The expertise defense is the best-known response by armchair philosophers to the challenge posed by experimental philosophers regarding the trustworthiness of intuitions. In a series of recent experiments, Experimental philosophers have recently focused on professional philosophers, claiming that, contrary to what the expertise defense assumes, philosophers’ intuitions are no less susceptible to the influence of irrelevant factors (the direct strategy). Additionally, drawing from literature on expertise, they contend that, unlike other domains of expertise, practice does not improve philosophers’ intuitions (the (...) indirect strategy). In this paper, adopting a skill-based perspective on expertise, my primary objective is to defend the expertise defense against both direct and indirect strategies. Based on the skill-based account, I present three arguments against the direct strategy by challenging its power, scope and methodology. Furthermore, borrowing empirical findings from recent literature on expertise, I argue against the indirect strategy that four skills that constitute philosophical expertise regarding thought experiments can be improved through various forms of practice, including deliberate practice. However, my moderate defense departs from typical versions of the expertise defense since I argue that while recent experiments by experimental philosophers cannot undermine the expertise defense, they provide valuable insights into philosophical expertise. (shrink)

This chapter proceeds from the standard picture of the relation between intuitions and experimental philosophy: the alleged evidential role of intuitions about hypothetical cases, and experimental philosophy’s challenge to these judgments, based on their variation with philosophically irrelevant factors. I will survey some of the main defenses of this standard picture against the x-phi challenge, most of which fail. Concerning the most popular defense, the expertise defense, I will draw the bleak conclusion that intuitive expertise of the envisaged kind is (...) largely a myth. Next, I will consider the mischaracterization objection, which has mainly been developed by Deutsch and Cappelen on the basis of textual evidence: that philosophers do not appeal to intuitions as evidence for their case judgments, but instead argue for them. This would render the x-phi challenge mostly irrelevant, due to its focus on intuitions about hypothetical cases. I will then consider a few instructive replies to the mischaracterization objection, which are all unconvincing on further inspection. Finally, I will discuss some potential normative consequences of the mischaracterization objection, and I will argue that it recommends a shift away from the excessive focus on intuitions about cases in metaphilosophy and experimental philosophy, towards more work on the role of argumentation in the method of cases. More speculatively, I claim that philosophers should always argue for their case judgments, even if they have strong intuitions about them, because an argument-based methodology would be more transparent and philosophically fruitful than one that mainly relies on intuition. (shrink)

In recent years, the epistemic reliability of moral intuitions has been undermined by substantial empirical data reporting the influence of cognitive biases. This paper discusses and elaborates upon a promising strategy in response to the reliability challenge to moral intuitions. The considered argument appeals to the fact that moral intuitions are experienced with different levels of strength and agents accept only strong intuitions, not vulnerable to bias under realistic circumstances. This essay aims to reconstruct this defense from the reliability challenge (...) in its most promising form and to evaluate the plausibility of the argument in light of the available empirical evidence. What emerges from the discussion is that the vindication of moral intuitions fundamentally depends on two distinct premises: first, the hypothesis that agents accept moral intuitions proportionally to their level of confidence, and second, the hypothesis that intuitive confidence is epistemically reliable. While there is consistent evidence for the first hypothesis, there is still no conclusive evidence for the second. (shrink)

In an important and widely discussed series of studies, Jonathan Phillips and colleagues have suggested that the ordinary concept of happiness has a substantial moral component. For in- stance, two persons who enjoy the same extent of positive emotions and are equally satisfied with their lives are judged as happy to different degrees if one is less moral than the other. Considering that the relation between morality and happiness or self-interest has been one of the central questions of moral philosophy (...) since at least Plato, such a result would be of considerable philosophical interest. On closer examination of the original research and new studies, we suggest that the data point to a different conclusion: in the dominant folk understanding of happiness, morality has no fundamental role. Findings seeming to indicate a moralized concept are better explained, we suggest, by folk theories on which extreme moral turpitude indicates that an individual suffers from psychological dysfunction. (shrink)

Many philosophers have become sceptical of the use of thought experiments in theorising about personal identity. In large part this is due to work in experimental philosophy that appears to confirm long held philosophical suspicions that thought experiments elicit inconsistent judgements about personal identity, and hence judgements that are thought to be the product of cognitive biases. If so, these judgements appear to be useless at informing our theories of personal identity. Using the methods of experimental philosophy, we investigate whether (...) people exhibit inconsistent judgements and, if they do, whether these judgements are likely to be the source of cognitive bias or, instead, sensitivity to some relevant factor. We do not find that people’s judgements are sensitive to any of the factors we investigate (relevant or irrelevant), nor that people have inconsistent judgements across cases. Rather, people’s judgements are best explained by them having a very minimal account of what it takes for a person to survive. Since this pattern of judgements is no reason to think that we are subject to cognitive bias, we see no reason, as things stand, to be sceptical of our judgements. (shrink)

