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The Epistemology of Ethical Intuitions

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 March 2011

Hallvard Lillehammer
Hallvard Lillehammer*
Affiliation:
University of Cambridge
*
[email protected]
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Abstract

Intuitions are widely assumed to play an important evidential role in ethical inquiry. In this paper I critically discuss a recently influential claim that the epistemological credentials of ethical intuitions are undermined by their causal pedigree and functional role. I argue that this claim is exaggerated. In the course of doing so I argue that the challenge to ethical intuitions embodied in this claim should be understood not only as a narrowly epistemological challenge, but also as a substantially ethical one. I argue that this fact illuminates the epistemology of ethical intuitions.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy , Volume 86 , Issue 2 , April 2011 , pp. 175 - 200
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy 2011

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References

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44 Parts of this material have been presented at a conference on Value in Philosophy at the School of Advanced Study, London University, in June 2008; to a Practical Philosophy seminar at Uppsala University in September 2009; and to a Moral Philosophy seminar at Oxford University in March 2010. I am grateful to the audience on each of these occasions, and to the Editor of Philosophy, for helpful comments and criticism. Thanks also to Ben Colburn and Alex Oliver for discussions about ethics and advertising.