RE: Can we trust our Moral Intuitions?
November 4, 2021 at 3:34 pm
(This post was last modified: November 4, 2021 at 3:50 pm by The Grand Nudger.)
I've made the decision to shoot one of two people I know before - and I shot the better man because he was the better man. I was close enough to see in his eyes that he didn't understand why and that the fact I was doing it hurt him. Not the shooting, the choice and the ease of the choice itself. He never actually felt the shot. There was no moral ambiguity about it, and I'll feel like shit forever on account of it - but I didn't hesitate for a second to do it.
That's all that moral intuition is, as...say, non natural realism, contends. That you know that what you're doing or seeing is right, or wrong (you may have it factually wrong, it's about feeling that you know, not being right - at least at the bottom). You may still be conflicted..I'd go so far as to say that you're expected to be conflicted about your intuitions (even when they're "good" ones). That when apprehending a thing you immediately recognize the shape or character of it's moral importance, no matter what you may then do for any number of reasons, or none at all. Intuition doesn't tell you what to do (though some people report there being a strong suggestion), it informs you about what you are doing.
To a realist, and a non natural realist is still a realist - all moral considerations are made with specific reference to the situation...but that's all contained in the term. To say that things are specific to circumstances is not to say that they're ambiguous, that's an explicitily contradictory proposition. Specificity is the antithesis of ambiguity.
It's not ambiguous, for example, when you watch a group of adults curbstomp a child....though there could be any number of reasons they do so, up to and including the same reason I executed my friend. Which I'm absolutely certain was a bad thing to do, though I'd do it again, and it needed to be done.
That's all that moral intuition is, as...say, non natural realism, contends. That you know that what you're doing or seeing is right, or wrong (you may have it factually wrong, it's about feeling that you know, not being right - at least at the bottom). You may still be conflicted..I'd go so far as to say that you're expected to be conflicted about your intuitions (even when they're "good" ones). That when apprehending a thing you immediately recognize the shape or character of it's moral importance, no matter what you may then do for any number of reasons, or none at all. Intuition doesn't tell you what to do (though some people report there being a strong suggestion), it informs you about what you are doing.
To a realist, and a non natural realist is still a realist - all moral considerations are made with specific reference to the situation...but that's all contained in the term. To say that things are specific to circumstances is not to say that they're ambiguous, that's an explicitily contradictory proposition. Specificity is the antithesis of ambiguity.
It's not ambiguous, for example, when you watch a group of adults curbstomp a child....though there could be any number of reasons they do so, up to and including the same reason I executed my friend. Which I'm absolutely certain was a bad thing to do, though I'd do it again, and it needed to be done.
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