Executive summary: Philosophers often talk past each other about intuitions because they conflate two distinct uses—appealing to intuitions as empirical predictors versus expressing them as primitive normative commitments—and the reliability question applies very differently to each.
Key points:
When intuitions function as empirical predictors, it makes sense to ask how reliable they are: our social intuitions work well for detecting exploitation, but our physics intuitions work poorly for subatomic particles, and expertise (like a grandmaster’s chess intuition) improves reliability through feedback.
In philosophy, intuitions sometimes express normative attitudes rather than predict facts, and asking whether such intuitions are “reliable” in an empirical sense commits a category error.
The principle of indifference, the law of noncontradiction, and other abstract philosophical principles may be expressions of normative compellingness rather than predictions, making evolutionary debunking arguments about their reliability inapplicable.
The trolley problem’s footbridge case is ambiguous: if the intuition against pushing the fat man is a predictor of some deeper moral difference, reliability criticisms apply; if it’s a primitive normative commitment without claimed predictive force, reliability arguments do not apply.
Pareto optimality can be understood as either a predictor of consistent normative judgments across cases or as a primitive normative principle, and the author is more sympathetic to the latter interpretation because it avoids vulnerability to evolutionary debunking arguments.
Philosophers should clarify whether they are appealing to intuitions as empirical predictors or as normative expressions before debating an intuition’s reliability.
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Executive summary: Philosophers often talk past each other about intuitions because they conflate two distinct uses—appealing to intuitions as empirical predictors versus expressing them as primitive normative commitments—and the reliability question applies very differently to each.
Key points:
When intuitions function as empirical predictors, it makes sense to ask how reliable they are: our social intuitions work well for detecting exploitation, but our physics intuitions work poorly for subatomic particles, and expertise (like a grandmaster’s chess intuition) improves reliability through feedback.
In philosophy, intuitions sometimes express normative attitudes rather than predict facts, and asking whether such intuitions are “reliable” in an empirical sense commits a category error.
The principle of indifference, the law of noncontradiction, and other abstract philosophical principles may be expressions of normative compellingness rather than predictions, making evolutionary debunking arguments about their reliability inapplicable.
The trolley problem’s footbridge case is ambiguous: if the intuition against pushing the fat man is a predictor of some deeper moral difference, reliability criticisms apply; if it’s a primitive normative commitment without claimed predictive force, reliability arguments do not apply.
Pareto optimality can be understood as either a predictor of consistent normative judgments across cases or as a primitive normative principle, and the author is more sympathetic to the latter interpretation because it avoids vulnerability to evolutionary debunking arguments.
Philosophers should clarify whether they are appealing to intuitions as empirical predictors or as normative expressions before debating an intuition’s reliability.
This comment was auto-generated by the EA Forum Team. Feel free to point out issues with this summary by replying to the comment, and contact us if you have feedback.