Intuitionism

UNIVERSITY OF NIGERIA, NSUKKA. plane section OF SOCIAL SCIENCES AN ASSIGNMENT ON THE possibility OF INTUITIONISM A SEMINAR PRESENTATION IN partial(p) FULFILMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS OF PHIL. 523 (MODERN ETHICAL SYSTEM) BY ABAH, GEORGE . O. (REV. FR. ) PG/MA/12/63875 LECTURER DR. ENEH FEBRUARY, 2013 INTUITIONISM INTRODUCTION each(prenominal) the good theories imply just virtu in ally average or metre of clean-livingity. They non to a greater extent(prenominal)over proclaim the position that chasteity exists solely also that in that respect is both(prenominal)(prenominal) government agency of distinguishing the good from the evil, the regenerate from the injure. Ethical theories do not differ greatly in the actual commandments of goodity they adopt.The list of peckonical and disap probed acts, despite most glaring exceptions, is in customary more the same(p). Where they differ intimately is in their reasons for the approval or disapproval, in the formulas on which they base their judgments approximately incorruptity, that is to say, in the norm or standard by which they judge goodity. Intuitionism, which is our concern in this discussion, is genius of these ethical theories. The practical lodge up to, which is in agreement ab surface the facts with an other(prenominal) theories, parts ways from them to the highest degree the reasons and or the routes to getting and judging the facts.Prop whizznts of this possible sue think that we urinate a feel, a comprehend, an instinct, whatever wiz wants to call it, that out respectable manifests to us what is good and what is evil in the example subject field, and that this is prefatorialally the same in all of us. Our discussion below pass on unravel more on the teachings, fib, and the criticisms for and against the possible action. We shall as well attempt a heavyset and an evaluation of the concept before drafting our conclusions. THE CONCEPT OF INTUITIONISM Intuitioni sm is an ethical theory that teaches that incorrupt intimacy is ingest, spry or self-generated.Making it cle arer, Eneh (2001) states that Intuitionism in ethics is the understand that some good judgments much(prenominal) as goodness, lessonity, are know to be by agile or uninferred bonk. Hence, honorable actions of a behavior could be known to either be right or malign by an uninterrupted comprehension of either their rightness or wrongness, the honour of their consequences regardless. It is therefore the belief that there are clean-living truths ascertainable by lore the doctrine that there is no single principle by which to resolve conflicts between intuited moral rules the theory that ethical principles are known to be valid through suspiciousness.Intuitionism is the meta-ethical doctrine claiming that moral principles, rules or judgments are clear and overt truths that do not exigency to be supported by swayation. Apart from this claim, intuitionism postulates a special faculty for the acquaintance of right and wrong. The special faculty is distinct from the intellect. It is possible, the theory posits, to consent some take on, immediate, intuitive friendship of morality without attri only ifing such knowledge to either special faculty. The theory therefore reasons that ein truth well- heart and soul person conform toms to lose an immediate soul of what is right and what is wrong.M some(prenominal) who engender had s erecttily any opportunity for moral statement do nevertheless contain a prefatory moral awareness. The great value of moral instruction is to settle provisionary details, to supply one with cogent reasons, and to shoot consistency into ones moral convictions, only when all this is not demand for the formation of those convictions. Furthermore, the theory opines that bulk had moral ideas and convictions long before philosophers ramp uped a formal study of ethics. The pre-philosophical knowledge of right and wrong was not reasoned out and synthetically criticized.It was therefore a offhand knowledge occurring to the mind without consciously direct conclude, and hence it essential come from some intuitive or penetrationful exercise of the mind in recognizing the right and the wrong and discriminating between them. In the same light, our debate on moral matters, when we do use it, is subsequent and stick outatory to an sign direct perception of rightness or wrongness. We start-off go steady that the cause of action is right or wrong, as the incident may be, and then shade for reasons.If our argument leads to an answer hostile to our spontaneous moral judgment, we tend to let the reasoning go and stick to our simple moral intuition, which we cast a surer guide than our elaborate arguments, whose very elaborateness sack up arouse a suspicion of rationalization. To cap it all, the theory of intuitionism teaches that our reasoning stop go wrong on moral matters as easily as on other matters. Though unvanquishable ignorance excuses, we push asidenot allow it to govern so huge a share of our lives that our moral debt instrument is on the verge of vanishing.We essentialiness have some way of deciding primary moral issues. That we canfulnot do so by reasoning, studying, and philosophizing is evident from the more contradictory schools of ethical archetype. Therefore, we have to rely on some amiable of moral instinct, insight or intuition, which can act as a sure guide. HISTORY OF THE conjecture OF INTUITIONISM Ethical Intuitionism was popular in the other(a) twentieth century, particularly among British analytic philosophers. H. A. Prichard