Pekka Väyrynen has posted Two Recent Critiques of Ethical Intuitionism. Here is the abstract:
The core doctrine of ethical intuitionism is that some of our ethical knowledge is non-inferential. This paper develops responses to two recent critiques of intuitionism. One is Nicholas Sturgeon’s argument that intuitionism implies an implausible epistemology outside ethics; if so, intuitionism should be rejected. The other is Walter Sinnott-Armstrong’s argument that ethical beliefs are so commonly subject to defeaters that, as a contingent matter, any believer is epistemically justified in holding any ethical belief only if she is able to infer it from other beliefs that confirm the absence of defeaters; if so, intuitionism is false. Intuitionists are able to avoid an implausible epistemology outside ethics irrespective of whether they think that our non-inferential ethical knowledge is a posteriori or a priori. Either way, they are able to point out relevant differences between the source of justification for ethical beliefs and that for beliefs in the relevant other areas. At least a priori intuitionists are also able to avoid the contingent inferability requirement on the epistemic justification of ethical beliefs. It is argued that our support for ethical intuitionism should for now be merely conditional, however, because each of these responses raises further neglected issues that are critical to the success of intuitionism.