We applaud De Neys for drawing attention to the interaction between intuiting and deliberating without committing to single- or dual process models. It remains unclear, however, how he conceptualizes the distinction between intuiting and deliberating. We propose several levels at which the distinction can be made and discuss the merits of defining intuiting and deliberating as different types of behavior.

In recent years a growing number of philosophers writing about the methodology of philosophy have defended the surprising claim that philosophers do not use intuitions as evidence. In this paper I defend the contrary view that philosophers do use intuitions as evidence. I argue that this thesis is the best explanation of several salient facts about philosophical practice. First, philosophers tend to believe propositions which they find intuitive. Second, philosophers offer error theories for intuitions that conflict with their theories. Finally, (...) philosophers are more confident in rejecting theories to the extent that they have several counter examples involving diverse cases. I argue that these facts are better explained by philosophers' using intuitions as evidence than by any plausible contrary explanations. I further argue that aspects of philosophical practice that my thesis may initially seem ill-suited to explain are in fact unsurprising whether or not my thesis is true. (shrink)

There are ways that ethical intuitions might be, and the various possibilities have epistemic ramifications. This paper criticizes some extant accounts of what ethical intuitions are and how they justify, and it offers an alternative account. Roughly, an ethical intuition that p is a kind of seeming state constituted by a consideration whether p, attended by positive phenomenological qualities that count as evidence for p, and so a reason to believe that p. They are distinguished from other kinds of seemings, (...) such as those which are content driven (e.g., the sensory experience that a stick in water seems bent) and those which are competence driven (e.g., the intellectual seeming that XYZ is not water, or that one of DeMorgan’s laws is true). One important conclusion is this: when crafting a positive theory of justification ethical intuitionists have fewer resources than intuitionists in other domains, not because of the subject matter of ethical intuitions, but because of the their structure. A second conclusion is that the seemings featured in substantive ethical intuitions deliver relatively weak justification as compared to other seeming states. (shrink)

Intuitions may seem to play a fundamental role in philosophy: but their role and their value have been challenged recently. What are intuitions? Should we ever trust them? And if so, when? Do they have an indispensable role in science—in thought experiments, for instance—as well as in philosophy? Or should appeal to intuitions be abandoned altogether? This collection brings together leading philosophers, from early to late career, to tackle such questions. It presents the state of the art thinking on the (...) topic.Readership: Scholars and advanced students of philosophy. (shrink)

People often choose intuitive rather than equally valid nonintuitive alternatives. The authors suggest that these intuitive biases arise because intuitions often spring to mind with subjective ease, and the subjective ease leads people to hold their intuitions with high confidence. An investigation of predictions against point spreads found that people predicted intuitive options more often than equally valid nonintuitive alternatives. Critically, though, this effect was largely determined by people's confidence in their intuitions. Across naturalistic, expert, and laboratory samples, against personally (...) determined point spreads, and even when intuitive confidence was manipulated by altering irrelevant aspects of the decision context, the authors found that decreasing intuitive confidence reduced or eliminated intuitive biases. These findings indicate that intuitive biases are not inevitable but rather predictably determined by contextual variables that affect intuitive confidence. (shrink)

L’essai vise à reconstruire dans l’ Estetica come scienza dell’espressione e linguistica generale de Croce de 1902 la relation complexe entre les concepts d’intuition, d’expression et de sensibilité. Pour Croce, l’activité esthétique semble toujours osciller entre une forme de connaissance et une productivité qui trouve dans la matérialité du médium expressif (en particulier l’art) sa propre façon d’apparaître au niveau sensible.

