Knowledge Is Not Enough

Discussions of the role of intuition in philosophical methodology typically proceed within the knowledge-centred framework of mainstream analytic epistemology. Either implicitly or explicitly, the primary questions in metaphilosophy frequently seem to revolve around whether or not intuition is a source of justification, evidence, or knowledge. I argue that this Standard Framework is inappropriate for methodological purposes: the epistemic standards that govern inquiry in philosophy are more stringent than the standards that govern everyday cognition. The experimentalist should instead view her criticisms as analogous to calls for the use of double-blinding in science.     

Intuition and The Junctures of Judgment in Decision Procedures for Clinical Ethics

Moral decision procedures such as principlism or casuistry require intuition at certain junctures, as when a principle seems indeterminate, or principles conflict, or we wonder which paradigm case is most relevantly similar to the instant case. However, intuitions are widely thought to lack epistemic justification, and many ethicists urge that such decision procedures dispense with intuition in favor of forms of reasoning that provide discursive justification. I argue that discursive justification does not eliminate or minimize the need for intuition, or constrain our intuitions. However, this is not a problem, for intuitions can be justified in easy or obvious cases, and decision procedures should be understood as heuristic devices for reaching judgments about harder cases that approximate the justified intuitions we would have about cases under ideal conditions, where hard cases become easy. Similarly, the forms of reasoning which provide discursive justification help decision procedures perform this heuristic function not by avoiding intuition, but by making such heuristics more accurate. Nonetheless, it is possible to demand too much justification; many clinical ethicists lack the time and philosophical training to reach the more elaborate levels of discursive justification. We should keep moral decision procedures simple and user-friendly so that they will provide what justification can be achieved under clinical conditions, rather than trying to maximize our epistemic justification out of an overstated concern about intuition.     

Where is the Fundamental Disagreement Between Naive Realism and Intentionalism?

This paper aims to reveal the source of the dispute between naive realism and intentionalism. To accomplish this task, it examines Adam Pautz’s challenge to naive realism, according to which a naive intuition about visual phenomenology, which is the only workable case for naive realism, is problematic. It argues that naive realists can address the challenge from Pautz by rejecting his assumption that naive realists and intentionalists agree on the nominal definition of visual phenomenology. The paper then argues that the reason naive realists want to preserve the naive intuition is its irresistibility rather than its reliability. Given this, it concludes that the disagreement between naive realism and intentionalism is rooted in what philosophical projects they tackle. Naive realists are engaged in the philosophical project of delineating a coherent view of the actual world in which the irresistible naive intuition can be true; the intentionalist philosophical project differs from it.     

On Philosophical Translator-Advocates and Linguistic Injustice

Abstract

This paper argues for the need of philosophical translator-advocates to overcome the (would-be) limitations produced by the linguistic narrowness of analytic philosophy. It draws on a model used to analyze epistemic communities in order to characterize a form of linguistic injustice. In particular it does so by treating language as an epistemic barrier to entry of ideas and people and by treating philosophical translator-advocates as engaged in a form of arbitrage. Along the way I specify some necessary and jointly sufficient characteristics of a philosophical translator-advocate. My argument is illuminated and vivified with examples from the history of analytic philosophy and other episodes from the history of philosophy.     

Philosophical Intuition Is the Capacity to Recognize one’s Epistemic Position. An Old-Fashion Approach Based on Russell,Carnap, Wittgenstein,and Husserl

Philosophical intuition has become one of the most debated problems in recent years, largely due to the rise of the movement called experimental philosophy which challenged the conviction that philosophers have some special insight into abstract ideas such as being, knowledge, good and evil, intentional action, etc. In response to the challenge, some authors claim that there is a special cognitive faculty called philosophical intuition which delivers justification to philosophical theses, while some others deny it based on experimental results. A relatively smaller group of researchers aim at clarifying what the alleged intuition is. I follow the latter path. In this paper I argue that philosophical intuition is in the first place the capacity enabling one to what I refer to as the recognition of one’s epistemic position. The latter means becoming aware of the seemingly trivial “fact” that the way in which the world manifests itself depends on the cognitive apparatus one has, thereby propelling one to draw a distinction between appearances and reality. The recognition at stake is a very specific capacity to approach the world solely as it is experienced. This capacity, I argue, is the core and the defining feature of philosophical intuition. As part of my argumentation I also distinguish between the intuition in question and its different manifestations; and then introduce a novel notion of erotetic intuition. My argument is called “old-fashion” to emphasize the fact that I draw mostly on four figures who were pivotal in the twentieth- century philosophy and whose influence on the current debate concerning philosophical intuition should be, I believe, stronger than it is; I mean Russell, Carnap, Wittgenstein, and Husserl.

