Open Access journal ISSN (Print) 0719-4234 - ISSN (Online) 0719-4242 This journal is no longer being updated because: the publisher no longer provides RSS feeds
Authors:Kamil Cekiera Pages: 9 - 24 Abstract: In the past two decades, there has been a sudden increase of inquiry within the branch of analytic philosophy on the nature and role of intuition in philosophy. Philosophers began to investigate what intuition is, how it should be defined, what role it plays in philosophy, what its epistemic status is and many more. There is also a growing number of philosophers arguing that the whole debate rests on a mistake: intuition in philosophy plays no role whatsoever and philosophers do not use it as (a source of) evidence for their philosophical claims. This strategy is often conducted by differentiating among the two senses in which intuition is supposed to play an evidential role in philosophy. Intuition, thus, can be understood as a state of intuiting something or a propositional content that is intuited. Intuition in the first sense, the argument goes, cannot be treated as evidence as it would present the risk of psychologizing evidence in philosophy. If, however, we take intuition as evidence in the second sense, there is nothing distinctive about it: ultimately, all evidence in philosophy is of propositional nature, regardless of the intuitiveness of a given proposition. In my paper, I argue that this strategy fails and propose, instead, the view on intuition that, firstly, explains why the aforementioned distinction does not render the intuitiveness of the content irrelevant to its epistemic status, secondly, is in accord with the current findings in psychology, and, thirdly, is minimal enough to allow the different views of intuitions to be incorporated under that umbrella. In particular, I argue that it is an intuitive judgment, characterized by its non-inferentiality and defeasibility, that serves as evidence for particular philosophical claims, while its source is an intuition understood as a state of non-propositional character that can be examined empirically. PubDate: 2024-02-29 DOI: 10.22370/rhv2024iss24pp9-24
Authors:Esteban Céspedes Pages: 25 - 43 Abstract: As a non-representationalist form of integrating methodological naturalism with ontological naturalism, this work proposes a distinction between phenomenic and rational intuitions. Since this is not a static distinction, it offers a way of observing in which sense the apparent circularity between mental and theoretical representations is not a vicious one. The argument’s plausibility will have to be reinforced through considerations about the unstability of ontologies and about how to conceive conflicting intuitions. PubDate: 2024-02-29 DOI: 10.22370/rhv2024iss24pp25-43
Authors:David Bordonaba Plou Pages: 45 - 71 Abstract: Cappelen (2012) argues against the Thesis of Centrality, that is, against the idea that analytic philosophers rely on intuitions as evidential support for their theories. Cappelen challenges this notion by targeting the “Argument from ‘Intuition’-Talk”, i.e., the idea that intuitions must play a decisive role in the arguments of analytic philosophers because they use intuition talk profusely. This paper empirically examines this claim by assessing the prevalence of intuition talk in critical parts of the arguments. Specifically, it explores whether intuition talk coincides with reasoning markers signifying premises and conclusions. To accomplish this, I will first compile a corpus of articles on taste disagreements. Then, I will conduct two types of analysis: a frequency list analysis, and an analysis of the dispersion of both types of vocabulary along the corpus. PubDate: 2024-02-29 DOI: 10.22370/rhv2024iss24pp45-71
Authors:Silvia Carolina Scotto Pages: 73 - 103 Abstract: I identify the nature and the epistemic status of a sub-type of linguistic intuitions that I call iconic intuitions (IIs). The naive speakers are able to detect, through these intuitions, consistent iconic correspondences between linguistic forms and meanings. Firstly, I identify the main features of the linguistic phenomenon detected by IIs: sound symbolism. The correspondences in which it consists are iconic because they are made up of different types of perceived similarities or associations based on similarities between stimuli - one of which is linguistic. Then, I analyze the main alternative philosophical and psychological characterizations of intuitions, and their evidential role, focusing on linguistic intuitions. On these bases, I conclude that intuitions should be conceived as a heterogeneous construct. Secondly, I argue that the IIs are neither beliefs, dispositions to belief, judgments, or intellectual seemings with propositional contents, but rather perceptual seemings. They consist of the ability or sensitivity to detect iconic correspondences or associations. In other words, sound inputs directly “track” the meanings conveyed by them. They are characterized by their peculiar presentational phenomenology and evaluative component. Now, according to the type of content and cognitive processing involved, it would seem convenient to distinguish between the most purely perceptual ones, based on associative processes, and those that also involve accumulated experience, analytical processes, and conceptual manipulation. After reviewing the psycholinguistic experimental literature based on intuitions about sound symbolism, I argue that IIs are first-level intuitions, and as such a reliable source of direct and prima facie evidence about the iconic features in language. Finally, I argue that these IIs offer a privileged “window” to explore the relationships between language and perception (and affection/emotion). I conclude by arguing that this kind of intuition is a non-dispensable input for philosophical reflection and scientific research on language. So, although I vindicate the relevance of intuitions for understanding linguistic meaning, IIs are not of the same kind, nor do they require the same methods for studying them as those that have mainly interested philosophers. PubDate: 2024-02-29 DOI: 10.22370/rhv2024iss24pp73-103