This book is concerned with the role of intuitions in the justification of philosophical theory. The author begins by demonstrating how contemporary philosophers, whether engaged in case-driven analysis or seeking reflective equilibrium, rely on intuitions as evidence for their theories. The author then provides an account of the nature of philosophical intuitions and distinguishes them from other psychological states. Finally, the author defends the use of intuitions as evidence by demonstrating that arguments for skepticism about their evidential value are either (...) self-defeating or guilty of arbitrary and unjustified partiality towards non-intuitive modes of knowledge. (shrink)

According to ethical intuitionists, basic moral propositions are self-evident. Robert Audi has made significant progress articulating and defending this view, claiming that an adequate understanding of a self-evident proposition justifies rather than compels belief. It is argued here that understanding a proposition cannot justify belief in it, and that intuition, suitably understood, provides the right sort of justification. An alternative account is offered of self-evidence based on intuition rather than understanding, and it is concluded that once we have an adequate (...) understanding of a self-evident proposition, we can see that it does no distinctive epistemic work. It merely reports that intuition is doing some significant epistemic work. Since the very idea of self-evident moral propositions is so controversial, and self-evidence does no significant epistemic work, ethical intuitionists should drop this notion from their moral epistemology. All they need are intuitive propositions and our intuition of these. (shrink)

There is currently an important debate about whether philosophical intuitions are intended as evidence for the theories philosophers promote. On one side are those who argue that philosophers do rely on intuitions as evidence; on the other side are those who deny any such role for philosophical intuitions. This paper argues that both sides of this debate are partially right and partially wrong. Intuitive judgments do not, as psychological states, function as evidence in most well-known philosophical thought experiments. Philosophers nevertheless (...) strongly depend upon these intuitive judgments. Where both sides go awry is in assuming that the importance of intuitive judgments rests solely upon their role as evidence. We need to distinguish between evidence, as such, from various nonevidential psychological states that are needed for something else to serve as evidence. The paper calls these latter conditions “evidence facilitators” and argues that intuitive judgments belong in this category. (shrink)

This English translation of Intuition and Reflection in Self-Consciousness evokes the movement and flavor of the original, clarifies its obscurities, and eliminates the repetitions.

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. Nevertheless, 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. (shrink)

Gerald Harrison has argued that the readiness with which we have and agree to moral intuitions about the value of disembodied persons shows that persons are essentially non-material, for if we were essentially material we would not so easily be able to ascribe moral value to an impossible non-material person. To support this point, he advances a somewhat novel metaphor of intuitions as a "call" to a help desk which can answer our queries about counter-factual scenarios. I first point out (...) that the help desk metaphor is not only compatible with, but actually suggestive of, the possibility of systematic error on the part of our intuitions. But more crucially, rapid acquisition of and widespread agreement on even plausible intuitions about counter-factual scenarios does nothing to show that the counter-factual scenarios are possible, let alone true, giving several other counter-examples to this idea. I conclude with the suggestion that imagining such counter-factual scenarios should not be seen as a mode of accessing a fixed source of truths in a "help desk" manual, but as a constructive way of understanding the relationship between concepts, and hence ultimately as a mode of writing small parts of this heretofore unwritten text. (shrink)

This paper covers some large subjects: as well as intuition and Wittgenstein, it also discusses modern computing. However it only traces one thread through these topics. Basically it proposes that a computational analysis of Wittgenstein's Tractatus can shed light upon processes of discovery in mathematics.

Moral judgements are based on automatic processes. Moral judgements are based on reason. In this paper, I argue that both of these claims are true, and show how they can be reconciled. Neither the automaticity of moral judgement nor the post hoc nature of conscious moral reasoning pose a threat to rationalist models of moral cognition. The relation moral reasoning bears to our moral judgements is not primarily mediated by episodes of conscious reasoning, but by the acquisition, formation and maintenance (...) ? in short: education ? of our moral intuitions. (shrink)

The publication presents Maritain's concept of intellectual intuition in a wide philosophical and historical context and examines its role in the construction of metaphysics. The book addresses metaphysics in the aspect of its development and methodology.

