Question It seems that certain ethical theories are often criticized for contradiction ordinary ethical thinking, or common moral intuitions. Why should this matter, though? Is there a good reason to believe that ordinary common moral intuitions are infallible, and that more refined ethical systems ought not contradict such intuitions?

Accepted:
June 7, 2012

Comments

You're quite right: ordinary moral intuitions aren't infallible. However, the sort of criticisms you have in mind doesn't really suppose that they are.

Start with an extreme case. Suppose someone came up with a moral theory with the consequence that most of our common moral beliefs were wrong. Now ask yourself: what sort of reason could we have to believe this moral theory? The point is that there's no possible way of making sense of this; perhaps there is. But if I'm told that my ordinary moral judgments are massively wrong, there would be a real problem about what sort of reason we could have to accept the very unintuitive theory from which that consequence flowed.

Or take a more concrete example. Suppose some moral theory had the consequence that wanton cruelty toward innocent people was a good thing. I don't know about you, but I find it hard to imagine what could possibly make this moral theory more plausible than my ordinary moral belief that wanton cruelty is very wrong indeed.

Here's another way of getting at the point: if I don't give any weight to my ordinary moral judgments, then it's not clear what basis I could have for giving weight to a theory whose output was supposed to replace those judgments. If I cold be so massively wrong about ordinary moral matters, what hope would I have for picking the correct Big Picture of morality?

On the one hand, what's been offered so far is essentially a string of rhetorical questions. But the point of the questions is to make vivid that there is a close connection between our judgments about ordinary moral questions and larger theoretical questions about morality.

One way this is sometimes put is by saying that ordinary moral judgments play an evidential role to play in evaluating moral theories; the ability of a moral theory to make broad sense of our considered moral judgments is a point in its favor; the failure of a theory to do that job is a serious strike against it. This doesn't mean that ordinary judgments get the final say; sometimes we give up our intuitions in the face of compelling general arguments or principles. But an "ethical theory" that gave no weight to first-order moral judgments would have a hard time making the case that we should accept its deliverances.