## 1. The Nature of Intuitions



Consider the claim that a fully rational person does not believe both
*p* and not-*p*. Very likely, as you considered it, that
claim seemed true to you. Something similar probably happens when you
consider the following propositions:


* [I1]  If
not-not-*p*, then *p*.
* [I2]  Torturing a
sentient being for fun is wrong.
* [I3]  It is impossible
for a square to have five sides.
* [I4]  A person would
survive having their brain transplanted into a new body.



The focus of this entry is intuitions--mental states or events in
which a proposition *seems true in the manner of these
propositions*.



It appears clear that ordinary usage includes more in the extension of
the term "intuition" than such states, as it would allow
that a parent might have an intuition that their child is innocent of
some crime or an archaeologist might have an intuition that an ancient
site of some interest was in a certain area. Some psychological
research seems similarly permissive. Consider recent research on
"intuitions" in naturalistic decision making (Klein 1998).
Such research has shown that agents with sufficient experience in a
given domain (e.g., neonatal nursing, fire-fighting, or chess) arrive
at judgments and make decisions on the basis of a cognitive process
other than conscious considerations of various options and the
weighing of evidence and utilities. Such expert
"intuitions" that some infant suffers from sepsis, that a
fire will take a certain course, or that a certain chess move is a
good one, appear immediately in consciousness.



Less important than linguistic usage in various domains is whether our
theorizing captures the relevant psychological and epistemological
joints to be found in the world. The focus of the present entry is the
role of intuitions in distinctively philosophical (and other
"armchair") inquiry. It is plausible (and will be assumed
here, but see Nado 2014 for doubts) that the intuitions of interest in
philosophy constitute a single epistemic and psychological kind
exemplified by [I1]-[I4] and by many additional examples which
appear in
 SS2.2
 and
 SS2.3
 below, but not the sort noted in the previous paragraph.


### 1.1 Intuitions as Beliefs



Some philosophers equate intuitions with beliefs or with some kind of
belief. For example, David Lewis writes,



> 
> 
> Our "intuitions" are simply opinions; our philosophical
> theories are the same. Some are commonsensical, some are
> sophisticated; some are particular, some general; some are more firmly
> held, some less. But they are all opinions.... (1983: x)
> 
> 
> 



Such remarks suggest the following account:


* [A1]  *S* has the
intuition that *p* if and only if *S* believes that
*p*.



Why adopt [A1]? Some may be moved to do so on grounds of ontological
parsimony. If intuitions are beliefs, we need accept no new kind
psychological state. Furthermore, there is clearly a tight link
between intuitions and beliefs in that one typically believes the
contents of one's intuitions.



However, that belief that *p* is neither necessary nor sufficient
for intuition that *p* is suggested by conflicts between a
person's beliefs and their intuitions. One plausible
characterization of a paradox holds that it is a set of a
propositions, each of which is intuitive, but not all of which could
be true. If one has reasoned one's way to a satisfactory
resolution of a paradox and identified the false proposition, one
often still has the intuition that the rejected proposition is true.
Hence, supposing that in such a case one's beliefs are not
contradictory, one can have an intuition that *p* while one does
not believe *p* and one can have a belief that *p* without
having an intuition that *p*. Indeed, even before such reasoning,
one might suspend belief about the contradictory set while each
remained intuitive. More generally, it seems that one may believe
something--that some theory is true, that some mathematical or
logical proposition is a theorem, that one is hungry, or that a person
is now speaking--without having any intuition that *p* and
so belief that *p* is not sufficient for intuition that
*p*.



Such cases also illustrate an important feature of
intuitions--their relative causal independence from explicit
belief. An analogy with perception is helpful. One might, when viewing
the Muller-Lyer illusion, experience one line as longer than the
other even though one, having repeatedly measured the lines, firmly
believes them to be of equal length. Just such an analogy is invoked
when, for example, it is suggested that some moral intuitions may
be



> 
> 
> ineliminable moral illusion[s], similar to certain optical illusions
> which do not lose their intuitive appeal even when theory tells us
> better. (Kagan 1989: 15)
> 
> 
> 



A more discriminating version of this sort of account holds that
intuitions are *beliefs with a suitable etiology*. One such
account, favored by many psychologists and philosophers with
naturalistic inclinations, treats intuitions as beliefs without a
conscious or introspectively accessible inferential etiology (Gopnik
and Schwitzgebel 1998; Devitt 2006: 491; Kornblith 1998) as in


* [A2] *S* has the
intuition that *p* if and only if *S* forms the occurrent
belief that *p* without consciously inferring it from some other
belief.



On [A2], beliefs with an inferential origin of which a person is
conscious are not intuitions. However, [A2] still mistakenly includes
non-inferential perceptual beliefs, memory beliefs, and introspective
beliefs as intuitions. Moreover [A2], like [A1], runs afoul of the
fact that one can have intuitions the contents of which one does not
believe. The former problem might be circumvented by a content
restriction on the sort of non-inferential belief at issue or further
etiological restrictions. The latter problem does not appear so easily
circumvented.



A yet more discriminating etiological amendment to the belief analysis
(Ludwig 2007: 135) is


* [A3] *S* has the
intuition that *p* if and only if *S* forms the occurrent
belief that *p* solely on the basis of competence with the
concepts involved in *p*.



This analysis is not open to many of the objections to [A1] and [A2].
It does not count an introspective, memory, or perceptual belief as an
intuition. However, on the assumption that the concepts in question
are not contradictory, it may imply (depending on what is required for
competence with a concept) that intuitions are infallible. Even if
intuitions are infallible, if *S* has mistakenly rejected one of
the propositions making up a paradox, *p*, it seems she might,
contrary to [A3], still have the intuition that *p*. Finally,
[A3] appears to make the direct introspective judgment that one has an
intuition difficult to justify, as one lacks direct introspective
access to the non-conscious causes of one's beliefs.


### 1.2 Intuitions as Dispositions to Believe



Peter van Inwagen claims that intuitions might be



> 
> 
> in some cases, the tendencies that make certain beliefs attractive to
> us, that 'move' us in the direction of accepting certain
> propositions without taking us all the way to acceptance. (1997:
> 309)
> 
> 
> 



This suggests something like the following:


* [A4] *S* has the
intuition that *p* if and only if *S* is disposed to believe
*p*.



If a disposition to believe is a propositional attitude, such an
account would allow that intuitions are propositional attitudes and,
unlike belief analyses, allow that one may have an intuition without
belief. However, [A4] appears too liberal in placing no constraints on
the nature or source of the disposition in question. One might be
disposed to believe that a dog is nearby if one turns one's head
and looks, disposed to believe one is in pain if one reflects upon
it, or even disposed to believe a complex theorem if one were to reason
appropriately. None of these cases of being disposed to believe is,
taken alone, sufficient for an intuition. Additionally, [A4] has, on
some views of dispositions, the implication that a person's
believing *p* cannot be explained by their having an intuition
that *p*.



Such concerns about [A4] may be met with a restriction on the ground
of the disposition. A more plausible account (Sosa 1998) is:


* [A5] *S* has the
intuition that *p* if and only if *S* is disposed to believe
*p* merely on the basis of understanding *p*.



However, many claim that the primary notion of intuition is one on
which *S* has an intuition that *p* only when *S* is
occurrently in the relevant conscious psychological state. If so, any
purely dispositionalist account fails to capture the occurrent
conscious character of intuitions in much the way dispositional
analyses of other conscious states fail. It is quite possible to have,
at a time, a large number of dispositions to believe while failing to
host, at that time, a single intuition. For example, a person might
have an intuition that the naive comprehension axiom is true when
asked to consider it, but not have such an intuition while driving
home in heavy traffic. And yet it may be true throughout that she is
disposed to believe the proposition merely upon understanding it
(Bealer 1998: 209). As well, one may now have direct introspective
knowledge that one has an intuition that *p* while one has no
such direct introspective knowledge regarding one's
dispositions, especially one's non-activated dispositions, to
believe on the basis of mere understanding. (For additional discussion
of dispositionalist analyses see Pust 2000, Erlenbaugh and Molyneux
2009, and Koksvik 2011.)