The relationship between intuition and ethical decision-making has been researched extensively during the past two decades. This study aimed at exploring empirically observable associations between intuition and the moral intensity of ethical decision-making processes. A scenario-based quantitative approach was used to collect data from 157 practising professional spirit mediums. It was found that only collective universal intuition had a significant positive association with the moral intensity of ethical decision-making processes. Personal experience intuition and collective archetype intuition were not significantly associated (...) with moral intensity. This may explain why previous studies were unable to gauge the effects of intuition on ethical decision-making. The results suggest that a pure mind can improve one’s ability to make decisions. Thus, decision-makers would benefit by being more attuned to their sense of morality. (shrink)

Action is not always guided by conscious deliberation; in many circumstances, we act intuitively rather than reflectively. Tamar Gendler (2014) contends that because intuitively guided action can lead us away from our reflective commitments, it limits the power of knowledge to guide action. While I agree that intuition can diverge from reflection, I argue that this divergence does not constitute a restriction on the power of knowledge. After explaining my view of the contrast between intuitive and reflective thinking, this paper (...) argues against the conclusions Gendler draws from empirical work on implicit bias. (shrink)

Intuition in medical and moral reasoning -- Moral intuitionism -- The place of Aristotelian phronesis in clinical reasoning -- Aristotle's practical syllogism: accounting for the individual through a theory of action and cognition -- Individual and statistical physiognomy: the art and science of making the invisible visible -- Clinical intuition versus statistical reasoning -- Contingency and correlation: the significance of modeling clinical reasoning on statistics -- Abduction: the intuitive support of clinical induction -- Conclusion: medical ethics beyond ontology.

There is a vast literature that seeks to uncover features underlying moral judgment by eliciting reactions to hypothetical scenarios such as trolley problems. These thought experiments assume that participants accept the outcomes stipulated in the scenarios. Across seven studies, we demonstrate that intuition overrides stipulated outcomes even when participants are explicitly told that an action will result in a particular outcome. Participants instead substitute their own estimates of the probability of outcomes for stipulated outcomes, and these probability estimates in turn (...) influence moral judgments. Our findings demonstrate that intuitive likelihoods are one critical factor in moral judgment, one that is not suspended even in moral dilemmas that explicitly stipulate outcomes. Features thought to underlie moral reasoning, such as intention, may operate, in part, by affecting the intuitive likelihood of outcomes, and, problematically, moral differences between scenarios may be confounded with non-moral intuitive probabilities. (shrink)

Elijah Chudnoff elaborates and defends a view of intuition according to which intuition purports to, and reveals, how matters stand in abstract reality by making us aware of that reality through the intellect. He explores the experience of having an intuition; justification for beliefs that derives from intuition; and contact with abstract reality.

In Devitt’s view, linguistic intuitions are opinions about linguistic production of products, most often one’s own. They result frorn ordinary empirical investigation, so “they are immediate and fairly unreflectiveernpirical central-processor responses to linguistic phenomena”, which reactions are, moreover, theory-laden, where the ‘theory’ encompasses all sorts of speaker’s beliefs. The paper reconstructs his arguments, places his view on a map of alternative approaches to intuitions, and offers a defense of a minimalistic “voice-of-competence” view. First, intuitions are to be identified with the (...) data, the minimal “products” of tentative linguistic production of naïve speaker-listeners, and not with their opinions about the data. Second, the data involve no theory and very little prototheory. Third, although there might be admixtures of guesswork in the conscious production of data, these are routinely weaned out by linguists. Finally, mere acceptance of the “voice of competence” does not land us in any objectionable Cartesianism: it is cornpatible with naturalism and with distrust of a priori philosophy. (shrink)

In Philosophy Without Intuitions Herman Cappelen argues that unlike what is commonly thought, contemporary analytic philosophers do not typically rely on intuitions as evidence. If they do indeed rely on intuitions, that should be evident from their written works, either explicitly in the form of ‘intuition’ talk or by means of other indicators. However, Cappelen argues, while philosophers do engage in ‘intuition’ talk, that is not a good indicator that they rely on intuitions, as ‘intuition’ and its cognates have many (...) meanings that are irrelevant to this particular question. He identifies three other indicators and argues by appeal to case studies that these indicators are not present. I argue here that an account of intuitions as intellectual seemings draws attention to intuition features that Cappelen does not consider. These intuition features appear to be regularly present in the works of contemporary analytic philosophers. (shrink)

In this article, we discuss critically some of the key themes in Max Deutsch’s excellent book, The Myth of the Intuitive. We focus in particular on the shortcomings of his historical analysis – a missed opportunity by our lights, on the claim that philosophers present arguments in support of the judgments elicited by thought experiments, and on the claim that experimental philosophy is only relevant for the methodology of philosophy if thought experiments elicit intuitions.

