Ethical Intuitionism

 

Sterling's Core Stoicism: The Six Philosophical Commitments

Six: Ethical Intuitionism

The Commitment

Moral knowledge is immediate. The trained rational faculty perceives directly whether an impression corresponds to moral reality — whether the object falls into the category of virtue, vice, or indifferent — without constructing an argument, running a calculation, or deriving a conclusion from premises. Just as the eye perceives that black is not white without syllogism, the trained rational faculty perceives that an insult is an external and therefore indifferent without proof. The verdict of the examination is apprehended, not computed.

Why Sterling Needs It

The examination at Step Four applies foundational beliefs to the arriving impression and produces a verdict. That verdict must be delivered rapidly — the impression arrives with force and demands immediate response. If the verdict required constructing a syllogism from first principles at the moment of impact, the examination would be too slow to be practically effective.

More fundamentally — the foundational beliefs are not premises from which conclusions are derived. They are standards against which impressions are measured. The measurement is a perceptual act, not an inferential one. The source texts state this precisely: "The application of these standards is not inferential. One does not compute that an insult is an external and therefore indifferent. One recognizes it as such. One does not derive that a lie is vicious. One apprehends it directly. This recognition is not sensory and not emotional. It is rational and immediate. It is the direct apprehension of category membership: virtue, vice, or indifferent. Just as perception distinguishes colors without syllogism, rational intuition distinguishes moral kinds without proof. There is no regress. There is no mediation. There is no calculation. There is recognition."

Ethical intuitionism is also operative at Step Five. When the examination is complete nothing remains to be discovered, calculated, or tested. The source texts state: "No calculation occurs. No feeling is consulted. No preference is weighed. The claim simply does not match." The decision enacts what perception has already delivered.

This also explains why digestion is necessary. The foundational beliefs must be so thoroughly internalized that they operate immediately upon contact with the impression. A belief that requires retrieval and application through explicit reasoning has not been fully digested. A belief that produces immediate recognition has been. Ethical intuitionism is what the telos of Stoic training looks like from the inside.

The Competing Positions

Rationalism in ethics holds that moral knowledge is derived through reason — through argument, proof, and inference from first principles. Moral conclusions are reached the way mathematical conclusions are reached — by valid argument from true premises. Kant's categorical imperative is the most systematic example. On this view the examination would be a rational procedure — deriving whether the impression is acceptable from the formal structure of practical reason.

Empiricism in ethics holds that moral knowledge derives from experience — from observation of consequences, patterns of harm and benefit, or the results of social arrangements. Utilitarian calculation is the most prominent example. On this view the examination would assess the consequences of assenting to the impression.

Sentimentalism holds that moral judgments are grounded in feeling — in sympathy, moral sentiment, or emotional response. Hume and Adam Smith are the primary defenders. On this view the examination would consult the agent's emotional response to the impression as evidence of its moral status.

Particularism holds that moral knowledge is always situation-specific — that there are no general moral principles that reliably govern all cases. Each situation must be evaluated on its own terms. Jonathan Dancy is the most prominent contemporary defender. On this view foundational dogmata would be suspect — the same external might be indifferent in one situation and morally significant in another.

The Answers

Against rationalism: if the verdict of the examination requires constructing a valid argument at the moment of impression, the practitioner is vulnerable to precipitancy — the failure to invoke the standards at all — and to sophistical objection — the impression that generates a plausible counter-argument. Epictetus explicitly attacks students who treat philosophy as an exercise in argument construction. The sage does not argue his way to equanimity. His judgment is immediate because it is trained, not because it is derived. Rationalism also cannot explain why the student who knows the argument still fails under pressure — the argument is available but the perception is not trained.

Against empiricism: empirical calculation of consequences is too slow, too uncertain, and too dependent on information the practitioner does not have at the moment of impression. More fundamentally — the Stoic examination does not ask what consequences will follow from assenting to the impression. It asks whether the impression corresponds to moral reality. Consequences are externals and therefore indifferent. The examination is not a cost-benefit analysis.

Against sentimentalism: the emotional response to the impression is precisely what the examination is designed to override. The impression "I have been harmed" generates fear and anger. Consulting those feelings as evidence of the impression's moral status would simply confirm the false judgment. The examination tests the impression against objective standards — not against the feelings the impression produces. Sentimentalism would make the examination circular.

Against particularism: if there are no reliable general principles, the foundational dogmata dissolve. Each situation would require evaluation from scratch — the insult in this context might be indifferent, but the insult in that context might be genuinely harmful. Without stable foundational beliefs the practitioner has no immediate standard to apply. Particularism is incompatible with the speed and reliability the examination requires. It is also incompatible with Tremblay's account of digestion — there would be nothing to digest because there would be no stable principles to internalize.

The positive case rests on Epictetus's own account of moral knowledge, on the requirements of the examination, and on the phenomenology of trained judgment. G. E. Moore and W. D. Ross in twentieth century philosophy independently confirmed that basic moral knowledge has an immediate, non-inferential character — that some moral truths are simply perceived rather than derived. Epictetus anticipates this in the first century. Sterling's framework names it as one of the six structural preconditions for the practice.

The sage perceives immediately. The student trains toward immediate perception. The condition in which the foundational beliefs are so fully possessed that their application to arriving impressions is as direct and reliable as the eye's perception of color — that is eudaimonia. That is what the training is for. That is what the six commitments make possible.