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[Chapter 9. Criticism of Intuitionalism] 149. Ifthe intuitional theory were true, all moral experience would reduce itself to applying moral truth to given cases. There would be no responsibility on the individual to discover truth for himself. The intuitional idea is the charitable idea in food and money, also in giving truth-a more important thing. The weakness of intuitionalism is that it does not treat experience as working out the truth. 150. The general contention of intuitionalism is that there must be general and universal truth, not particular or contingent. Experience reveals only the particular. There must then be a power of the mind to realize the universal truths which transcend the particular. It is claimed that you must have a definite starting point, an ultimate truth to which other truths can be carried back. Otherwise there is no certainty anywhere. Of course then, these truths must be immediate, self-evident. Of course, the model of mathematics has been the stronghold of the intuitionalists since Aristotle. There you have axioms. 151. There are three points to be examined: (1) the nature ofaxioms, (2) deduction of particulars from generals, (3) subsumption. 152. (I] What is meant by self evident truth? If we take the model of mathematics we get a definite question to ask. Does self-evidence consist in the content ofthe definition as such? Is the straight line between two points gotten from contemplation of content? Or does the self-evidence consist in the fact that we have a process so simplified that the method, and therefore the results, is controlled ? Is it opposed to experimental truth or the simplest form ofexperimental truth? The logic of empiricism is the isolation of a subject, the effort to get a pure case. Does intuitionalism, here, in axioms, do the same? Ifwe take the case ofthe axiom regarding the straight line, what are we doing? Do we not abstract space from other conditions and then reconstruct space? Is the self-evidence from the simple content of [an] idea as the simplicity of the simple construction we are going through? Is empirical theory regarding geometrical theorems [and] propositions the only alternative to intuitionalism? 153. It is the simplicity of the process of making, constructing, that constitutes the self-evidence ofaxiomatic truth. There is great difficulty in going from geometrical axioms to ethics. Is the thing that corresponds to this [axiom] certain generalizations[, such] as "murder is wrong"? It is obvious that you are dealing not with simple, but most complex, relations. Instead ofenabling you to reconstruct that complete society, it gives you simply truisms that are not fertile, and do not go on as axiomatic truths. 71 72 Lectures on the Logic ofEthics 154. [2] The question here is, "Is it not possible to reduce moral experience to its simplest elements and conditions and then get a starting point which will not be truistic, but a purification as we have in time and space relations?" There is no necessary impossibility here, and it must be done if we are to get a science of ethics, by deduction as consisting in derivation of particular from general truths. No one ever did this. A general truth simply remains general. If we attempt to image any state of things corresponding to the statement it will be found impossible. We have particular mathematical truths demonstrated with reference to axioms, but they are not derived from any general truths. There is no absolute, essential, difference between a definition and a demonstration. Some geometries take as axioms what others take as demonstrations. 155. There is no process of drawing a particular from a general truth. The important point is always the auxiliary construction from the primary construction . The former is not drawn from the latter; the latter is simply another demonstration under simpler conditions. If this holds in geometry it will hold anywhere else. The real process, then, is not a deduction, but such a use of the general with regard to the particular as to organize the latter into a comprehensive whole. 156. The correlative of this, the assumption, according to intuitionalism, is always given. This process always means loss. We are always losing something from the reality of the case. The old classifications were subsumptions. The interest was simply in putting a particular case in a given pigeon-hole. The differences of a particular are then lost, disregarded. There is loss on both sides. The universal does not grow. The particular is not taken in the concrete...

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