### 1.3 Intuitions as *Sui Generis* States



A final family of accounts holds that an intuition is a *sui
generis* occurrent propositional attitude, variously characterized
as one in which a proposition occurrently *seems* true (Bealer
1998, 2002; Pust 2000; Huemer 2001, 2005), in which a proposition is
*presented to* the subject as true (Chudnoff 2011a; Bengson
2015), or which *pushes* the subject to believe a proposition
(Koksvik 2011). Such views are united in denying that belief that
*p* is necessary or sufficient for an intuition that *p* and
in rejecting dispositional analyses of intuition. The close connection
between intuition that *p* and disposition to believe *p* is
explained by claiming that intuitions typically serve as the ground of
the disposition to believe *p*.



According to proponents of accounts of this sort, when one has an
intuition that *p*, one does not merely represent or believe or
consider *p*. Rather, *p* is the content of a distinctive
occurrent conscious non-belief propositional attitude. Bealer, for
example, claims that



> 
> 
> When you have an intuition that *A*, it *seems* to you
> that *A*. Here 'seems' is understood, not in its use
> as a cautionary or "hedging" term, but in its use as a
> term for a genuine kind of conscious episode. For example, when you
> first consider one of de Morgan's laws, often it neither seems
> true nor seems false; after a moment's reflection, however,
> something happens: it now just seems true. (Bealer 1998: 207)
> 
> 
> 



Some philosophers who endorse such views also hold that perceptual
(and other) experiences have propositional contents and seek to
provide an account of the distinctive features of intuition,
perception and other seemings or experiences.



According to the "seemings" version of such a view, an
indiscriminate account of intuition would be the following:


* [A6] *S* has the
intuition that *p* if and only if it seems to *S* that
*p*.



While this account seems fitting for much psychological work on the
topic of intuitions, it is insufficiently discriminating. If memorial
or introspective seemings with propositional content exist, they are
not plausibly identified with intuitions of the sort with which this
entry began. Moreover, when conjoined with the view that
perceptual experience consists of a suitable seeming that
*p*, this view implies that there are perceptual intuitions.
Clarity is served by stipulating that such states are not intuitions
even if they are all species of some common genus.



A more discriminating account is the following:


* [A7] *S* has the
intuition that *p* if and only if it intellectually seems to
*S* that *p*.



Some, however, have claimed that there is an important distinction
between the intuitions of primary interest in philosophical inquiry
and other states which involve intellectual seemings that *p*.
Bealer, for example, claims that philosophical inquiry typically
relies upon "*a priori* intuitions" which must be
distinguished from the "physical intuitions" elicited by
scientific thought experiments in that the latter do not present
themselves as necessary while the former do (1998: 165). Those who
wish to distinguish the states involved in scientific thought
experiments from those typically involved in philosophical inquiry may
either endorse [A7] and reject the suggestion that such physical
intuitions involve the same intellectual seeming or impose further
conditions on those intuitions of distinctive philosophical relevance
as in the following accounts:


* [A8] *S* has the
*rational intuition* that *p* if and only if it intellectually seems
to *S* that necessarily *p*.
* [A9] *S* has the
*rational intuition* that *p* if and only if either [A] (1) it
intellectually seems to *S* that *p* and (2) if *S*
were to consider whether *p* is necessarily true, it would
intellectually seem to *S* that necessarily *p*, or [B] it
intellectually seems to *S* that necessarily
*p*.



[A8] renders all rational intuitions overtly modal in content and, on
a view of concept possession according to which possessing the concept
*c* at *t* requires the ability to deploy *c* in
thought at *t*, requires a level of sophistication not obviously
had by the philosophical innocent who is, nonetheless, presumably
capable of having a rational intuition (Pust 2000: 38; Ludwig 2007:
136). Moreover, possibility intuitions are also essential to
philosophical practice and if the proponent of [A8] wishes to include
possibility claims as the contents of intuitions (rather than treating
them as inferentially justified by a rational intuition and the
principle that what is necessarily possible is possible), then they
must treat such intuitions as possessed of an iterated modal
propositional content.



[A9] (see Pust 2000: 46) requires a single occurrent conscious
psychological state in rational intuition and distinguishes that state
from physical intuitions while allowing that a naive agent might
have a rational intuition even though not currently deploying the
concept of metaphysical necessity. It also does not require that a
possibility intuition involve an occurrent iterated modal content.
However, because it leaves the distinction between a rational and
physical (or other) intuitions sometimes dependent on dispositional
rather than occurrent factors, [A9] may raise worries about our
ability to discern directly that we harbor a rational intuition.



Some philosophers maintain that such *sui generis*
propositional attitudes do not exist or are not part of their own
mental life. For example, Williamson writes,



> 
> 
> For myself, I am aware of no intellectual seeming beyond my conscious
> inclination to believe the Gettier proposition... . These
> paradigms provide no evidence of intellectual seemings, if the phrase
> is supposed to mean anything more than intuitions in Lewis's or
> van Inwagen's sense. (2007: 217)
> 
> 
> 



Proponents of such accounts must be concerned to explain the error of
their opponents and, ideally, to enable them to locate the states in
themselves. (See Chudnoff 2011a and Koksvik 2011 for attempts to help
such skeptics by describing carefully that which they should
seek.)



Williamson (2007: 218-219) argues against analyses of the sort
now under consideration and in favor of a more permissive belief or
dispositional analysis by noting that a wide variety of propositions
may be properly called "counterintuitive" and that this
class does not consist merely of the negations of propositions which
are, according to more restrictive accounts of intuition, the contents
of intuitions. For example, Williamson points out that philosophical
views which entail that there are no mountains are often thought, in
virtue of such entailments, to be highly counterintuitive. The
proposition that there *are* mountains is, however, not the
content of an intuition on any of the accounts in this family.



One possible rejoinder to Williamson's argument would be to
characterize the counterintuitive claim as the claim that no suitable
arrangement of matter is metaphysically sufficient for the presence of
a mountain (i.e., that mountains are impossible) and there is no
reason why the negation of this proposition cannot be, on more
restrictive accounts of intuition, the content of an intuition.
Another possible rejoinder would point out that we have extremely good
grounds for believing that there are mountains and to suggest that the
complaint that *p* is counterintuitive is merely the claim that
not-*p* is extremely well-justified.


### 1.4 Propositions, Properties, and Faculties



It has thus far been assumed that intuitions always take propositions
as their objects. Some might disagree, holding that we have *de
re* or objectual intuitions of properties or states of affairs.
Indeed, it might be held that our *de re* grasp of various
properties is what grounds or justifies our assent to propositions
involving them. Pursuit of this issue would require a detailed account
of propositions and properties and their relations. It would also
require detailed accounts of the *de dicto* and *de re*
attitudes. None of these explorations can be undertaken here. It
should be noted, however, that such a conception of our *de re*
grasp of properties lurks under the surface of many rationalist
accounts whether framed in terms of concepts or properties (Bealer
1998; BonJour 1998) and is even more explicit in the claim that we
have knowledge by acquaintance of universals (Russell 1912).



In addition, the precise conception of propositional contents may have
to be varied with the account of intuition. For example, those who
appeal to propositions which seem true or which one is inclined to
believe would presumably hold that what we are justified in believing
*via* rational intuition is not a pure Russellian proposition
but rather either a Fregean proposition or a Russellian proposition
under something like a mode of presentation.



Finally, the focus above has been on intuitions as psychological
states or events. Sometimes the issues surrounding intuitions are
framed in terms of whether there is a distinct *faculty of
intuition*. Of course, to the extent that intuitions are causally
explicable, there is *some* process which produces them and
some may wish to call that process a "faculty." If that is
all that is meant by the term, then no harm is done. Still, while such
talk may have its place (especially in various cognitive scientific
attempts to explain the occurrence of intuitions), taking it to mean
more than just suggested seems to prejudice the issue of how much
intuitive justification is like the justification produced by
empirical faculties like vision and to invite dismissive caricatures
of the view that intuitions serve to justify beliefs.


