Ethical intuitionism suffered a dramatic fall from favor by the middle of the century, due in part to the influence of logical positivism, in part to the rising popularity of C . L . Stevenson's emotivism would prove especially attractive to Moorean intuitionists seeking to avoid ethical naturalism.
22.
The majority of secular moral concepts are based on the acceptance of natural rights and social contracts, and on a more individual scale of either some form of attribution of intrinsic value to things, Kantianesque ethical intuitionism or of a logical deduction that establishes a preference for one thing over another, as with Occam's razor.
23.
Generally speaking, rationalist ethical intuitionism models the acquisition of such non-inferential moral knowledge on " a priori ", non-empirical knowledge, such as knowledge of mathematical truths; whereas moral sense theory models the acquisition of such non-inferential moral knowledge on empirical knowledge, such as knowledge of the colors of objects ( see moral sense theory ).
24.
Prichard gave an influential defence of ethical intuitionism in his " Does Moral Philosophy Rest on a Mistake ? " ( 1912 ), wherein he contended that moral philosophy rested chiefly on the desire to provide arguments, starting from non-normative premises, for the principles of obligation that we pre-philosophically accept, such as the principle that one ought to keep one's promises or that one ought not steal.
