Abstract
In this paper I articulate and defend a view that I call phenomenal dogmatism about intuitive justification. It is dogmatic because it includes the thesis: if it intuitively seems to you that p, then you thereby have some prima facie justification for believing that p. It is phenomenalist because it includes the thesis: intuitions justify us in believing their contents in virtue of their phenomenology—and in particular their presentational phenomenology. I explore the nature of presentational phenomenology as it occurs perception, and I make a case for thinking that it is present in a wide variety of logical, mathematical, and philosophical intuitions.
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Notes
See in particular Huemer (2001) and Pryor (2004). Huemer defends a more comprehensive view that he calls phenomenal conservatism: (PC) If it seems to S that P, then S thereby has at least prima facie justification for believing that P (Huemer 2001, p. 99). DPJ is equivalent to phenomenal conservatism restricted to perceptual seemings.
See Markie (2005).
See Pryor (2004).
See Goldman (2008).
I am assuming that the phenomenal character of a visual experience can fix at least some of its intentional content, i.e., that there is such as thing as phenomenal intentionality. For some defenses of phenomenal intentionality see: Siewert (1998), Loar (2003), Horgan and Tiensen (2002), and Chalmers (2002). For the purposes of this paper the assumption that there is phenomenal intentionality plays a simplifying role: it is possible to relax it at the cost of added complexity. For example, without the assumption of phenomenal intentionality, I would have to reformulate the footnoted sentence thus: all you have to do is have a visual experience with a certain phenomenal character and intentional content in order to have it; it need not be the case that there is a rocket that has in fact launched.
Suppose you are hallucinating: there is no smiling friend before you. In this case there is no smile that makes true the proposition that your friend is smiling. Still, you seem to see an item—a smile—that can make true, or is of the sort to make true the proposition—that your friend is smiling—that you seem to perceive to be the case. I will generally ignore such niceties in the interests of readability.
I should point out that the claim that all perceptual experiences possess some presentational phenomenology is compatible with what Adam Pautz argues in Pautz (2007): Pautz argues against the metaphysical claim that all perceptual experiences involve item-awareness; I am endorsing the phenomenological claim that all perceptual experiences involve seeming item-awareness.
See, for example, Williamson (2008, p. 217).
Chudnoff (unpublished a).
Here I am aligning myself with the universal-in-the-particular tradition, according to which it is possible to be aware of a universal by being aware of a particular. See, for example, Kant (1999) on the construction of mathematical objects in pure intuition, Parson’s (1980, 2005, 2007) elaboration of Kant’s view, Husserl (1975) on the grasping of essences though imaginative variation, and Tieszen’s (1989, 2005) elaboration of Husserl's view. The claim I am making here is relatively modest since my claim is a phenomenological claim about seeming awareness, not a metaphysical claim about genuine awareness.
The idea that intuitions involve both item- and fact-presentation—presentational phenomenology in the sense that I have articulated—can be found in: Gödel (1947), Husserl (1975), Parsons (1980, 2007), Russell (1992), and Tieszen (1989) among others in the rationalist, Kantian, early analytic, and phenomenological traditions.
I add “perhaps” for reasons that emerge below, in the Sect. 7. Just as theoretical considerations might favor thinking some perceptual justification is mediate, similar theoretical considerations might favor thinking some intuitive justification is mediate.
Arguing that Albert has justification for thinking the bigger of two numbers is the average of their sum and difference only if he has justification for believing that |m − n| is the difference by which the smaller number falls short of the bigger number, say, does not settle the matter. The reason why is that Albert might have one common justification—his awareness of the arithmetical operation—that justifies believing both claims, if it justifies either.
Cf. Descartes’s (1985) discussion of intuition and demonstration in the Rules.
I elaborate on these claims and explore the difference between intuition and inference further in Chudnoff (unpublished b).
The phrase “force this proposition on him as being true” derives from Gödel.
If one proposition can have more than one truth-maker, then this claim is compatible with the claim that if 2 > 1, then 2 > 1 is made true by the fact that 2 > 1. Further, the claim that logical truths or their forms are truth-makers for themselves does not warrant drawing the logical positivist conclusion that logical truths are not about the world, or that they lack factual content.
It might be possible to extend this account to immediate intuitions of analytic truths, such as the truth that bachelors are unmarried or that vixens are female foxes. I must leave exploring this development to another occasion.
It is important to distinguish between two properties an experience might have: the first is that of possessing presentational phenomenology, and the second is that of representing something as present, i.e., here and now. Recollective experiences can possess the first even if not the second.
It is a difference between intuition and perception that there are no perceptual experiences in which you seem to perceive that p and in which you seem to recollect an item, or some items, that make it true that p. Perception is presentational in the sense that I have been discussing, and it is also an experience as of the presence—in the sense of the being here and now—of the items presented in it.
This need not be genuine removal, such as physical detachment. The operation might just consist of isolating the part in thought.
See Williamson (2008).
See Ichikawa and Jarvis (2009).
This claim is compatible with a range of views about what exactly fictional scenarios are. Further, one might even deny that there are such things, but still accept the phenomenological claim that I am making—that in having an intuition presenting (1) as true, I seem to be aware of a fictional scenario.
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Thanks to Yuval Avnur, Selim Berker, Sinan Dogramaci, Ned Hall, Charles Parsons, Jim Pryor, Susanna Siegel, and Alison Simmons for helpful discussion of earlier versions of this work.
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Chudnoff, E. The nature of intuitive justification. Philos Stud 153, 313–333 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-010-9495-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-010-9495-2