J Value Inquiry (2014) 48:177194

DOI 10.1007/s10790-014-9423-3

Varieties of Moral Intuitionism

Elizabeth Tropman

Published online: 10 April 2014

 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2014

Moral intuitionism is the view that we can know or justifiably believe some moral
facts directly, without inferring them from other evidence or proof. While
intuitionism is frequently dismissed as implausible, the theory has received
renewed interest in the literature.1 Several philosophers have defended updated
intuitionistic theories and argue that the theory is not as objectionable as previously
alleged.
Contemporary reformulations of moral intuitionism are being developed along
multiple lines. These different varieties of intuitionism call for critical classification
and comparison. I take up this task in this paper. In what follows, I tease out
important points of contention among rival intuitionists and draw some preliminary
conclusions about the relative merits of certain intuitionistic approaches. I pay
special attention to the relatively recent suggestion that intuitive moral knowledge is
based on how things appear to the judging subject.2 I refer to this view as
appearance intuitionism, and a secondary aim of the paper is to situate this new
variety of intuitionism vis-a`-vis competing theories. Getting clear on these issues
will not only move key intramural debates within intuitionism forward, but help us
assess the prospects for a renewed intuitionism generally.
The paper begins by getting clear about intuitionisms central commitments in
section 1. Sections 2, 3, and 4 then outline three distinct classes of intuitionism:
1

See Robert Audi, The Good in the Right: A Theory of Intuition and Intrinsic Value (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 2004); Jill Graper Hernandez (ed.), The New Intuitionism (London:
Continuum, 2011); Michael Huemer, Ethical Intuitionism (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005);
Sabine Roeser, Moral Emotions and Intuitions (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011); Russ ShaferLandau, Moral Realism: A Defence (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2003); Philip Stratton-Lake (ed.), Ethical
Intuitionism: Re-evaluations (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2002).

See Huemer, op. cit.

E. Tropman (&)
Department of Philosophy, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO 80523-1781, USA
e-mail: beth.tropman@colostate.edu

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rationalist intuitionism, response intuitionism, and appearance intuitionism. The

papers second half focuses on appearance intuitionism in greater detail and
considers the possible advantages this approach provides. One conclusion of this
paper is that appeals to moral appearances may not be as helpful to intuitionists as
commentators suppose.

1 Moral Intuitionism: A General Characterization

Moral intuitionism is, like other philosophical categories, a term of art. There are
competing characterizations of the view. Despite these differences, intuitionists are
united behind the idea that it is possible to know, or justifiably believe, some moral
facts non-inferentially. By non-inferentially, intuitionists mean that the target
belief is not held on the basis of reasoning, explicit or implicit. Implicit inferences,
while not fully noted in consciousness, are consciously accessible and count as
inferences nonetheless. Even though moral intuitionism has been associated with
other positions in normative ethics (such as ethical pluralism) and moral
metaphysics (such as moral realism or non-naturalism), as I shall understand it,
intuitionisms moral epistemology is the defining commitment of the view.
Two elements of moral intuitionism are in need of development. First, how do
the target moral beliefs arise if not from inference? Let us call this the noninferentiality question. To answer it, intuitionists must provide a plausible
descriptive, psychological story about the beliefs and their causal history. Second,
why are the non-inferential beliefs justified? Call this the justificatory question.
While the discussion that follows focuses mostly on epistemic justification, what is
said below could be extended to the concept of knowledge as needed.
We can distinguish various versions of intuitionism by how they answer the
above two questions. Keeping the descriptive project of explaining non-inferentiality separate from the question of justification helps delineate different positions
within the intuitionistic camp. Failure to keep these two issues separate can also
obscure important issues within intuitionism.
It is common to say that, for intuitionists, we reach some moral knowledge by
intuition. I prefer to avoid this way of putting things. The problem is that moral
intuition lacks a univocal meaning in the literature. Sometimes intuition refers
to a belief that is non-inferential and justified. In other contexts, intuitions are not
beliefs, but non-doxastic mental states upon which moral beliefs are based. In still
other cases, intuitions are immediate gut feelings or emotional reactions. Rather
than prejudge the associated issues, I will do without the concept of intuition. We
can more fruitfully examine and compare how different intuitionists develop the two
components of their moral epistemology without the disputed term intuition.

2 Rationalist Intuitionism
According to rationalist intuitionists, some moral propositions are self-evidently
true, and we can non-inferentially recognize these truths by carefully exercising our

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rational capacities. Robert Audi, a leading rationalist intuitionist, claims that a selfevident proposition is one such that an adequate understanding of it meets the
following two conditions.
(a) [I]n virtue of having that understanding, one is justified in believing the
proposition (i.e., has justification for believing it, whether one in fact believes
it or not); and
(b) if one believes the proposition on the basis of that understanding of it, then
one knows it.3
Consider the proposition that acts of beneficence are prima facie right. Many
rationalists think that this proposition is self-evident in the above sense. If it is selfevident, then once one sufficiently understands what it means to be beneficent and
prima facie right and adequately grasps the proposition, this understanding is all that
is needed to be justified in believing it.4
Beliefs in self-evident truths that are grounded in this understanding and not in
anything beyond a grasp of the proposition itself are not inferred from premises.
Ones grasp of a self-evident proposition does not represent evidence for the
proposition, evidence from which one then concludes that the proposition is true.
Rather, upon understanding adequately a self-evident truth, one can believe this
principle without having inferred it, implicitly or explicitly, from any prior
premises.
The existence of self-evident moral propositions would explain not only the noninferential character of certain beliefs in them, but also these beliefs positive
epistemic status. Ones adequate understanding of a self-evident truth is what would
justify ones belief in it, provided that one held the belief on the basis of this
understanding and not on some other faulty ground, such as unreliable testimony.
Moral self-evidence does double-duty by answering both the non-inferentiality and
justificatory questions posed above.
Rationalist intuitionism was held by several prominent British philosophers in the
first part of the twentieth century, such as G. E. Moore, H. A. Prichard, W. D. Ross,
and Henry Sidgwick.5 Among these classic rationalist intuitionists, there was
disagreement over which truths were self-evident. While Ross thought that only the
mid-level prima facie duties, such as the duty to keep promises and improve
ourselves, are self-evidently true, Sidgwick characterized as self-evident several
propositions that underwrite utilitarianism, including the principles of moral
impartiality and generalized benevolence.6 Still, these intuitionists agreed that some
moral propositions are evident to us in themselves upon the exercises of reason,
3

Robert Audi, Self-Evidence, Philosophical Perspectives, Vol. 13, (1999), p. 206.