## 2. The Epistemological Role of Intuitions


### 2.1 Philosophical and Non-Philosophical Uses of Intuitions



As noted in
 SS1,
 the focus of the present entry is the role of intuitions in
philosophy. It is as accounts of such intuitions that the accounts
above were evaluated. Hence, in what follows, it will be assumed that
the appropriate account of the states at issue is some relatively
restrictive version of the *sui generis* state account
 (SS1.3).
 Such an assumption is not, however, essential to much of what
follows.



In light of the discussion of
 SS1,
 some of the states which are included in more expansive accounts of
intuition might be better taken to be perceptual seemings or
experiences of the sort endorsed by those who claim we have perceptual
seemings or experiences with complex propositional content. In this
connection, it is worth considering the views of various theorists who
hold that perceptual experience can basically represent, and present
to a subject, propositions featuring sophisticated properties well
beyond phenomenological ones (Siegel 2010). On this kind of view,
those with suitable training might have a perceptual experience that a
child is ill or that a fire will soon engulf a room in the way that a
non-expert has a perceptual experience that they are presented with
something red. The epistemology of such propositional perceptual
states (if they exist) must be addressed elsewhere.


### 2.2 The Method of Cases



Consider the following paradigmatic examples of contemporary
philosophical reasoning in which a philosophical theory is taken to be
*prima facie* undermined by contradicting an intuition
regarding a particular hypothetical case:



**The Gettier Case** (Gettier 1963):
Suppose that Smith and Jones have applied for a certain job. Smith
believes, on the basis of strong evidence, that Jones will get the job
and also that Jones has ten coins in his pocket. He infers from this
that the man who will get the job has ten coins in his pocket.
However, imagine that, unknown to Smith, he himself, not Jones, will
get the job. And, also unknown to Smith, he himself has ten coins in
his pocket.
*Gettier Intuition:* Smith does not know
that the man who will get the job has ten coins in his pocket.
*Justified True Belief Theory of
Knowledge:* *S* knows that *p* IFF *S* has a
justified true belief that *p*.
**The Transplant Case** (Thomson 1976):
Suppose that you are a transplant surgeon and that you now have
five patients, each in need of a different organ in order to prevent
imminent and certain death. You also have a suitable donor in your
hospital for a routine check-up. If you were to involuntarily (and secretly) take her
organs and transplant them into the needy five, you are certain to
bring about her death but also to prevent the death of the five.
 *Transplant Intuition:* It is not
morally permissible to take the organs of the one in order to save the
five.
 *Act Utilitarian Theory of Morality:*
Action *A* is morally right IFF *A* maximizes
well-being.
**The Chinese Nation Case** (Block 1978)
Suppose that the citizens of China are organized so as to be
functionally equivalent to a human brain and to interact with a
human-like body in a manner functionally equivalent to that in which
the brain interacts with the human body.
*Chinese Nation Intuition:* The nation of
China, so organized, would lack qualia (i.e., there would be nothing
it would be like to be the nation of China).
*Functionalist Theory of Mind:* *S*
has mental state *M* IFF *S* contains a realization of
functional state *F*.
**The Flagpole Case** (Bromberger 1966)
Suppose that a flagpole is standing on level ground in bright
sunshine. From a specification of the length of the flagpole's
shadow and the height of the sun in the sky one can, given the
relevant laws of optics, deduce the height of the flagpole.
*Flagpole Intuition:* The height of the
flagpole is not explained by the length of its shadow.
*Deductive-Nomological Theory of
Explanation:* *E* is an explanation of *F* IFF *E*
is a set of truths which deductively implies *F* and the
deduction relies essentially on a nomic generalization.


Such examples could easily be multiplied to include teletransportation
and fission cases in the literature on personal identity, preemption
and epiphenomena cases in the literature on causation and explanation,
clairvoyance and evil demon cases in epistemology, Newcomb cases in
decision theory, Frankfurt cases in the literature on free will,
Twin-Earth and Swampman cases in the literature on mental content,
Jackson's Mary case in the metaphysics of mind, trolley cases in
applied ethics, experience machine cases in normative ethics, and many
many others.



In each such instance, the fact that the theory or generalization in
question contravenes the content of an intuition is treated as
(defeasible) evidence against the theory or generalization. As well,
the fact that a theory implies results which agree with intuitions is
commonly taken to constitute *prima facie* support for the
theory. (See the supplementary document
 "The Logical Structure of the Method of Cases"
 for further discussion of the logical structure of such
reasoning.)



This use of intuitions is, perhaps, even clearer if we consider what
seems to be a contrast between philosophical methodology and that of
the natural sciences. An empirical scientist must engage in empirical
observation of some sort in an order to confirm or disconfirm the
theories with which her discipline is engaged. If judged by her
practice, the philosopher, by contrast, appears able to proceed
largely or entirely from the armchair. If one takes the evidence to
which natural science is primarily responsive to be that produced by
empirical observation, it seems that philosophical (and other) inquiry
proceeding from the armchair must have some other (putative)
evidential basis. A natural (though contested) suggestion is that
intuitions are treated as the primary evidence in philosophical
inquiry.



(Some contemporary discussion of the methodology and epistemology of
the appeal to particular hypothetical cases treats them as
"thought experiments" and endeavors to draw analogies
between the role of such cases in philosophical inquiry and the role
of thought experiments in empirical science (Horowitz and Massey 1991;
Sorensen 1992). This analogy is not pursued here for reasons outlined
in
 SS1.3.)


### 2.3 General Intuitions



The four examples above
 (SS2.2)
 involve appeal to intuitions regarding particular hypothetical cases
in philosophical theorizing. There are, however, other prominent
examples of appeals to intuition, such as those of the epistemological
rationalist. For present purposes, the epistemological rationalist is
one who holds that belief in some propositions is not justified by
sense experience, introspection, or memory, but rather by *rational
intuition* (BonJour 1998; Bealer 1998).



One traditional argument for rationalism appeals to various
propositions which (a) we seem clearly justified in believing, and (b)
seem justified not by experience, but rather simply by our seeming to
see or apprehend that they are true. Plausible candidates include
principles of classical logic, basic arithmetic, analytic
propositions, color or shape exclusion principles, and transitivity
claims. The following examples are representative:


* [R1] Nothing can be red
and green all over at the same time.
* [R2] \(2 + 2 =
4\)
* [R3] If *A* is
taller than *B* and *B* is taller than *C*, then
*A* is taller than *C*.
* [R4] There are no round
squares.
* [R5] (*P* and
*Q*) implies *Q*.



The hypothetical case examples which drive much philosophical
theorizing in epistemology, moral theory, metaphysics, and the
philosophy of mind are, in some sense, particular in content. The
rationalist's examples are typically more general.



In fact, there are philosophically significant propositions at all
levels of generality which may be the content of intuitions. Here are
some examples of general propositions which have been alleged to be
intuitive:


* [G1] If *S* is
justified in believing *p* and justified in believing \(\Box(p
\supset q)\), then *S* is justified in believing
*q*.
* [G2] If *X* is a
heap of sand, then *X* remains a heap even if one grain of sand is
removed.
* [G3] *S* performs
act *A* freely only if *S* could have done
otherwise.
* [G4] For every property
*P*, there is a set of individuals (perhaps empty) which possess
*P*.
* [G5] Through a given
point not on a given line, there exists exactly one line parallel to
the given line.
* [G6] Whether a later
person, *y*, is numerically identical to an earlier person,
*x*, can depend only on intrinsic facts about *x* and
*y* and the relations between *x* and
*y*.
* [G7] Any two possible
actions exactly alike in all non-moral respects must be exactly alike
in all moral respects.


### 2.4 Intuitions as Evidence: Intuit*eds* vs. Intuit*ings*



The previous sections have aimed to show that much philosophical
inquiry depends in significant ways on intuitions as evidence or
reasons. However, such a claim is ambiguous. To say that the intuition
that *p* is treated as evidence might be to claim that *the
fact that a person has an intuition* is taken to serve as some
kind of evidence (the intuit*ing*) or it might be to claim that
*the propositional content of the intuition* (the
intuit*ed*) is treated as the evidence.



