Emotion and Intuition as Sources of Moral Judgment

Abstract

This chapter examines how moral perception is possible for virtually any normal person with an elementary mastery of moral concepts. But moral perception is by no means the only route to moral intuition or moral knowledge; reflection is another way. Moral intuitions may also arise in a quite different way: from emotion. The importance of emotional evidence in ethical matters is best appreciated when its relation to moral perception and moral intuition is taken into account. The chapter argues that people sometimes know things that they would not otherwise know, which is possible through the evidence of emotion, often where the emotion is connected with intuition.