It might not be correct to say that we understand propositions. Propositions are non-linguistic
structures. We understand sentences, not propositions. Understanding a sentence may involve grasping,
rather than understanding, the proposition it expresses.

G. E. Moore, Principia Ethica, Rev. ed. (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993); H.
A. Prichard, Does Moral Philosophy Rest on a Mistake?, Mind, Vol. 21, No. 81, (1912); Henry
Sidgwick, The Methods of Ethics, 7th ed. (London: Macmillan, 1907); W. D. Ross, The Right and the
Good, New ed. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2002).
6

Ross, op. cit., p. 29; Sidgwick, op. cit., p. 382.

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similar in these respects to our a priori knowledge of basic self-evident truths in

mathematics and logic.
The intuitionism of the classic rationalists fell out of favor by the mid-twentieth
century. It was frequently dismissed as implausible on many grounds and remained
an unpopular view for some time. Recently, rationalist forms of intuitionism have
enjoyed a revival of interest. Several contemporary philosophers, including Robert
Audi, Roger Crisp, Derek Parfit, and Russ Shafer-Landau, embrace new and
updated versions of rationalist intuitionism.7 Current rationalist intuitionists think
that traditional complaints with the view rest on misconceptions or are otherwise
unfounded. For example, the objection that rationalist intuitionism must be
committed to the existence of an occult, special faculty of intuition is misplaced.
None of the classic rationalists posited such a faculty, and nor does a commitment to
grasping self-evident truths self-evidently require one.8 Further, while critics have
rejected rationalist intuitionism on the grounds that moral properties would be
strange and non-natural, the assumption that self-evident moral propositions require
a strange or objectionably non-natural moral ontology is questionable.9
These new rationalist intuitionists also distance themselves from some commitments of their classic predecessors. Beliefs in self-evident truths need not be
indubitable nor held with certainty, as Ross suggested.10 One could believe a selfevident proposition upon grasping it adequately, yet still subject ones belief to
doubt.11 Further, simply because a proposition is self-evident, it does not follow that
one must also recognize it as self-evident to justifiedly believe it.12 Some agents
may lack the concept of self-evidence or simply fail to recognize a propositions
self-evidence. Additionally, even though self-evident truths are not in any need of
proof, since they are evident in and of themselves, this does not mean that they
could not become evident to us on other, inferential grounds. As current intuitionists
note, Ross was mistaken when he claimed that self-evident moral and mathematical
propositions cannot be proved, but that just as certainly need no proof.13 By
amending classic rationalist intuitionism in these ways, current theorists propose a
more modest form of the view.
Still, critics worry that by reducing non-inferential knowledge to the grasping of
self-evident truths, rationalist intuitionists cannot account for the affective and
action-guiding character of moral thought.14 Additionally, it is not obvious that
7

See Audi, The Good in the Right; Roger Crisp, Reasons and the Good (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2006),
ch. 3; Derek Parfit, On What Matters, Vol. 2 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), ch. 32; ShaferLandau, op. cit.

See Audi, op. cit., p. 32; Crisp, op. cit., p. 78; Parfit, op. cit., p. 490.

See Shafer-Landau, op. cit., ch. 3; and Elizabeth Tropman, Naturalism and the New Moral
Intuitionism, Journal of Philosophical Research, Vol. 33, (2008).

10

Ross, op. cit., p. 30.

11

Related to this, ones justification for believing self-evident truths is not indefeasible; one could lose
ones previously adequate understanding of the proposition or fail to base the belief on the good grounds
one has. See Audi, Self-Evidence, pp. 219221; Shafer-Landau, op. cit., pp. 256258.
12

Ross, op. cit., pp. 31 and 3940. See also Audi, The Good in the Right, pp. 2930.

13

Ross, op. cit., p. 30. See Audi, op. cit., pp. 5254; Shafer-Landau, op. cit., p. 248.

14

Roeser, op. cit., pp. xvi and 152.

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moral propositions are in fact self-evident. Relatedly, perhaps the only candidates
for self-evidence would be too insignificant to ground moral thinking. It would not
be enough for intuitionists to establish that trivial claims, such as It is right to do
that which is right to be done or Murder is prima facie wrong, are self-evidently
true.15 Unfortunately, the more substantive a proposition is, the harder it is to see
how it could be known solely in virtue of understanding it adequately.
Even if there are some substantive self-evident propositions, these propositions
will be of a general sort, such as We have a prima facie duty to be just or I am
bound to aim at the good generally. Propositions concerning the moral status of
concrete, particular actions, like Smiths breaking of his promise was prima facie
wrong or Smiths action was wrong all things considered, are not candidates for
self-evidence, for we cannot justifiedly believe these propositions about Smiths
conduct solely on the basis of grasping them. One can adequately understand what
these sentences mean without thereby knowing that they are true of the world.
Indeed, Ross claimed that propositions about our overall, as opposed to prima facie,
moral duties are never self-evident.16 This is a potential weakness of rationalist
intuitionism, for the appeal to moral self-evidence cannot answer, as some
intuitionists wish to do, the non-inferentiality and justificatory questions concerning
our beliefs about moral particularities.17

