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Ethical Intuition

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Ethical Intuition

Ratheius Netheros
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Posted 07/02/09 - 01:32 PM: Subject: Ethical Intuition	#1
Do we have an intuitive notion of what is and isn't ethical? When I analyze different ethical theories, I find myself sympathetic to utilitarianism. At the same time, the conclusions this theory results in can seem counter intuitive. Why trust our intuitions at all? Doesn't current scientific evidence suggest intuition is simply a subconscious viewpoint? People who have had more experiences with animals will have better "intuition" as to how an animal is likely to behave. In particular, I'm taking an environmental ethics class. Regularly the use of thought experiments that play on our "common sense" view of morality. When someone presents these counterexamples, they are supposedly a refutation of certain theories. Is this really the case? I see these counterexamples with respect to Kant, Utilitarianism, and Ethical Egoism. Kant requires people to tell the truth to murderers. Utilitarians require us to murder innocent people. Ethical egoism requires us to murder when it's convenient. How is intuition in any way reliable for making ethical decisions? Is it because ethics is somehow intrinsic to us? We have access to ethics? This seems to imply that racists know racism is wrong. I don't think this is the case. I used to feel guiltless about eating meat. Presuming my rationality is legitimate, I now feel eating meat is illegitimate. My actual emotional perspective altered according to rationality. If rationality is not sufficient to alter our perspectives, such as killing innocent people to save others, should we trust rationality anyway? What basis is there for trusting or so-called ethical "intuitions?"

zjerome
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Posted 07/03/09 - 08:12 AM:	#2
I thinks it correct to question "intuition". I don't believe we are all born with the knowledge of "this is right-this is wrong". I think its a culmination of our experience and beliefs and culture we have been raised in. I do believe that you should question your own ethics and morality and re-evaluate why you think what you think. I don't believe that there is a "right and wrong" or "good and evil". I think its subjective. I don't think we have Intuition i think we have a brain that thinks, and that we can change the way we think. I don't think thought experiment refute anything. I think they help you look at certain things differently. And as far as rationality and logic, I have found that you can logically argue two opposite views. So it doesn't really prove one is right and one is wrong, just that they are both logical arguments.

Heterotheist
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Posted 07/10/09 - 01:59 AM:	#3
I think the idea is that what happened when you changed your view about eating meat was not that rational argument changed your ethical intuition, but removed distortions that were obscuring your latent ethical intuition. Let's take an extreme case: someone doesn't think twice about eating meat because they literally have no idea how the neat packages of foodstuff wind up in the meat section of the supermarket. All they know is that they're tasty so they eat them. Later, a friend takes them on a trip to the slaughterhouse and an industrial chicken farm, and after putting two and two together and losing their lunch, they vow never to eat meat again. Their friend didn't teach or convince them that eating meat is wrong; they agreed after taking the facts into consideration.

Geospiza
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Posted 07/16/09 - 05:03 AM:	#4
Ratheius Netheros wrote: Kant requires people to tell the truth to murderers. Utilitarians require us to murder innocent people. Ethical egoism requires us to murder when it's convenient. Without some qualifications, this badly distorts how these theories should be understood. Your discussion is narrow in that you seem to be preoccupied with the different ethical prescriptions that would occur at the outer margins of each of these theories. These differences are interesting, but the more interesting thing to me is the broad agreement about right and wrong as between different theories. Realize that murder, by definition is wrongful killing. A person could (and likely would) conclude that killing another person is prima facie wrong on any one of the theories you mention. Kant would urge us that we cannot will that murder be universalized. Utilitarianism would decry murder as unproductive and contrary to the common good. Even ethical egoism would prescribe against murder because of the negative interpersonal consequences and the anticipated loss of liberty through imprisonment. In my opinion the interesting question about ethics is not, "why is there disagreement?" but rather, "why is there so much broad agreement?" It is as though normal, properly nurtured humans share a common basic conception, or intuition, about what is right and what is wrong.

