Do we have any good reasons to trust our moral intuition?

Abstract

Moral intuition is the instinctive, immediate understanding which self-evident basic moral propositions are based upon, arising from an inner sense of right and wrong that operates without the need for conscious reasoning—in other words, intuition(Stratton-Lake Intuitionism in ethics). These judgments often occur spontaneously and with a sense of certainty, and help us navigate social interactions by providing quick assessments of ethical issues. However, there is no convincing reason to trust moral intuitionism by itself because the way that morality develops from innate sources and manifests itself as a result of socialization is inconsistent and thus unreliable. This paper will prove this by assessing the origin of moral intuition and how that affects the reliability of moral intuition in daily life.