Moral Intuitions

To properly understand moral intuitions, it is important to bear in mind their evolution within a social context. Specifically, we ought to contemplate their role within groups of humans, which, as social animals, we evolved in. Doing so will come into play once we consider the limitations and problems that face the utilisation of intuitions in moral theory. In terms of social groups, our moral psychology, and our moral intuitions, serve as devices for enabling and promoting cooperation between members of a group, where we will find conflicts between the interests of the individual and the interests of the collective (Greene 2013: 28, 31, 348). In turn, cooperation inducing behaviour can be expected to lead to greater group cohesiveness and, …show more content…
Joshua Greene makes a case for two ways in which our moral intuitions can fail us in terms of morality, both of which I think cause serious problems for anyone who holds that intuitions should play a role in moral theory. First, Greene posits that our moral intuitions can be 'over-sensitive ', where they respond to things that are not morally relevant. And second, that they can be 'under-sensitive ', when morally relevant factors do not cause them to respond sufficiently, or at all (Greene 2013: …show more content…
For example, our ancestors would never have been faced with the question of giving aid to people in far away parts of the world. Instead, we have evolved to favour those within our particular group, which leads us to, typically, have a lesser, or even no, emotional response to those who do not belong to our particular group (Greene 2013: 25, 328). Inspired by Peter Singer 's (1972) well known 'drowning child ' thought experiment, research (Musen 2010) has been undertaken in order to investigate people 's moral intuitions regarding our obligations to help others. Just as with Singer 's original experiment, participants overwhelmingly respond that you have a moral obligation to help those to whom you are in close proximity, though you are not obligated to help those who are far away. Even when variables of the scenario are changed so that there is no difference in the actions one would undertake when helping someone in close proximity or someone far away, people still resoundingly respond that you are not obligated to help those far away. In keeping with the evolutionary account of our moral intuitions that I have given, Greene asserts that such findings are what we should expect given we evolved to cooperate