Moral realism and the heuristics debate

Abstract

There has been substantial debate about whether certain forms of universal moral intuitions "exist" -intuitions that are non-reflective and undefended-and, if so, whether these intuitions have a privileged normative status. This debate arguably has implications for jurisprudential debates about the existence of "natural law." This essay explores the underappreciated homology between one instantiation of the debates about the nature and quality of intuitive "moral" reasoning, and debates, associated with the Heuristics and Biases (H&B) school and the "Fast and Frugal" (F&F) school, about the nature and quality of our capacity to make "self-interested" decisions. © The Author 2013. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of The John M. Olin Center for Law, Economics and Business at Harvard Law School.