What does intuitionism imply?

Abstract

Intuitionism in ethics is nowadays usually treated as a methodological doctrine. In the sense that John Rawls gives to the term in A Theory of justice, an ethical view is intuitionist if it admits a plurality of first principles that may conflict, and, moreover, it has no explicit method or priority rules for resolving such conflicts.

The use of the term to stand for this kind of view represents a change from the practice of the 1950s and 1960s, when it was taken for granted that intuitionism in ethics was an epistemological doctrine, a view about the way in which ethical propositions are grasped or known – the kind of view held, for instance, by W. D. Ross and H. A. Prichard. As such, intuitionism was much criticized at that time, to considerable effect.

It seems to be mainly the influence of Rawls that has brought about this change in the understanding of the term. Interestingly, the change restored an earlier state of affairs. J. O. Urmson tells us that when he was an undergraduate and attended Prichard’s classes, it was assumed that intuitionism was to be understood as a methodological position: it was opposed, necessarily, to utilitarianism, and Moore (for instance) was not regarded as an intuitionist.

Rawls seems to regard the epistemological doctrine as an addition to the methodological, and sees intuitionists as a methodological genus of which the notorious epistemological intuitionists are a species. I shall be concerned with the relations between methodological intuitionism (MI), on the one hand, and, on the other, two different epistemological doctrines that may be called ‘intuitionist’ (EI).