Are moral intuitions self‐evident truths?

Abstract

Mr. Wilson's Heresies The Moral Sense is an intellectually courageous book that will have relatively few friends among anthropologists or moral philosophers. It is an intellectually courageous book because it commits many heresies, in particular these four: (1) The heresy of moral cognitivism, which claims that moral appraisals should be interpreted and evaluated in terms of their degree of accuracy in representing some domain of moral truth. As I understand The Moral Sense it suggests that moral sense is not merely a feeling or a sensation but is a kind of sixth sense, which, like our other senses, is a source of valid knowledge about something (namely, goodness) that is objective, natural, or real. (2) The heresy of intuitionism, which claims that valid or truthful moral appraisals are produced rapidly and unconsciously and that moral men and women know good (and/or are inclined to do good) spontaneously or reflexively, without being motivated by conclusions of deliberative reason. (3) The heresy of romanticism, which claims that the mind is in heart and that moral truths are represented to senses (and motivate action) by means of emotions, via feelings such as repugnance, indignation, or shame. (4) The heresy of pluralism, which claims that ultimate goods of morality are many, not one, and that plurality is a terminal (rather than an intermediary) state. When joined with heresy of cognitivism, heresy of pluralism implies that there are universally valid moral goods (for example, fairness, sympathy, duty and self-control) but these various goods cannot be reduced, aggregated or translated into any single common denominator of moral evaluation, and cannot be rank ordered in terms of their relative efficiency as alternative means to some more ultimate moral end (such as pleasure, happiness, or utility). The heresy of pluralism also implies that those various universally valid and ultimate moral goods cannot be simultaneously maximized, either because they are inherently in conflict with each other (for example, fairness and sympathy drive out duty and self-control) or because they are practically difficult to combine in this or that setting, culture or institutional context. Permit me to confess from outset that I am a fan of all of those heresies, including a fifth heresy, heresy of thinking that it makes sense to commit all four heresies in same book, or with same breath. Shortly before I became aware of publication of The Moral Sense, Jon Haidt and I wrote a review essay predicting and looking forward to development of a cognitive-pluralist-intuitionist theory of moral psychology,(1) whose main tenets are brilliantly set forth in The Moral Sense. I find it exhilarating to discover that our prophecy had come true even before it had been made. I also find Wilson's four-fold classification of virtues extremely insightful, and credible. The broad domains of moral sensibility that he portrays (fairness, sympathy, duty and self-control) are consistent with a tripartite division of moral domain (the Big Three of Morality) that my associates and I have induced from research on moral intuitions and judgments in India and United States, where we distinguish an ethics of autonomy (including fairness and sympathy) from an ethics of community (including duty) from an ethics of divinity (including self-control).(2) Wilson's abstraction nicely captures some of formal characteristics of substantive moral sensibilities and raises possibility that diverse aspects of personal functioning (for example, planning, foresight and dependability) may well be in service of same moral ideal (for example, self-control). Permit me to also acknowledge up front that, based on my reading of The Moral Sense, I fancy that Wilson and I probably differ a bit in personal temperament. …