Why we get the world wrong -- Intuitive theories of the physical world -- Matter : what is the world made of? How do those components interact? -- Energy : what makes something hot? What makes something loud? -- Gravity : what makes something heavy? What makes something fall? -- Motion : what makes objects move? What paths do moving objects take? -- Cosmos : what is the shape of our world? What is its place in the cosmos? -- Earth (...) : why do continents drift? Why do climates change? -- Intuitive theories of the biological world -- Life : what makes us alive? What causes us to die? -- Growth : why do we grow bigger? Why do we grow older? -- Inheritance : why do we resemble our parents? Where did we get our traits? -- Illness : what makes us ill? How does illness spread? -- Adaptation : why are there so many lifeforms? How do they change over time? -- Ancestry : where do species come from? How are they related? -- How to get the world right. (shrink)

Despite his unreserved appreciation of Turing’s analysis for being a “precise and unquestionably adequate definition” of formal system or mechanical computability, Gödel nevertheless published a short note in 1972 claiming to have found a “philosophical error” in Turing’s argument with regard to the finite nature of mental states and memory. A natural question arises: how could Gödel enjoy the generality conferred on his results by Turing’s work, despite the error of its ways? Previous interpretative strategies by Feferman, Shagrir and others (...) have mainly tried to resolve the disparity by distinguishing different types of arguments in Turing and taking Gödel to approve only some of them. By a more integral examination of their ideas, especially Turing’s response to the “mathematical objection” based on Gödel’s incompleteness theorem and Gödel’s own conception of finite yet non-mechanical procedures, and taking some of the main ideas of current developments in machine learning into consideration, I will try to present a new explanation for the apparent disparity, arguing that there is no “error” on Turing’s side and the seemingly conflicting views held by Turing and Gödel should best be seen as complementary, keeping intuition and ingenuity together. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that Dual Process Theories of cognition offer a useful framework to understand the nature and role of concepts in cognitive science and intuitions in epistemology.

If we are to understand the complex relationship between Bergson and Kant, we must not approach the former’s philosophy as if it could only be either pre-critical or post-Kantian. Instead, the present essay seeks to shed light on this relationship by treating Kant as another “missing precursor of Bergson.” In Bergson’s eyes, Kant, like Descartes, contains two possible paths for philosophy, which reflect the two fundamental tendencies that are mixed together in the élan vital and continued in humankind: intuition and (...) intelligence. Bergson breaks with Kant from the interior of his philosophy, which he divides into two Kantianisms: the one, which he rejects as ancient, and the other, which he appropriates. What the analysis of this Bergsonian appropriation of Kant reveals, however, is not the existence of a latent Bergsonism in Kant, but rather the recovery of a Kantianism that is completed in Bergson—a Kantianism that embarked down a path that Kant himself, who held himself back from following it in order to dispense with all “intellectual” intuition, had only sketched. Thus, if Bergson is to be believed, an intuitive metaphysics, which installs itself in pure duration, is neither below nor beyond Kantian critique, but can pass through it, can traverse it in its entirety, since it proposes to surpass it, to prolong it following the path that Kant himself had cleared in order to fulfill its suppressed virtualities. (shrink)

Recently, there has been a great deal of skepticism about appeals to intuitions in philosophy. Appeals to intuition often get expressed in the form of what ‘we’ believe. Many people take the ‘we’ in this context to refer to what the folk believe. So the claim about what we believe is an empirical claim. And it looks like the support for this claim comes from a biased sample consisting solely of analytic philosophers. In this paper I want to explain a (...) different way appeals to intuition are used in the literature and why it survives such attacks. The basic idea, which comes from Bernard Williams, is that the 'we' used in many appeals to intuitions is not a referring expression at all. The appeal to intuition is not a claim about what any group of individuals believes. Rather it is an invitation to make a judgment. I argue that when you hear a philosopher say 'P is what we intuitively believe' the proper response is not 'who is this 'we'?’ The proper response is to wonder whether one ought to accept P. (shrink)

