 We will talk about intuitionism as a theory, and in our conversation, in our little talk about intuitionism, we came across this notion of self-evidence. Now what is self-evidence, we briefly recapitulating what we meant by intuitionism is that well, that the moral truths are, there are objective moral truths, and these truths are self-evident. It is definitely not to be understood as being mysteriously intuited by individuals, but that it is self-evident. Now we will dwell a little bit on this notion of self-evidence. How does this notion of self-evidence make a intuitionism a sound moral theory? Not a mysterious justification for moral truths. Now what is meant by self-evidence, well if you take a look at the slide, the fundamental prima facie principles are known with certainty. Now if this is to be taken with Ross theory, well if we quickly recapitulate what Ross meant that well we had a, Ross proposed a group of prima facie duties, duties that were clearly evident. But how to choose among these duties was the discretion of the agent or of the individual. Now these duties are self-evident according to Ross, but how do we choose between these duties or if there is a conflict between duties or if there is a hierarchy that has to be maintained or brought about how is that to be done, that has to be done by the agent. Now moral truths being self-evident meaning that we have an intuitive or if I may drop the use of the term for its association with mysterious unscientific thinking. What we mean by this intuitive ability or self-evidence. Let us take an example and this example is from Plato's dialogue and Plato postulates asks a slave of the enthrangue which was supposed to be very low on knowledge and was perhaps mostly doing manual work to go from point A to point B. Let us take a look at the slide what briefly was the position. Now say this is point A and this is point B. Now the slave was given two options. He takes this, this is root 1 and he takes this is root 2. Now which slave is given the task to go from A to B, which root should he take 1 or 2. Now slave in that dialogue chose the root 1 instead of 2. Now this goes also corroborates the mathematical axiom that two sides of a triangle are together longer than the third side. Now this is what the Plato tried to show that well this slave who has not been trained in mathematics, arithmetic or geometry of that time still chose the first root, the root which is shorter thereby indicating that well he does have implicitly the knowledge that well two sides of a triangle are longer than the third side of a triangle. So that is why he chose a shorter root. Now this seems to be pretty obvious and the profoundity of this claim can be understood if he is look a little deeper. Now what Plato is trying to prove or demonstrate by this is that well these fundamental truths of geometry of knowledge are there implicitly in the human framework, in the human mind. It is only through education that these are made conscious, that these are made aware consciously. In fact I am reminded of Vivekanan's quote which said that well education is the manifestation of perfection already present in man. So well this went ahead to talk about that well knowledge already resides or we have certain framework for our knowledge in our we are pre-equipped with it and this is only made conscious by the process of education. Now this went ahead further to demarcate two schools of two dominant or major schools of philosophy between rationalism and empiricism one claiming that well experiences the source of knowledge empiricism and rationalism claiming that well most of our knowledge comes as a part of our framework. Now without getting into that debate why we talk about this example now is in context of this claim of self-evidence. Now Ross was a ethicist who went ahead to claim that well the self-evidence that we talk about moral truths comprises in the framework of human mentality that is just as the way mathematical truths form a part of what comprises of the human framework just as we do not question or it comes into obvious it is obvious to us that two sides of a triangle are together longer than the third side. Now this kind of an appeal that such an arithmetic or geometric claim has is the same kind of appeal that a moral claim has looking for a justification or an experiential empirical justification for it is futile or is irrelevant or is not required to justify this. Just as mathematics held as one of the purest forms of knowledge because it is mostly intuitively evident in that sense not a mysterious sense that because it is a part of our framework of approaching the world of the human mentality that needs no further proof it is self-evident just as the truths of mathematics if you take a look at what I am trying to say is that just as axioms of mathematics are self-evident so are the moral truths self-evident and this is the claim of intuitionism a truth is what it says is that a truth is self-evident if understanding it is sufficient for being justified in believing it one knows the proposition provided one believes it on the basis of understanding it such truths are self-evident but that does not mean they are obvious they are evident to those sufficient mental abilities with mental abilities and experience who have reflected properly about them well what this simply means is that well now these self-evident truths that the intuitionists talk about and the mathematicians talk about are not known by everybody in the sense that it is realized only by those who have reflected or who have grappled with it. So this axiom that two sides of a triangle are together longer than the first side or that a line is the shortest distance between two points now these are evident self-evident to the reflecting mind or to the trained mind. So we have the primitive ability to register this but it is only with reflection