3 Response Intuitionism
Motivated in part by a dissatisfaction with a rationalist picture of non-inferential
moral knowledge, other intuitionists focus instead on our emotions and other felt
responses, such as guilt, anger, resentment, disapprobation, or a sense of injustice, to
account for non-inferential moral knowledge. Call this general class of intuitionism
response intuitionism. We should note that various forms of intuitionism need not be
inconsistent with one another, especially when they concern different sorts of noninferential beliefs. Audi, a leading rationalist intuitionist, also endorses response
intuitionism when it comes to certain felt moral judgments.18
For response intuitionists, some moral beliefs are non-inferentially based on, or
integrated with, distinctive phenomenological responses we have to objects of moral
evaluation. Response intuitionists point out that we would be blind to many moral
facts if we were emotionally uninvolved. These responses can be a crucial source of
moral knowledge. Suppose that I witness the seizure of an old mans wallet and
experience outrage or a phenomenological sense of wrongdoing.19 Audi suggests
15
See Sidgwick, op. cit., pp. 375 and 379; and Pekka Vayrynen, Some Good and Bad News for Ethical
Intuitionism, Philosophical Quarterly, Vol. 58, No. 232, (2008), pp. 506509.
16

See Ross, op. cit., p. 33.

17

For a development of this objection, see Roeser, op. cit.; and Elizabeth Tropman, Renewing Moral
Intuitionism, Journal of Moral Philosophy, Vol. 6, No. 4, (2009).
18
Robert Audi, Moral Perception and Moral Knowledge, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society,
Supplementary Volume 84, No. 1, (2010). Audi refers to this class of moral judgments as perceptual
moral judgments.
19

This example is Audis. Ibid., p. 90.

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that these felt responses can be prior to, and also ground, my subsequent belief that
the man was wronged.20 In such cases, the grounding relation is not to be mediated
by inference.21 The experiential response is not a doxastic state that serves as a
premise from which I reason that the action was wrong. The basis of the moral
belief is not propositional, and this is why it would be improper to say that the belief
was inferred from it.
Response intuitionist Sabine Roeser has defended a different answer to the noninferentiality question.22 For Roeser, in paradigmatic cases, the belief and emotional
response comprise a complex unity that cannot be teased apart; one is not prior to
the other, and this is why the belief is not based on the response.23 Together, the
moral belief and affective response are what constitute moral emotions such as guilt
or anger. Commonly, such complex cognitive-emotional states are psychologically
immediate responses to concrete moral situations and are non-inferential insofar as
they are not held on the basis of reasoning or proof.24
Response intuitionism in general distinguishes itself from other forms of
intuitionism by its contention that the target moral beliefs are based upon, or
combine with, certain felt responses. This view is not committed to any particular
account of why such beliefs have positive epistemic status. While it is possible to
combine the aforementioned psychological picture of moral thinking with a range of
answers to the justificatory question, response intuitionists frequently cite the
reliability of the relevant belief-forming processes to claim that felt moral beliefs
are reliable enough to be justified or count as knowledge.25 This does not mean that
affective responses are infallible; response intuitionists readily admit that emotions
can lead us astray. The point is that responses are sufficiently reliable indicators of
moral facts.
Response intuitionism holds out of the hope of avoiding many of the alleged
errors of rationalist intuitionism. Response intuitionism is not tied to the contentious
claim that there is a relevant class of self-evident truths. Additionally, it can account
for the way in which particular moral facts, as opposed to merely general ones, can
be the object of justified non-inferential belief. Indeed, it is often particular
instances of injustice or wrongdoing that elicit the felt responses in question. By
eschewing the rationalists analogy to basic mathematical knowledge and prizing
the emotional element of moral thinking, response intuitionists also respect the
affective quality of moral experience.
20

Ibid., pp. 9092.

21

See ibid., pp. 9094.

22

Roeser, Moral Emotions and Intuitions. She refers to her view as affectual intuitionism. Note that,
while Jonathan Haidts social intuitionism shares some similarities with response intuitionism, it should
be distinguished from the latter approach. Haidt agrees that moral beliefs are often grounded in affective
responses, but for him, these responses are more like socially-informed gut reactions, and they do not
offer us epistemic access to independent moral facts. See Jonathan Haidt, The Emotional Dog and Its
Rational Tail: A Social Intuitionist Approach to Moral Judgment, Psychological Review, Vol. 108, No.
4, (2001).
23

Ibid., ch. 5.

24

Ibid., 151152.

25

See Audi, Moral Perception and Moral Knowledge, pp. 9395; Roeser, op. cit., pp. 156158.

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Response intuitionism is not without its challenges. Notably, the view has to
account for dispassionate moral beliefs. Certainly it is possible for someone to hold
a moral belief in the absence of any corresponding felt response. In such cases, we
must ask: does the belief fail to qualify as a candidate for intuitionistic knowledge,
as conceived by response intuitionism? Or, is the relevant response there but barely
perceptible, overwhelmed, or not actually felt? The proposed psychological account
of moral belief and response is also open to criticism. One could argue that felt
beliefs are neither based on, nor irresolvably integrated with, affective responses
like guilt or disapprobation; the emotional reactions may result from the moral
assessment or concurrently arise with it. Finally, the suggestion that felt moral
judgments have positive epistemic status insofar as they are reliable must overcome
opposition both from those who reject the idea that reliability is enough to answer
the justificatory question and from those who think that affective responses interfere
with, rather than underwrite, reliable moral thinking.