We argue that many intuitions do not have conscious propositional contents. In particular, many of the intuitions had in response to philosophical thought experiments, like Gettier cases, do not have such contents. They are more like hunches, urgings, murky feelings, and twinges. Our view thus goes against the received view of intuitions in philosophy, which we call Mainstream Propositionalism. Our positive view is that many thought-experimental intuitions are conscious, spontaneous, non-theoretical, non-propositional psychological states that often motivate belief revision, but they (...) require interpretation, in light of background beliefs, before a subject can form a propositional judgment as a consequence of them. We call our view Interpretationalism. We argue (i) that Interpretationalism avoids the problems that beset Mainstream Propositionalism and (ii) that our view meshes well with empirical results in contemporary cognitive science. (shrink)

Much evidence has accumulated in favor of such a dual view of reasoning. There is however some vagueness in the way the two systems are characterized. Instead of a principled distinction, we are presented with a bundle of contrasting features - slow/fast, automatic/controlled, explicit/implicit, associationist/rule based, modular/central - that, depending on the specific dual process theory, are attributed more or less exclusively to one of the two systems. As Evans states in a recent review, “it would then be helpful to (...) have some clear basis for this distinction”; he also suggests that “we might be better off talking about type 1 and type 2 processes” rather than systems. We share the intuitions that drove the development of dual system theories. Our goal here is to propose in the same spirit a principled distinction between two types of inferences: ‘intuitive inference’ and ‘reflective inference’. We ground this distinction in a massively modular view of the human mind where metarepresentational modules play an important role in explaining the peculiarities of human psychological evolution. We defend the hypothesis that the main function of reflective inference is to produce and evaluate arguments occurring in interpersonal communication. This function, we claim, helps explain important aspects of reasoning. We review some of the existing evidence and argue that it gives support to this approach. (shrink)

Ancients and moderns alike have constructed arguments and assessed theories on the basis of common sense and intuitive judgments. Yet, despite the important role intuitions play in philosophy, there has been little reflection on fundamental questions concerning the sort of data intuitions provide, how they are supposed to lead us to the truth, and why we should treat them as important. In addition, recent psychological research seems to pose serious challenges to traditional intuition-driven philosophical inquiry. Rethinking Intuition brings together a (...) distinguished group of philosophers and psychologists to discuss these important issues. Students and scholars in both fields will find this book to be of great value. (shrink)

Speakers’ intuitive judgements about meaning provide important data for many debates in philosophy of language and pragmatics, including contextualism vs. relativism in semantics; ‘faultless’ disagreement; the limits of truth-conditional semantics; vagueness; and the status of figurative utterances. Is the use of speakers intuitive judgments about meaning justified? Michael Devitt has argued that their use in philosophy of language is problematic because they are fallible empirical judgements about language that reflect speakers’ folk theories about meaning rather than meaning itself. In this (...) paper I respond to Devitt’s criticism and propose a positive account explaining the nature and evidential status of such judgements. I argue that speakers’ intuitive judgements about meanings of utterances provide valuable evidence for various debates in philosophy of language because they are importantly connected to the linguistic performance of speakers. Arguably, the connection is reliable due to a constant monitoring of the interpretations ascribed to linguistic utterances. I call this the voice of performance view. My account restores prominence to speakers’ intuitive judgements about meaning while avoiding Devitt’s worries. (shrink)

A discussion of George Bealer's conception and defense of rational intuition as a basis of philosophical knowledge, under three main heads: a) the phenomenology of intellectual intuition; b) the status of such intuition as a basic source of evidence, and the explanation of what gives it that status; and c) the defense of intuition against those who would reject it and exclude it on principle from the set of valid sources of evidence.

