Go with Your Gut: A Defense of Reliance on Intuition in Ethics

Abstract

There are many objections to the practice of relying on intuition—that is, taking one’s intuitions to be evidence—in ethics. Here, I respond to two types of objection that I believe have not yet been given sufficient consideration. First, I argue that the existence of disagreement between people’s intuitions does not provide reason to ignore our intuitions about questions in ethics. Next, I respond to worries that cite susceptibility to various biases as a reason to distrust intuition. I outline a set of guidelines to help us tell which intuitions are veridical and which are misleading. The inspiration for these guidelines comes from Michael Huemer’s paper “Revisionary Intuitionism.” There, he encourages us to eschew intuitions about particular cases in favor of very general intuitions. Counter to Huemer, the guidelines to be outlined here do not rule out reliance on particular intuitions.