Treating the intuit*ings* as the exclusive evidence has been
alleged to overly psychologize philosophy (Pust 2001) and to play into
the hands of skeptics of both the armchair and empirical variety
(Williamson 2007; Deutsch 2010). After all, if one's ultimate
evidence is psychological, it can seem a difficult question why such
states or events ought to be treated as evidence for claims which are
not psychological at all--claims about the nature of knowledge,
morality, modality, etc. (For the suggestion that philosophers should
instead treat many of their efforts as aiming to explicate the
structure and content of our *mental representations*, see
Goldman 1999, 2007.) Furthermore, it doesn't seem at all
plausible that most explicit philosophical argument and analysis
proceeds from psychological premises (i.e., premises about what some
person or persons find intuitive). Rather, they appeal to claims
regarding knowledge, justification, morality, explanation, etc.



On the other hand, to fail to address the fact that the proposition in
question *is intuitive*--that it is the *content
of* an intuit*ing*--is, it seems, to neglect something
important about one's apparent justification for believing the
proposition. While most of our putative evidence in philosophy
consists of non-psychological propositions, what qualifies such
propositions as our evidence must have *something* to do with
our epistemic justification for believing them. Even if philosophical
argumentation rarely includes premises about the intuitiveness of a
proposition, our justification for accepting the premises in an
argument is of great importance in determining the ultimate
justificatory force of the argument.



Hence, the view that intuitions are treated as evidence in philosophy
is best thought of as the view that, with respect to many core
questions of philosophy, our justification for believing an answer
consists (at least substantially) in our having suitable intuitions.
It does not follow that all explicit philosophical reasoning can be
properly represented as beginning with propositions stating that we
have intuitions of various sorts (that route is self-defeating and
incapable of accounting for justification by reasoning). Put simply,
the view is that the occurrence of an intuit*ing* is taken to
provide the person in whom it occurs with *prima facie*
justification for believing the intuit*ed*. Alternatively, it
holds that *S*'s having an intuition that *p prima
facie* justifies *S* in believing that *p*. Given a
capacious view of evidence, then, both the intuiting and the intuited
are treated as evidence, the occurrence of the former being treated as
*prima facie* non-inferential justification for accepting the
latter and the latter as a potential inferential justification for
further propositions.



Those who prefer to focus on knowledge rather than justification can
take the claim that intuitions are treated as evidence as the claim
that beliefs based on intuition (if intuitions are distinct from
beliefs) or intuitive beliefs are usually taken to be knowledge and so
taken as evidence for further claims. They may also allow that having
an intuition that *p* is, when it is veridical, a way of knowing
that *p* and thereby having *p* as part of one's
evidence (Cath 2012).



The view that intuitions are treated as evidence in philosophy has
come under recent attack by a number of philosophers (Williamson 2007;
Cappelen 2012; Deutsch 2015). The critics seem clearly to wish to deny
that philosophical practice treats the having of an intuition as
*prima facie* justification for its content, either because
they deny that intuitions (at least as characterized by the *sui
generis* accounts) exist or because they are skeptical that such
states could serve as *prima facie* justification for their
contents. Though Williamson, as noted above, suggests he cannot
introspectively locate such states, Cappelen and Deutsch largely avoid
introspective appeals, arguing instead that attention to philosophical
practice and writing reveals little evidence of appeals to intuitions.
Instead, they claim that close attention to influential discussions in
philosophy reveals the ultimate source of justification for various
claims is to be found in arguments.



The rejoinder to such a revisionary view of the role of intuitions
takes various forms. An understanding of the sort of state at issue
may require careful introspection and theorizing of the sort appearing
above. Moreover, one may doubt that a given account of the nature of
intuitions is correct without doubting that intuitions exist. A
further rejoinder would be to argue that much of the written work
discussed by Cappelen and Deutsch features language which *is*
plausibly used to designate intuitions and, additionally, that the
provision of arguments supporting verdicts regarding various thought
experiments is not inconsistent with the author's taking
(implicitly or explicitly) intuitions to serve as *prima facie*
justification for their contents (Bengson 2014; Devitt 2015).


## 3. Challenges and Defenses


### 3.1 Four Constraints on Skeptical Challenges



Skeptics about intuitions allege that we are not justified in
believing the contents of our intuitions. Prior consideration of the
features that a suitable skeptical argument must possess will allow
greater concision below and will also aid in revealing common features
of the arguments.



First, such arguments are arguments for the conclusion that intuitions
(either intuitions generally or intuitions of some specific sort) do
not justify us in believing their contents. Hence, any such skeptical
argument must have a premise stating a necessary condition on the
justification of belief. Call this premise, "*the normative
premise.*" Second, such an argument must contain a premise
stating that beliefs based on the intuitions in question do not
satisfy the necessary condition of justified belief advanced in the
normative premise. Call this premise, "*the non-normative
premise.*"



Third, a successful argument for *selective* skepticism
regarding intuitions must be one which does not equally apply to many
other sources of putatively justified belief. After all, if the
argument at issue would also justify skepticism regarding perceptual
belief and/or memorial and/or introspective belief, it shows nothing
distinctively problematic about intuitions or beliefs based upon them.
Call this constraint on a successful argument, "*the local
skepticism constraint.*"



Finally, (a) the justification for the normative and the non-normative
premises must be provided by some source of evidence or justification
*other than* intuitions of the sort impugned by the argument
and (b) we must lack good reason to think that our belief in the
normative or factual premise fails the necessary condition on
justified belief advanced by the normative premise. Call the
conjunction of these requirements "*the non-self-undermining
constraint*" (Bealer 1992; Pust 2001; but see
Silva 2013). While running afoul of this constraint does not provide
reason to think the argument at issue *unsound*, it appears a
reasonable constraint on a skeptical argument meant to produce
reflectively justified belief in a conclusion in virtue of its
following from justified premises. Given that the proponents of the
various skeptical arguments to be discussed are mere local skeptics,
they certainly appear to be offering arguments aimed at inducing
philosophically reasonable belief in a local skeptical thesis
regarding intuition.



Attempts to construe skeptical arguments against intuition as a
*reductio* of the supposition that intuitions have evidential
worth will not be discussed below. Note, however, that their
proponents (a) require some justification for the relevant inferential
principles required by the *reductio*, and (b) are likely to be
deprived of any justified positive epistemological position, let alone
one sufficient to justify the typical intuition skeptic's high
epistemic regard for empirical inquiry.


### 3.2 The Argument from Lack of Independent Calibration



Some skeptics regarding intuition argue that intuition is
epistemically illegitimate because it cannot be independently
calibrated. In Cummins' forceful presentation of the argument,
this independent calibration requirement is used to justify the
conclusion that we should "dismiss philosophical intuition as
epistemologically valueless" (1998: 125).



Let us state the argument as follows:




*The Argument from Lack of Independent Calibration*


* [P1] One is justified
in believing the contents of a putative source of evidence only if one
has independent justification for the belief that the putative source
is reliable.
* [P2] We lack
independent justification for the belief that intuitions are
reliable.
* [C]  We are not
justified in believing the contents of intuitions.




Though it has substantial plausibility in connection with various
derived epistemic sources such as scientific instruments, it is clear
that [P1] runs afoul of the local skepticism constraint. It amounts to
a demand which is *in principle* unsatisfiable. If, as [P1]
implies, intuition must be calibrated by some other source, *X*,
then, by [P1], *X* must itself be calibrated by yet another
source of evidence, *Y*, which must itself be calibrated and so
on. Some hold, in virtue of this fact, that it is impossible to arrive
at justified belief and others that it is, in suitable circumstances,
possible to do so. If the former is true, then [P1] runs afoul of the
local skepticism constraint. If, instead, the latter is true, then
[P1] is false. Additionally, it seems clear that an argument for [P1]
will require evidential reliance on epistemic intuitions and so
contravene the non-self-undermining requirement.