     

Intuition and Nature in Kant and Goethe

Abstract: This essay addresses three specific moments in the history of the role played by intuition in Kant's system. Part one develops Kant's attitude toward intuition in order to understand how ‘sensible intuition’ becomes the first step in his development of transcendental idealism and how this in turn requires him to reject the possibility of an ‘intellectual intuition’ for human cognition. Part two considers the role of Jacobi when it came to interpreting both Kant's epistemic achievement and what were taken to be the outstanding problems of freedom's relation to nature; problems interpreted to be resolvable only via an appeal to ‘intellectual intuition’. Part three begins with Kant's subsequent return to the question of freedom and nature in his Critique of Judgment. With Goethe's contemporaneous Metamorphoses of Plants as a contrast case, it becomes clear that whereas Goethe can embrace the role of an intuitive understanding in his account of nature and within the logic of polarity in particular, Kant could never allow an intuition of nature that in his system would spell the very impossibility of freedom itself.     

Expanding Epistemology: A Responsibilist Approach

Abstract

The first section of this paper asks why we need, or what would motivate, a meaningful expansion of epistemology. It answers with three critical arguments found in the recent literature, which each purport to move us some distance beyond the preoccupations of ‘post-Gettier era’ analytic epistemology. These three—the ‘epistemic luck,’ ‘epistemic value’ and ‘epistemic reconciliation’ arguments associated with Duncan Pritchard, Jonathan Kvanvig, and Michael Williams, respectively—each carry this implication of needed expansion by functioning as forceful ‘internal critiques’ of the tradition. The second section of the paper asks what specific directions an expanded field of epistemology should take. While this is taken as an open question for debate, the expansion suggested here remains continuous with the analytic tradition, while also underlining the centrality of the acquired or ‘reflective’ intellectual virtues in meeting the burdens of the three arguments. Responsibilism, as here understood, is not a philosophical thesis so much as an orientation of commitment to clearing away philosophical assumptions that systematically obstruct recognition of the importance of empirically-informed research programs into the reflective virtues.     

On Categories and A Posteriori Necessity: A Phenomenological Echo

This article argues for two related theses. First, it defends a general thesis: any kind of necessity, including metaphysical necessity, can only be known a priori. Second, however, it also argues that the sort of a priori involved in modal metaphysical knowledge is not related to imagination or any sort of so‐called epistemic possibility. Imagination is neither a proof of possibility nor a limit to necessity. Rather, modal metaphysical knowledge is built on intuition of philosophical categories and the structures they form.     

Relying on Intuitions: Where Cappelen and Deutsch Go Wrong

Abstract

In Philosophy without Intuitions (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), Herman Cappelen challenges the ‘almost universally accepted’ thesis of ‘Centrality’: ‘philosophers rely on intuitions as evidence (or as a source of evidence) for philosophical theories’. Cappelen takes there to be two arguments for Centrality and rejects both. According to the first, Centrality is supported by the way philosophers characterize key premises in their arguments as ‘intuitive’. Central to Cappelen’s rejection of this is his lengthy argument that philosophers’ ‘intuition’-talk is very hard to interpret, indeed often ‘meaningless’. I argue, in contrast, that this talk is easy to interpret. The great mass of philosophers who would endorse Centrality mean by ‘intuition’ just what it ordinarily means: ‘immediate judgment, without reasoning or inference’. Cappelen claims further that philosophers’ ‘intuition’-talk, however it is interpreted, does not support Centrality. I argue that this talk, interpreted in the ordinary way, does indeed support Centrality. According to the second argument, Centrality is supported by the very practice of philosophy. Cappelen rejects this with a thorough examination of several philosophical arguments. Deutsch has attacked Centrality similarly, in effect, with a thorough examination of one famous argument from Kripke. How are we to tell whether philosophical practice relies on intuitions? Cappelen, and Deutsch to some extent, answer by looking to the opinions of intuition-theorists about the nature of intuitions. This approach is quite mistaken. Rather, we should look to our ordinary ability to recognize intuitions. Adopting this approach, and discussing Deutsch’s Kripke example in most detail, I argue that Centrality gets support from all of these examples of philosophical practice.     

