Normativity of Moral Intuitions in the Social Intuitionist Model

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to answer the question of whether moral intuitions, understood in terms of Jonathan Haidt's Social Intuitionist Model (SIM), have any normative power. The conclusion is no. And there are many separate arguments in favor of it. First, these moral intuitions cannot be objective, justifying reasons that are expected to arise in the course of making a ‘real’ moral judgment. Second, we do not even know if they actually represent the grounds for moral judgments. There are too few reasons to exclude the possibility that, when we make moral judgments, we unconsciously follow moral rules, which can be objective moral reasons. Furthermore, in Haidt's terms, moral intuitions are most probably heuristic by nature. But if they are, it is even more problematic for their normativity because they can lead to mistakes. There is also a lacuna in the research concerning problems with resolving moral dilemmas in which two strong moral intuitions are involved. Third, philosophers claim that there is some other kind of justified moral intuitions and psychologists often mistakenly mix together these two phenomena. In this paper, all of these arguments will be examined and they will serve to justify the lack of normativity of moral intuitions in the SIM.