gave an early defense of the view in his Does Moral Philosophy Rest on a Mistake? (1912), wherein he contended that moral philosophy rested chiefly on the desire to provide arguments starting from non-normative premise for the principles of responsibleness that we pre-philosophically take to , such as the principle that one ought to keep ones promises or that one ought not to steal. This is a mistake, Prichard argued, both because it is out(predicate) to derive any statement rough what one ought to do from statements not concerning obligation ( thus far statements about what is good), and because there is no need to do so since common aesthesis principles of moral bligation are self-evident. Prichard was influenced by G. E. Moore, whose Principia Ethica (1903) argued gorgeously that goodness was an indefinable, non- inwrought property of which we had intuitive awareness. Moore originated the terminal figure the naturalistic fallacy to refer to the (alleged) erroneousness of confusing goodness with some natural property, and he deployed the Open Question occupation to show why this was an error. Un wish Prichard, Moore thought that one could derive principles of obligation from propositions about what is good.Ethical intuitionism suffered a dramatic fall from este em by the eye of the century, probably payable in part to the influence of logical positivism, in part to the rising popularity of realism in philosophy, and in part to philosophical objections based on the phenomenon of widespread moral disagreement. Some recent work suggests the view may be enjoying a revival of interest in academic philosophy. Robert Audi is one of the main supporters of ethical intuitionism in our days. His 2005 book, The nice in the Right, claims to update and strengthen Rossian intuitionism and to start out the epistemology of ethics.Michael Huemers book Ethical Intuitionism (2005) also provides a recent defense of the view. Furthermore, authors writing on normative ethics often accept methodological intuitionism as they present allegedly obvious or intuitive examples or thought experiments as support for their theories. In all, Intuitionism as an ethical theory and a concept was introduced by George Edward Moore (1873-1958). It was he who intercommunica te the above ideas on intuitionism, and believed strongly that moral judgments were non-empirical they are just brute facts.G. E. Moore was an intuitionist as we can see by his claim that we have the non-natural ability to strike moral properties. Moore believed that moral knowledge about particular values is much ilk sense knowledge, but this is not requirement to intuitionism. He claims that principles, rules, or judgments collection to our sense of reasonableness, and that we cannot imagine them to be false. Why because we cant understand what it would be resembling for the statement to be false. Hence general principles are intuitive.CRITICISMS FOR INTUITIONISM The main advantage of intuitionism is that it is a simple philosophy positing simply for pillowcase that God is indefinable. Moore said that good was like xanthous, in that it cannot be embarrassed down any further yellow-bellied cannot be described in any other way than to say it is yellow. A horse, on the ot her hand, could be described as brown, vainglorious an animal and so on. The strength of intuitionism is that it appeals to the fact that some moral beliefs stand so firmly that they take on the look of data.That it is wrong to murder or to convolute a child seems unbowedr than any widely accepted theory. The intuitionist labels such judgments as intuitions. And they certainly appear to be immediate judgments. We do not need to turn in reasons about them. Judgments about murder and vitiate are supported by basic moral principles and values. They have intuitive appeal, albeit, such judgments may arise because of socialized sympathy with others, or from basic moral education. CRITICISMS AGAINST INTUITIONISM Intuitionism, many observed, has a lot of difficulties and contradictions it show cases.In the first place, Intuition is Latin for Insight, a looking in, and therefore a very appropriate enounce for the direct activity of the intellect in taking hold self-evident truths. B ut it has become associated with hunches, fruity guesses, irrational inspirations, clairvoyance, and other fancies so lacking(p) in scientific respectability as to give utterly the wrong impression. It should be clear that guesses and hunches are of no more value in the ethical sphere than in any other sphere. Also, we have no in-born set of moral rules with which we must compare our acts to see whether they are moral or not.There is no evidence for the initiation of any innate ideas in the man mind, including ethical ideas. All our knowledge comes from baffle, and our moral ideas are likewise derived from experience. We do not have any faculty, not even conscience that automatically flashes a warn signal as soon as we think of doing something wrong. If conscience seems to act in this way, it is nothing but habit, by which we have become accustomed through dressing to avoid actions of a certain kind and to judge them to be wrong.Such habitual action is quite different from i nstinctive action, and such judges need not be intuitive. Furthermore, an appeal to intuition has the disadvantage of beingness immune to objective criticism. One claims to see it, and no one gives that he or she does not another claims not to see it, and no one can prove that he or she does. The both claims are not contradictory, for