Experimental philosophy involves subjecting philosophical methods and judgments to empirical scrutiny. I begin by exploring conceptual, confirmational, and empirical factors that limit the significance of experiment-based and survey-based approaches to the evaluation of philosophical epistemic activities. I then consider specific criticisms of experimental philosophy: its experimental conditions lack ecological validity; it wrongly assumes that philosophers rely on psychologized data; it overlooks the reflective and social elements of philosophical case analysis; it misconstrues the importance of both procedural and evaluative forms of (...) philosophical expertise; it incorrectly views psychological bias as incompatible with reliability; and it generalizes to a global, self-defeating skepticism about case judgment. I explain why these criticisms should be understood as converging and interdependent. I also set out a three-level model of philosophical case judgment that frames the criticisms. (shrink)

This dissertation is a contribution to the field of empirically informed metaethics, which combines the rigorous conceptual clarity of traditional metaethics with a careful review of empirical evidence. More specifically, this work stands at the intersection of moral psychology, moral epistemology, and philosophy of action. The study comprises six chapters on three distinct (although related) topics. Each chapter is structured as an independent paper and addresses a specific open question in the literature. The first part concerns the psychological features and (...) cognitive function of moral intuition. Chapter 1 (“Moral intuition, strength, and metacognition”) is focused on the concept of intuitive strength, which is one of the defining features of moral intuition. I provide a metacognitive account of intuitive strength and show why such a view is preferable to emotional or quasi-perceptual accounts. Then, in Chapter 2 (“Dual process reflective equilibrium”), I will discuss the interplay between intuition and reflection in moral reasoning. I will contend that the influential “default-interventionist” model of reasoning, theorized by Greene, is insufficiently supported by the evidence. In light of some recent studies, I outline an account of moral reasoning in which intuition and reflection are not in conflict but cooperate to reach a reflective goal. I call this model dual process reflective equilibrium. The aim of the first part is descriptive, i.e., it argues for an accurate understanding of moral intuition and reasoning in light of the available empirical evidence. In contrast, the second part addresses a normative question: is a subject epistemically justified in forming a belief on the basis of a moral intuition? Skeptics of moral intuition argue that accepting moral intuitions should be the exception rather than the rule to the extent that epistemically defective processes determine the content of moral intuitions. Chapter 3 (“Moral intuitionism and the reliability challenge”) introduces the recent empirical challenges to the reliability of moral intuitions and elaborates a promising strategy for defending intuitionism. In short, I consider whether subjects can track the reliability of their intuitions with their confidence. In Chapter 4 (“The argument from limited cognitive resources”), I evaluate a different strategy to defend moral intuitionism. Specifically, I develop an argument according to which accepting moral intuitions is legitimate because it is the most rational option that a subject has, given her limited resources. The third and final part of the dissertation concerns the role of moral intuitions in action. The influence of automatic processes on moral conduct raises different challenges to moral philosophy. The first challenge is to explain how a subject can be motivated by certain values without the mental effort of deliberation. Chapter 5 (“Caring, moral motivation, and automatic conduct”) tackles this issue. Chapter 6 (“Moral sensitivity as skillful automaticity”) aims to explain how moral agents can be sensitive to good reasons through automatic mental processes. (shrink)

In this paper, we first briefly survey the main responses to the challenge that experimental philosophy poses to the method of cases, given the common assumption that the latter is crucially based on intuitive judgments about cases. Second, we discuss two of the most popular responses in more detail: the expertise defense and the mischaracterization objection. Our take on the expertise defense is that the available empirical data do not support the claim that professional philosophers enjoy relevant expertise in their (...) intuitive judgments about cases. In contrast, the mischaracterization objection seems considerably more promising than its largely negative reception has suggested. We argue that the burden of proof is thus on philosophers who still hold that the method of cases crucially relies on intuitive judgments about cases. Finally, we discuss whether conceptual engineering provides an alternative to the method of cases in light of the challenge from experimental philosophy. We argue that this is not clearly the case, because conceptual engineering also requires descriptive information about the concepts it aims to improve. However, its primarily normative perspective on our concepts makes it largely orthogonal to the challenge from experimental philosophy, and it can also benefit from the empirical methods of the latter. (shrink)

