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Intuition Talk is Not Methodologically Cheap: Empirically Testing the “Received Wisdom” About Armchair Philosophy

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Abstract

The “received wisdom” in contemporary analytic philosophy is that intuition talk is a fairly recent phenomenon, dating back to the 1960s. In this paper, we set out to test two interpretations of this “received wisdom.” The first is that intuition talk is just talk, without any methodological significance. The second is that intuition talk is methodologically significant; it shows that analytic philosophers appeal to intuition. We present empirical and contextual evidence, systematically mined from the JSTOR corpus and HathiTrust’s Digital Library, which provide some empirical support for the second rather than the first hypothesis. Our data also suggest that appealing to intuition is a much older philosophical methodology than the “received wisdom” alleges. We then discuss the implications of our findings for the contemporary debate over philosophical methodology.

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Fig. 1

(source JSTOR Data for Research)

Fig. 2

(source JSTOR Data for Research)

Fig. 3

(source JSTOR Data for Research)

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Notes

  1. Some think that appeals to intuition are essential to philosophical methodology. For instance, Gutting (1998, p. 7) writes that “Our disagreement about the nature and epistemic authority of intuitions is at root a battle for the preservation of philosophy as an autonomous field of inquiry.” Others disagree, of course (see, e.g., Cohnitz and Haukioja 2015, p. 618). On methodological pluralism in philosophy, see Dutilh Novaes (2012, pp. 255–257).

  2. Other “intuition deniers,” as Nado (2016, p. 782) calls them, who think that “philosophers generally don’t employ intuitions as evidence,” include Williamson (2007) and Deutsch (2015).

  3. In this paper, we are concerned with the epistemology of intuition, or more specifically, with appeals to intuition as a philosophical methodology, which is also known as the method of cases (Baz 2016), not with what intuitions are. As De Cruz (2015, p. 233) puts it, “The method of cases in analytic philosophy involves the construction of scenarios that elicit intuitions. These intuitions are considered as evidence for or against philosophical theories.” On intuitions as inclinations to believe, see Sosa (2007) and Ludwig (2007). On intuitions as judgments, see Devitt (2006) and Williamson (2007). On intuitions as intellectual appearances or seemings, analogues to perceptual appearances or seemings, see Bealer (1992) and Pust (2000). On the underlying psychology of the method of cases, see De Cruz (2015).

  4. Unlike Andow (2015a), whose study looks at the use of the word ‘intuition’ (and its cognates) or intuition talk, we are also interested in the use of intuitions as evidence in philosophical arguments; that is, in appeals to intuition as a philosophical methodology.

  5. We’ve chosen to look at the results by decade because early years often had so few total publications in the database that decades give a more well-rounded view.

  6. For a useful survey of the ways in which philosophers use ‘intuition’, see Jenkins (2014, pp. 91–115).

  7. See also Levy (2013, p. 382): “an intuition is an intellectual seeming […]; to intuit that p is for one to have the relatively forceful impression that p seems to be the case”.

  8. See also Bealer (2002) and Chudnoff (2013). Cf. Sarch (2010) and Mizrahi (2014d, 2015b, c).

  9. See also Textor (2009) on linguistic seemings. Cf. Cohnitz and Haukioja (2015).

  10. On the analogy between intuition and perception, see Chudnoff (2013), Hales (2012), and Mizrahi (2014d).

  11. For more on Phenomenal Conservatism, see Moretti (2015). Cf. Mizrahi (2013a, 2014a, b, c, e).

  12. Thanks to an anonymous reviewer to pressing this point about the difference between language and methodology. For more on appeals to intuition, see Feltz (2008) and Mizrahi (2012, 2013b, 2015a).

  13. See also Deutsch (2015), pp. 105–110.

  14. For more phrases that count as ‘intuition’-terminology, such as ‘see’, ‘grasp’, and ‘strike’, see Bengson (2014).

  15. In The Methods of Ethics (1874), Sidgwick characterizes intuitionism as the moral theory whose “rules are thought to be ascertained by direct intuition of the actions themselves.” For example, I know that I ought to tell the truth, on this view, since it seems to me that I ought to tell the truth. For more on intuitionism, see Kaspar (2012).

  16. Collier (1836) was first published in 1713.

  17. According to Google Scholar, it was cited 258 times (last checked 05 February 2017).

  18. Like Devitt, Climenhaga (forthcoming in Mind) examines arguments from Kripke’s Naming and Necessity (1980), which are the arguments that Cappelen examines as well, and concludes that philosophers do rely on intuitions as evidence.

  19. Cf. Cappelen’s (2014) reply to Chalmers (2014). See also Nado (2016) for a critical discussion of arguments put forth by those she calls “the intuition deniers.”

  20. See Ichikawa’s (2013) discussion of what he calls the “what else?” argument. See also Nado (2016).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Simon Fraser University, 8888 University Drive, Burnaby, BC, V5A 1S6, Canada

    Zoe Ashton

  2. Florida Institute of Technology, 150 W. University Blvd., Melbourne, FL, 32901, USA

    Moti Mizrahi

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  1. Zoe Ashton
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  2. Moti Mizrahi
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Correspondence to Moti Mizrahi.

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Ashton, Z., Mizrahi, M. Intuition Talk is Not Methodologically Cheap: Empirically Testing the “Received Wisdom” About Armchair Philosophy. Erkenn 83, 595–612 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10670-017-9904-4

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