Walter Sinnott-Armstrong: Moral Intuitionism Meets Empirical Psychology

Walter Sinnott-Armstrong: Moral Intuitionism Meets Empirical Psychology
Moral intuitionism is the view that some people are epistemically justified in holding certain moral beliefs independently of whether they are able to infer those moral beliefs from other beliefs - i.e., they would be justified even if they lacked inferential abilities. Sinnott-Armstrong, however, argues that recent developments in psychology and brain science raise doubts about moral intuitionism.
We can deny moral intuitionism, Sinnott-Armstrong claims, by showing that moral believers are not justified in holding spontaneous moral beliefs. To this end, he posits five principles which indicate when confirmation for a belief is needed. According to Sinnott-Armstrong, confirmation is needed: (i) when the believer is partial; (ii) when people disagree with no independent reason to prefer one belief or believer to the other; (iii) when the believer is emotional in a way that clouds judgment; (iv) when the circumstances are conducive to illusion; and (v) when the belief arises from an unreliable or disreputable source. Consider, for example, partiality. As Sinnott-Armstrong notes, it can be personally costly to believe that we are morally required to help the needy. Consequently, by principle (i), our beliefs concerning our obligations to the needy demand confirmation.
Unfortunately, Sinnott-Armstrong argues, a quick look at recent work on moral psychology suggests that most of our moral beliefs are partial, controversial, emotional, subject to illusion, or explicable by dubious sources. And, given that the vast majority of our moral beliefs are undermined, the one's we are left with also require confirmation. We can thus plausibly deny that any of our spontaneous moral beliefs are justified. Moral intuitionism, Sinnott-Armstrong concludes, should hence be rejected.
-According to Sinnott-Armstrong, reliabilists hold that any belief is justified if it results from a reliable process, regardless of whether that process has anything to do with any inference.