Reflective equilibrium has been criticized for various reasons ever since the publication of Rawls’ A Theory of Justice. Recent empirical research into moral decision-making poses new challenges to RE because it questions the reliability of moral intuitions. This research might discredit moral intuitionism in general and RE in particular insofar as it ascribes epistemic value to moral intuitions. These findings suggest, for instance, that moral intuitions vary with cultural background, gender or framing. If it could be shown that all or (...) certain kinds of moral intuitions are unreliable, this would diminish the plausibility of the claim that they provide good reasons to believe in the truth of their content, especially given the growing evidence that professional philosophers are just as biased and susceptible to distorting factors as lay people. In this paper I critically discuss three recent defenses of RE against this unreliable intuitions objection. Two of these defenses argue that the UIO misses its target, because RE does not depend on intuitions, or because the relevant considered judgments in RE are not intuitions. The third defense grants that RE depends on intuitions and that some Rawlsian considered judgments are intuitions. But it argues that the notion of considered judgments can be revised, and that wide reflective equilibrium has the means to adopt the criticism because it can use information about unreliable intuitions and exclude those from further consideration. I argue that the first two defenses do not succeed. The third defense is the most promising one. However, I argue that this defense also fails. In this defense, RE is not a distinctive moral epistemic theory: different versions of RE would be conceivable, all of which are deeply problematic. I conclude with a discussion of the broader philosophical implications of the UIO, specifically whether or not accepting the UIO would warrant skepticism regarding moral knowledge. (shrink)

Lay persons may have intuitions about morality's objectivity. What do these intuitions look like? And what are their causes and consequences? In recent years, an increasing number of scholars have begun to investigate these questions empirically. This article presents and assesses the resulting area of research as well as its potential philosophical implications. First, we introduce the methods of empirical research on folk moral objectivism. Second, we provide an overview of the findings that have so far been made. Third, we (...) raise a number of methodological worries that cast doubt upon these findings. And fourth, we discuss ways in which lay persons' intuitions aboutmoral objectivity may bear on philosophical claims. (shrink)

The meta-ethical commitments of folk respondents – specifically their commitment to the objectivity of moral claims – have recently become subject to empirical scrutiny. Experimental findings suggest that people are meta-ethical pluralists: There is both inter- and intrapersonal variation with regard to people’s objectivist commitments. What meta-ethical implications, if any, do these findings have? I point out that current research does not directly address traditional meta-ethical questions: The methods used and distinctions drawn by experimenters do not perfectly match those of (...) meta-ethicists. However, I go on to argue that, in spite of this mismatch, the research findings should be of interest to moral philosophers, including meta-ethicists. Not only do these findings extend the field of moral psychology with new data and hypotheses, but they also provide tentative evidence that touches on the adequacy of theses in moral semantics and moral metaphysics. Specifically, they put pressure on argum... (shrink)

We develop an argument for a novel version of moral intuitionism centered on the claim that moral intuitions are trustworthy. Our argument employs an epistemic principle that we call the Trustworthiness Criterion, a distinctive feature of which is its emphasis on oft-neglected social dimensions of cognitive states, including non-doxastic attitudes such as intuition. Thus our argument is not that moral intuitions are trustworthy because they are regress-stoppers, or because they are innocent until proven guilty, or because denying their epistemic contribution (...) would be self-defeating, or because they are presupposed in rational inference, or because they are analogous to perceptions, or because they are based on understanding—individualistic claims that have elsewhere been used (controversially) in defense of the thesis that moral intuitions are in good epistemic standing. Rather, our argument appeals to the idea that moral intuitions are trustworthy because they are the outputs of a cognitive practice, which has epistemically-fecund social elements, that is in good working order. (shrink)

This article examines whether people share the Gettier intuition (viz. that someone who has a true justified belief that p may nonetheless fail to know that p) in 24 sites, located in 23 countries (counting Hong Kong as a distinct country) and across 17 languages. We also consider the possible influence of gender and personality on this intuition with a very large sample size. Finally, we examine whether the Gettier intuition varies across people as a function of their disposition to (...) engage in “reflective” thinking. (shrink)

Experimental philosophy, at least in its ‘negative’ variety, has standardly been portrayed as presenting a dramatic challenge to traditional philosophical methodology. As such, it has prompted a large variety of counter-arguments and defenses of intuition. In this paper, I argue that many of these objections to experimental philosophy rest on various oversimplifications that both experimental philosophers and their opponents have made regarding intuitions and philosophical methodology. Once these oversimplifications are abandoned, I argue that the experimentalist critique of current philosophical methods (...) becomes somewhat less dramatic, but also much less open to objection. (shrink)

