Philosophical Method and Intuitions as Assumptions

Many philosophers claim to employ intuitions in their philosophical arguments. Others contest that no such intuitions are used frequently or at all in philosophy. This article suggests and defends a conception of intuitions as part of the philosophical method: intuitions are special types of philosophical assumptions to which we are invited to assent, often as premises in argument, that may serve an independent function in philosophical argument and that are not formed through a purely inferential process. A series of philosophical case studies shows that intuitions in these arguments contain the relevant features. The view has implications for philosophical method, offering a compromise between opponents on the divisive debate of the merits of experimental philosophy: experimental philosophy provides an especially useful role in philosophical assumption analysis.     

Where Philosophical Intuitions Come From

Little is known about the aetiology of philosophical intuitions, in spite of their central role in analytic philosophy. This paper provides a psychological account of the intuitions that underlie philosophical practice, with a focus on intuitions that underlie the method of cases. I argue that many philosophical intuitions originate from spontaneous, early-developing, cognitive processes that also play a role in other cognitive domains. Additionally, they have a skilled, practiced, component. Philosophers are expert elicitors of intuitions in the dialectical context of professional philosophy. If this analysis is correct, this should lead to a reassessment of experimental philosophical studies of expertise.     

The Meta-Justification of Reflective Equilibrium

The paper addresses the possibility of providing a meta-justification of what appears to be crucial epistemic desiderata involved in the method of reflective equilibrium. I argue that although the method of reflective equilibrium appears to be widely in use in moral theorising, the prospects of providing a meta-justification of crucial epistemic desiderata are rather bleak. Nor is the requirement that a meta-justification be provided obviously misguided. In addition, I briefly note some of the implications of these results for our use of the method of reflective equilibrium and for the best interpretation of the method.     

Without Intuitions

This paper criticizes Analytic philosophy with its reliance on intuitions in pursuit of conceptual analysis. Rejecting naturalism as an alternative philosophical method, I offer in its place a pragmatic and revisionary conception of philosophical method. I explain the method of Analytic philosophy and show why reliance on intuitions is essential to that method, which is unable to provide substantive answers to philosophical problems. I further show that reflective equilibrium or wide analysis requires some criterion of intuition choice and that this criterion can be applied directly to definitions themselves.     

How “Intuition” Exploded

Recent decades have seen a surge in interest in metaphilosophy. In particular there has been an interest in philosophical methodology. Various questions have been asked about philosophical methods. Are our methods any good? Can we improve upon them? Prior to such evaluative and ameliorative concerns, however, is the matter of what methods philosophers actually use. Worryingly, our understanding of philosophical methodology is impoverished in various respects. This article considers one particular respect in which we seem to be missing an important part of the picture. While it is a received wisdom that the word “intuition” has exploded across analytic philosophy in recent decades, the article presents evidence that the explosion is apparent across a broad swathe of academia (and perhaps beyond). It notes various implications for current methodological debates about the role of intuitions in philosophy.     

The Reliability of Armchair Intuitions

Armchair philosophers have questioned the significance of recent work in experimental philosophy by pointing out that experiments have been conducted on laypeople and undergraduate students. To challenge a practice that relies on expert intuitions, so the armchair objection goes, one needs to demonstrate that expert intuitions rather than those of ordinary people are sensitive to contingent facts such as cultural, linguistic, socio‐economic, or educational background. This article does exactly that. Based on two empirical studies on populations of 573 and 203 trained philosophers, respectively, it demonstrates that expert intuitions vary dramatically according to at least one contingent factor, namely, the linguistic background of the expert: philosophers make different intuitive judgments if their native language is English rather than Dutch, German, or Swedish. These findings cast doubt on the common armchair assumption that philosophical theories based on armchair intuitions are valid beyond the linguistic background against which they were developed.     

Qualitative tools and experimental philosophy

Experimental philosophy brings empirical methods to philosophy. These methods are used to probe how people think about philosophically interesting things such as knowledge, morality, and freedom. This paper explores the contribution that qualitative methods have to make in this enterprise. I argue that qualitative methods have the potential to make a much greater contribution than they have so far. Along the way, I acknowledge a few types of resistance that proponents of qualitative methods in experimental philosophy might encounter, and provide reasons to think they are ill-founded.     

Moral Learning,Rationality, and the Unreliability of Affect

James Woodward and John Allman [2007, 2008] and Peter Railton [2014, 2016] argue that our moral intuitions are products of sophisticated rational learning systems. I investigate the implications that this discovery has for intuition-based philosophical methodologies. Instead of vindicating the conservative use of intuitions in philosophy, I argue that what I call the rational learning strategy fails to show philosophers are justified in appealing to their moral intuitions in philosophical arguments without giving reasons why those intuitions are trustworthy. Despite the fact that our intuitions are outputs of surprisingly sophisticated learning mechanisms, we do not have reason to unreflectively trust them when offering arguments in moral philosophy.     

Reliable but not home free? What framing effects mean for moral intuitions

Various studies show moral intuitions to be susceptible to framing effects. Many have argued that this susceptibility is a sign of unreliability and that this poses a methodological challenge for moral philosophy. Recently, doubt has been cast on this idea. It has been argued that extant evidence of framing effects does not show that moral intuitions have an unreliability problem. I argue that, even if the extant evidence suggests that moral intuitions are fairly stable with respect to what intuitions we have, the effect of framing on the strength of those intuitions still needs to be taken into account. I argue that this by itself poses a methodological challenge for moral philosophy.     