4 Appearance Intuitionism
For other intuitionists, intuitionisms target moral beliefs are justified by how things
appear to the judging subject. Call this view appearance intuitionism. Michael
Huemer is the leading proponent of this position and has done much to advance this
recent way of developing intuitionism.26 The central idea of appearance intuitionism
is that upon considering a moral claim carefully, it often just seems true prior to
argument. Seeming states, or appearances, represent propositions as being true.
Appearances are not specific to ethics; they also figure in perception, memory, and
intellectual awareness. Even though appearances have representational, propositional
content, they are non-doxastic mental states. The difference between appearance and
belief can be illustrated by the fact that a proposition can seem true, even if one
withholds belief in it or believes it to be false. As the Muller-Lyer illusion illustrates,
we believe that the two lines in the illusion are equal, despite the fact that the one line
simply seems longer than the other.27 Similarly in ethics, an action that fails to
maximize the good can still seem wrong to a utilitarian who believes it to be right.
While appearances are independent of belief, they often invite belief. Most of us
would agree that upon reflection, it simply seems to us that killing is prima facie
wrong. Appearance intuitionists assert that in normal cases, absent wishful thinking or
self-deception, our belief that killing is prima facie wrong is based on this appearance.
Importantly, this basing relation is not supposed to be an inferential one. Huemer tells
us that appearances do not function as a kind of evidence from which we do or should
infer moral conclusions.28 I do not infer, says Huemer, that killing is wrong on the
basis of noticing that it seems wrong. This inferential picture is mistaken because it
26

Huemer, op. cit.

27

For a discussion of the Muller-Lyer illusion, see Catherine Q. Howe and Dale Purves, The MullerLyer Illusion Explained by the Statistics of Image-Source Relationships, Proceedings of the National
Academy of Science USA, Vol. 102, No. 4, (2005).
28

Huemer, op. cit., pp. 121122.

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E. Tropman

inappropriately treats appearances as the objects of belief and then supposes that we
infer moral claims from premises about how things appear to us. For Huemer, it is the
appearances themselves, and not our beliefs about them, that ground belief.29
Appearance intuitionists claim that appearances are the source of epistemic
justification in general. According to the basic epistemological principle of
Phenomenal Conservatism, if it seems to one that p, then one has at least prima
facie justification for believing that p.30 Phenomenal Conservatism applies to
appearances with non-moral and moral contents. A candidate theorem appears true
to me; one line of the Muller-Lyer illusion seems longer than the other. In all such
cases, when a proposition seems true to me, I am prima facie justified in believing it.
The justification is prima facie and not indefeasible. Countervailing evidence, such
as the results of measuring the lines in the Muller-Lyer illusion, can defeat the
justification in question. Justification also does not guarantee knowledge. Appearances can be deceiving, and some false beliefs are reasonable for us to hold even if
they do not turn out to be pieces of knowledge.
If we are justified in believing that things are as they seem absent evidence to the
contrary, then the positive epistemic status of moral beliefs that are non-inferentially
based in moral appearances would be unproblematic. One of the chief attractions of
appearance intuitionism is that a special moral epistemology is not needed to
account for intuitionistic moral knowledge. Non-inferential moral awareness turns
out to be part of a much larger epistemological story, one that privileges
appearances as sources of prima facie justification. Unlike the non-propositional felt
responses that ground moral beliefs in some forms of response intuitionism, it is not
as difficult to see how appearances could rationalize or justify moral beliefs since
appearances have propositional contents. Appearance intuitionists also side step
many of the problems that afflict rationalist versions of the view, for they do not
need to defend the idea that certain moral principles are knowable solely on a basis
of understanding them adequately. A proposition does not have to be self-evident
for it to seem true.
Appearance intuitionists embrace a more permissive account of non-inferentiality
and epistemic justification than other intuitionists, and in this respect may capture
the appeal of alternative forms of intuitionism while avoiding their pitfalls. Indeed,
appearance intuitionists can grant that some moral propositions will appear true
upon grasping an apparently self-evident principle or while experiencing a sense of
injustice. They distinguish themselves by maintaining that it is the appearance that
justifies subsequent moral belief, and not the believers understanding, emotional
response, or reliability.
Despite these attractions, once we consider appearance intuitionisms answers to
the non-inferentiality and justificatory questions more critically and compare these
answers to rationalist intuitionism some of the views relative appeal may diminish.
The following discussion (sections 5 and 6) raises two concerns about the non29
While the way in which appearances are related to subsequent belief will be important for an answer to
the non-inferentiality question, as I discuss below, this relation cannot fully account for the noninferentiality of the target beliefs.
30

Huemer, op. cit., p. 232.

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inferentiality of moral beliefs on appearance intuitionism and one worry about the
beliefs status as justified (section 7).

5 Appearance Intuitionism and the Non-Inferentiality Question

The first worry is that the relation between appearance and belief is mediated by
inference. If so, beliefs based on appearances would be inferential, and appearance
intuitionism would not count as a variety of moral intuitionism after all. Consider
the appearance intuitionists suggestion that in normal cases, if we believe that lying
is wrong, we do so because it seems wrong to us. Huemer endorses the idea that
the reason we believe what we do is that it appears true to us.31 When one bases
ones belief upon an appearance, the appearance is both causally responsible for,
and logically supports, the belief in question.32 If asked what grounds I had for
thinking that lying was wrong, a perfectly natural response would be, Lying seems
wrong to me. Unfortunately, all of this suggests that the mental process that moves
from appearance to belief is some sort of inference.
Huemer rejects the idea that beliefs are typically inferred from appearances
because it would mean that beliefs about how things appear to us are the basis of our
moral beliefs rather than the appearances themselves. We can only infer a belief
from another belief, and since appearances are not beliefs, the basing relation in
question is not inferential. Huemer writes, What makes you justified in believing
P is not that you believe or know that it seems to you as if P, and you thereupon
get to conclude that P; rather, it is the mere fact that it does seem to you as if P that
makes you prima facie justified in believing P.33 It is Ps appearing true to you,
and not your belief that it does, that gives you justification for believing P. Still, this
speaks to the justificatory power of appearances, not the way in which we base
beliefs on them. It is consistent with the aforementioned theory of justification to
claim that beliefs are based on an awareness of how things seem to us. Indeed, how
things appear are usually accessible to introspection. We often subject these
appearances to scrutiny, deciding to accept or reject that things are as they seem.
Further, it is hard to make sense of self-reports such as, I believed that lying is
wrong because it seemed wrong to me, but I was unaware of how lying seemed to
me, or While I was aware of how things seemed, I did not take lyings seeming
wrong as a reason for thinking that it is, even though the belief was based on this
appearance.
Huemer must hold that, even though nearly all beliefs are caused by how things
appear, these beliefs do not normally result from agents treating appearances as
logical support for the believed propositions. For if they did, the movement from
31

