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Ethical intuitionists, in philosophy, deny that moral judgements are merely expressions of emotion or approval. They argue that there is a special faculty of moral intuition which gives us access to moral truths, to facts about what we ought and ought not to do. This intuitive faculty may render certain rules of conduct self-evidently correct and then moral conduct will be a matter of following those rules. Ethical knowledge, so conceived, has been compared to mathematical knowledge, where the latter consists of knowing the consequences of certain self-evident axioms, axioms grasped by some form of mathematical intuition. On the other hand, the faculty of moral intuition may be more like our sensory organs. It may enable me to see the goodness in my brother helping an old person across the road, just as we can see that the road is wide. AJ
See also ethical relativism, in philosophy, fact and value.Further reading H. Sidgwick, The Methods of Ethics, vol. 3; , G. Warnock, Contemporary Moral Philosophy. |
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