The Morally Obvious :: Ethics Philosophy Moral Papers

The Mor all in ally ObviousI. Obviousness. There is no way to contrive an ethical theory which does not rely in the end upon moralistic judgments that are subjectively intuitive or obvious or entirely seen. No matter which of the major approaches to ethical theory one takes, an ultimate trustfulness upon the individuals intuitive judgment is inevitable. If one supposes that moral valuations are sui generis, irreducible, the deliverances of a moral sense or faculty, then manifestly what one just feels or just sees to be morally valuable will have to be the final court of appeal. If one supposes that moral set are a special subclass of adult male likings or preferences, say those things men want overall, in the long run, in the light of mans deepest needs and his sympathetic nature, etc., why then those wants and preferences must themselves be eventually known by making their presence felt. The presence of a want, of a satisfaction or fulfillment, of pleasure or pain, is known in tuitively and immediately. Finally, if moral values are perceived by the eye 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 knowing 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 can ask for justifications only so far. Even when a made justification of an opinion can 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 point where all that can be tell is that the thing just seems obvious, and we can only hope that others will think so too. Notoriously, of course, others often d ont.I have said that moral judgments must in the end rest 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 demonstration whatever and yielding infallible and incorrigible results.