Meta-ethical theories (OCR A-Level Religious Studies): Model Answers

Meta-Ethics: Intuitionalism Essay

Intuitionalism agrees with the statement 'moral judgments are based on an unquestionable intuitive knowledge of what is good'. Intuitionalism believes we distinctly know what is right and wrong and that these ethical terms are meaningful.

However, other meta-ethical theories such as emotivism and naturalism would disagree with the statement. Emotivism believes that moral judgments are based on emotions alone whilst naturalism believes moral truths can be discovered by observation. In this essay, I will be arguing that moral judgments are not based on Intuition because of the strengths of emotivism in comparison to Intuitionalism which fails to reflect the realities of human society and morality.

G.E. Moore's Intuitionalism

Intuitionalism believes that moral truths can't be discovered by observation and right and wrong cannot be defined by they are self-evident. Moral statements under Intuitionalism are subject to truth or falsity due to Intuitionalism being a cognitive theory. G.E. Moore is the main philosopher associated with Intuitionalism and he argued that 'good' is self evident to our intuition. He uses "yellow" as an analogy to demonstrate his idea. A complex idea.

Problems with Intuitionalism

However, there are many problems that arise with Intuition it relies on everyone having the same intuition and getting the same idea of what is good from their intuition. However, this is clearly not the case. People have different ideas on what is Intuition and moral senses, it is not equal everywhere, if it was the case there would be no disagreements on what is right and wrong for many things such as abortion and yet consensus cannot be reached. An Intuitionalist would argue that there is widespread agreement on moral issues however debates surrounding conversion and everyday topics prove this to be wrong. Pritchard attempts to argue this saying that some people have better Intuitions than others leading to controversy, yet this is a completely weak argument as Intuitionalism completely relies on universal intuition to be effective. There is evidence for Morality being influenced by social conditioning and culture meaning "good" can be interpreted differently depending on your upbringing, and experiences of Intuition as upbringing and social conditioning are done unconsciously.

Therefore, I believe that moral judgments cannot be based on unquestionable intuitive knowledge because of the differences in the beliefs of when something is right or wrong. We are just saying what we think and we can agree or we more or disagree but both are evidence it is moral.

Relationship between Intuitionalism and Emotivism

Whilst some may say that emotions undermine the severity of many situations and involve emotions differing opinions on it or have influenced morality, most people are against banning actions such as murder because of the emotions associated with it reinforcing emotion. Furthermore, when assessing Intuitionalism it can be seen as emotionism as when reducing "just knowing" something it reduces to a feeling which is essentially emotionism as feelings and emotions are the same. Overall, I disagree with the statement that moral judgments are based on unquestionable Intuition because I believe Emotions can judge what is good due to the fact we can further the argument through our thought processes, and their Intuition can be reduced to emotions.

Intuitionalism vs. Naturalism

Lastly, Naturalism and Intuitionalism disagree with each other in certain ways. Naturalism agrees that moral truths can be self-evidence and can be discovered by observation in the world, what is right and wrong can be discovered by observing by looking at the world around us it is a moral realism theory and cognitivist. Naturalism believes that ethical terms are meaningful. Naturalism can weaken Intuitionalism by arguing that we observe moral truths, as opposed to just "knowing". Also, Intuitionalism argues that the advantage of Naturalism is that we can observe it meaning there is more clarity in what we should do and there is evidence for this in the natural moral realist truth Intuitionalism there can be conflicting duties. Utilitarians argue that the clearest view of right and wrong is by seeing which ways to produce our pain.

Whilst Intuitionalism does have weaknesses it demonstrates the idea clearly. Moore's Intuitionalism gives us. Multi-Intuitionalism There are conflicting duties here we don't know which to pick in his situation unless we are to go because Intuition does not give up. Ross argues for 7 prima facie duties where he argues that the right action will be known. However, his 7 duties may differ from one person to another. Ross however argues therefore that just because one person has to keep promises due to their Intuition and we should keep promises it does not mean that is the same for everyone. At least with Naturalism, we are using empirical knowledge making it easier to understand and follow. However, Intuitionalism does not commit the naturalistic fallacy as it does not rely on the natural world for ethical values and cannot be criticised by the "is-ought" problem of David Hume.

However, regardless of this Intuitionalism does not provide strong evidence because,

I disagree with the statement because of conflicting duties that arise from Intuitionalism, clearly it cannot be trusted, meaning we have to rely on reason also.

Conclusion

In conclusion, I believe that moral judgments cannot be based on unquestionable intuition because I do not believe that it is unquestionable. Some ideas in moral ethics clearly differ widely, suggesting a lack of coherence and a lack of universality. Intuition is not universal and should be taken into account however our views on what is "good" is wrong, is very a subjective term. Intuition can be reduced to emotivism which I believe is a far stronger argument as it explains why there is such a discrepancy in moral views and why each individual believes that their views are correct.

AO1: 15 AO2: 19