What of [P2]? Setting aside non-reductive accounts of testimony,
independent calibrations look unlikely to succeed for the full range
of philosophically relevant intuitions, at least given the more
constrained accounts of intuition above. The primary reason is the
lack of overlap between the contents of intuitions and those beliefs
justified by suitably independent sources. One doesn't, it
seems, use one's senses to discern if some hypothetical case is
a case of knowledge or right action or a case in which the
hypothetical entity is conscious or in which two temporally distinct
persons are the same person. As well, while perception may indicate
the truth of some proposition and hence its possibility, it seems
incapable of itself demonstrating the possibility of non-actual truths
or the necessity of any proposition.


### 3.3 Arguments from Unreliability



A more plausible normative premise would hold that unreliable (rather
than uncalibratable) faculties cannot justify belief, yielding the
following:




*The Argument from Unreliability--First Version*


* [P1] One is justified
in believing on the (sole) basis of a putative source of evidence only
if it is reliable.
* [P2] Intuitions (or
intuitions of type *T*) are not reliable.
* [C]  Beliefs based
(solely) on intuitions (or intuitions of type *T*) are not
justified.




Insofar as the normative premise is meant to articulate a necessary
truth, it is open to the "new evil demon" counterexample
to the necessity of reliability (Cohen 1984) according to which
subjects with exactly our experiences and beliefs are justified in
believing as we do even if they are the victims of a deceptive evil
demon. As a natural interpretation of the reliability condition would
be contravened here, this is taken by many to demonstrate that
reliability (so understood) is not a necessary condition of justified
belief.



However, even those who reject [P1] typically allow that good reason
to think a putative source of evidence is *un*reliable is
sufficient to defeat whatever *prima facie* justification it
may otherwise provide. Hence, we may reformulate the argument as
follows in order to provide it with a more plausible normative
premise:




*The Argument from Unreliability--Second Version*


* [P1\*]  One is justified
in believing on the (sole) basis of a putative source of evidence only
if one lacks (undefeated) reason to think it unreliable.
* [P2\*]  We have
(undefeated) reasons to think intuitions (or intuitions of type
*T*) unreliable.
* [C]  Hence, beliefs
based (solely) on intuitions (or intuitions of type *T*) are not
justified.




As the defense of [P1] or [P1\*] requires appeal to epistemic
intuitions, any attempt to justify by such means a skeptical
conclusion regarding all intuitions, all epistemic intuitions or even
all normative intuitions, would fail to observe the
non-self-undermining constraint.



Still, it is worth considering the possible ways of attempting to
justify skeptical arguments *of a more limited sort* by arguing
that intuitions of some sort (which does not include epistemic
intuitions or at least the epistemic intuitions of the sort needed to
justify the premises) are unreliable. Given that the relevant
non-normative premise must claim that intuitions of the sort at issue
are more frequently false than true (or equally likely to be false as
to be true) it seems to require an inductive justification based on a
sufficiently large number of cases in which we have justification for
believing \({\sim}p\) while *p* is the content of an
intuition.



One way of developing the case would involve a sufficiently large
number of cases in which one has an intuition-independent
justification for thinking \({\sim}p\) while intuition testifies that
*p* (*intrapersonal intersource inconsistency*). Another
would involve a sufficiently large number of cases in which one has
the intuition that *p* and either oneself or some other person
has the intuition that \({\sim}p\). In the intrapersonal case, this
might involve our finding a given proposition intuitive and, at some
other time, our finding its explicit negation intuitive
(*intrapersonal intrasource inconsistency*). More likely is a
less direct inconsistency, as when we have two intuitions which,
though not the explicit propositional negations of each other, can be
shown to contradict with the aid of some other justified principle.
Many contemporary skeptics, however, wish to appeal to
*interpersonal* disagreement as justification for their
skepticism. Here we should distinguish between cases in which some
other person has intuition-independent justification for believing the
negation of the content of one of one's own intuitions
(*interpersonal intersource inconsistency*) and cases in which
the other person has an intuition with a content contradicting
one's own intuition or, perhaps, fails to have any intuition
regarding *p* (*interpersonal intrasource
inconsistency*).


#### 3.3.1 Intersource Inconsistency



As noted when conceding the factual premise, [P2], of the Argument
from Lack of Independent Calibration
 (SS3.2),
 on the *sui generis* accounts of intuition
 (SS1.3),
 there are few, if any, *direct* conflicts between the putative
deliverances of rational intuition and our other sources of evidence
(Bealer 1998; BonJour 1998). *Indirect* conflicts would be ones
in which the results of empirical theory contradict the content of
rational intuitions. Such cases, if there are any, are quite rare.



Indeed, in view of the lack of direct conflicts, there is substantial
reason to think indirect conflicts must be quite rare as standard
empirical theorizing seems unlikely to yield conclusions about the
domains about which intuition seems to inform us. These facts suggest
that *interpersonal interfaculty inconsistency* will also be an
insufficient basis for skepticism.


#### 3.3.2 Intrasource Inconsistency



The main case of *intrapersonal intrasource inconsistency* has
been mentioned previously--the case of paradoxes. To support the
present (limited) skeptical argument, however, it must be parlayed
into an argument that intuitions are so unreliable as to fail to
justify belief at all.



It is not clear how this can be done. For one thing, there remains the
fact that most of a person's intuitions are not in conflict with
one another. For another, some conflicts between intuitions can be
resolved by standard means or by favoring the more intuitive
propositions. This is not to claim that such disagreements might not
rationally require a suspension of judgment about the actual
contradicting intuitions (if they are suitably balanced in strength).
However, such a conclusion is quite limited and extends clearly only
to areas of demonstrable and irresolvable inconsistency.



The case of greatest interest to skeptics is likely to be the case of
*interpersonal intrasource inconsistency* or disagreement. We
must be careful to distinguish between interpersonal conflicts of
intuitions and conflicts between beliefs or between beliefs and
intuitions. Philosophers disagree a great deal about the correct
*theory* of free will, knowledge, justification and the like.
This fact has been alleged to make a certain sort of epistemic modesty
(though not complete skepticism) about the *theoretical*
accomplishments of philosophy quite reasonable (Christensen 2007).
However, philosophers seem to disagree less about what the relevant
intuitions are. Bealer claims that



> 
> 
> the on-balance agreement among our elementary concrete-case intuitions
> is one of the most impressive general facts about human cognition.
> (1998: 214) 
> 
> 
> 



(See, however, "the variation project" of experimental
philosophers discussed in
 SS4.1.)
 Functionalists, for example, don't usually claim to lack the
intuition that the Chinese nation (Block 1978) would lack qualia.
Rather, they often go to great lengths to explain away such
intuitions, formulate the functionalist theory to accommodate them
(Putnam 1967), or selectively deflate their epistemic value.
Reliabilists don't typically claim that there is no new evil
demon problem (Cohen 1984). Rather, they engage in considerable
maneuvering to discount the intuition, to rephrase it in a way not
damaging to straightforward reliabilism, or, most commonly, to provide
an alternative, recognizably reliabilist, theory which accommodates
the intuition.



Much of the recent literature on the epistemic significance of
disagreement is focused on cases in which two persons disagree with
respect to *a single proposition* which is *inferentially
justified*, and in which the two parties are *known to each
other* to have the *same evidence* and general cognitive
virtues (Christensen 2009). The lessons of such cases for the present
questions are likely to be limited. If intuitions are evidence which
non-inferentially justify belief, then even if one ought to suspend
judgment in the aforementioned kind of case, it will not follow that
one ought to do so in the case of intuitive disagreements. Hence, we
must instead focus on cases of disagreement between non-inferentially
justified beliefs or, more appropriately, on the propositional content
of some non-doxastic basis for such belief. Feldman (2007) provides a
perceptual case (explicitly compared to something like rational
intuition) in which one person seems to see *p* and the other,
similarly situated, does not seem to see *p*. When the two become
apprised of each other's appearances (and know each other to
have equally good vision and to be honest), Feldman avers that they
must withhold judgment on *p*. Perhaps the same is true with
respect to philosophical intuitions.