Much evidence has accumulated in favor of such a dual view of reasoning. There is however some vagueness in the way the two systems are characterized. Instead of a principled distinction, we are presented with a bundle of contrasting features - slow/fast, automatic/controlled, explicit/implicit, associationist/rule based, modular/central - that, depending on the specific dual process theory, are attributed more or less exclusively to one of the two systems. As Evans states in a recent review, “it would then be helpful to (...) have some clear basis for this distinction”; he also suggests that “we might be better off talking about type 1 and type 2 processes” rather than systems. We share the intuitions that drove the development of dual system theories. Our goal here is to propose in the same spirit a principled distinction between two types of inferences: ‘intuitive inference’ and ‘reflective inference’. We ground this distinction in a massively modular view of the human mind where metarepresentational modules play an important role in explaining the peculiarities of human psychological evolution. We defend the hypothesis that the main function of reflective inference is to produce and evaluate arguments occurring in interpersonal communication. This function, we claim, helps explain important aspects of reasoning. We review some of the existing evidence and argue that it gives support to this approach. (shrink)

There are a number of well-established concepts explaining decision-making. The sociology of wise practice suggests that thinking preferences like the use of intuition form a cornerstone of administrators’ virtuous practice and phronesis is a likely candidate to explain this behaviour. This contribution uses conceptual and theoretical resources from the behavioural sciences, management science as well as philosophy to account for individual level differences of employees regarding thinking preferences in administrative professions. The analysis empirically investigates the behavioural dimension of the preference (...) for intuition vs the preference for deliberation to cast light on three different intuitive markers present among individuals who also prefer to use deliberation. We explore possible explanations for the differences and similarities of our global sample of 2227 workplace respondents who conceptually represent phronetic practitioners. The results show that many phronetic practitioners prefer the intuitive marker of unconscious thought, besides using deliberation. (shrink)

Humans have two kinds of beliefs, intuitive beliefs and reflective beliefs. Intuitive beliefs are a fundamental category of cognition, defined in the architecture of the mind. They are formulated in an intuitive mental lexicon. Humans are also capable of entertaining an indefinite variety of higher‐order or‘reflective’propositional attitudes, many of which are of a credat sort. Reasons to hold reflective beliefs are provided by other beliefs that describe the source of the reflective belief as reliable, or that provide an explicit argument (...) in favour of the reflective belief. The mental lexicon of reflective beliefs includes not only intuitive, but also reflective concepts. (shrink)

It is alleged that the causal inertness of abstract objects and the causal conditions of certain naturalized epistemologies precludes the possibility of mathematical know- ledge. This paper rejects this alleged incompatibility, while also maintaining that the objects of mathematical beliefs are abstract objects, by incorporating a naturalistically acceptable account of ‘rational intuition.’ On this view, rational intuition consists in a non-inferential belief-forming process where the entertaining of propositions or certain contemplations results in true beliefs. This view is free of any (...) conditions incompatible with abstract objects, for the reason that it is not necessary that S stand in some causal relation to the entities in virtue of which p is true. Mathematical intuition is simply one kind of reliable process type, whose inputs are not abstract numbers, but rather, contemplations of abstract numbers. (shrink)

This book is an intellectual history of intuition.

One mainstream approach to philosophy involves trying to learn about philosophically interesting, non-mental phenomena—ethical properties, for example, or causation—by gathering data from human beings. I call this approach “wide tent traditionalism.” It is associated with the use of philosophers’ intuitions as data, the making of deductive arguments from this data, and the gathering of intuitions by eliciting reactions to often quite bizarre thought experiments. These methods have been criticized—I consider experimental philosophy’s call for a move away from the use of (...) philosophers’ intuitions as evidence, and recent suggestions about the use of inductive arguments in philosophy—and these criticisms point out important areas for improvement. However, embracing these reforms in turn gives wide-tent traditionalists strong reasons to maintain other traditional approaches to philosophy. Specifically, traditionalists’ commitment to using intuitions and to gathering them with bizarre thought experiments is well founded, both philosophically and empirically. I end by considering some problems with gathering trustworthy intuitions, and give suggestions about how best to solve them. (shrink)

This paper relies on experimental methods to explore the psychological underpinnings of folk intuitions about free will and responsibility. In different conditions, people give conflicting responses about agency and responsibility. In some contexts, people treat agency as indeterminist; in other contexts, they treat agency as determinist. Furthermore, in some contexts people treat responsibility as incompatible with determinism, and in other contexts people treat responsibility as compatible with determinism. The paper considers possible accounts of the psychological mechanisms that underlie these conflicting (...) responses. (shrink)