The Morally Obvious :: Ethics Philosophy Moral Papers

The morally ObviousI. Obviousness. There is no way to contrive an ethical theory which does not rely in the end upon moral judgments that are subjectively self-generated or obvious or but seen. No payoff which of the major approaches to ethical theory one takes, an final reliance upon the individuals intuitive judgment is inevitable. If one supposes that moral valuations are sui generis, irreducible, the deliverances of a moral smell or faculty, then manifestly what one on the dot feels or just sees to be morally valuable will have to be the last court of appeal. If one supposes that moral values are a special(a) subclass of human likings or preferences, say those things men want overall, in the foresightful run, in the light of mans deepest needs and his sympathetic nature, etc., why then those wants and preferences must themselves be finally cognise by making their strawman felt. The presence of a want, of a satisfaction or fulfillment, of pleasure or pain, is cogniz e intuitively and immediately. Finally, if moral values are perceived by the affectionateness of reason, as a number of philosophers still urge, so that the wrongness of things is known by the mind in a way similar to its discriminating 2 + 2 = 4, this too must be seen as an ultimate reliance upon the intellectually obvious, or the intuitively known.It appears that whether in ethics or in any field of human opinion we put forward ask for acknowledgments only so far. Even when a successful excuse of an opinion displace be given, the very success of that justification involves the just seeing of how the justification applies to and supports the opinion. Beyond that, we can always request a proof of the justifying premises or considerations themselves, and if we keep asking for a justification for the justification that has just been given, we will soon reach a compass point where all that can be said is that the thing just seems obvious, and we can only hope that others will t hink so too. Notoriously, of course, others often dont.I have said that moral judgments must in the end correspondence upon an intuitive judgment of some sort. The word intuition is too useful and too close to what I mean to avoid, but it also has technical connotations I wish to disavow. Philosophers often use intuition to mean a way of knowing involving no inference whatever and yielding needed and incorrigible results.