However, it can be difficult to determine if another's failure
to have an intuition that *p* is epistemically significant, as
they may have yet to really grasp or consider the precise proposition
at issue. An analogous claim is true in the perceptual case as well,
as when one sees an object which is well camouflaged and another
claims not to see it. Still, restricting ourselves to a situation in
which one has good reason to think the other fully understands the
content at issue and claims either not to have the intuition or to
have the contrary intuition, we must ask what the appropriate
responses to such cases is. Here, it does seem that the proper
response is sometimes (depending on the proposition at issue)
suspension of belief or some suitable diminution of credence (BonJour
1998: 138-142). Even if the correct response to disagreement
about *p* in such cases is the suspension of belief (or a
reduction of credence), it won't follow that beliefs in
propositions about which no known disagreement exists are undermined.
Nor could it follow that one must always have independent reason to
think there is no disagreement prior to being justified in accepting
the content of an intuition. That would be impossible.



A serious case for disagreement-based local skepticism regarding some
entire class of intuitions which evades the non-self-undermining
constraint would require justification for thinking that quite
substantial disagreement with some equally (or more) competent other
person has arisen. It cannot be supposed that the question of whether
one is justified in thinking that some apparent competent interlocutor
is sincerely testifying that *p* is entirely independent of the
content of their apparent assertion or of one's total evidence
relevant to existence of other minds and their mental contents of the
appropriate sort. Some sorts of apparent disagreement call into
question the understanding, sanity, intelligence, or sincerity of
one's interlocutor, as when some other denies some basic truth
of arithmetic. Consider a version of Feldman's perceptual case
in which there are successive occasions on which one seems to see
*p* and one's interlocutor apparently denies that they see
any such thing. Were they to become frequent enough, there might be
reason to doubt that the other is honest and competent, speaking
one's language, or, indeed, whether there is another person to
whom one is speaking. Similar obstacles arise for the possibility of
very widespread disagreement of intuitions, especially on views
according to which the reliability of intuitions is constitutive of
possessing certain concepts (Bealer 1998; Huemer 2005; Ludwig
2007).


### 3.4 Arguments from Explanation



Many of the most interesting arguments for skepticism regarding
philosophical intuitions do not appeal to direct evidence of
unreliability, but are instead instances of what shall here be called
"arguments from explanation." Such arguments maintain
either that (a) the fact that our best explanations of the occurrence
of intuitions (i.e., intuit*ings*) do not appeal to the truth
of their contents is reason to think we are not justified in accepting
such contents, or that (b) the fact that we cannot provide any
explanation of *how* our intuitions are or could be reliable
regarding the domains about which they might initially appear to
inform us, is reason to think we are not justified in believing their
contents. Let us call former sort of argument "the argument from
lack of explanatory necessity" and the second sort, "the
argument from inexplicability of reliability." Recent arguments
of this sort have been discussed by those concerned with so-called
"debunking arguments" regarding our moral beliefs and
intuitions (Street 2006; Clarke-Doane 2015).


#### 3.4.1 The Argument from Lack of Explanatory Necessity



Gilbert Harman (1977) suggests that moral theories are unjustified
because they cannot be tested and confirmed in the way that scientific
theories can. While he admits that we may "test" general
moral principles against our intuitions regarding particular actual
and hypothetical situations, he argues that we are not thereby testing
our moral theories or principles against the world. Instead, we are
merely testing them against our "moral sensibility" or
against our tacitly held moral views.



Harman claims that there is an important difference between the use of
observations in empirical science and the use of intuitions in moral
inquiry, a difference which renders moral intuitions unable to provide
evidence for moral theory. The alleged difference is that



> 
> 
> you need to make assumptions about certain physical facts to explain
> the occurrence of the observations that support a scientific theory,
> but you do not seem to need to make assumptions about any moral facts
> to explain the occurrence
> 
> 
> 



of the moral intuitions. When, for example, one has the intuition, in
the Transplant case, that it would be wrong for a doctor to kill an
unconsenting healthy patient to save the lives of five other patients,




> 
> 
> an assumption about moral facts would seem to be totally irrelevant to
> the explanation of your making the judgment you make
> 
> 
> 



and hence the intuition "does not seem ... to be ...
evidence for or against any moral theory" (1977: 6-7). The
argument seems to be:



> 
> 
> *The Argument from Lack of Explanatory Necessity*
> 
> 
> * [P1] Aside from
> propositions describing the occurrence of her introspectively
> accessible states, *S* is justified in believing only those
> propositions which are part of the best explanation of the occurrence
> of those introspectively accessible states.
> * [P2] Moral propositions
> are not part of the best explanation of the occurrence of
> *S*'s introspectively accessible states.
> * [C]  *S* is not
> justified in believing moral propositions.
> 
> 
> 



The normative premise, [P1], is perfectly general and hence may be
equally deployed to undermine justified belief of any proposition
failing its standard. Indeed, there seems equally good reason to think
that the propositions which are the contents of most philosophical
intuitions will not be part (outside of attitude contexts) of the best
explanation of our *having* those intuitions. (See Goldman
1989, 1992 for similar skeptical arguments regarding the use of
intuitions in contemporary metaphysics.)



One possible response to this sort of argument is to concede [P1] and
to argue, for the class of propositions at issue, that they do satisfy
the necessary condition of justification. This maneuver is represented
by Sturgeon's (1984) rejoinder to Harman. Sturgeon suggests that
it is often reasonable to think that we *wouldn't* think
some action or person possessed a relevant moral property unless they
in fact possessed the property. More precisely, he holds that in order
for a given act or agent to have a different moral status it or they
would have to differ in some non-moral way and then we often would not
take it or them to have the same moral status. However, whatever the
plausibility of this account with respect to actual token actions or
persons, it is less clear how the counterfactual criterion would apply
to the moral status of actions featured in the merely hypothetical
cases found in typical methodology. Moreover, even if one takes
Sturgeon's maneuver to be successful against Harman's
attack on moral intuitions, it seems quite unclear how it is to be
extended to the many appeals to intuition catalogued above
 (SS2).



It has also been argued that [P1] is unjustified (Pust 2001). There
appear to be only two ways that [P1] could be justified. It might be
justified by being intuitive or by being supported by our intuitions
regarding particular cases of justified belief. [P1] is not, however,
intuitive. Furthermore, an inductive argument for [P1] based on our
intuitions about particular cases of justified belief will not support
[P1] since many of what seem, intuitively, to be our most justified
beliefs run afoul of [P1]. (See, for example, [I1]-[I4] from
 SS1
 and the examples in
 SS2.2
 and
 SS2.3.)
 Many of our particular epistemic beliefs, moral beliefs, and modal
beliefs seem, intuitively, no less justified than our empirical
beliefs. Indeed, some of them seem more justified. Since it seems
implausible that all of these propositions are required in the best
explanation of the occurrence of our intuitions, it seems that [P1],
which requires such a role, is undermined by such cases.



Even if there were sufficient intuitive support for [P1], defending
this argument by such means would contravene both strands of the
non-self-undermining constraint (Pust 2001). According to [P1],
*S*'s non-introspective belief that *p* is justified
only if the proposition believed plays a role in the best explanation
of *S*'s mental states. No demonstration of explanatory
relevance is involved in the two methods of justifying [P1] just
discussed. Rather, each approach would take the mere fact that the
principle is the *content* of an intuition or best explains the
content of a set of particular intuitions (i.e., intuit*eds*)
as sufficient for justified belief in that principle. This is to treat
intuit*eds* as supporting evidence for a principle allowing
only intuit*ings* to count as evidence. Moreover, since [P1]
states a necessary condition for the justified acceptance of
*any* proposition not about the occurrence of an observation or
intuition, acceptance of [P1] itself is justified only if it satisfies
the very requirement it articulates. Unfortunately, because [P1] is a
normative proposition about when a belief is justified, it is
difficult to see how its truth could play any role in the explanation
of *the occurrence of* any of our experiences or intuitions.
However, if [P1] does not satisfy [P1], then, if [P1] is true, we
cannot be justified in believing [P1].


