intuitions shouldn’t be seen as data that give us direct access to moral truth,
I think that our initial moral intuitions about particular situations are—along with immediate occurrences like “Courage is better than cowardice”—the lowest-level moral information, and these intuitions provide reasons for believing that the moral facts are the way they appear.
Sometimes intuitions conflict, like if someone intuits
I should pull the lever to save five in a trolley problem
I shouldn’t kill someone and use their organs to save five others
The two scenarios have no morally relevant differences
So we need principles, and I find the principle “consult your intuition about the specific case” unappealing because I feel more strongly about more abstract intuitions like the third one above (or maybe like universalizability or linearity) than intuitions about specific cases.
I think that our initial moral intuitions about particular situations are—along with immediate occurrences like “Courage is better than cowardice”—the lowest-level moral information, and these intuitions provide reasons for believing that the moral facts are the way they appear.
I’ll read the Singer paper.
Sometimes intuitions conflict, like if someone intuits
I should pull the lever to save five in a trolley problem
I shouldn’t kill someone and use their organs to save five others
The two scenarios have no morally relevant differences
So we need principles, and I find the principle “consult your intuition about the specific case” unappealing because I feel more strongly about more abstract intuitions like the third one above (or maybe like universalizability or linearity) than intuitions about specific cases.
When your intuitions conflict you can think of your relative credence and then maximize the expected quality of your choice.