Abstract

Moral reasoning proceeds largely through the systematization of intuitions about moral problems or cases. Recent empirical research seems to reaffirm some traditional criticisms of this form of reasoning. The critics hold that intuitions are unreliable: they seem to vary inappropriately with factors such as culture, religion and framing. This chapter investigates the role of this kind of empirical higher-order evidence in the debate concerning the reliance on intuitions in moral epistemology. It distinguishes between higher-order evidence about an intuition in a particular case and such evidence about reliance on intuitions as a moral epistemic practice. The chapter argues that the unreliability objection is better understood in the latter sense and that mere "bracketing" is no appropriate response to cases of higher-order evidence about a practice. The chapter discusses some of the available evidence about the robustness of moral intuitions to morally irrelevant factors. It concludes that we have little reason to trust in our capacity for intuiting, because it seems to go wrong in surprising ways. Higher-order evidence about relying on intuitions as a moral epistemic practice thus suggests that this practice is an instance of wishful thinking.