Moral Intuition: its Nature and Its Normative Roles

This thesis offers a characterisation of moral intuition and presents its normative roles. I aim at describing accurately the nature and the main features of moral intuition and its connections with other mental states, and I defend the justificatory power of moral intuition within a realist and moderately foundationalist framework. In the first chapter, I support the status of moral intuition as a sui generis mental state and argue against its reduction to doxastic attitudes. I clarify the features shared by moral and non- moral intuitions and I introduce the phenomenological property of felt moral valence. In the second chapter I turn to the relation between intuitions and emotions. I argue that moral intuitions and emotions are distinct mental states and that emotions influence and shape moral intuitions in relevant ways. Next, I explore the epistemic and metaethical implications of moral intuitions. In chapter 3 I defend the objectivity and truth-aptness of moral appraisals, addressing challenges from disagreement and dogmatism. The version of moral intuitionism developed here endorses objectivism, realism, and foundationalism, responding to common critiques like queerness, conservatism, and lack of calibration. In the fourth and final chapter, I enquire whether moral intuitions is a legitimate source of epistemic justification. I illustrate and endorse a phenomenological conception of justification, according to which intuitions provide prima facie justification to corresponding beliefs in virtue of their phenomenal character, and I extend this normative role with respect to moral stances. I finally turn to the objection that moral intuitions are systematically distorted by irrelevant influences. I address this challenge by suggesting the cultivation of epistemic virtues as a strategy to improve moral intuitions and mitigate the effect of irrelevant influences, and present the advantages of my strategy over criteria-based approaches.