Browsing by Author "Lamblin, Michel Alain"

This thesis aims to defend the use of intuitions and intuition-based philosophy in light of the recent negative conclusions from the field of experimental philosophy. First, an account of intuitions and intuition-based philosophy will be given that is continuous with four questions from past conceptions of intuitions regarding their features and uses. The four questions are drawn from analyses of intuitions in Kant and in Aristotle (Chapter 2). The questions are concerned with whether intuition is best understood as (1) a special faculty, or a product of some faculty or capacity; (2) an immediate and noncognitive episode, or a more mediate and reflected-upon episode of understanding and competence; (3) a particular judgment only, or a generalizable judgment; (4) only correct in light of an appropriate level of expertise, or with a minimal level of competence. Following this, analogies will be made to the sciences and scientific method (Chapter 3), and to linguistic intuitions (Chapter 4), which will bring the four previous questions into contemporary understanding of intuitions and intuition use in standard philosophical methodology. Chapter 3 will focus more on the third and fourth points, while Chapter 4 will focus more on the first and second points. The science analogy will benefit from a more recent account of philosophical intuitions provided by George Bealer (1998), as well as from considerations of reflective equilibrium’s role in the third point, and a discussion on moral and more general expertise in light of the fourth point. Chapter 4 will then focus on a contemporary account of philosophical intuitions by Jaakko Hintikka (1999), drawing on the analogy with linguistics and providing a negative foil from which to argue against. Chapter 4 will also benefit from discussion on experimental psychology’s insights and confusions in their subject of 'intuitional thinking', which will be contrasted with a more philosophical account of intuitions and reflective thinking drawing from Robert Audi (1996). Both chapters 3 and 4 will end with a recapitulation of the two-part features of each of the four questions from Chapter 2 in light of the contemporary discussions and respective analogies. Chapter 5 will introduce thought experiments as one of the best tools of intuition-based philosophy that makes use of a four-model taxonomy from Roy Sorensen (1992). The tripartite movement of experimental philosophy will be then be introduced, with a review of one of the first papers of the movement: Jonathan Weinberg, Shaun Nichols and Stephen Stich’s (2001) 'Normativity and Epistemic Intuitions.' Criticisms and response will follow, based on the preliminary conclusions drawn by the divergences in intuitions across cultural and socio-economic divisions, as well as a criticism of the survey methodology employed by most experimental philosophers. Finally, the expertise defense from the armchairists will be made, in light of question 4 from Chapter 2, that also faces criticisms from the Experimental Restrictivists who attack intuition-based philosophy. With a broadened understanding of the prevalence of intuition in contemporary philosophy as provided in chapters 3 and 4, the attack will be seen as either premature, or as still allowing for progressive philosophical inquiry in the other camps of Experimental Descriptivism and Analysis.