Publicly Accessible Intuitions: "Neutral Reasons" and Bioethics

This article examines Leon Kass's contention that a choice forphysician-assisted suicide is "undignified." Although Kass isJewish rather than Christian, he argues for positions that mostChristians share, and he argues for these positions withoutpresupposing the truth of specific religious claims. I arguethat although Kass has some important intuitions, he too readilyassumes that these intuitions will be shared by his audience,and that this assumption diminishes the force of his argument.An examination of the limitations of Kass's argument is helpfulinsofar as it illustrates the real challenge faced by religiousbelievers who wish to defend their beliefs in the "public forum."For it illustrates that what needs to be made "accessible" isthe Judeo-Christian understanding of man and his place in theworld. While I do not wish to claim that this task is impossible,I do think that it is far more difficult than most realize.Like all important tasks, however, unless we wrestle with thedifficulties it raises, our arguments will strike many as unconvincing.     

Ethics and Intuitions

For millennia, philosophers have speculated about the origins of ethics. Recent research in evolutionary psychology and the neurosciences has shed light on that question. But this research also has normative significance. A standard way of arguing against a normative ethical theory is to show that in some circumstances the theory leads to judgments that are contrary to our common moral intuitions. If, however, these moral intuitions are the biological residue of our evolutionary history, it is not clear why we should regard them as having any normative force. Research in the neurosciences should therefore lead us to reconsider the role of intuitions in normative ethics.     

Fanciful Examples

This article defends the use of fanciful examples within the method of wide reflective equilibrium. First, it characterizes the general persuasive role of described cases within that method. Second, it suggests three criteria any example must meet in order to succeed in this persuasive role; fancifulness has little or nothing to do with whether an example is able to meet these criteria. Third, it discusses several general objections to fanciful examples and concludes that they are objections to the abuse of described cases; they identify no special problem with fanciful examples.     

The evidential status of philosophical intuition

Philosophers have traditionally held that claims about necessities and possibilities are to be evaluated by consulting our philosophical intuitions; that is, those peculiarly compelling deliverances about possibilities that arise from a serious and reflective attempt to conceive of counterexamples to these claims. But many contemporary philosophers, particularly naturalists, argue that intuitions of this sort are unreliable, citing examples of once-intuitive, but now abandoned, philosophical theses, as well as recent psychological studies that seem to establish the general fallibility of intuition.In the first two sections of this paper, I evaluate these arguments, and also the counter-arguments of contemporary defenders of tradition. In the next two sections, I sketch an alternative account of the role of philosophical intuitions that incorporates elements of traditionalism and naturalism - and defend it against other such views. In the final section, however, I discuss intuitions about conscious experience, and acknowledge that my view may not extend comfortably to this case. This may seem unfortunate, since so much contemporary discussion of the epistemology of modality seems motivated by worries about the mind-body problem, and informed by the position one wishes to endorse. But, as I argue, if conscious experience is indeed an exception to the view I suggest in this paper, it is an exception that proves - and can illuminate - the rule.     

How Distinctive Is Philosophers’ Intuition Talk?

The word “intuition” is one frequently used in philosophy. It is often assumed that the way in which philosophers use the word, and others like it, is very distinctive. This claim has been subjected to little empirical scrutiny, however. This article presents the first steps in a qualitative analysis of the use of intuition talk in the academy. It presents the findings of two preliminary empirical studies. The first study examines the use of intuition talk in spoken academic English. The second examines the use of intuition talk in written academic English. It considers what these studies tell us about the distinctiveness of philosophical language and methods and considers some implications for evaluative and ameliorative methodology.     

Abduction by Philosophers: Reorienting Philosophical Methodology

A reorientation is needed in methodological debate about the role of intuitions in philosophy. Methodological debate has lost sight of the reason why it makes sense to focus on questions about intuitions when thinking about the methods or epistemology of philosophy. The problem is an approach to methodology that focuses almost exclusively on questions about some evidential role that intuitions may or may not play in philosophers’ arguments. A new approach is needed. Approaching methodological questions about the role of intuitions in philosophy with an abductive model of philosophical inquiry in mind will help ensure the debate doesn't lose sight of what motivates the debate.     

The Relationship Between Personality Traits and Reflective Judgment Among Female Students

Forty-three female undergraduate and graduate students preparing for careers as educators provided Omnibus Personality Inventory and Reflective Judgment Interview data. The sample included 14 seniors, 15 master's candidates, and 14 doctoral candidates. Each educational level group included participants with a range of intellectual disposition scores as measured by the Omnibus Personality Inventory. Scores on six scales of the Omnibus Personality Inventory correlated significantly with Reflective Judgment Interview scores (p < .05): thinking introversion, response bias, altruism, autonomy, complexity, and theoretical orientation. These findings support the conclusion that postformal reasoning, as described in P. M. King and K. S. Kitchener's (1994) reflective judgment model of cognitive development, is related to measurable personality traits.     

判断偏差分析的认知-生态取样途径

对判断偏差的研究曾主要侧重于考察个体的动机和认知缺陷,而近期从认知-生态取样角度对判断偏差进行的研究则表明,判断偏差源于人与环境的交互作用。从认知-生态取样角度分析人的判断偏差着重考察以下四方面的问题：基于样本的判断涉及的多个变量,现实环境中刺激的分布,取样过程及其结果,取样过程中的心理预设与限制。认知-生态取样角度的研究对判断偏差产生的原因提供了一种全新的解释,同时,它也存在一些亟待解决的问题