3.1.2 - Non-naturalism and Intuitionism
If pleasure is not the same thing as goodness, what kind of property is moral value, and how could we know it? G. E. Moore's Principia Ethica, the open-question argument and the naturalistic fallacy lead towards non-naturalism and intuitionism. You will explain why basic values are called self-evident, then evaluate whether intuition gives objective knowledge or merely disguises disagreement and prejudice.
The Meta-Ethical Claim
Meta-ethics asks a question underneath ordinary moral decision making: what do words such as good, right, wrong and ought mean, and what kind of truth do moral claims have?
AQA's wording joins two ideas:
| Term | Core meaning in this lesson | Why it matters |
|---|---|---|
| Naturalism | Moral value can be explained in natural terms, such as pleasure, pain, desire, social approval or biological facts. | AQA's nearby example is utilitarian naturalism: right causes pleasure, wrong causes pain. |
| Non-naturalism | Moral value is not identical with, or reducible to, any natural property. | It treats moral value as real, but not as the same kind of property as pleasure, pain or physical facts. |
| Intuitionism | Basic moral values or moral truths are self-evident to rational reflection. | It explains how moral value can be known if it is not discovered by science or reduced to consequences. |
Non-naturalism
The meta-ethical view that moral properties such as goodness or rightness are not identical with natural properties such as pleasure, pain, desire, survival, biology or social approval.
Intuitionism
The view that basic moral values or moral truths can be known directly by rational intuition, rather than proved from non-moral facts.
The official phrase "moral values are self-evident" needs careful handling. It does not mean every moral answer is obvious, or that a student should trust any first reaction. It means that, for intuitionists, some basic moral truths are evident in themselves once the relevant ideas are properly understood.
Why Non-Naturalism Rejects Reduction
Non-naturalism is easiest to see by contrast. A naturalist tries to explain moral value using natural features of the world. For example, a utilitarian naturalist may say that right means what causes pleasure and wrong means what causes pain.
The non-naturalist reply is not that pleasure and pain are irrelevant. They clearly matter in many moral situations. The reply is that pleasure and pain do not mean the same thing as good and bad. You can still ask whether a particular pleasure is good, or whether avoiding a particular pain is always right. That question is not nonsense; it remains morally open.
| Scholar/source card | G.E. Moore |
|---|---|
| Source | Principia Ethica (1903). |
| Claim | Good is simple and indefinable; it cannot be analysed into a natural property such as pleasure. |
| Why it matters | Moore gives a classic non-naturalist reason for resisting definitions of moral value in non-moral terms. |
| Caution | AQA does not name Moore in this row, so he is a useful scholarly anchor rather than extra required specification content. |
Moore's best-known move is the open-question argument. If good simply meant pleasant, then asking "Is pleasure good?" would be like asking "Is pleasure pleasant?" But it still makes sense to ask whether pleasure is good. That suggests that goodness has not been successfully defined as pleasure.
This matters for AQA because intuitionism sits inside non-naturalism. If moral value is not discovered by reducing it to pleasure, pain or another natural fact, the intuitionist needs a different account of how moral value is known.
Non-naturalism does not deny that natural facts matter. It denies that moral value is identical with those natural facts.
What Self-Evident Means
In ordinary speech, intuition can sound like a hunch. That is not the philosophical meaning needed here. Ethical intuitionism treats intuition as rational insight into a basic moral truth.
A self-evident truth is not proved by a chain of further reasons. It becomes evident through understanding. A simple analogy is mathematics: once someone understands what a triangle is, they can see why it has three sides. Intuitionists argue that some moral truths can be grasped in a similar direct way, though moral cases are often more complex and contested than geometry.
H.A. Prichard and W.D. Ross help clarify this. Prichard argues that some obligations are apprehended immediately when the morally relevant facts are properly understood. Ross later develops an intuitionist view in which several basic duties, such as keeping promises and avoiding harm, are not reducible to one single moral rule. Their detailed theories go beyond this lesson, but they show that self-evidence means considered moral apprehension, not private feeling.
| Not this | This |
|---|---|
| "I feel strongly, so it must be right." | "After understanding the case, reason recognises a basic moral value or duty." |
| A personal preference. | A claim about moral truth. |
| Instant certainty about every issue. | Reflective grasp of basic moral points, with room for error in difficult cases. |
| Proof from pleasure, pain or social approval. | Direct recognition that a moral feature has value or authority. |
How Intuitionism Reasons
Intuitionism is sometimes misunderstood as a refusal to reason. That is too quick. Intuitionism rejects one kind of reasoning: deriving moral value entirely from non-moral natural facts. It does not reject careful description, reflection or argument.
