Expert Philosophical Intuitions

In Dan’s epistemology seminar last semester, we spent the last portion of the class reading Herman Cappelen’s Philosophy without Intuitions. I don’t have a copy of it with me, so I’m going to play fast and loose with the citations (i.e. no citations).

Philosophical intuitions are, according to him, understood to be sui generis. Their role is, for most philosophers who rely on them, to fundamentally shore up various philosophical positions. I’m skeptical myself that such intuitions exist, and so in a way I’m sympathetic with his claims. And if his book results in less use of “Intuitively p,” or “It’s intuitively clear that p,” then it will have a salutary effect. However, Cappelen does not (to my recollection) ever entertain the idea that philosophical intuitions might just be a form of expert intuition. I will argue that this is a completely plausible account of philosophical intuitions, and that Cappelen might have better titled his book Philosophy without (Those Sorts of) Intuitions. Plenty of philosophers already think that’s a reasonable position, though, so it takes some of the wind out of the sails of his project.

I don’t think that my philosophical intuitions are dramatically different than the intuitions the Car Talk hosts have when they get a sense of what’s wrong with a car based on limited evidence, or the intuitions I have when I sense I’ve brought up an awkward issue in conversation based on extremely subtle social cues, or the intuitions successful chess players have when playing at a high level. All of these situations require that the intuiter have some expertise (I won’t listen to a novice chess player’s intuitions, or my own uneducated intuitions about why my car won’t start). None of these intuitions provide fundamental support (all of them could prove to be misguided). They might be based on tacit rules of thumb, or a conscious or subconscious judgment based on similar situations, or a number of other possibilities.

When I hear a philosophical argument, I often have intuitions. Since I have some level of expertise in philosophy, I think these intuitions are worth pursuing; it’s not that they’re fundamental guarantors of philosophical correctness, only that they often are based on tacit expertise that points in the right direction. Appealing to intuitions, then, cannot be a way to stop argument. However, appealing to intuitions as a reason for resistance to a seemingly good argument is perfectly reasonable; something strikes you as funny, maybe because a similar technique has been used before and turned out to be shoddy, and you need more time to think the argument over before you assent. This is not, as I see it, any different than the earlier kinds of intuition.

The idea that philosophical intuition is sui generis might have some phenomenological support. Since philosophers often pursue fundamental issues, it is unsurprising that we might have particularly fundamental feelings that accompany these intuitions. Issues such as personal identity, the existence of ordinary objects, modality, ethical behavior, and knowledge are fundamental to our existence in a way that chess moves and automobile issues are not. My intuitions about these subjects might have an accordingly fundamental feel to them.

Some problems arise for my view. First of all, philosophers disagree constantly. If we’re all such experts, why are our intuitions so divergent? One reason might be that our intuitions are often based on previously accepted positions. The intuition that the mind is immaterial might be quite powerful, but once one accepts a materialistic conception of the universe, we find that its intuitive character fades. Hence philosophical intuition stands on the shoulders of giants, so to speak, and different intuitive experiences will follow depending on the shoulders one stands on.

Another issue might be whether or not the intuitions of the folk about philosophical issues are therefore less trustworthy. I think this would depend upon your understanding of how to do philosophy (whether you understand yourself as doing descriptive work or prescriptive work, for example). My own position would be that certain concepts are not particularly well understood by the folk (free will, for example…the folk do not appear to be experts on what free will is and if we have it), while others are more profitably explored by polling the folk (non-philosophers, I think, have worthwhile intuitions about whether something counts as knowledge). Certainly empirical data suggests that philosophers are better than non-philosophers at determining whether an argument is valid; I would listen to a philosopher’s intuition about validity before a non-philosopher’s.

A further issue might be whether philosophical intuitions count as evidence in favor of your view. I’m not certain what to think about this, though if your intuitions always turn out wrong, I think you should stick to careful argument in the future (or listen to the intuitions of those who seem to always be right).

A final point: Cappelen claims to not find much explicit intuition-talk in published philosophy (except in metaphilosophy). This is accounted for on my view. If you listen to philosophers speak to one another, they use intuition-talk all the time; uttering the phrase “it seems to me that p” or “that seems wrong” in casual philosophical argument happens so frequently that it might be mistaken for a form of respiration among philosophers. However, since we read journals for argument and not vague seemings, we work out why it seems to us that p, and then just say the reason (or, if we don’t, we don’t get published as readily).