Exotic Journeys: A Tourist's Guide to Philosophy

brought to you by Ron Yezzi

Emeritus Professor of Philosophy

Minnesota State University, Mankato

© Copyright 1986, 1994, 2015, 2020 by Ron Yezzi

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(Author's Note: The account below, with slight modifications, is taken from Ron Yezzi, Philosophical Problems: The Good Life (Mankato: G. Bruno & Co., 1994), pp. 142-148.)

Topics

G. E. Moore

W. D. Ross

Controversies: Some Objections and Possible Replies

Creative Excursions

Sources

Positive Answer:

Intuition

An ethical intuitionist claims an immediate insight into what is good. This immediate insight has the character of a self-evident truth; that is, once we possess the intuition, we know what the good is and no reasons can count for or against what we grasp immediately as a truth.

Although reasoning is not part of the intuition itself, some (but not all) philosophers assert that reason is a necessary prerequisite for reaching the intuition. Plato, for example, who is most properly labeled a rationalist because of his stress upon long training in the ability to reason, maintains that the ultimate goal of this training is an intuition of The Good. Spinoza (1632 - 1677 C.E.), the eminently rational author of Ethics: Demonstrated in the Manner of Geometry, asserts that scientific reasoning leads to intuition, the highest form of knowledge.

G.E. Moore