committed to the existence of a special psychological faculty that reliably produces true moral intuitions. Few intuitionists, however, have explicitly required such a faculty exist, and some, such as Richard Price, would have explicitly denied it exists.

Pluralism

Secondly, sometimes the term "ethical intuitionism" is associated with a pluralistic, deontological position in normative ethics, a position defended by most ethical intuitionists, with Henry Sidgwick and G.E. Moore being notable exceptions.

"Intuitivism"

Robert Audi (2004, Ch. 1) points out that in applied ethics, philosophers frequently appeal to intuitions to justify their claims, even though they do not call themselves intuitionists. Audi hence uses the label "intuitivists" to refer to people who are intuitionists without labeling themselves as such.

On this broad understanding of intuitionism, there are only a few ways someone doing moral philosophy might not count as an intuitionist. First, they might really refrain from relying on intuitions in moral philosophy altogether (say, by attempting to derive all moral claims from claims about what certain individuals desire). Second, they might deny foundationalism in favor of (say) coherentism. Third, they might be non-cognitivists, holding that moral "beliefs" aren't really beliefs at all.

Rational intuition versus moral sense

Some use the term "ethical intuitionism" in moral philosophy to refer to the general position that we have some non-inferential moral knowledge (see Sinnott-Armstrong, 2006a and 2006b)—that is, basic moral knowledge that is not inferred from or based on any proposition. However, it is important to distinguish between empiricist versus rationalist models of this. Some, thus, reserve the term "ethical intuitionism" for the rationalist model and the term "moral sense theory" for the empiricist model (see Sinnott-Armstrong, 2006b, pp. 184–186, especially fn. 4). However, the terminology is not ultimately important, so long as one keeps in mind the relevant differences between these two views.

Generally speaking, rationalist ethical intuitionism models the acquisition of such non-inferential moral knowledge on a priori, non-empirical knowledge, such as knowledge of mathematical truths; whereas moral sense theory models the acquisition of such non-inferential moral knowledge on empirical knowledge, such as knowledge of the colors of objects (see moral sense theory).

Rational intuition

The rationalist version of ethical intuitionism models ethical intuitions on a priori, non-empirically-based intuitions of truths, such as basic truths of mathematics. Take for example the belief that two minus one is one. This piece of knowledge is often thought to be non-inferential in that it is not grounded in or justified by some other proposition or claim. Rather, one who understands the relevant concepts involved in the proposition that two minus one is one has what one might call an "intuition" of the truth of the proposition. One intuits the truth of the proposition, rather than inferring it. Likewise, the ethical intuitionist claims that basic moral truths—whether they are principles (such as don't kill people) or judgments (such as it is wrong to kill people)—are known without inference, and in particular they are known via one's rational intuition.

Some rationalist ethical intuitionists characterize moral "intuitions" as a species of belief (for example, Audi, 2005, pp. 33–6) that are self-evident in that they are justified simply by virtue of one's understanding of the proposition believed. Others characterize "intuitions" as a distinct kind of mental state, in which something seems to one to be the case (whether one believes it or not) as a result of intellectual reflection. Michael Huemer (2005), for example, defines "intuition" as a sort of seeming:

Reasoning sometimes changes how things seem to us. But there is also a way things seem to us prior to reasoning; otherwise, reasoning could not get started. The way things seem prior to reasoning we may call an 'initial appearance'. 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. An ethical intuition is an intuition whose content is an evaluative proposition. (§5.2)

Regardless of one's definition of rational intuition, intuitionists all agree that rational intuitions are not justified by inference from a separate belief.

Moral sense

Main article: Moral sense theory

Another version—what one might call the empiricist version—of ethical intuitionism models non-inferential ethical knowledge on sense perception. This version involves what is often called a "moral sense". According to moral sense theorists, certain moral truths are known via this moral sense simply on the basis of experience, not inference.

One way to understand the moral sense is to draw an analogy between it and other kinds of senses. Beauty, for example, is something we see in some faces, artworks and landscapes. We can also hear it in some pieces of music. We clearly do not need an independent aesthetic sense faculty to perceive beauty in the world. Our ordinary five senses are quite enough to observe it, though merely observing something beautiful is no guarantee that we can observe its beauty. In the same way, a color-blind person is not necessarily able to perceive the green color of grass although he is capable of vision. Suppose we give a name to this ability to appreciate the beauty in things we see: one might call it the aesthetic sense. This aesthetic sense does not come automatically to all people with perfect vision and hearing, so it is fair to describe it as something extra, something not wholly reducible to vision and hearing. As the aesthetic sense informs us about what is beautiful, we can analogically understand the moral sense as informing us of what is good. People with a functioning moral sense get a clear impression of wrongness when they see puppies being kicked, for example.

Moral sense theory

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_sense_theory 

Moral sense theory (also known as moral sentimentalism) is a theory in moral epistemology and meta-ethics concerning the discovery of moral truths. Moral sense theory typically holds that distinctions between morality and immorality are discovered by emotional responses to experience. Some take it to be primarily a view about the nature of moral facts or moral beliefs (a primarily metaphysical view)—this form of the view more often goes by the name "sentimentalism". Others take the view to be primarily about the nature of justifying moral beliefs (a primarily epistemological view)—this form of the view more often goes by the name "moral sense theory". However, some theorists take the view to be one which claims that both moral facts and how one comes to be justified in believing them are necessarily bound up with human emotions.

Popular historical advocates of some version of the moral sense theory or sentimentalism include the 3rd Earl of Shaftesbury (1671–1713), Francis Hutcheson (1694–1746), David Hume (1711–1776), and Adam Smith (1723–1790). Some contemporary advocates include Michael Slote, Justin D'Arms, Daniel Jacobson, Jesse Prinz, Jonathan Haidt, and perhaps John McDowell. Simon Blackburn and Allan Gibbard endorse a non-cognitivist form of sentimentalism.