each reports only his or her own experience. Such intuitive knowledge, if it exists, can be of benefit only to the proprietor and cannot be used to convince anyone else.Unless most(prenominal) people testify to having the same intuitive (as does happen, for example, regarding sense experience), this sort of private knowledge lacks the universal character of scientific knowledge. Since there is no common agreement on moral intuitions, an appeal to intuitionism, each pursual a in-person moral code privately discovered by personal insights. Moreover, those who find that they do not experience moral intuitions are either leave without any ethics whi ch obliged to live ethically, or are obliged to develop an ethical theory on other grounds.They have to judge both their ethical theory and the intuitionist theory on some basis other than intuition, which by hypothesis they themselves do not posses. The intuitionists, however, must either appeal to intuition to comprise the truth of their own theory, thus convince only themselves, or they must cast away intuition and resort to rational argument when it comes to establishing their theory. Either way shows the weakness of the method. military rank Despite these and similar criticisms of an intuitionist ethics, we can still ask whether it is possible to convey all intuition from ethics.Certainly, we shall remove intuition in the sense of hunches and guesses, in the sense of a special faculty for the perception of ethical motive, and in the sense of a direct apprehension of moral rules right away applicable to particular actions. These illegitimate uses of intuition have tended t o ruin the whole concept. However, there form a legitimate use. Not all knowledge can be derived from anterior knowledge. There must be some reliable knowledge, some primitive experience, and some immediate apprehension from which derived knowledge can originate. Thus, not all knowledge can be the consequent of a reasoning process.Premises are proved by former premises and these by others still more previous, but the process cannot go on forever or nothing will ever be proved. Somewhere, one must come to a direct experience (and this is intuition in the original meaning of the term) or to some principle that cannot be proved and needs no create because it is self-evident. In ethics, there are two particular areas in which we must appeal to such direct and underived knowledge one is the kind of knowledge of morals people had before developing a scientific ethics, and the other is the first or basic moral principle on which scientific ethics rests.In other words, the suppuratio n of ethics in history must have been preceded by an era in which people had ethical ideas that were not the result of reasoned proof, and even after they true a scientific ethics, they still had to string it back logically to some immediately known and underived principles for instance, connatural knowledge and first moral principles. Finally, if we are to hold on to the teachings of intuitionism, moral norms could be move under the carpet since no standard rule stands to judge actions but innate self-evident truths.We know of course by simple logic that A or not A can be true, but both cannot be true at the same condemnation. Intuitionists hold that it is possible to prove A and not A as long as amiable constructions can be built which prove each consistently. In this sense, proof in intuitionist reasoning is not refer with proving whether or not A exists, but is instead defined by whether both A and not A can be coherently and consistently constructed as valid statements i n the mind. This is against the law of the excluded middle which states that either A or not A can be true, but both cannot be true at the same time.If a person at one end operates on an intuition that stealing is good, and the other person at the other end stands on an intuition that stealing is bad. Intuitionists judge both actions as true at the same time since their positions result from their self-evident truths. Such a proposition disposes a society to destruction. compact AND CONCLUSION Intuitionism in general holds that existence have direct, immediate, or intuitive knowledge of morality, with or without a special faculty. Reasons for intuitionism is that people can tell right from wrong studying ethics, se reasoning to confirm their spontaneous judgments, and reject arguments that contradict their basic moral convictions. Reasons against intuitionism spring from the fact that the word is too vague to be of much use. We have no innate moral ideas or principles intuition wo uld be a purely subjective experience and scientifically useless, and the intuitionist can convince no one but himself or herself. Nevertheless, there is a legitimate use for intuition in the sense of an intellectual acceptation of self-evident truths. REFERENCES Aristotle Posterior Analytics, bk. 11, ch. 19 Metaphysics, bk. IV, ch. 4.Butler xv Sermons upon Human Nature, Sermons 11 and 111. Eneh, J. O. , War & counterinsurgency Aspects of Practical morality, (Pub. By AFRANEDOH (Nig. ) LTD, Calabar) 2001. Hutcheson Inquiry into the original of our ideas of Beauty and virtue, Treatise 11, sec. 1 http//en. wikipedia. org. wiki/intuitionsim http//www. philosophybasics. com/branchintuitionism. htmlhistory Jill Graper Hernandez (ed. ). The New Intuitionism, Continuum 2011. Milton A. Gonsalves (ed. ) Fagotheys Right and Reason, Ethics in Theory and Practice, (Charles E. Merrill Publishing Company, 1985). St. doubting Thomas Summa Theologica, 1-11, q. 94, a. 2.