After decades of receiving a lot of attention on the epistemological level, the so-called ‘problem of intuitions’ is now in the center of debates on the metaphilosophical level. One of the reasons for this lies in the unfruitfulness of the epistemological discussions that recently subsided without producing any significant or broadly accepted theory of intuitions. Consequently, the metaphilosophical level of discussion of the ‘problem of intuitions’ inherits the same difficulties of the epistemological level. The significance of Max Deutsch’s book The (...) Myth of the Intuitive is his effort to resolve these problems in a clear and persuasive way. He is not only trying to debunk problems behind the vagueness of the ‘intuition-talk’ by drawing important distinctions that usually go under the radar in the contemporary literature, but also develops his own account of philosophical methodology. In this paper I will present some of his arguments against the traditional view of intuitional methodology, as well as his own solutions to the presented problems. Regardless of Deutsch’s insightful account of the ‘problem of intuitions’, I find that some difficulties in his own proposal are inherited from the unresolved issues of intuitions on the epistemological level. (shrink)

In recent years an increasing number of psychologists have begun to explore the prevalence, causes and effects of ordinary people’s intuitions about moral realism. Many of these studies have lacked in construct validity, i.e., they have failed to measure moral realism. My aim in this paper accordingly is to motivate and guide methodological improvements. In analysis of prominent existing measures, I develop general recommendations for overcoming ten prima facie serious worries about research on folk moral realism. G1 and G2 require (...) studies’ answer choices to be as metaethically comprehensive as methodologically feasible. G3 and G4 prevent fallacious inferences from intuitions about related debates. G5 and G6 limit first-order moral and epistemic influences. G7 address studies’ instructions. And G8 and G9 suggest tests of important psychological presuppositions. (shrink)

Many philosophers insist that the revisionary metaphysician—i.e., the metaphysician who offers a metaphysical theory which conflicts with folk intuitions—bears a special burden to explain why certain folk intuitions are mistaken. I show how evidence from cognitive science can help revisionist discharge this explanatory burden. Focusing on composition and persistence, I argue that empirical evidence indicates that the folk operate with a promiscuous teleomentalist view of composition and persistence. The folk view, I argue, deserves to be debunked. In this way, I (...) take myself to have illustrated one key role cognitive science can play in metaphysics; namely by helping the revisionary metaphysician discharge the explanatory burden of providing a plausible explanation of how the folk have gone wrong. (shrink)

Gettier’s paper, “Is Justified True Belief Knowledge?,” is widely taken to be a paradigm example of the sort of philosophical methodology that has been so hotly debated in the recent literature. Reflection on it motivates the following four theses about that methodology: (A) Intuitive judgments form an epistemically distinctive kind. (B) Intuitive judgments play an epistemically privileged role in philosophical methodology. (C) If intuitive judgments play an epistemically privileged role in philosophical methodology, then their role is to be taken as (...) given inputs into generally accepted forms of reasoning. (D) Philosophical methodology is reasonable. Negative experimental philosophers have empirically challenged (D). Radical responses to their challenge include Williamson’s rejection of (A) and Cappelen and Deutsch’s rejection of (B). Here I follow traditionalists in maintaining (A), (B), and (D), but suggest questioning (C), which has largely been taken as a fixed point in the literature. (shrink)

This dissertation examines the recent arguments against the “Centrality” thesis—the thesis that intuition plays central evidential roles in philosophical inquiry—and their implications for the negative program in experimental philosophy. Two types of objections to Centrality are discussed. First, there are some objections which turn out to only work against Centrality when it is taken as a potential form of philosophical exceptionalism. I respond by showing that negative experimental philosophy doesn’t need the assumption that philosophy is distinctive in its reliance on (...) intuitions. Second, there are some objections which turn out to be related to some particular view concerning the nature of evidence. In response, I distinguish between several different versions of Centrality, and argue that the version of Centrality that experimentalists need remains innocuous. Though none of the arguments against Centrality works as intended, I agree with its opponents that negative experimental philosophers have mischaracterized philosophical practice in a way which has problematic consequences for at least some versions of their argument. Specifically, I contend that philosophical practice grants important evidential status to general intuitions and context-rich intuitions, but extant experimental studies have almost exclusively focused on case intuitions and context-poor intuitions. I conclude that those who work on the negative program of experimental philosophy need to more carefully examine how philosophers actually use intuition in their practice. (shrink)

Experimental restrictionists have challenged philosophers’ reliance on intuitions about thought experiment cases based on experimental findings. According to the expertise defense, only the intuitions of philosophical experts count—yet the bulk of experimental philosophy consists in studies with lay people. In this paper, we argue that direct strategies for assessing the expertise defense are preferable to indirect strategies. A direct argument in support of the expertise defense would have to show: first, that there is a significant difference between expert and lay (...) intuitions; second, that expert intuitions are superior to lay intuitions; and third, that expert intuitions accord with the relevant philosophical consensus. At present, there is only little experimental evidence that bears on these issues. To advance the debate, we conducted two new experiments on intuitions about knowledge with experts and lay people. Our results suggest that the intuitions of epistemological experts are superior in some respects, but they also pose an unexpected challenge to the expertise defense. Most strikingly, we found that even epistemological experts tend to ascribe knowledge in fake-barn-style cases. This suggests that philosophy, as a discipline, might fail to adequately map the intuitions of its expert practitioners onto a disciplinary consensus. (shrink)

