Intuition and Reasoning in Morality

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This page describes my world view on the relationship between Intuition and Reasoning when it comes to making moral judgements. It is heavily influenced by both Social Intuitionism and Dual Process Theory

Social intuitionism adds that: after an emotional intuition judgement has been made, the brain can generate a seemingly logical reasoning to support the judgement, regardless of what it was. Intellegence has no affect on the decision of intution, it will only form stronger reasonings to support the judgment. Dual process theory:

• there are two distinct mental processes that can make a moral decision: 1) the automatic emotional system is fast and intuitive. You may not be able to truely discern why the emotional judgement is the way it is, as trying to reason about it activates a post-rationalization, which is highly efficient 2) the conscious reasoning system is deliberative and slow.

• The emotional system tends to make judgments based on [[ Deontological Ethics ]] (morality is based on the action itself, not the consequences, eg traditional methods “the way its always been done”, religious texts “because God said so”)
• The reasoning system tends to make judgments based on [[ Consequentialism]] based ethic frameworks such as [[Utilitarianism ]] (morality is based on the consequences alone, “this causes harm”)

If there is no intuition about a situation, the reasoning system must activate, and will do so with a clean slate and less bias. If there is an intuition, a judgement may be made on intuition alone. If there is an intuition and the reasoning system also activates it will be biased towards finding evidence to support the intuition. If the reasoning system initially forms a conflicting opinion, the emotional judgement may offer so much inhibition that it overrides the reasoning system “I feel like this is wrong, even though I’m not sure why”. It is possible for private reflection of oneself to modify the intuition system, but this is rare.

The most common reason for the reasoning system to activate after intuition has already made an initial judgement is to try to convince someone else of your judgment.

It is possible that the intuition can be “correct” (or at least useful) even if an individual doesn’t have a solid reasoning to back it up. For example a primitive society can evolve an intuitive moral practice that dead bodies should not be kept around the living. This reduces spread of disease, even if the society may not understand that is the reason why. As humanity becomes more advanced, we have less reason to follow intuitive based ethical systems.

“Because God said so” is one of the last bastions of emotional morality. It is not easily disrupted by scientific progress, because one can always claim that God knows better and that is why we do not understand the rules they have been given. However, this requires a blind faith, rather than one that questions itself