Michael Huemer, Compassionate Phenomenal Conservatism, Philosophy and Phenomenological

Research, Vol. 74, No. 1, (2007), p. 41.
32
Michael Huemer, Skepticism and the Veil of Perception (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield
Publishers, 2001), pp. 5657. See also Huemer, Skepticism, pp. 9398 for his discussion of the basing
relation between perceptual appearances and belief.
33

Ibid., p. 102.

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appearance to belief would be one of inference.34 Suppose, then, that I fail to make
the connection between the appearance and the belief. I do not appreciate the
support relation that obtains between the two, but the appearance is still causally
responsible for the belief. In such cases, the belief seems to be just a mere effect of
how things appear. It was not held in the light of it. For this reason, it does not make
sense to say that my belief was based in how things appear. At most we can allow
that the belief was caused by the appearance. This would be problematic, as a mere
causal relation does not seem enough for proponents of Phenomenal Conservatism
to establish the way in which beliefs are based on, and justified by, appearances.
For there to be a basing relation between appearances and belief, the believer
must appreciate in some sense the logical support that the appearance provides for
the belief. This appreciation need not be explicitly noted in consciousness, but it
must at least be tacit in the believers thinking, as evidenced by a disposition to cite
the appearance as his or her reason for the belief. Unfortunately, this means that the
belief would be held on the basis of premises or reasons, undermining its alleged
non-inferential character.
To summarize, if we base our beliefs in appearances, this basing relation seems
to preclude an intuitionist answer to non-inferentiality question. To secure noninferentiality, appearance intuitionists would have to give up on the idea that beliefs
are based on appearances rather than merely caused by them.
Now perhaps this is mistaken, and appearances can be our basis for belief without
our treating them as such. For the remainder of the paper, suppose that this is the
case, and even though the appearance is not the reason for which a believer holds
the belief, the appearance is the basis of the belief in some other sense. Even with
this concession, as revealed below, appearance intuitionists still have work to do if
they hope to offer a compelling answer to the non-inferentiality question.

6 Appearance Intuitionism, the Non-Inferentiality Question, and Rationalist

Intuitionism
If the previous criticisms are misplaced, and beliefs based in appearances are not
inferred from them, it would be natural to think that the non-inferential character of
this basing relation is what secures an answer to the non-inferentiality question.
This, though, is not the case. All of our beliefs, in normal cases, are supposed to be
based in how things seem. Even beliefs that are produced by reasoning are
ultimately based in appearances. Huemer notes that one way to change others
beliefs is to alter the way things seem to them by offering arguments for your
conclusion.35 If what makes the target moral beliefs of intuitionism non-inferential
is that they are based in appearances, there would no longer be anything distinctive
about intuitionism, for nearly all moral beliefs would be non-inferential in this
sense.

34

See Elizabeth Tropman, Non-Inferential Moral Knowledge, Acta Analytica, Vol. 26, No. 4, (2011).

35

Huemer, Ethical Intuitionism, p. 101.

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This is why Huemer restricts the moral appearances implicated by intuitionism to

those that are not dependent on inference from other beliefs.36 The appearances
in question are the way things seem, intellectually, prior to argument.37 What is
non-inferential about intuitionisms target moral beliefs, then, is not that they are
non-inferentially based in how things appear, but rather, that they are based in
appearances that themselves did not result from considering arguments.38
To answer the non-inferentiality question, appearance intuitionists now owe us
an account of how some moral appearances arise non-inferentially. We find one
such account in Huemers discussion of a priori moral knowledge.39 As Huemer
conceives of it, a priori propositions are knowable solely in virtue of grasping the
relevant universals adequately. Ones grasp of a universal is adequate when ones
concept of it is consistent, clear, and determinate. Importantly, understanding the
nature of a universal inherently tends to cause one to apprehend certain basic facts
about it, such as its relations to other universals.40 In Huemers epistemology, this
means that certain propositions about universals, including for instance Pleasure is
good, appear true to agents who adequately grasp pleasure and goodness.41
Huemer writes, when ones intuitions [appearances] are caused (only) by clear,
consistent, and determine understandingthe internal process by which one forms
beliefs guarantees their truth.42
If a moral proposition is a priori in this sense, and the proposition appears true to
an agent in virtue of adequately grasping the relevant universals, then this
appearance cannot be mistaken. Beliefs based on these special appearances are
therefore not only prima facie justified, but also true. More importantly for the
present purposes, the non-inferentiality of such beliefs has now been explained; the
appearances on which the beliefs are based are caused only by ones adequate
understanding and not from considering an argument for the propositions truth.
This answer to the non-inferentiality question sounds extremely similar to the one
given by rationalist intuitionists. While Huemer does not invoke the concept of selfevidence per se, as do rationalists, I think we can agree that a priori propositions are
self-evident in the rationalists sense. A priori propositions are such that one can
recognize their truth upon grasping their universals adequately, and this sort of
recognition would involve the adequate grasp of the propositions themselves. In
other words, if a proposition is a priori, then it is self-evident insofar as adequately
understanding it is sufficient to know it. While appearance intuitionists insist that
this knowledge is based in how things appear, the extra appeal to appearances does
36

Ibid., p. 102.