#### 3.4.2 The Argument from Inexplicability of Reliability



The second argument from explanation has its origins in
Benacerraf's (1973) epistemological objection to Platonism in
mathematics. Benacerraf argued that the best semantic accounts of
mathematics (e.g., Platonist ones) were in tension with our best
theories of knowledge (e.g., causal ones) and that attempts to bring
the truth conditions of mathematical statements into closer epistemic
proximity to human subjects were semantically inadequate. Though he
claimed to favor "a causal account of knowledge" and such
an account is now generally thought mistaken, it should be noted that
Benacerraf motivated the causal connection constraint by noting that
one may justify the claim that *S* does not know *p* by
arguing that *S* 



> 
> 
> could not have come into possession of the relevant evidence or
> reasons: that [*S*'s] four-dimensional space-time worm does
> not make the necessary (causal) contact with the grounds of the truth
> of the proposition
> 
> 
> 



for *S* to have adequate evidence (1973: 671).



Field (1989) provides a Benacerraf-style epistemic challenge to belief
in mathematics (construed in a Platonist fashion), one which he
alleges 



> 
> 
> does not depend on any theory of knowledge in the sense in which the
> causal theory is a theory of knowledge; that is it does not depend on
> any assumption about necessary and sufficient conditions for
> knowledge. (pp. 232-233)
> 
> 
> 



On his account, the fundamental problem has to do with *the
impossibility of explaining "the reliability of our
beliefs" in the domain in question*. More precisely, he
alleges that "if it appears impossible to explain" how our
beliefs about some entities or our grounds for the beliefs "can
so well reflect the facts about them," then 



> 
> 
> that tends to undermine the belief in .... (these) entities,
> *despite whatever initial reasons we might have for believing in
> them.* (p. 26, emphasis added)
> 
> 
> 



Though Field's argument has various of our beliefs as it target,
it seems to support the following argument against intuition:



> 
> 
> *The Argument from Inexplicability of Reliability*
> 
> 
> * [P1] If we have good
> reason to think that there is no explanation of why our intuitions are
> reliable, then we are not justified in believing *p* on the basis
> of the intuition that *p*.
> * [P2] We have good
> reason to think that there is no explanation of why our intuitions are
> reliable.
> * [C] We are not
> justified in believing *p* on the basis of the intuition that
> *p*.
> 
> 
> 



The non-normative premise, [P2], seems to extend to all necessary
truths if the explanation of reliability mentioned in [P1] requires
any sort of counterfactual sustaining relation between the truth
makers of the propositions in question and our psychological states.
The failure of explanation here is intimately linked to the intuitive
deviance of counterfactuals featuring in their antecedents the
negations of necessary propositions. The standard semantics treats
them as uniformly and vacuously true and so there is little
informative sense to be made of the notion that were some proposition
we take to be (necessarily) true to be false we would believe (or
intuit) otherwise than we do. As it is implausible that *all*
our beliefs in non-contingent matters are unjustified, this cuts
against [P1] if it is taken to require a counterfactual supporting
kind of explanation.



If, on the other hand, [P1] requires only that we have reason to think
our reliability not utterly mysterious, then, while [P1] is more
plausible, the relevant instance of [P2] may be false. It has been
suggested that the provision of an explanation of our having the
intuitions we do would, in virtue of the impossibility of such
propositions as we intuit having different truth values, suffice as
*an* explanation of their *reliability*. There is no
particular reason to think that our intuitions lack explanation while
our other mental states have an explanation. That explanation, when
conjoined with our *prima facie* justification for believing
the contents of our intuitions (and our being *prima facie*
justified isn't challenged on this construal of the argument)
seems to suffice as *an* explanation of our reliability. Put
another way, if our reliability is a necessary accompaniment of having
a certain content, then we have no reason to think our reliability is
*inexplicable*. The explanation, in this sense, of our
reliability is a straightforward consequence of the necessarily true
contents of our intuitions and the psychological explanation for our
having those particular intuitions (Pust 2004; Grundmann 2007: 84; but
see Schechter 2010).



It may also be argued (Pust 2004) that it isn't, as seems
assumed by Field's objection, clearly possible for a creature to
have intuitions significantly different from our own. Given the more
constrained accounts of intuition discussed above, it is not clear
that a creature might have intuitions with contents *generally*
contradicting our own. That such a creature is metaphysically possible
is itself a modal claim apparently requiring justification by
intuition and such intuitions seem to be lacking. This response to the
explanationist can be elaborated in the context of a theory of concept
possession according to which a necessary condition of the genuine
possession of a given concept (of the sort of primary interest in
philosophical investigation) is the reliability of one's
intuitions regarding hypothetical cases. Such an account is justified
by intuitions and so cannot be an independent justification of them.
It may, however, still reasonably be thought to be an explanation
(though not a causal one) of their (necessary) reliability.



Finally, just as was true with respect to the Argument from Lack of
Explanatory Necessity, there remains the concern that any attempt to
justify believing [P1] and [P2] will run afoul of the
non-self-undermining constraint by relying on intuitions about
*justification* and *explanation* in order to argue that
intuitions do not justify belief.


### 3.5 Defenses of Intuitions: Self-Support and Epistemic Circularity



There are, broadly speaking, two ways of defending the use of
intuitions as evidence. The first possible defense would be an
empirical defense of intuitions by arguing against the second premise
of the Argument from Lack of Independent Calibration
 (SS3.2).
 The defense would proceed by providing an inductive argument, based
on non-intuitive evidence, that the contents of intuitions (either
generally or of some specific sort) are reliable.



The only other apparent possible defense of the thesis that intuitions
*prima facie* justify belief in their content appeals, as does
the traditional rationalist, to the fact that there are many
particular propositions which one seems justified in believing simply
in virtue of their being the content of a rational intuition (Bealer
1998; BonJour 1998). The strength of the conclusion is, of course,
more supported to the extent that such examples are multiplied. And,
as noted above, there appear to be many such examples.



This defense may be generalized by claiming that intuition *is
self-supporting* insofar as the general claim that intuitions
provide *prima facie* justification for belief in their
contents is itself intuitive. The possibility of such a defense is the
result of the same fact that revealed that all of the extant local
skeptical arguments run afoul of the non-self-undermining
constraint--the fact that intuitions seem to be the only source
of justification for claims about justification, reason, evidence, and
other epistemic properties.



The obvious concern about this sort of defense (in both its particular
and general form) is the fact that it necessarily involves epistemic
circularity of some kind. That is, it defends the appeal to intuitions
as reasons for belief by appeal to intuitions. It seems clear that
epistemically circular defenses are sometimes illegitimate, as when
questions about the epistemic probity of appeals to a crystal ball are
answered by consulting the ball. However, as indicated above
 (SS3.2),
 it also appears that *some* sort of epistemic circularity is
inevitable in the attempt to defend our most basic modes of evidence
and justification. Exactly when such circularity is epistemically
disabling and when, if ever, it is acceptable is a difficult question
which cannot be here treated in detail (Alston 1986, 1993; Bergmann
2006; Cohen 2002; Vogel 2008). However, a few remarks are in
order.



First, if epistemic circularity is *always* unacceptable, then
it is impossible to defend the appeal to intuition. However, the same
result will follow (ultimately) for any putative source of evidence.
So, while it will be the case that the use of intuitions as evidence
cannot be defended, it will also follow that the reliance on
perception, memory and introspection can also not be defended.
Universal skepticism would appear to follow. Alternatively, if
epistemic circularity is sometimes acceptable, then no reason has been
provided why it is not acceptable in the case of rational
intuition.



Second, if we focus on the question of whether we are *prima
facie* justified in accepting the contents of our intuitions,
there may be a feature which distinguishes intuition from all other
putative sources of evidence. Only intuition is clearly capable of
epistemic self-support because it is the only source which produces
non-doxastic states with *epistemically normative content*.
Whether or not apparent perception that *p*, introspection that
*p*, or apparent memory that *p justify* us in believing
their content is, it seems, a question they cannot answer as their
content is never epistemic. Hence, intuition appears distinguishable
from our other putative sources of evidence in being *both*
required for a coherent epistemology and capable of epistemic
self-support. So, if any source of evidence can be defended against
global skeptical attack, it seems that intuitions can.