Rose and Schaffer (forthcoming) argue that teleological thinking has a substantial influence on folk intuitions about composition. They take this to show (i) that we should not rely on folk intuitions about composition and (ii) that we therefore should not reject theories of composition on the basis of intuitions about composition. We cast doubt on the teleological interpretation of folk judgments about composition; we show how their debunking argument can be resisted, even on the assumption that folk intuitions have a (...) teleological source; and we argue that, even if folk intuitions about composition carry no weight, theories of composition can still be rejected on the basis of the intuitions of metaphysicians. (shrink)

A growing number of authors defend putative examples of knowledge from falsehood (KFF), inferential knowledge based in a critical or essential way on false premises, and they argue that KFF has important implications for many areas of epistemology (whether evidence can be false, the Gettier debate, defeasibility theories of knowledge, etc.). I argue, however, that there is no KFF, because in any supposed example either the falsehood does not contribute to the knowledge or the subject lacks knowledge. In particular, I (...) show that if the subject actually has knowledge in putative KFF cases, then there is always a veridical evidential path meeting the basing conditions that accounts for her knowledge; if there is no such path, then the subject is in a type of Gettier case. All the recent arguments that rely on KFF are therefore based on a mistake. (shrink)

Do philosophers use intuitions? Should philosophers use intuitions? Can philosophical methods (where intuitions are concerned) be improved upon? In order to answer these questions we need to have some idea of how we should go about answering them. I defend a way of going about methodology of intuitions: a metamethodology. I claim the following: (i) we should approach methodological questions about intuitions with a thin conception of intuitions in mind; (ii) we should carve intuitions finely; and, (iii) we should carve (...) to a grain to which we are sensitive in our everyday philosophising. The reason is that, unless we do so, we don’t get what we want from philosophical methodology. I argue that what we want is information that will aid us in formulating practical advice concerning how to do philosophy responsibly/well/better. (shrink)

Many philosophers would, in theory, agree that the methods and tools of philosophy ought to be supplemented by those of other academic disciplines. In practice, however, the sociological data suggest that most philosophers fail to engage or collaborate with other academics, and this article argues that this is problematic for philosophy as a discipline. In relation to the value of interdisciplinary collaboration, the article highlights how experimental philosophers can benefit the field, but only insofar as they draw from the distinctive (...) methods of philosophy and overcome the charge of “amateur psychology” by more consistently collaborating with the scientists they seek to emulate. It concludes that philosophers ought to collaborate with other academics in order to gain an experience‐based understanding of the methods of other disciplines in addition to an understanding of the content of these disciplines. (shrink)

Recent empirical work appears to suggest that the moral intuitions of professional philosophers are just as vulnerable to distorting psychological factors as are those of ordinary people. This paper assesses these recent tests of the ‘expertise defense’ of philosophical intuition. I argue that the use of familiar cases and principles constitutes a methodological problem. Since these items are familiar to philosophers, but not ordinary people, the two subject groups do not confront identical cognitive tasks. Reflection on this point shows that (...) these findings do not threaten philosophical expertise—though we can draw lessons for more effective empirical tests. (shrink)

Cognitive scientists have revealed systematic errors in human reasoning. There is disagreement about what these errors indicate about human rationality, but one upshot seems clear: human reasoning does not seem to fit traditional views of human rationality. This concern about rationality has made its way through various fields and has recently caught the attention of philosophers. The concern is that if philosophers are prone to systematic errors in reasoning, then the integrity of philosophy would be threatened. In this paper, I (...) present some of the more famous work in cognitive science that has marshaled this concern. Then I present reasons to think that those with training in philosophy will be less prone to certain systematic errors in reasoning. The suggestion is that if philosophers could be shown to be less prone to such errors, then the worries about the integrity of philosophy could be constrained. Then I present evidence that, according to performance on the CRT (Frederick 2005), those who have benefited from training and selection in philosophy are indeed less prone to one kind of systematic error: irrationally arbitrating between intuitive and reflective responses. Nonetheless, philosophers are not entirely immune to this systematic error, and their proclivity for this error is statistically related to their responses to a variety of philosophical questions. So, while the evidence herein puts constraints on the worries about the integrity of philosophy, it by no means eliminates these worries. The conclusion, then, is that the present evidence offers prima facie reasons to ascribe a mitigated privilege to philosophers' ability to rationally arbitrate between intuitive and reflective responses. (shrink)