Metaphilosophy and the Role of Intuitions

The practice of appealing to intuitions as evidence has recently been criticized by experimental philosophers. While some traditional philosophers defend intuitions as a trustworthy source of evidence, others try to undermine the challenge this criticism poses to philosophical methodology. This paper argues that some recent attempts to undermine the challenge from experimental philosophy fail. It concludes that the metaphilosophical question whether intuitions play a role in philosophy cannot be decided by analyzing our use of the word ‘intuition’ or related terms, and what philosophers rely on may not be manifest on the surface of what they write. The question what intuitions are and what their role is in philosophy has to be settled within the wider framework of a theory of knowledge, justification, and philosophical methodology.

     

Reminiscing together: joint experiences,epistemic groups,and sense of self

In this essay, I consider a kind of social group that I call ‘epistemic’. It is constituted by its members’ possession of perceptually grounded common knowledge, which endows them with a particular kind of epistemic authority. This authority, I argue, is invoked in the activity of ‘joint reminiscing’—of remembering together a past jointly experienced event. Joint reminiscing, in turn, plays an important role in the constitution of social and personal identity. The notion of an epistemic group, then, is a concept that helps explain an important aspect of a subject’s understanding of who she is.

     

The Proof of Utility and Equity in Mill's Utilitarianism

Bolzano incorporated Kant's distinction between intuitions and concepts into the doctrine of propositions by distinguishing between conceptual (Begriffssätze an sich) and intuitive propositions (Anschauungssätze an sich). An intuitive proposition contains at least one objective intuition, that is, a simple idea that represents exactly one object; a conceptual proposition contains no objective intuition. After Bolzano, philosophers dispensed with the distinction between conceptual and intuitive propositions. So why did Bolzano attach philosophical importance to it? I will argue that, ultimately, the value of the distinction lies in the fact that conceptual and intuitive truths have different objective grounds: if a conceptual truth is grounded at all, its ground is a conceptual truth. The difference in grounds between conceptual and intuitive truths motivates Bolzano's criticism of Kant's view that intuition plays the fundamental role in mathematics, a conceptual science by Bolzano's lights.     

Evidence: wanted,alive or dead

This paper is meant to link the philosophical debate concerning the underdetermination of theories by evidence with a rather significant socio-political issue that has been taking place in Canada over the past few years: the so-called ‘death of evidence’ controversy. It places this debate within a broader philosophical framework by discussing the connection between evidence and theory; by bringing out the role of epistemic values in the so-called scientific method; and by examining the role of social values in science. While it should be admitted that social values play an important role in science, the key question for anyone who advocates this view is: what and whose values? The way it is answered makes an important epistemic difference to how the relation between evidence and theory is appraised. I first review various arguments for the claim that evidence underdetermines theory and shows their presuppositions and limitations, using conceptual analysis and historical examples. After broaching the relation between evidence and method in science by highlighting the need to incorporate epistemic values into the scientific method, my discussion focuses on recent arguments for the role of social values in science. Finally, I address the implications of the approach outlined for the current ‘death of evidence’ debate in Canada.     

Rational intuition and understanding

Rational intuitions involve a particular form of understanding that gives them a special epistemic status. This form of understanding and its epistemic efficacy are not explained by several current theories of rational intuition, including Phenomenal Conservatism (Huemer, Skepticism and the veil of perception, 2001; Ethical intuitionism, 2005; Philos Phenomenol Res 74:30–55, 2007), Proper Functionalism (Plantinga, Warrant and proper function, 1993), the Competency Theory (Bealer Pac Philos Q 81:1–30, 2000; Sosa, A virtue epistemology, 2007) and the Direct Awareness View (Conee, Philos Phenomenol Res 4:847–857, 1998; Bonjour, In defense of pure reason, 1998). Some overlook it; others try to account for it but fail. We can account for the role of understanding in rational intuition by returning to the view of some of the early Rationalists, e.g. Descartes and Leibniz. While that view carries a prohibitive cost, it does contain an insight that may help us solve the problem of giving understanding its due.     