37

Ibid., p. 119.

38

This suggests another way in which appearance intuitionists could reply to my claim in section 5 that
the basing relation between belief and appearance is inferential. Even if the basing relation is inferential, a
belief could still count as non-inferential in the intuitionists sense provided that the appearance upon
which it is based did not result from reasoning.
39

Huemer, Ethical Intuitionism, pp. 122127.

40

Ibid., p. 125.

41

Ibid., p. 126.

42

Ibid.

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little to distinguish this account of non-inferentiality from the one rationalists offer.
As we have already seen, the relationship between belief and appearance is not
responsible for the beliefs non-inferential character.
At this point, these two camps of intuitionism disagree, not so much about how
key non-inferential moral beliefs arise, but about why they are justified. According
to appearance intuitionism, it is how the proposition appears to us, and not our
adequate understanding of it, that justifies our belief in its truth. Both rationalist and
appearance intuitionists can allow that inadequate understandings may cause an
agent to hold a belief independent of argument. For the rationalist, if the
understanding is clouded or confused, or the proposition is not self-evident after all,
the subsequent non-inferential belief would not be justified. Appearance intuitionists
place no such restriction on the justificatory status of beliefs based on how things
appear. Appearances that result from an inadequate understanding would still justify
belief. I take up the appearance intuitionists answer to the justificatory question in
the next section. The present point concerns appearance intuitionisms account of
non-inferentiality, and more specifically, the contention that its answer to the noninferentiality question, at least as it has been developed by Huemer, is not relevantly
unlike the rationalists.
Perhaps appearance intuitionists distinguish themselves from their rationalist
competitors in this regard by appealing to processes over and above grasping
universals to explain why some appearances are not the result of reasoning. If other
propositions, such as non-a priori moral propositions about concrete cases, appear
true to us independent of inference from other beliefs, appearance intuitionism
could offer a more distinctive account of non-inferentiality. Indeed, Huemer does
sometimes refer to our moral intuitions about particular cases, and by moral
intuition he means a moral appearance that does not depend on inference from
other beliefs.43 Nothing in Huemers moral epistemology precludes a non-a priori
moral propositions appearing true to someone for no reason whatsoever. It certainly
seems psychologically possible for concrete moral claims, such as Smiths conduct
was morally wrong, all things considered, to seem true to someone independent of
inference. Appearance intuitionists may then embrace a more permissive reading of
which moral appearances are non-inferential, a reading that would include
appearances about particular cases in addition to those about self-evident general
principles.
The problem with this more permissive reading of non-inferentiality is that no
account, as of yet, has been offered for how these other appearances arise
independently of inference. Simply stating that the propositions appear true prior to
reasoning is not an answer to the non-inferentiality question, but an assertion of
what needs explained. This is not to deny that some such answer is forthcoming:
with response intuitionists, appearance intuitionists could develop and defend the
idea that some moral propositions simply seem true due to our emotional reactions
or other felt responses. As was true for response intuitionists, the challenge will be
to explain the non-inferentiality of the relevant beliefs in such a way that does not
43
For reference to intuitions about cases, see ibid., pp. 103104, 109, and 117, and Michael Huemer,
Revisionary Intuitionism, Social Philosophy and Policy, Vol. 25, (2008).

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preclude a successful answer to the justificatory question. This is in part why

intuitionists cannot dodge the non-inferentiality question altogether. In the absence
of any sort of story about how the target non-inferential moral beliefs arise, it is
harder to accept the corresponding claim that the beliefs enjoy positive epistemic
status. I discuss a more general version of this concern about non-inferential
justification as it applies to appearance intuitionism in the next section.
Furthermore, at other times Huemer suggests that the morality of particular cases
do not seem apparent to us independent of an inference. Huemer asserts that claims
like, The United States should not have gone to war in Iraq in 2003 and
Abortion is wrong, do not seem true to us non-inferentially, since the appearances
in question depend on other beliefs.44 In the case of the first claim, its seeming
true depends, among other things, on ones belief that the war predictably caused
many deaths and that killing people is prima facie wrong.45 The beliefs implicated
in abortions appearing wrong plausibly concern the metaphysical status of the fetus
and the moral permissibility of ending lives. Huemer tells us that the more general
moral propositions just mentioned, such as Killing is wrong, are what appear true
to us independent of inference.46 As before, these principles may appear true noninferentially because our grasp of the principle alone is what is responsible for the
appearance.47 Huemer frequently stresses the intellectual nature of these noninferential moral appearances, stating that they result from thinking about the
propositions themselves.48 This again suggests that the moral appearances in
question are the upshot of rationally reflecting upon certain general moral
propositions, supporting a more restrictive account of non-inferentiality, one
relevantly like the one endorsed by rationalists.
In review, the alleged non-inferential relation between belief and appearance is
not what makes certain moral beliefs non-inferential. On the more restrictive
account of which appearances are non-inferential, appearance intuitionists are in
much agreement with rationalists about how the target non-inferential moral beliefs
arise: they result from grasping universals and their relations. Appearance
intuitionists more clearly distinguish themselves from rationalists if they embrace
a more permissive reading of non-inferential appearances, but doing so leaves them
as of yet without a compelling answer to the non-inferentiality question, and may
present additional challenges to the idea that beliefs based on them are justified.

7 Appearance Intuitionism and the Justificatory Question

Another worry about appearance intuitionism is that its answer to the justificatory
question invites many of the classic objections to intuitionism that new intuitionists
44

Huemer, Ethical Intuitionism, p. 102.

45

Ibid.

46

Ibid.

