Abstract
One critique of experimental philosophy is that the intuitions of the philosophically untutored should be accorded little to no weight; instead, only the intuitions of professional philosophers should matter. In response to this critique, “experimentalists” often claim that the intuitions of professional philosophers are biased. In this paper, we explore this question of whose intuitions should be disqualified and why. Much of the literature on this issue focuses on the question of whether the intuitions of professional philosophers are reliable. In contrast, we instead focus on the idea of “muddled” intuitions—i.e. intuitions that are misdirected and about notions other than the ones under discussion. We argue that the philosophically untutored are likely to have muddled intuitions and that professional philosophers are likely to have unmuddled intuitions. Although being umuddled does not, by itself, establish the reliability of the intuitions of professional philosophers, being muddled is enough to disqualify the intuitions of the philosophically untutored. We then turn to the charge that, despite being unmuddled, professional philosophers still have biased intuitions. To evaluate this charge, we switch focus from the general notion of biased intuition to the more specific notion of theory-laden intuition. We argue that there is prima facie evidence—in the form of the presence of conflicts of intuition—for thinking that at least some of the intuitions of professional philosophers are theory-laden. In summary, we conclude that that there is no clean and easy answer to the question of whose intuitions should matter.
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Notes
These experimentalists maintain that professional philosophers cannot determine what people’s intuitions are about some topic from the armchair. Just because it seems intuitive to professional philosophers that P (where “P” is some proposition with philosophical content) is not sufficient evidence for asserting that P is intuitively plausible. Instead, we need to survey a variety of people in order to determine whether that P truly is intuitive plausible or not.
Consider, for example, the discovery of “the Knobe Effect” — i.e. the tendency ordinary subjects have to attribute moral accountability and intent for a negative outcome when they are less likely to attribute them in structurally similar cases with positive outcomes. See Knobe 2003 for details.
In favor of this claim, Weinberg et al. cite, among others, the work of Camerer and Johnson 1991 and a meta-study by Shanteau 1992. The latter reveals that extensive training and experience in fields such as psychiatry, stock brokerage, and polygraph administration and reading do not tend to produce real expertise or increased reliability.
Recently, Schwitzgebel and Cushman (2012) have demonstrated that this phenomenon extends to the case of philosophy. More specifically, they showed that the intuitions/judgments of professional philosophers on moral issues are susceptible to the kind of order effects that also influence the folk’s intuitions/judgments on the same topics.
In a way, our account will focus on something that is an extension of the ability tracked in Camerer and Johnson 1991.
For an interesting experimentalist discussion of the differences between asking the general question and the more specific question, see Nichols and Knobe 2007.
For discussion of this particular threat to the idea of moral responsibility, see G. Strawson 1994.
This, of course, can be a difficult task in practice.
Recall that one of Weinberg et al’s complaints was that there is no non-question-begging account of a feedback mechanism that would allow graduate students to correct their intuitions and make them more reliable. There are, however, feedback mechanisms that would allow graduate students to discover which of their intuitions are muddled and to unmuddled them.
As part of an ongoing project to understand the value of intuitions in philosophy, it would be interesting to gather empirical data determining whether and the degree to which professional philosophers are “less muddled” on philosophical topics outside their interests than graduate students, undergraduates, and the population more generally.
For an attempt to flesh out this basic approach, see Kauppinen’s (2007) discussion of “The Dialogue Model”.
To be clear, an armchairist might have a theory of epistemology under which intuitions are “justifiers” regardless of issues stemming from the reliability of the psychological mechanism that justifies them. For example, a Phenomenal Conservatist who maintains that seeming that p is prima facie justification for believing that p could argue that since intuitions involve certain propositions seeming to be true, that fact alone is sufficient for those intuitions being prima facie justifiers for various beliefs/theories. Since we are not offering a positive epistemological account of the status of intuitions in this paper, we will not take a stand on whether the justificatory status of intuitions is best understood from a Reliabilist perspective, the Phenomenal Conservatist perspective, or the perspective of any other epistemological theory. For additional discussion of these issues, see Goldman 2007.
This is not to claim that undergoing extensive philosophical training on some topic makes it inevitable that one will possess a theory about that topic. We mean to present this claim only as a rule of thumb: in general, undergoing philosophical training with regard to some topic is likely to result in your possessing a theory about that topic.
This would be an instance of what Goldman (2007) calls the “theory of a concept”—in this case, it would be a theory about the content of the concept of moral responsibility—influencing my intuitions about various cases. This is in contrast to cases where concepts “embed” a theory—i.e. cases where a theory is already embedded within the content of a concept. In discussing the concern that intuitions are theory-laden, we are concerned about the former cases, not the latter.
See, for example, the presentation of the claim in Knobe and Nichols 2008 and in Machery at al 2004.
For just some of the problems facing semantic holism in general, see Fodor and Lepore 1992.
For an alternative account of ambiguous figures, an account that undermines the claim that ambiguous figures are evidence of the theory-ladenness of observation, see Fodor 1990.
We want to thank an anonymous referee for suggesting this way of characterizing our argument.
We want to thank an anonymous referee for pressing this question.
Recall that on this last question we are ignoring a difference between those who think that zombies are conceivable but not possible, and those who think that zombie are conceivable and possible
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Acknowledgments
We would like to thank two anonymous referees for helpful comments and recommendations. Also, Jeanine Weekes Schroer participated in Shaun Nichols and Ron Mallon’s 2009 N.E.H Summer Seminar “Experimental Philosophy”, which was the inspiration of several of the ideas and arguments in this paper.
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Schroer, J.W., Schroer, R. Two Potential Problems with Philosophical Intuitions: Muddled Intuitions and Biased Intuitions. Philosophia 41, 1263–1281 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-013-9465-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-013-9465-y