What we talk about when we talk about epistemic justification

Stewart Cohen argues that much contemporary epistemological theorizing is hampered by the fact that ‘epistemic justification’ is a term of art (rather than something we all pretheoretically understand) and one that is never given any serious explication in a non-tendentious, theory-neutral way. He suggests that epistemologists are therefore better off theorizing in terms of rationality, rather than in terms of ‘epistemic justification’. Against this, I argue that even if the term ‘epistemic justification’ is not broadly known, the concept it picks out is quite familiar, and partly because it’s a term of art, justification talk is a better vehicle for philosophical theorizing. ‘Rational’ is too unclear for our philosophical purposes, and the fact that ‘epistemic justification’ gets fleshed out by appeal to substantive, controversial theses is no obstacle to its playing the needed role in epistemological theorizing.     

Coverage-Reliability, Epistemic Dependence, and the Problem of Rumor-Based Belief

Rumors, for better or worse, are an important element of public discourse. The present paper focuses on rumors as an epistemic phenomenon rather than as a social or political problem. In particular, it investigates the relation between the mode of transmission and the reliability, if any, of rumors as a source of knowledge. It does so by comparing rumor with two forms of epistemic dependence that have recently received attention in the philosophical literature: our dependence on the testimony of others, and our dependence on what has been called the ‘coverage-reliability’ of our social environment (Goldberg 2010). According to the latter, an environment is ‘coverage-reliable’ if, across a wide range of beliefs and given certain conditions, it supports the following conditional: If ~p were true I would have heard about it by now. However, in information-deprived social environments with little coverage-reliability, rumors may transmit information that could not otherwise be had. This suggests that a trade-off exists between levels of trust in the coverage-reliability of official sources and (warranted) trust in rumor as a source of information.     

Understanding Epistemic Relevance

Agents require a constant flow, and a high level of processing, of relevant semantic information, in order to interact successfully among themselves and with the environment in which they are embedded. Standard theories of information, however, are silent on the nature of epistemic relevance. In this paper, a subjectivist interpretation of epistemic relevance is developed and defended. It is based on a counterfactual and metatheoretical analysis of the degree of relevance of some semantic information i to an informee/agent a, as a function of the accuracy of i understood as an answer to a query q, given the probability that q might be asked by a. This interpretation of epistemic relevance vindicates a strongly semantic theory of information, according to which semantic information encapsulates truth. It accounts satisfactorily for several important applications and interpretations of the concept of relevant information in a variety of philosophical areas. And it interfaces successfully with current philosophical interpretations of causal and logical relevance.     

Mathematics and conceptual analysis

Gödel argued that intuition has an important role to play in mathematical epistemology, and despite the infamy of his own position, this opinion still has much to recommend it. Intuitions and folk platitudes play a central role in philosophical enquiry too, and have recently been elevated to a central position in one project for understanding philosophical methodology: the so-called ‘Canberra Plan’. This philosophical role for intuitions suggests an analogous epistemology for some fundamental parts of mathematics, which casts a number of themes in recent philosophy of mathematics (concerning a priority and fictionalism, for example) in revealing new light.     

‘If something doesn’t look right,go find out why’: how intuitive decision making is accomplished in police first-response

ABSTRACT

Intuition is an important mechanism by which organizational actors make significant decisions; however, precisely how intuitive decisions are taken is not well understood and hence is worthy of closer scrutiny. First-response decisions, because of the conditions under which they are executed, offer researchers an interesting and relevant context for the study of intuitive decision making in organizations. We used qualitative methods to explore how “peak performing” police officers used intuition in first-response decisions. Our findings show that intuition’s role in first-response occurs in two differing but complementary ways: “recognition-based intuition” and “intuition-based inquiry”. This finding builds on previous intuition research and informs current debates in behavioural sciences regarding “default-intervention” versus “parallel-competitive” variants of dual-process theory; it also reveals how a complex and situated mix of intuition and analysis can guide effective decision making and support peak performance in uncertain, dynamic and complex environments that typify many organizational decision processes. Our findings contribute to intuition research by extending the current theory of “intuition-as-expertise” in going beyond a simple “recognize-and-respond” model. We propose a “Perceiving-Knowing-Enacting-Closing” framework which captures the complex role that intuition in combination with analysis plays in police first-response decisions, and discuss implications for decision-making policies and practices in organizations.