47

Once more, ones grasp may turn out to be inadequate. This possibility would not undermine the
psychological story of non-inferentiality at hand.
48

Huemer, Ethical Intuitionism, p. 102.

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are keen to avoid. The problem is that any moral appearance, however it arises,
would justify ones belief that things are as they seem. Consider an agent who
believes some moral proposition on the basis of its seeming true to her. Suppose
further that this person gave the matter little thought, reflected carelessly (if at all)
on the proposition, and had no reason to think that the proposition was true. The
proposition seemed true to her nonetheless, and because her belief is based in how
things appeared, by Huemers lights the non-inferential belief is prima facie
justified.
This answer to the justificatory question will strike critics of intuitionism as too
liberal. A long-standing criticism of intuitionism is that it inappropriately counts as
justified many non-inferential beliefs that clearly lack positive epistemic status. It is
alleged that many of our non-inferential moral beliefs stem from our initial gut
reactions, cultural influences, and other unreliable sources, and therefore hardly
represent a source of knowledge about the nature of moral reality. Appearance
intuitionism seems to affirm this objection, for any non-inferential moral belief
even one that is the product of bias, irrational thinking, and so onwould be
justified, so long as it was based on how things appeared to the judging subject.
Response intuitionists like Roeser would respond that intuitionistic beliefs are not
the product of an unreliable belief-forming mechanism. Rationalist intuitionists
avoid the concern by restricting justified, non-inferential moral beliefs to those
about self-evident truths that are held self-evidently. The restrictive reading of
appearance intuitionism, too, can place some limits on which beliefs are noninferential and justified, since the class of non-inferential moral beliefs may be
smaller than critics think. Still, even this restrictive reading must allow that noninferential general moral beliefs caused by careless, partial, or otherwise inadequate
understandings have positive epistemic status. Alternatively, the permissive reading
of appearance intuitionism is most vulnerable because it counts a wider range of
moral beliefs as non-inferential.
In response to this objection, Huemer agrees that some moral appearances are
misleading, but asserts that this is not a problem for appearance intuitionism, since
certain appearances are more trustworthy than others. Huemer allows that
appearances that arise from emotional responses, personal bias, and cultural
indoctrination are less likely to indicate moral reality.49 Notably, appearances
concerning the moral status of concrete cases and mid-level moral generalities are
especially susceptible to these sorts of distorting factors.50 Fortunately for
appearance intuitionism, not all appearances are triggered by personal bias or
emotion. Consider, for instance, the following abstract moral propositions.
If x and y are qualitatively identical in nonevaluative respects, then x and y are
also morally indistinguishable.
If it is wrong to do x, and it is wrong to do y, then it is wrong to do both x and
y.

49

Huemer, Revisionary Intuitionism.

50

Ibid., pp. 383385.

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191

The ethical status of choosing (x and y) over (x and z) is the same as that of
choosing y over z, given the knowledge that x exists/occurs.51
These propositions express formal constraints on moral thinking, and Huemer
suggests that upon understanding the nature of ethical evaluation and moral
permissibility, the propositions simply seem true.52 Because such appearances
plausibly result from rational reflection, and not personal prejudice, they are more
trustworthy than moral appearances concerning Sallys conduct or the keeping of
promises. Huemer writes, the intuitions [appearances] that are most subject to bias
are to be discounted, while those that are most clearly products of intellectual
reflection are to be preserved as a basis for ethical theory.53
The worry above was that appearance intuitionists have too liberal a picture of
which beliefs are non-inferential and justified. Huemer mitigates this concern by
identifying certain kinds of appearances that should be distrusted in moral thinking.
If Jones action appears wrong to me independent of argument, but I realize that this
appearance may well be the result of a strong, distorting emotional response or a
personal interest, I should probably withhold belief that things are as they appear.
An appearances justificatory powers can be defeated, and if I were to believe that
Jones action was wrong because it seemed wrong, Huemer has indicated that
evidence for the appearances unreliability would undercut my beliefs justification.54 As Huemer claims, The theory of Phenomenal Conservatism yields the
conclusion that in our world, carelessly formed beliefs are typically ill-justified,
even if they strongly seem to the subject to be true, because their would-be
justification is defeated, since we are generally justified in believing that careless
belief-formation is unreliable.55 Hence, even if moral propositions about concrete
cases and mid-level generalities appear true to us prior to inference, it does not
follow that we will or should trust these appearances as accurate or that beliefs held
on their basis are ultimately justified. This means that, even on the more permissive
reading of which appearances are non-inferential, the class of non-inferential moral
beliefs that are justified will be more restricted than critics suppose.56
Whatever else we may want to say about this reply, appearance intuitionism once
again ends up closer to rationalist intuitionism than initially supposed. As was true
for rationalist intuitionists, the appeal to rational reflection does double-duty. The
method of reflecting on universals not only yields moral beliefs that are noninferential, but beliefs that are especially reliable and more likely to be justified.
While it is possible to develop a version of appearance intuitionism along other lines
and reject the priority Huemer places on rational reflection and a priori moral
knowledge, Huemers formulation of appearance intuitionism is the leading and
51

Ibid., p. 386.

52

Ibid., pp. 386387.

53

Ibid., p. 388.

54

Ibid., pp. 380381.

55

Huemer, Compassionate Phenomenal Conservatism, p. 37.

56

Further, even if some unreliable non-inferential moral beliefs are justified but undefeated, it is likely
that the beliefs would be false and not rise to the level of knowledge.

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most representative example of the position.57 Moreover, without the idea of

rational reflection upon universals, I suspect that appearance intuitionists will have a
harder time accounting for the possibility of non-inferential justified moral belief.