According to act-consequentialism the right action is the one that produces the best results as judged from an impersonal perspective. Some claim that this requirement is unreasonably demanding and therefore consequentialism is unacceptable as a moral theory. The article breaks with dominant trends in discussing this so-called Overdemandingness Objection. Instead of focusing on theoretical responses, it empirically investigates whether there exists a widely shared intuition that consequentialist demands are unreasonable. This discussion takes the form of examining what people think about (...) the normative significance of consequentialist requirements. In two experiments, the article finds that although people are sensitive to consequentialist requirements and, on average, find more extreme demands less reasonable, the level of disagreement with consequentialism falls short of qualifying as a widely shared intuition, even when demands are the highest. The article then ends with a general discussion of possible objections to its methods and its findings. (shrink)

In this thesis I seek to advance our understanding of what intuitions are. I argue that intuitions are experiences of a certain kind. In particular, they are experiences with representational content, and with a certain phenomenal character. -/- In Chapter 1 I identify our target and provide some important reliminaries. Intuitions are mental states, but which ones? Giving examples helps: a person has an intuition when it seems to her that torturing the innocent is wrong, or that if something is (...) red it is coloured. We can also provide an initial characterisation of the state by saying that it has representational content, often causes belief, and appears to justify belief. In addition, there is something it is like to have an intuition: intuition has a certain phenomenal character. -/- Some argue that intuition does not explain anything which cannot be explained by other mental states. One version of this view takes intuition to reduce to belief. In Chapter 2 I argue that this entails that agents are rationally criticisable in situations where we know they are not, and that such views are therefore untenable. A parallel argument shows that the corresponding approach to perception fails. This suggests a similarity in nature: both intuition and perception are experiences. -/- Others take intuition to reduce to a disposition to have a belief. In Chapter 3 I consider a line of argument against such views, find it unsuccessful, and present two new arguments. One is likely to be dialectically ineffective. The other suffers no such weakness: it shows that the proposed reduction fails. As before, the argument also applies to perception, and suggests that intuition and perception are both experiences. -/- In the remainder of the thesis I develop an account of intuition as an experience. I distinguish between content-specific and attitude-specific phenomenology, and argue that intuition lacks the former (Chapter 4), but has the latter (Chapter 5). This allows us to say what intuition is: it is is an experience with representational content and with attitude-specific phenomenology of a certain kind. -/- In Chapter 6 I put this account of intuition to use. When a person has a perceptual or intuitional experience, I argue that simply having the experience is what makes the subject justified in believing what the experience represents. Moreover, what explains that intuition and perception can justify belief in this way is precisely their phenomenal character. (shrink)

When do the folk think that mereological composition occurs? Many metaphysicians have wanted a view of composition that fits with folk intuitions, and yet there has been little agreement about what the folk intuit. We aim to put the tools of experimental philosophy to constructive use. Our studies suggest that folk mereology is teleological: people tend to intuit that composition occurs when the result serves a purpose. We thus conclude that metaphysicians should dismiss folk intuitions, as tied into a benighted (...) teleological view of nature. (shrink)

This entry addresses the nature and epistemological role of intuition by considering the following questions: (1) What are intuitions?, (2) What roles do they serve in philosophical (and other “armchair”) inquiry?, (3) Ought they serve such roles?, (4) What are the implications of the empirical investigation of intuitions for their proper roles?, and (5) What is the content of intuitions prompted by the consideration of hypothetical cases?

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 work investigates intuitions' nature, demonstrating how philosophers can best use them in epistemology. First, the author considers several paradigmatic thought experiments in epistemology that depict the appeal to intuition. He then argues that the nature of thought experiment-generated intuitions is not best explained by an a priori Platonism. Second, the book instead develops and argues for a thin conception of epistemic intuitions. The account maintains that intuition is neither a priori nor a posteriori but multi-dimensional. It is an intentional (...) but non-propositional mental state that is also non-conceptual and non-phenomenal in nature. Moreover, this state is individuated by its progenitor, namely, the relevant thought experiment. Third, the author provides an argument for the evidential status of intuitions based on the correct account of the nature of epistemic intuition. The suggestion is the fitting-ness approach: intuition alone has no epistemic status. Rather, intuition has evidentiary value as long as it fits well with other pieces into a whole, namely, the pertinent thought experiment. Finally, the book addresses the key challenges raised by supporters of anti-centrality, according to which philosophers do not regard intuition as central evidence in philosophy. To that end, the author responds to them, showing that they fail to affect the account of intuition developed in this book. This text appeals to students and researchers working in epistemology. (shrink)

