Most disagreements between professional philosophers on population ethics come down to disagreements about intuition:
Alice supports the total view because she has an intuition that the Repugnant Conclusion is not actually repugnant
Bob adopts a person-affecting view and rejects the independence of irrelevant alternatives (IIA) because his intuition is that IIA doesn’t matter
Carol rejects transitivity of preferences because her intuition is that that’s the least important premise
But none of them ultimately have any justification beyond their intuition. So I think it’s totally fair and relevant to survey non-philosophers’ intuitions.
Well, all disagreements in philosophy ultimately come down to intuitions, not just those in population ethics! The question I was pressing is what, if anything, the authors think we should infer from data about intuitions. One might think you should update toward people’s intuitions, but that’s not obvious to me, not least when (1) in aggregate, people’s answers are inconsistent and (2) this isn’t something they’ve thought about.
Most disagreements between professional philosophers on population ethics come down to disagreements about intuition:
Alice supports the total view because she has an intuition that the Repugnant Conclusion is not actually repugnant
Bob adopts a person-affecting view and rejects the independence of irrelevant alternatives (IIA) because his intuition is that IIA doesn’t matter
Carol rejects transitivity of preferences because her intuition is that that’s the least important premise
But none of them ultimately have any justification beyond their intuition. So I think it’s totally fair and relevant to survey non-philosophers’ intuitions.
Well, all disagreements in philosophy ultimately come down to intuitions, not just those in population ethics! The question I was pressing is what, if anything, the authors think we should infer from data about intuitions. One might think you should update toward people’s intuitions, but that’s not obvious to me, not least when (1) in aggregate, people’s answers are inconsistent and (2) this isn’t something they’ve thought about.