or training or education that that is known to us. So moral truths in the same sense that well we cannot expect that somebody with an unrefined thinking or primitive way of instinctual thinking will have the same level of knowledge of moral objectivity according to intuitionists as someone with a very refined way of thinking this happens only when reflection and advanced thinking takes place. So this is what the intuitionists want to say by self-evidence that this is reflection that takes place only when we find that the agent has reflected upon it has been trained in it and has consciously reached the realization of the same well. Now let us talk about another metaethical classification that we talked about earlier which is called ethical non-cognitivism now ethical non-cognitivism claims that ethical judgments do not express that ethical judgments do not express beliefs or mental states apt to be assessed in terms of truth and falsity well what is meant here well first what is a proposition let us say a proposition is a statement or any sentence that can be assigned a truth value now what makes an ethical proposition an ethical judgment is a proposition only if it can be assigned the value of truth or falsity. Now the ethical non-cognitivism says that well this is incorrect so ethical judgment is not a proposition and this value of truth and falsehood cannot be assigned to an ethical judgment now let us take a look at two sentences one murder is wrong there were twenty one cases of murder reported in city X in year N now can this pay attention on the two sentences written now first is murder is wrong two there were twenty one cases of murder reported in city X in year N now can we verify this now how would you judge well can this be true or false no matter whether it is true or false how would we perhaps verify it we would go and check up with the police records and find out that well if this is true or not so this can be made true or false on verification but what about sentence one can this be given truth or false value now according to the non-cognitivists no this cannot be given the truth value of true or false so that means murder is wrong is a value claim but it is non-cognitive what is meant by non-cognitive non-cognitive truth value cannot be assigned so now to start with well let us look at those two sentences or think about those two sentences again now murder is wrong why can it not be treated as a moral fact well the non-cognitive is say that well any moral judgment is in fact not a judgment it is perhaps an expression of feeling or whatever it be it cannot be granted a truth value because it is a fiction it is a feeling it is it is does not have a correlate to justify it as right and wrong well there are various forms of ethical non-cognitivism we have emotivism as we have talked about in the earlier sessions there is also quasi realism prescriptivism these are all forms of ethical non-cognitivism the third meta ethical position that we talked about that well moral judgments are cannot be falsified or proved to be true so they cannot be a truth value assigned to them so this is what ethical non-cognitivism is trying to say now let us take an example of the same sentence that we talked about that murder is wrong now as we said murder is wrong according to the emotivist is just an expression of one's feeling to or as a reaction as a reaction to the notion or concept of murder this is according to the emotivists and because it is a feeling not even a belief not a belief there cannot be a true false cannot be marked true or false beliefs can differ or beliefs may contradict each other may contradict other beliefs but feelings are inexplicable and uncontradictible in the sense that well feelings can be can differ from person to person and there is no way of saying that well these feelings contradict each other the propositions that the feeling hint at may contradict but feelings that way are not contradictible according to the non-cognitivists particularly the emotivist version of the non-cognitivist school so we see ethical non-cognitivism as a third alternative which is trying to take away or which claims that there is no objectivity to moral claims and moral claims for whatever purpose utility they may have may be to exert action may be to bring people on one side but it is merely fictional or psychological and it is not true so we talked about three versions of ethics we talked about naturalistic ethics which based ethics on three versions or three meta-ethical foundations of ethics naturalism which talked about equating natural properties with ethical properties and ethical properties were meaningful second was non-naturalism or intuitionism that ethical properties are meaningful but only they cannot be equated to non-ethical properties and therefore the grounding for the ethical properties around self-evidence or the as intuitionists say the third is the non-cognitivist school which still hold that well there are ethical judgments but these judgments are cannot be regarded as true or false and they are non-cognitive the balance of it if one denies even the existence of moral judgments now in the non-cognitivist say that there are ethical claims but these claims cannot be verified cannot be made true or false but there is a fourth foundation which is nihilism or moral nihilism that claims that well there are no moral judgments and the this belongs to the category of a moralism so this is a denial of the very ethical domain that we have talked about so this basically sums up three of the meta-ethical foundations in classifying meta-ethics over which be various applied theories have been built for example emotivism is built on non-cognitivism utilitarianism is built on naturalism so this is the fundamental meta-ethical positions that come to prescribe these or come to lay the foundation of further moral theories.