GUIDE TO THE PHILOSOPHY 1938 - 1947.pdf - Rare Books at ...

CHAPTER VI: OBJECTIVE
INTUITIONISM. BUTLER
AND KANT
I The Moral Sense School
Place of Conscience in Ethics. We shall be concerned
in this chapter with that group of ethical
theories which I have called objcctivc-intuitionist. The
distinctive contentions of Objective-Intuitionism are that
certain things are good, others bad, whether we personally
like them or not; certain things right, others wrong,
whether we think them to be so or not. Most objective
intuitionists would maintain that we are endowed with a
special faculty, conscience, or, as it is sometimes called,
the moral sense, which, if we have been reasonably well
trained and have reasonably good characters, tells us what
things are good, what bad, what right and what wrong.
I have deliberately stated the doctrine in its popular form
because it is of all ethical doctrines the one which wins
the widest popular acceptance. It is probable, indeed,
that it represents the view which the plain man is in-
stinctively inclined to adopt in regard to' ethical questions,
more often than any other ethical theory. The people
who tell you that right is right and wrong wrong, and that
all the arguing and cleverness in the world will not make
them any different are objectivc-intuitionists. Christianity,
too, lends its support to this view. Postulating the existence
of a faculty called conscience, sometimes identified
with the voice of God, Christianity holds that it is by means
of this faculty that the absolute and unanalysable judgments
of right find 'wrong, ill whose validity Objective Intuitionism
believes, are made. Conscience, it is agreed, may