This chapter sheds light on a response to experimental philosophy that has not yet received enough attention: the reflection defense. According to proponents of this defense, judgments about philosophical cases are relevant only when they are the product of careful, nuanced, and conceptually rigorous reflection. The chapter argues that the reflection defense is misguided: Five studies (N>1800) are presented, showing that people make the same judgments when they are primed to engage in careful reflection as they do in the conditions (...) standardly used by experimental philosophers. (shrink)

Deutsch 2010 (The Review of Philosophy and Psychology 1: 447–460) claims that hypothetical scenarios are evaluated using arguments, not intuitions, and therefore experiments on intuitions are philosophically inconsequential. Using the Gettier case as an example, he identifies three arguments that are supposed to point to the right response to the case. In the paper, I present the results of studies ran on Polish, Indian, Spanish, and American participants that suggest that there’s no deep difference between evaluating the Gettier case with (...) intuitions and evaluating it with Deutsch’s arguments. Specifically, I argue that one would find these arguments persuasive if and only if one is already disposed to exhibit the relevant intuition. (shrink)

This article lays the groundwork for a defense of rational intuitions by first arguing against a prevalent view according to which intuition is a distinctive psychological state, an “intellectual seeming” that p, that then constitutes evidence that p. An alternative account is then offered, according to which an intuition that p constitutes non-inferential a priori knowledge that p in virtue of the concepts exercised in judging that p. This account of rational intuition as the exercise of conceptual capacities in a (...) priori judgment is then distinguished from the dogmatic, entitlement and reliabilist accounts of intuition’s justificatory force. The article concludes by considering three implications of the proposed view for the Experimental Philosophy movement. (shrink)

Two kinds of considerations are thought to be relevant to the correct response to the discovery of a peer who disagrees with you about some question. The first is general principles pertaining to disagreement. According to the second kind of consideration, a theory about the correct response to peer disagreement must conform to our intuitions about test cases. In this paper, I argue against the assumption that imperfect conformity to our intuitions about test cases must count against a theory about (...) peer disagreement, offer a principled way of shrugging off a theory’s failure to deliver the intuitive verdict, and consider the main extant theories from the new methodological perspective. (shrink)

Recent empirical studies raise methodological concerns about the use of intuitions in philosophy. According to one prominent line of reply, these concerns are unwarranted since the empirical studies motivating them do not control for the putatively characteristic phenomenology of intuitions. This paper makes use of research on metacognitive states that have precisely this phenomenology to argue that the above reply fails. Furthermore, it shows that empirical findings about these metacognitive states can help philosophers make better informed assessments of their warrant (...) for relying on intuitions in inquiry. (shrink)

This article examines whether people share the Gettier intuition (viz. that someone who has a true justified belief that p may nonetheless fail to know that p) in 24 sites, located in 23 countries (counting Hong-Kong as a distinct country) and across 17 languages. We also consider the possible influence of gender and personality on this intuition with a very large sample size. Finally, we examine whether the Gettier intuition varies across people as a function of their disposition to engage (...) in “reflective” thinking. (shrink)

A central metaphilosophical project seeks to evaluate the reliability of the types of evidence that figure in philosophical arguments and, relatedly, the justificatory status of relying on those types of evidence. Traditionally, metaphilosophers have approached this project via an analysis of intuition. This article argues that the category picked out by “intuition” is both too broad and too heterogeneous to serve as the appropriate target for metaphilosophical inquiry. Intuition is a gerrymandered and disjunctive kind, undeserving of the widespread attention it (...) receives in the literature. Instead, metaphilosophers should examine more finely grained mental states. Three promising strategies for parsing intuitions more finely are proposed: by their causal origins, by their context of employment, and by the exoticism of their content. This more narrow focus may significantly alter the dialectic in three prominent metaphilosophical arguments: the argument from calibration, the argument from self-defeat, and the argument from intuitional sensitivity. (shrink)

One of the important discussions in the philosophy of mathematics, is that centered on Benacerraf’s Dilemma. Benacerraf’s dilemma challenges theorists to provide an epistemology and semantics for mathematics, based on their favourite ontology. This challenge is the point on which all philosophies of mathematics are judged, and clarifying how we might acquire mathematical knowledge is one of the main occupations of philosophers of mathematics. In this thesis I argue that this discussion has overlooked an important part of mathematics, namely mathematics (...) as it is exercised by ordinary people. I do so by looking at the different theories that have been put forward in the recent debate, and showing for each of these that they are unable to account for the mathematical practices of ordinary people. In order to show that these practices do need to be accounted for, I also argue that ordinary people are doing mathematics, i.e. that they engage in properly mathematical practices. Because these practices are properly mathematical, they should be accounted for by any philosophy of mathematics. The conclusion of my thesis, then, is that current theories fail to do something that they should do, while remaining neutral on how well they perform when it comes to accounting for the practices of professional mathematicians. (shrink)