An intuitionist line of reasoning usually works like this:
| Step | Intuitionist move |
|---|---|
| 1. Describe the case accurately | Natural facts still matter: who is affected, what harm is caused, what promise was made, what intention is present. |
| 2. Identify the morally relevant feature | For example, cruelty, promise-keeping, fairness, gratitude or unnecessary harm. |
| 3. Reflect on the moral value | The wrongness or goodness is apprehended as a moral feature, not calculated as identical with a natural fact. |
| 4. Test the judgement | Consider whether the case has been described fully and whether another moral value conflicts with the first. |
| 5. Make a limited judgement | The judgement rests on self-evident moral value, but difficult cases may require weighing several values. |
Take a simple case: deliberate cruelty to a vulnerable person. A natural fact is involved: someone is suffering. But the intuitionist does not say that wrong simply means causes pain. The wrongness is grasped in the cruelty itself, once the act is understood as needless harm to a vulnerable person.
That gives intuitionism a distinctive decision pattern. It is not a calculation like utilitarianism, and it is not obedience to a command like Divine Command Theory. It is a reflective recognition of moral value.
AO1 To AO2 Bridge
AO1 needs the view stated accurately. AO2 asks what that view can and cannot justify. For this lesson, the central evaluative question is: does intuitionism make moral value secure, or does it make morality mysterious?
| AO1 content | AO2 judgement it can support | Pressure point | Possible response |
|---|---|---|---|
| Non-naturalism says moral value is not reducible to natural properties. | This preserves the special force of moral words such as ought and wrong. | Non-natural moral properties may seem hard to explain or locate in the world. | Not every real feature has to be reducible to science; moral reasoning may have its own kind of authority. |
| Intuitionism says basic moral truths are self-evident. | This explains why some moral claims feel basic rather than inferred, such as the wrongness of cruelty. | People disagree deeply about moral issues, so self-evidence may look unreliable. | Intuitionists can reply that self-evident does not mean obvious before reflection, or obvious when facts are incomplete. |
| Moore's open-question argument challenges naturalist definitions of good. | It gives a clear reason to resist defining good as pleasure, desire or social approval. | A naturalist may say Moore only shows that moral language is complex, not that moral properties are non-natural. | Even then, Moore exposes a serious burden for any naturalist definition: it must explain why the moral question still seems open. |
| Intuitionism lacks a simple algorithm for hard cases. | It avoids reducing moral life to one calculation. | It may give less practical guidance than a normative theory such as utilitarianism. | This is partly because intuitionism is meta-ethical: it explains moral knowledge and value, not a full rulebook for every action. |
The best judgement is balanced. Intuitionism is strong if moral value really seems irreducible: it explains why "right" is not just another word for pleasure, command, survival or social approval. Its weakness is epistemological: if moral truths are self-evident, students should ask why sincere, reflective people still disagree about them.
Paragraph Use And Synoptic Links
In a future essay paragraph, avoid writing that intuitionism means "do whatever feels right". That loses both AO1 precision and AO2 force. The stronger move is to show the link between non-naturalism and self-evidence.
| Paragraph move | What to write |
|---|---|
| Point | Non-naturalist intuitionism claims that moral value is real but not reducible to natural properties. |
| Evidence | Moore's challenge to naturalism helps explain this: even if an act produces pleasure, it remains meaningful to ask whether that pleasure is good. |
| Explanation | Since moral value is not known by reducing it to pleasure or pain, intuitionism says basic moral values are recognised directly by rational reflection. |
| Evaluation | This protects the distinctive meaning of moral language, but it faces the problem of explaining disagreement and how humans access non-natural moral truths. |
| Mini-judgement | Intuitionism is most persuasive as a challenge to reductionism; it is less persuasive if expected to provide a complete decision procedure for difficult cases. |
The narrow synoptic link is to the wider C1-meta-ethics cluster. This lesson can be compared with Divine Command Theory and utilitarian naturalism because all three try to explain the meaning of right and wrong. It can also support C1-ethics-synoptic work when a question asks where moral authority comes from, but it should not be turned into a full lesson on conscience, free will or religious sources of authority.
For AQA, the key sentence is: non-naturalism says moral value is not reducible to natural facts; intuitionism says basic moral values are self-evident to rational reflection.