8 Appearance Intuitionism vs. Rationalist Intuitionism: A Relative Evaluation

For some critics, appearance intuitionism represents a clear improvement over
rationalist defenses of the view. Before concluding, I would like to examine one
consideration that is thought to tell in appearance intuitionisms favor. As we will
see, the results of the prior discussion reveal what is flawed with this line of
argument.
Matthew Bedke has argued that appearance intuitionism is more promising than
rationalist forms of intuitionism.58 For Bedke, the defining feature of rationalist
intuitionism is its appeal to self-evident moral propositions. Bedkes complaint with
rationalist intuitionism is that self-evidence does no additional work not already
done by the appearance intuitionists idea that moral beliefs are based in how things
seem. Bedke puts the point as follows. As compared to self-evidence theory
[rationalist intuitionism], seeming state theory [appearance intuitionism] more
perspicuously identifies and explains cases of intuition. Self-evidence theory
[rationalist intuitionism] earns its keep only if there is some theoretical work left for
it to do.59 The problem is supposed to be that self-evidence does not account for
anything not already explained by a propositions appearing to be true, thereby
making the appeal to moral self-evidence ineffectual and unnecessary for
intuitionism.
Bedke considers three possible roles a moral propositions self-evidence might
play in a defense of intuitionism. First, self-evidence could characterize some noninferentially justified moral beliefs that are not based on appearances.60 Bedke
quickly dismisses this possibility because, with Huemer, he thinks that all
intuitionistic beliefs are grounded in how things appear. Second, perhaps some
intuitions are constituted by seemings plus something else that self-evidence theory
helps to capture.61 While I have avoided the term intuition, this need not
obscure Bedkes suggestion, which is that the target non-inferential mental state
be it the moral appearance or the belief based on the appearanceconsists in
something else that is captured by self-evidence. Bedke doubts that self-evidence is
57
Antti Kauppinen has developed a form of appearance intuitionism that eschews emphasis on a priori
intellectual insight. See his A Humean Theory of Moral Intuition, Canadian Journal of Philosophy,
Vol. 43, No. 3, (2013). Kauppinen agrees that moral beliefs are justified by how things appear, but
suggests that moral appearances are constituted by certain emotional responses. Kauppinen pairs
appearance intuitionisms answer to the justificatory question with a response-intuitionist view about the
importance of emotion to intuitionistic moral knowledge.
58
Matthew S. Bedke, Ethical Intuitions: What They Are, What They Are Not, and How They Justify,
American Philosophical Quarterly, Vol. 45, No. 3, (2008).
59

Ibid., p. 255.

60

Ibid.

61

Ibid.

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going to account for anything that appearance intuitionism has not already
explained, such as the nature of the mental state or its justificatory status. Finally,
Bedke considers, but rejects, the possibility that grasping self-evident propositions
augments the justification one already has for ones belief.62 Bedke concludes, it
is difficult to think of cases that feature some psychological or justificatory residue
left unaccounted for by seeming theory [appearance intuitionism], and even more
difficult to see how self-evidence might fill the gap.63
Given the results of the previous three sections, Bedkes dismissal of moral selfevidenceand with it, rationalist intuitionismis too quick. As already discussed,
appealing to moral appearances was not enough for appearance intuitionists to
account for the non-inferentiality and special positive epistemic status of target
moral beliefs. Huemer invoked the self-evidence of certain moral propositions to
explain why they appear true prior to reasoning for agents who adequately grasp
them, and also why these appearances are especially trustworthy. There is indeed
important theoretical work for moral self-evidence to do here. Referring back to
Bedkes list of options above, the second possibility is most promising. Selfevidence earns its keep by capturing a psychological [and] justificatory residue
left unaccounted for by moral appearances.64
At this point, it is tempting to turn the tables on Bedkes reservations with
rationalist intuitionism and develop an analogous objection against appearance
intuitionism. Perhaps it is the appearance intuitionist who offers few advantages
over rationalist intuitionism. One should question the relative merits of appealing to
moral appearances over and above the rationalists idea that some moral
propositions are non-inferentially knowable upon grasping them adequately. We
have already seen that being based on an appearance is not what makes a moral
belief non-inferential. Further, moral appearances that are grounded in grasping
universals adequately are to be highly trustworthy and prized above others. The idea
that non-inferential moral beliefs are based in how things appear is arguably an
unnecessary extra step, and as discussed in section 5, could potentially undermine
the beliefs non-inferential character. These considerations cast doubt on the relative
merits of invoking moral appearances to defend the possibility of intuitionistic
moral knowledge.

9 Conclusion
Different versions of intuitionism can be distinguished by their accounts of noninferentiality and justification. Rationalist intuitionists give specific answers to both
the non-inferentiality and justificatory questions, whereas alternative intuitionists
62

Ibid., p. 256.

63

Ibid.

64

Ibid. Bedke would probably deny that substantive moral principles are self-evident after all, since he
thinks that people can disagree about such principles despite having an adequate grasp of the concepts
involved. See ibid., pp. 261265. The possibility of self-evident moral truths is a different issue, though,
from the theoretical role that a successful appeal to self-evident truths could play in developments of
intuitionism.

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define themselves by their answers to one of the two questions. What is unique
about response intuitionists is their descriptive account of the nature of felt noninferential moral beliefs, while appearance intuitionists distinguish themselves with
their view that appearances justify moral beliefs.
Despite their apparently deep differences, appearance intuitionismat least as it
has been developed by Huemerlooks very similar to recent versions of rationalist
intuitionism. The disagreements between these views may not be as great as initially
supposed. Given these similarities, the relative usefulness of appealing to moral
appearances in defenses of intuitionism loses some of its force. Perhaps the more
central current debate within intuitionism should not be between rationalists and
appearance intuitionists, but between those intuitionists who think that rational
reflection yields the non-inferential justified moral beliefs targeted by intuitionism,
and thoseincluding many response intuitionistswho do not.
Acknowledgments I would like to thank Charlie Kurth, Sabine Roeser, and an anonymous referee for
their helpful comments and suggestions.

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