An emerging trend in cognitive science is to explore central epistemological questions using psychological methods. Early work in this growing area of research has revealed that epistemologists’ theories of knowledge diverge in various ways from the ways in which ordinary people think of knowledge. Reflecting the practices of epistemology as a whole, the vast majority of these studies have focused on the concept of propositional knowledge, or knowledge-that. Many philosophers, however, have argued that knowing how to do something is importantly (...) different from knowing that something is the case. Hence, in this paper we turn our attention to people’s concept of knowledge-how. We present data from two experiments that employed a sentence recognition task as an implicit measure of conceptual activation. The data from this implicit measure suggest that, contrary to prominent intellectualist theories of know-how, according to which know-how is a species of propositional knowledge, people’s concept of know-how more closely aligns with anti-intellectualism, the view that knowing how to perform some task consists in having the appropriate skills or abilities. (shrink)

Intuition is sometimes derided as an abstruse or esoteric phenomenon akin to crystal-ball gazing. Such derision appears to be fuelled primarily by the suggestion, evidently endorsed by traditional rationalists such as Plato and Descartes, that intuition is a kind of direct, immediate apprehension akin to perception. This paper suggests that although the perceptual analogy has often been dismissed as encouraging a theoretically useless metaphor, a quasi-perceptualist view of intuition may enable rationalists to begin to meet the challenge of supplying a (...) theoretically satisfying treatment of their favoured epistemic source. It is argued, first, that intuitions and perceptual experiences are at a certain level of abstraction the same type of mental state, presentations, which are distinct from beliefs, hunches, inclinations, attractions, and seemings. The notion of a presentation is given a positive explication, which identifies its characteristic features, accounts for several of its substantive psychological roles, and systematically locates it in a threefold division among types of contentful states. Subsequently, it is argued that presentations, intuitive no less than sensory, are by their nature poised to play a distinctive epistemic role. Specifically, in the case of intuition, we encounter an intellectual state that is so structured as to provide justification without requiring justification in turn—something which may, thus, be thought of as ‘given’. (shrink)

Epistemic expressivists maintain, to a first approximation, that epistemic assertions express non-cognitive mental states, like endorsements, valuations, or pro-attitudes, rather than cognitive mental states such as beliefs. Proponents of epistemic expressivism include Chrisman, Gibbard, Field, Kappel, and Ridge, among others. In this paper, I argue for an alternative view to epistemic expressivism. The view I seek to advocate is inspired by hybrid expressivist theories about moral judgments, Copp Oxford studies in metaethics, 2009), Finlay, Strandberg ). According to these hybrid views, (...) moral judgments express semantically cognitive or representational states and pragmatically convey the speaker’s non-cognitive mental states via implicatures. I will argue that a particular version of this view can reasonably be extended to epistemic judgments and that it has several advantages over its expressivist and cognitivist competitors. In particular, I will try to show that there exist certain phenomena in the epistemic domain that seem to be best accounted for by expressivist theories of epistemic judgments. However, a version of hybrid expressivism that maintains that epistemic judgments convey the attributor’s non-cognitive mental states via generalized conversational implicatures is able to account for these phenomena just as well without running afoul of the main problems that have been identified for different versions of epistemic expressivism. (shrink)

Many philosophers would, in theory, agree that the methods and tools of philosophy ought to be supplemented by those of other academic disciplines. In practice, however, the sociological data suggest that most philosophers fail to engage or collaborate with other academics, and this article argues that this is problematic for philosophy as a discipline. In relation to the value of interdisciplinary collaboration, the article highlights how experimental philosophers can benefit the field, but only insofar as they draw from the distinctive (...) methods of philosophy and overcome the charge of “amateur psychology” by more consistently collaborating with the scientists they seek to emulate. It concludes that philosophers ought to collaborate with other academics in order to gain an experience-based understanding of the methods of other disciplines in addition to an understanding of the content of these disciplines. (shrink)

Awareness is a two-place determinable relation some determinates of which are seeing, hearing, etc. Abstract objects are items such as universals and functions, which contrast with concrete objects such as solids and liquids. It is uncontroversial that we are sometimes aware of concrete objects. In this paper I explore the more controversial topic of awareness of abstract objects. I distinguish two questions. First, the Existence Question: are there any experiences that make their subjects aware of abstract objects? Second, the Grounding (...) Question: if an experience makes its subject aware of an abstract object, in virtue of what does it do so? I defend the view that intuitions, specifically mathematical intuitions, sometimes make their subjects aware of abstract objects. In defending this view, I develop an account of the ground of intuitive awareness. (shrink)