J. Doomen, Review of "Philosophy Without Intuitions", Herman Cappelen

Philosophy in Review, 2013

Philosophical Inquiries, Vol 1, No 2 (2013)

For several years now, the main debate in metaphilosophy has been over the use of intuitions in philosophical practice. On the one side, experimental philosophers (notably, Jonathan Weinberg and Joshua Alexander) and other empirical philosophers (notably Hilary Kornblith) have argued for the elimination or the severe restriction of such uses on the motive that philosopher's intuitions were not truth-tracking. On the other side, armchair philosophers (notably Georges Bealer, Alvin Goldman, Ernest Sosa and Timothy Williamson) have argued for the opposite claim. The assumption shared by the two camps is that philosophers use intuitions as evidence. This is this assumption that Herman Cappelen challenges in his last book, Philosophy Without Intuitions. He provides a detailed and clear discussion of it that makes for a very pleasant and stimulating book. However, despite the fact that he does more than occupying a position in the logical space that until now wasn't occupied by anyone, he fails to be convincing. I will begin by presenting Cappelen's arguments. Then I will raise an objection against one of them. Finally, I will argue that, even if he is right, it doesn't show that Experimental Philosophy is, in his own words, a "Big Mistake".

Synthese, 2018

This special issue (short: S.I.) is dedicated to the study of philosophical methodology. Until recently, the debate about philosophical methods in analytic philosophy primarily focused on the method of conceptual analysis, linguistic intuitions, thought experiments, and empirical methods. The result of an analysis of a concept is typically taken to be an explicit definition that consists of a list of individually necessary and jointly sufficient conditions for its fulfillment. Yet, such a list is only a result of a conceptual analysis if it is true by virtue of the meaning of its parts and if this truth can be recognized a priori with the aid of linguistic intuitions (e.g., Grice 1958). We can test definitions by conducting thought experiments that enact the specified conditions (e.g., Mach 1973; Jackson 1998, ch. 2; Nimtz 2012). This method of conceptual clarification has been criticized in several respects. For instance, Willard van Orman Quine challenged one of its presuppositions, namely the analytic/synthetic distinction (Quine 1951). Hilary Kornblith argued that its aim of specifying individually necessary and jointly sufficient condition cannot be reached (Kornblith 2007; see also Chalmers and Jackson 2001). Longstanding debates about concepts like knowledge are thus rather a gimmick than fruitful philosophical work (Kornblith 2014). Lynne Rudder Baker aimed to show that empirical considerations are involved in seemingly a priori analyses (Rudder Baker 2001), and it has been debated whether conceptual analysis is knowledge expanding (for this debate see, e.g., Balcerak Jackson and Balcerak Jackson 2012; Balcerak Jackson 2013). In recent years, it has also been argued that conceptual analysis should not be carried out by individual philosophers. Instead, folk intuitions need to be elicited by means of quantitative research. Such arguments B Insa Lawler

The following is a familiar argument type that has dominated recent literature on intuition. Premise: work in experimental philosophy indicates that intuitions vary as a function of such philosophically irrelevant features as order of presentation and cultural background. Conclusion: intuitions are unsuited for their current evidential role in philosophical argumentation. We might call this the 'variation argument' against intuition. Early incarnations of the variation argument (e.g., were interpreted by many as suggesting that intuition should be wholly jettisoned as an evidential source, leading to a conception of experimental philosophers as endorsing a sort of 'intuition skepticism'. At the same time, the general tendency among defenders of traditional methodology has been to equate criticism of intuition with a complete rejection of intuition, and to direct their focus primarily towards undermining the latter.

The Philosophical Quarterly

This article discusses the methodological and epistemological significance of so-called intuitions in philosophy, i.e. whether intuitions can constitute evidence for philosophical claims or, if not, whether they might have some other kind of methodological significance. A closely connected issue addressed is whether our comprehension of non-empirical possibilities and necessities can be explained by reference to intuition or intuitions, or if not, how our capacity to understand modalities should be explained. In response to the accounts of Ernest Sosa and George Bealer I distinguish three senses in which one might talk about intuition or intuitions in philosophy, arguing that, while two of them are empty, intuitions in the third non-empty sense can’t be appealed to as evidence in philosophy. Part of this argument is an explanation why it is unnecessary to postulate a capacity or competence of intuition to explain our comprehension of modalities, and how this can be explained in simpler terms by reference to linguistic or conceptual competence. I conclude with a discussion of the methodological significance of intuitions in the third non-empty sense, ascribing to them a significance radically different from that envisaged by Sosa and Bealer.

Filozofia, vol. 64, no. 7, pp. 680-692.

Abstract: In the analytic tradition, the appeal to intuition has been a common philosophical practice that supposedly provides us with epistemic standards. I will argue that the high epistemological standards of traditional analytic philosophy cannot be pursued by this method. Perhaps within a naturalistic, reliabilistic background can one more coherently evoke intuitions: Philosophers can use intuition as scientists do, in hypothesis-construction or data-collection. This is an ironic conclusion: traditional analytic epistemologists rely on the appeal to intuition but cannot justify it.

2008

Intuition serves a variety of roles in contemporary philosophy. This paper provides a historical discussion of the revival of intuition in the 1970s, untangling some of the ways that intuition has been used and offering some suggestions concerning its proper place in philosophical investigation. Contrary to some interpretations of the results of experimental philosophy, it is argued that generalized skepticism with respect to intuition is unwarranted. Intuition can continue to play an important role as part of a methodologically conservative stance towards philosophical investigation. I argue that methodological conservatism should be sharply distinguished from the process of evaluating individual propositions. More significantly, intuition is not always a reliable guide to truth and experimental philosophy can serve a vital ameliorative role in determining the scope and limits of our intuitive competence with respect to various areas of inquiry.

2014

Intuitions have for many years been considered indispensable to philosophical methodology. Recently, however, a growing body of empirical work has indicated that intuitions may be subject to various sorts of undesirable variation. Th ese fi ndings strongly suggest that philosophers have substantially overestimated the epistemological worth of intuition; it has even been suggested that intuition must be excluded from philosophical practice. Nonetheless, given that there’s been no dramatic revolution in philosophical method, most philosophers seem to be hesitant to relegate intuition to the dustbin entirely. Th ere is a strong temptation to say that intuitions must have at least some evidential weight—though they obviously occasionally go astray. Given their ubiquity in reasoning (philosophical and otherwise), it’s diffi cult to accept the idea that our intuitions could be so unreliable that they’d have to be wholly abandoned as an evidential source. Th erefore, in this chapter, we’ll...

2009

In the analytic tradition, the appeal to intuition has been a common philosophical practice that supposedly provides us with epistemic standards. I will argue that the high epistemological standards of traditional analytic philosophy cannot be pursued by this method. Perhaps within a naturalistic, reliabilistic frame intuitions can be evoked more coherently. Philosophers can use intuition as scientists do, in hypothesisconstruction or datacollection. This is an ironic conclusion: Traditional analytic epistemologists rely on the appeal to intuition, but cannot justify it. Naturalists, on the other hand, are not that needy of such a method; yet they can better accommodate it within their view.