Intuition versus moral sense

Some use the term "ethical intuitionism" in moral philosophy to refer to the general position that we have some non-inferential moral knowledge (that is, basic moral knowledge that is not inferred from or based on any proposition). On this definition, moral sense theory is a form of ethical intuitionism.

However, it is important to distinguish between empiricist versus rationalist models of this. One may thus distinguish between rationalist ethical intuitionism for the rationalist version and "moral sense theory" for the empiricist version. (This will be the use of the terms here. However, the terminology is not ultimately important, so long as one keeps in mind the relevant differences between these two models of non-inferential moral knowledge.)

History

The first prominent moral sense theory (especially using the term "sense") is found in Mencius (372–289 BCE). The eponymous text deals with an innate moral sense possessed by all human beings. All orthodox interpretations of Confucianism accept this view, several unorthodox groups make a point of refuting it (see: Xunzi). This line of thinking reached its most extreme iteration in xinxue, a form of Neo-Confucianism associated with the Ming Dynasty and Wang Yangming.

In the west, the first prominent moral sense theory is found in Anthony Ashley-Cooper, 3rd Earl of Shaftesbury (1671–1713). His major work espousing a form of moral sense theory is An Inquiry Concerning Virtue, or Merit (first published in an unauthorized edition in 1699).

Subsequently, Francis Hutcheson (1694–1746) developed a version of moral sense theory. The chief statements of his theory occur in An Inquiry Concerning the Original of Our Ideas of Virtue or Moral Good (1725; Treatise II of An Inquiry Into the Original of Our Ideas of Beauty and Virtue) and An Essay On the Nature and Conduct of the Passions and Affections, With Illustrations Upon the Moral Sense (1728).

Arguably the most prominent defender of moral sense theory in the history of philosophy is David Hume (1711–1776). While he discusses morality in Book 3 of his Treatise of Human Nature (1739–40), Hume's most mature, positive account of the moral sense is found in An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals (1751).

Adam Smith also advanced a form of moral sense theory in his The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759). Smith focused less on a single faculty of the moral sense and more on the various sentiments that make up the moral feelings that ground moral judgments.

Thomas Reid (1710–1796) defends moral sense theory in his Essays on the Active Powers of the Human Mind. He compares the moral sense to sight and hearing, and defends its veridicality on the same ground as those.

The introduction of Herbert Spencer's Social Statics argued on behalf of moral sense theory.

Overview

^{[citation needed]}The moral sense is often described as providing information in a way analogous to other sensory modalities, such as sight in the perception of colors. It is contrasted with the way in which one acquires a priori, non-empirical knowledge, such as mathematical knowledge for example.

One way to understand the moral sense is to draw an analogy between it and other kinds of senses. Beauty is something we see in some faces, artworks and landscapes. We can also hear it in some pieces of music. We clearly do not need an independent aesthetic sense faculty to perceive beauty in the world. Our ordinary five senses are quite enough to observe it, though merely observing something beautiful is not by itself enough to appreciate its beauty. Suppose we give a name to this ability to appreciate the beauty in things we see: let's call it the aesthetic sense.

This aesthetic sense does not come automatically to all people with perfect vision and hearing, so it is fair to describe it as something extra, something not wholly reducible to vision and hearing. As the aesthetic sense informs us about what is beautiful, we can analogically understand the moral sense as informing us of what is good. People with a functioning moral sense get a clear impression of wrongness when they see (or perhaps even imagine) someone being mugged, for example.

However, though the wrongness is obvious, we may find it very difficult to list the features of the scene which account for the wrongness. We discover wrongness through observing natural properties with our five senses. Can we list the necessary and sufficient conditions such that any action which satisfies these conditions is wrong?

The ethical naturalist thinks that in principle, we can. For naturalists, rightness and wrongness are nothing more than certain combinations of natural, non-evaluative properties. Since we can in principle build mechanical detectors for all these natural properties, the ethical naturalist thinks wrongness is something that a machine could eventually detect.

The ethical intuitionist typically disagrees (although, it is not essential to the view): they see a wide conceptual gap between natural facts and evaluations. There seem to be no valid arguments in which purely descriptive/factual premises entail a prescriptive/evaluative conclusion.

Ethical intuitionists claim that only an agent with a moral sense can observe natural properties and through them discover the moral properties of the situation. Without the moral sense, you might see and hear all the colors and yelps, but the moral properties would remain hidden, and there would be in principle no way to ever discover them (except, of course, via testimony from someone else with a moral sense).

Criticisms

The key opponents of moral sense theory (as a primarily epistemological view) are rationalist ethical intuitionists—such as G.E. Moore (1903), W.D. Ross (1930), and Michael Huemer (2005), and other moral rationalists, such as Immanuel Kant and Samuel Clarke.

For a recent criticism of sentimentalism (as a primarily metaphysical thesis), see François Schroeter (2006). D'Arms and Jacobson (2000) also provide a recent critique; however, they criticize "simple sentimentalism" and defend a more "sophisticated sentimentalism".

Joshua Greene criticizes the epistemic basis of moral sentimentalism because of beliefs formed in response to morally irrelevant factors. These factors change our moral decisions, but they should not because they do not have a bearing on the morality of the decision. The example he uses is the trolley problem and compares it to the fat man rendition of it. Empirical data shows that people chose differently between the two scenarios despite the consequences being the same; the only difference being pulling a switch in the former and pushing the man in the latter.^[1]