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This chapter discusses Audi's version of metaethical intuitionism, arguing that it faces significant objections. Without a basis for the theory's claims of self-evidence, it argues, moral intuitions can be charged with arbitrariness. Moreover, familiar problems concerning “queerness” and supervenience remain. This chapter proposes that moral intuitions are grounded in conative experiences of “felt obligation”. It then argues that his version of intuitionism preserves the virtues of Audi's approach—indeed sharing the spirit of Audi's theory—without succumbing to the skeptical problems.

This chapter considers how a link was established between genius and genius in a manner that sidelines the public. It explores arguments which claims that the public—now deemed “vulgar”—lacks the requisite sensibility to respond to genius, and is bracketed out of a relation that now goes exclusively from genius to genius. Genius remains self-evident, but only to the man who is already endowed with it: he alone is equipped to recognize it, whether in himself or another. As the burden of recognition is shifted from reader-spectator to genius itself, the continuity between reader-spectator and genius is broken, and the self-evidence of genius begins to wane.

This chapter traces the construction in the 18th-19th centuries of the belief that fertility cult was the earliest form of religion. It developed in Enlightenment Neoplatonism (Payne Knight) and also appealed to the Romantics; particular attention is paid to Hamann and Creuzer. In 19th-century classical studies, it was marginalized as primitive (Bachofen), superstitious (Jahn), or pre-Greek (Preller). Nevertheless, the assumption that it was primordial came to seem self-evident. It is argued that historicist narrative still has a useful function in revealing that such apparently self-evident facts are comparatively recent constructions.

In reasoning about justification of the basic principles of logic and mathematics, Frege combined a traditional Euclidean conception with a more modern pragmatic one. In thinking of the self-evidence of axioms — understood as true, natural, starting points for justification — he strictly distinguished self-evidence from obviousness. This chapter discusses Frege's notions of axiom, self-evidence, basic truth, certainty, unprovability, and proof structure. Frege's tendency to argue for his axioms is explained not as a justification for them, but as a way of articulating a proper understanding of them; an elaboration of their self-evidence. Frege's semantical exposition of axioms and rules of inference in The Basic Laws of Arithmetic is explained in the same way. Thus, the arguments and semantical expositions are not themselves justifications, for their conclusions are self-evident: they carry their evidence or justification in themselves. Frege's more modern, pragmatic strands centre in his contextualist views about sense, his view that applications and experience with theory provide a type of justification that is significant but secondary to proof, and his strong emphasis that obviousness is neither necessary nor sufficient for self-evidence or rational certainty. The inferences involved in theory building were for Frege integral to obtaining the understanding necessary to appreciate the self-evidence and rational certainty of the basic principles of logic and mathematics.

This chapter probes whether the Grisez School is able to find a new means to secure the moorings of ethics to the givenness of reality. It explores the relationship between practical reason and the reality and the role of self-evidence in the Grisez School's theory in three stages. First, it considers the relationship between human nature and the fulfilling objects and objectives towards which practical reason directs people. This provides the opportunity to begin an exploration of the question of self-evidence. Second, the chapter analyses the connections between principles of practical reason (which guide people in their pursuit of those fulfilling objects and objectives) and human nature and the conditions of human existence. Third, it considers the function of knowledge about reality in the actual process of moral deliberation.

Sidgwick believes that his own proto-utilitarian axioms satisfy criteria for self-evidence, while the principles of common-sense morality, including the particularly apparently compelling principle requiring fidelity to promises, do not. Sidgwick presents his argument for this claim in Book III of the Methods. Important predecessors like Whewell and successors like Ross, who share Sidgwick's commitment to epistemic intuitionism but develop deontological moral theories, disagree. The chapter articulates Sidgwick's argument, but suggest that it fails; its official version, directed against Whewell, is vulnerable to a charge of unfairness; and its unofficial version cannot establish Sidgwick's view against Ross's. Sidgwick is central to the development of the familiar contemporary theoretical contrast between utilitarianism and deontology; he aspires, as many utilitarians do, to argue for utilitarianism broadly on the grounds of its superior rationality; but his own attempt to argue for it in this way is a failure.

‘Self‐Understanding’ (2007, 2011) explains how immunity to brute error in self‐knowledge is constitutive to applicability of norms of critical reason and morality. The essay argues that if all an individual’s self‐understanding could be warranted but mistaken, the self‐understanding would be too detached to ground accountability to norms of critical reason and morality. Immunity to brute error resides in use of capacities whose structures and natures are constitutive to a point of view. The relevant capacities are mostly preservational. Immunity to brute error in deductive inference; in accepting simple, self‐evident truths; and in non‐inferential beliefs about reason support are considered as comparison cases. The essay offers a general account of how the role of self‐knowledge in critical reasoning bears on warrant for the relevant self‐knowledge. The account extends beyond knowledge of occurrent thoughts to knowledge of standing attitudes, to meta‐representational episodic memory, to knowledge of anticipations of actions, and to knowledge of sensations.

Several different understandings of perceptual immediacy are criticized. A vivid example of immediate knowledge is then introduced to highlight the need for self-evident objectivity, and the importance of entertaining alternate perspectives. Arguments are presented to show why sensory content is not as relevant as usually supposed.

This chapter considers some questions arising out of reflection on Finnis' writings about value, exemplifying them by a consideration of the putative value of knowledge. They include the role of harmony, and of self-evidence, in identifying or constituting values, and the ways in which values can provide reasons.

‘Concepts, Conceptions, Reflective Understanding: Reply to Peacocke’ (2003) discusses Christopher Peacocke’s view that apriori reflection consists in bringing to clear consciousness an implicit understanding that is already fully formed in the reflector’s psychology. The essay notes that even Leibniz and Kant’s traditional conception is more liberal, in allowing that only components of a correct explication may be present in the individual’s psychology. Against Peacocke’s account, Burge maintains that most apriori reflection is guided by examples–often socially inculcated‐‐ and senses of similarity that in themselves do not provide (even unconscious) explications. The more liberal traditional account also fails to capture reflection that obtains explications only through developing new concepts in new theoretical work or by relying on others. The explication in mathematics of Liebniz’s concept of infinitesimal is discussed as an example. The essay further reflects on the relation between non‐inferential understanding of self‐evident logical truths and inferential mastery that is necessary for having such understanding.

In this chapter Robert Audi argues that cognitive diversity is inherent in the human condition. People differ greatly in what they believe even when they do not disagree. But most of us also disagree with many others on various important matters. Nor are cognitive disparities limited to what is believed: we also differ in what we presuppose, presume, accept, suspect, and surmise. Even where we agree, and thereby coincide in the content of certain cognitions, we may differ in our degrees of conviction regarding the mutually accepted propositions. This paper considers the kinds of cognitive disparities—intrapersonal as well as interpersonal—of major interest for epistemology. These include rational disagreements even on self-evident propositions, which some have thought obvious in a way that precludes rationally rejecting them. On the basis of the account of cognitive diversity and several distinctions within that category, the paper indicates a number of ways both to understand rational disagreement and to resolve it when possible.