Authors:Alison M Jaggar, Theresa W. Tobin Pages: 105 - 123 Abstract: In the last three decades of the twentieth century, many analytic philosophers turned to addressing questions of practical ethics, radically expanding the field of moral philosophy beyond the meta-ethical topics that had been its primary focus for most of the century. Yet addressing practical controversies quickly raised the question of how normative moral claims might be justified. Many analytic philosophers relied on intuitionism, which has a long pedigree in Anglophone moral philosophy. This paper assesses three ways in which twentieth analytic philosophers drew on intuitions to support or dispute moral claims. We argue that those methods failed in their aim of promoting trustworthy moral knowledge because they relied on assumptions that, when presumed in contexts of structural epistemic injustice, are systematically misleading. Even though intuitions are among the sources of knowledge on which moral agents should rely, moral epistemology must give careful attention to the social processes through which intuitions and other forms of evidence are gathered, refined, and assessed. Producing trustworthy moral knowledge requires democratic reasoning processes that are sensitive to the ubiquity of epistemic injustice and domination and develops strategies for countering these. PubDate: 2024-02-29 DOI: 10.22370/rhv2024iss24pp105-123
Authors:Kiichi Inarimori Pages: 125 - 143 Abstract: This paper aims to vindicate the expertise defense in light of the experimental philosophy of free will. My central argument is that the analogy strategy between philosophy and other domains is defensible, at least in the free will debate, because philosophical training contributes to the formation of philosophical intuition by enabling expert philosophers to understand philosophical issues correctly and to have philosophical intuitions about them. This paper will begin by deriving two requirements on the expertise defense from major criticisms of it. First, precisely how philosophical training contributes to the formation of philosophical intuitions requires explanation (Contribution); second, it must be explained how philosophical training immunizes philosophical intuitions from distorting factors (Immunity). I shall argue that the Contribution requirement is crucial for the expertise defense and that this requirement can be satisfied at least in the domain of free will: recent research shows that most novices are unable to understand determinism correctly, suggesting that having intuitions about determinism requires philosophical expertise. I then discuss how this proposal can be applied to other philosophical disciplines. PubDate: 2024-02-29 DOI: 10.22370/rhv2024iss24pp125-143
Authors:Tabitha Prußeit Pages: 145 - 162 Abstract: Through an ecological approach, it can be said that a person tries to identify the optimal action for him- or herself by a set of different possible actions through intuition. The debate about the ‘dual process theories’ takes up this idea and postulates two different ways to evaluate decision possibilities: A logical-analytical path and an intuitive (Magrabi and Bach, 2013). Predominantly, it is assumed that the logical-analytical path is related to rationality and therefore the path to strive for in rational decision-making. However, in science it has been shown that bounded rationality is to be assumed. Therefore, the question of the extent to which emotions or feelings, and in this context also intuitions, are rational has come to the fore (De Sousa, 1987; Evans and Cruse, 2004). In this paper, intuitions are considered as a feeling with intentionality: Intuitions always refer to an appropriate environment and are directed toward a decision that results in an action. With Damásio (1994, 2013) it can be shown that an intuition is a feeling that excels in acting as a cue or signal. With the assumption of an ecological rationality (Gigerenzer, Todd and ABC Research Group, 1999; Todd and Gigerenzer, 2012; Todd and Brighton, 2016), it can be shown that intuitive decisions are based on experiential knowledge and implicit structure recognition (Magrabi and Bach, 2013). Accordingly, with the approach of an ecological rationality it can be shown that an intuitive decision is rational in the sense that a person interacts quickly and energy-efficiently successfully adapted with his or her environment and thereby identifies the individual optimal action for him- or herself. This may then be recognized as a ‘gut feeling’ or ‘intuition’. Two challenges will be outlined explained in this paper: The influence of a negative environment on intuitive decisions, and the confusion of an intuition with an emotion or other feeling. PubDate: 2024-02-29 DOI: 10.22370/rhv2024iss24pp145-162
Authors:Luis Alberto Carrillo Cáceres Pages: 163 - 182 Abstract: The holist and inferential condition that, according with Davidson, defines imperatively the cognitive process collides with the existence of the intuitive believes, that is to say, those believes that are of themselves the fundamentum and that, thus, don’t require other belief for their grounds. Nonetheless, if, for one part, is adopted the way in which Peirce understands the term “intuition” and, for another, is accepted the extension of inferential holism, is allowed, even so, to admit the existence of intuitive believes, without transgressing the Davidsonian prohibition. Indeed, if the inferential basis of supported belief is located beyond of the individual agency of who support that belief, the very belief would count as intuition of the agent and would respect the Davidsonian holist constraint, in the sense that such a belief would be a belief whose basis would be in another belief, even when that belief was one that was in an external agency. The key for to accomplish this purpose is to sustain a reasoning extended theory —analogous to the Clark and Chalmers (1998) extended theory of mind—, by virtue of which the agent can obtain, from an intuitive assistant —as alien inferential authorship — what he cannot get by his own inferential authorship. Precisely, in this work we will expound a Davidsonian type of linguistic interaction model —namely, dialogic and triangular—, for cognitions persuasive transfer, by means of one’s reasons (the assistant) become other’s intuitions (the assisted). PubDate: 2024-02-29 DOI: 10.22370/rhv2024iss24pp163-182