’Does “intuition” have a specific, carefully-guarded meaning in moral philosophy? ‘
Quite possibly not: a bit over 15 years ago Timothy Williamson famously argued (in effect, that’s not quite how he frames it) that “intuition” as philosophers use it just isn’t very well-defined: http://media.philosophy.ox.ac.uk/assets/pdf_file/0008/1313/intuit3.pdf Rather, philosopher say “intuitively, P” when they can’t be bothered arguing for “P” or “that’s just an intuition, why would they be reliable” when someone says “P” and they disagree, but something about the terminology convinces people that we know what “intuitions” are in some substantive theoretical sense, when at most it just means something like a judgment that people in the current conversational context think feels “natural”’, which, as Tim points out, actually covers pretty much any time a human being quickly and easily applies a word to something on the basis of pretty much any kind of evidence.
David—that makes sense to me; thanks for sharing the link to the Williamson paper.
I guess apart from ‘evolutionary debunking’ of intuitions, it’s often possible to run some ‘cultural/historical debunking’ of philosophical intuitions, e.g. pointing out that our ‘deepest intuitions’ about particular issues have often changed—often quite quickly—over historical time periods, as culture changes.
’Does “intuition” have a specific, carefully-guarded meaning in moral philosophy? ‘
Quite possibly not: a bit over 15 years ago Timothy Williamson famously argued (in effect, that’s not quite how he frames it) that “intuition” as philosophers use it just isn’t very well-defined: http://media.philosophy.ox.ac.uk/assets/pdf_file/0008/1313/intuit3.pdf Rather, philosopher say “intuitively, P” when they can’t be bothered arguing for “P” or “that’s just an intuition, why would they be reliable” when someone says “P” and they disagree, but something about the terminology convinces people that we know what “intuitions” are in some substantive theoretical sense, when at most it just means something like a judgment that people in the current conversational context think feels “natural”’, which, as Tim points out, actually covers pretty much any time a human being quickly and easily applies a word to something on the basis of pretty much any kind of evidence.
David—that makes sense to me; thanks for sharing the link to the Williamson paper.
I guess apart from ‘evolutionary debunking’ of intuitions, it’s often possible to run some ‘cultural/historical debunking’ of philosophical intuitions, e.g. pointing out that our ‘deepest intuitions’ about particular issues have often changed—often quite quickly—over historical time periods, as culture changes.