Weaknesses

• does not give a satisfactory answer to the question of how it is that we come to have intuitions about right and wrong

  if we cannot observe the presence of a faculty, then it is more likely that it does not exist
• Makes ethical discussion very difficult, since there seems to be no fundamental reasoned basis upon which to argue

  • if people cannot justify their moral intuitions then all they can do is state them
  • if people have different moral intuitions then how do we choose between them?
• It is easy to be influenced by prevailing social norms

  • e/g in the 18th century we may have alluded to slavery being right because that is what we have been brought up to believe
  • 'intuition' might be nothing more than the unconscious acceptance of the norms of the society that we live in
• led many to turn to ethical non-cognitivism

  • claims that ethics has nothing to do with facts at all but instead is about wishes/emotions/intentions
  • Ayer's emotivism