vasra
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Posted 10/12/09 - 06:25 AM:	#5
>Do we have an intuitive notion of what is and isn't ethical? Donald Brown argues yes, in his book Human Universals. According to Brown there are several shared beliefs or assumption shared by people regardless of culture, time or place. Of course they are contextually weighted, but they share them nevertheless. This, if correct, could be a basis for an intuitive ethical judgements that are also shared between people to a fairly high degree. >Why trust our intuitions at all? Because we can NOT help but to trust them? Or at least because it is devilishly hard to do so, even when being fully aware of the potential infallibility of our intuitions and how exactly they deceive us and while being a trained mind. The whole heuristics and biases research tradition by Tversky, Kahneman, et al in cognitive psychology has experimentally demonstrated this. >Doesn't current scientific evidence suggest intuition is simply a subconscious viewpoint? The scientific (cognitive psychology) evidence I have read point towards various possible interim conclusions: - intuitions are based on internalized non-consiously (sub- or un-) accessed implied learning schemas - intuitions can be simplified satisficing rules for difficult problems (see Gigerenzer for more) - intuition can be right or wrong (if there is an objective criteria for rightness) - intuition can be inferior/superior to rational conscious reasoning - depending on situation (Gigerenzer, Klein) Some internal traditions of thinking claim that intuitions are not 'from within', that is implicit memory structures, but can be received also 'from outside'. This of course is subject to scientific scepticism, even ridicule. However, it appears there might be some empirical evidence to suggest that this could in fact be true - at least on a probabilistic scale - that is intuitions can be more often correct than a pure guess, even when no previous learning/familiarity is included in the situation (see Dean Radin's popular meta-review 'Entangled Minds' for more information on this). >How is intuition in any way reliable for making ethical decisions? I'm not sure it is any way reliable. However, neither is rational reasoning, which is often dualistically described as the 'opposite' of intuitive reasoning in dual-process models of thinking (see Epstein, Gilovich for these). That is, we can also make really bad ethical decisions (i.e. non-reliable ones) with rational reasoning. >Is it because ethics is somehow intrinsic to us? We have access to ethics? I find this really interesting question. Some researchers in psychology study intuition with really small babies (few months old). In these tests small babies have been found to act as if they have crude, but statistically significant distinctions between good and bad that correlates with what naturally agree on. There's an interesting video about such a test on youtube, by Harvard psychologists, but I can't now locate it nor remember the the names of the researchers. Sigh, my memory. >should we trust rationality anyway? Well clearly we cannot be trusted always with our rationality on issues for which a 'correct answer' exists. Herbert Simon showed this already in the 60s with his bounded rationality approach. This has been then hammered in further by many decision making researchers (Gigerenzer, Klein, Betsch among others). >What basis is there for trusting or so-called ethical "intuitions?" Good question! I don't know the psychological and even less the philosophical literature on moral intuitions, but based on what I've written above and extending it loosely to intuitions in general, I think the issue might be as Geospiza puts it: "why is there so common agreement?" Maybe there are innate, non-cultural aspects of intuitive ethics that bind us all. Edited by vasra on 10/12/09 - 06:36 AM

Mako
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Posted 10/12/09 - 07:07 AM:	#6
We intuitively sense 'symmetry' in its various manifestations. Social-relational symmetry, which to some extent involves reciprocal stragegies, are fundamental to ethical considerations in my view.
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ethicist
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Posted 10/13/09 - 04:51 AM:	#7
I agree with several of the points made so far. But I would like to promote the notion that ethical intuition is at the heart of all ethical conduct. Even if a change of view has apparently come about by a purely rational process, what I believe is happening in this case is that the rational process has struck an accord with intuition, and that an accord with intuition is an essential aspect of all ethical judgements. The fact that reasoning cannot lead us to the ultimate end of itself (that we do not know the reason for our being) reveals that intuition as a non-rational element is always at work.

Hamandcheese
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Posted 10/13/09 - 01:00 PM:	#8
Ethical intuitions are a good place to start, I think, if only because they are the originator of morality. But what must be kept in mind is that our ethical intuitions are Darwinian by nature, and therefore not necessarily internally coherent or consistent.
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baden511
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Posted 10/14/09 - 06:40 AM:	#9
I agree with the Darwinian perspective mentioned above. We, along with other animals, have been designed by evolution to follow strategies both personal and social to further our survival, reproduction and well-being. For us humans. these strategies are further refined, and sometimes even perverted by the culture and society in which we are brought up. These strategies can be labelled ethical or unethical depending on the context, and can also be referred to as intuitive in the cases where they are based on feelings rather than conscious reasoning (granted the separation is not always so neat, we may reason to support an intuition, for example). Of course our 'intuitions' often conflict with the conscious ethical reasoning of others, particularly reasoning built on ethical theories that try to be 'objective', because we are not machines that make objective calculations when faced with ethical dilemmas, but people bound by the prior conditioning of our genes and our environment and the particular psychological make-up that those two factors combine to form in us.
"I asked a Burmese why women, after centuries of following their men, now walk ahead. He said there were many unexploded land mines since the war." - Robert Mueller

Yahadreas
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Posted 10/15/09 - 07:10 AM:	#10
What does it mean for an action to be ethical? Only after answering this can one judge the acceptability of one's moral intuitions. For some, an action is ethical if it promotes happiness. For others, an action is ethical if it is deemed acceptable by God. For others, an action is ethical if it is not repulsive. Once a definition has been established, one can test to see the correlation between one's intuitions and the facts of the matter. If an ethical action is an action which promotes happiness, and one intuits X to be ethical, and X promotes happiness, then one's intuition was correct. If X does not promote happiness then one's intuition was incorrect. If one's intuition is correct more than it is incorrect (and largely so) then it is trustworthy.
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