Recently, a number of philosophers have argued that the epistemic
credentials of intuitions can be defended by appealing to similarities
between perceptual justification and intuitive justification or to a
general doctrine regarding non-inferential justification. According to
*perceptual dogmatism*, a person having a perceptual experience
or a perceptual seeming with propositional content *p* is thereby
*prima facie* justified in believing *p* (Pryor 2000).
According to *intuitive dogmatism*, a person having an
intuition or intellectual seeming with propositional content *p*
is thereby *prima facie* justified in believing *p*.
According to *general dogmatism*, when it seems to a person
that *p*, that person is thereby *prima facie* justified
in believing *p*. It follows from general dogmatism that
intuitions, as characterized by the various versions of the *sui
generis* state view above
 (SS1.3),
 are a source of justification (Huemer 2005, 2007). Moreover, it seems
extremely plausible that if perceptual dogmatism is true, then so is
intuitive dogmatism (Chudnoff 2011b; Koksvik 2011; Bengson 2015).



Whatever the merits of general or perceptual dogmatism, it is
important to recognize that appealing to them in defending intuitive
dogmatism involves *exactly* the same sort of epistemic
circularity as that involved in the more straightforward defense
previously noted. This is because all versions of dogmatism are
themselves justified entirely on intuitive grounds--by the fact
that they properly accommodate our various intuitions about the
conditions under which a person has non-inferential propositional
justification. Hence, appeals to dogmatism of any sort are ultimately
justified only if intuitions do provide *prima facie*
justification and so cannot serve as an independent defense of the
appeal to intuitions. Epistemic circularity in the epistemology of
intuition appears unavoidable.


## 4. Experimental Philosophy and Intuitions


### 4.1 The Nature of Experimental Philosophy



In the last ten to fifteen years, there has been an explosion of
interest in research involving the scientific or empirical
investigation of intuitions of philosophical interest. Such projects
are now frequently grouped under the rubric of "experimental
philosophy." (For general characterizations of experimental
philosophy see Knobe and Nichols 2008, Appiah 2008, and Nadelhoffer
and Nahmias 2007.) At least four broadly-individuated projects in
experimental philosophy can be distinguished.



The first project, "*the psychology project*," aims
to discover how people ordinarily think. Knobe and Nichols claim that
the results of such inquiries "have great philosophical
significance in their own right ... for traditional philosophical
questions" (2008: 12). This claim is motivated in part by the
idea that questions which occupied the attention of historically
significant philosophers ought to count as philosophically significant
questions. As many philosophers of antiquity and the early modern
period made various claims about human psychology, such questions, it
is claimed, count as philosophical questions which may be better
pursued by modern psychological inquiry.



The second project, "*the verification project*,"
aims to determine if the various propositions which philosophers
allege to be intuitive, pre-theoretical, or "part of common
sense" are, in fact, intuitive to ordinary non-philosophers.
This project is motivated both by the general conviction that
empirical claims, such as those regarding the extent to which some
belief or intuition is shared by others, require adequate empirical
support, and by the suspicion that what philosophers find intuitive or
regard as commonsensical may be the result of their specialized
training, theoretical allegiance, or general cognitive biases
(Nadelhoffer and Nahmias 2007: 125; Knobe and Nichols 2008: 9). An
example of this approach can be found in Nahmias and colleagues'
investigations of free will (2006, 2007).



The third project, "*the sources project,*" aims to
discover the psychological mechanisms or processes that produce
people's intuitions. According to Knobe and Nichols, it is
motivated by the "hope ... that we can use the information
to help determine whether the psychological sources ... undercut
the warrant for the beliefs" based upon the source (2008: 9).
Similarly, Allman and Woodward suggest that



> 
> 
> better understanding of the sources and character of moral intuition
> will help to clarify whether and when it has a legitimate role in
> moral argument. (2008: 167) 
> 
> 
> 



Examples of this approach include: Greene's (Greene et al. 2001;
Greene 2003: 848) fMRI investigations of moral judgment (criticized in
Berker 2009), Horowitz's (1998) attempt (see also Sunstein 2005)
to explain certain intuitions taken to support the doctrine of doing
and allowing using Kahneman and Tversky's prospect theory
(criticized in Kamm 1998 and van Roojen 1999), and aspects of Nichols
and Knobe's (2007) investigations of the role of affect on
judgments regarding the compatibility of determinism and moral
responsibility.



The fourth project, "*the variation project*,"
seeks to determine the extent of variation in intuitions between
different groups, persons or persons-at-times or persons-in-contexts.
Many working on this project hold that the empirically discovered
variation in intuitions gives us reason to believe that intuitions are
unreliable (Alexander et al. 2010). Examples of this approach (which
traces its main intellectual lineage back to Stich 1988) include
Weinberg et al. (2001) on cross-cultural variation in intuitions about
knowledge (criticized in Sosa 2007), Swain et al. (2008) on order
effects in intuitions about knowledge (criticized in Sosa 2007),
Buckwalter and Stich (2013) on gender variation in intuitions of many
sorts, and Machery et al. (2004) and Mallon et al. (2009) on
cross-cultural variation in intuitions about reference (criticized in
Ludwig 2007; Devitt 2011; Deutsch 2009; Sytsma and Livengood
2011).


### 4.2 The Experimental Evidence



For experimental philosophers seeking to investigate the sources,
character, and distribution of intuitions of philosophical interest,
the primary method has consisted of asking subjects questions about
hypothetical scenarios, or less frequently, about principles or
generalizations. The evidence has been responses (whether binary
[yes/no] responses or graded [Likert scale] responses) to such survey
questions. Those pursuing the sources project and the variation
project also aim to determine which factors co-vary with
answers--cultural or ethnic group, socio-economic status, region
of brain or cognitive processes implicated in answering the question,
psychopathology, order of questions, framing of questions, etc.



Of course, traditional first-person armchair methods seek to determine
which features of the content of the scenario under consideration vary
with one's intuitions. Indeed, this is exactly how one endeavors
to test or to make more precise some general thesis in many areas of
philosophy. Proponents of the sources project and the variation
project however, seek to determine which features of those considering
the scenario or of framing or presenting the same question vary with
the relevant intuitions.



There have been a variety of worries raised about the adequacy of
survey methods as means of gaining access to *intuitions* of
the relevant sort. The strength of these worries vary according to the
conception of intuition. If, as claimed by various *sui
generis* state accounts
 (SS1.3),
 intuitions are not beliefs or mere dispositions to believe, then the
inferential route from evidence consisting of survey responses to
conclusions about intuitions is considerably lengthened.



First, differences in responses may be produced by different ways of
"filling in" a schematic hypothetical case (Sosa 2007;
Horvath 2015). Second, there may be multiple concepts answering to a
single word (Sosa 2007). (For some recognition of this fact by
experimental philosophers, see the use of the
"coin-flipping" case by Weinberg et al. (2001) and Swain
et al. (2008) to exclude subjects who use "*S* knows that
*p*" to mean merely that *S* has high confidence that
*p*.) These two suggestions do not raise the possibility that
that the subjects in such surveys are not responding on the basis of
intuitions. Rather, they raise the possibility that the intuitions are
not intuitions regarding the same property or about the same case.
(See Alexander and Weinberg 2007 for the suggestion that both of these
concerns apply equally to non-solipsistic proponents of the
traditional armchair methodology.)



A third, more general, worry is that such surveys run a risk of
eliciting from subjects responses determined by something other than
their intuitions regarding the answer to the survey
question--e.g., by implicatures determined by what a sentence is
typically used to communicate (Adams and Steadman 2004; Deutsch 2009;
Bach 2002) and by more general pragmatic factors governing the
determination of speaker meaning and task interpretation. These
worries may be especially pressing in the odd and ambiguous context of
a set of hypothetical and often bizarre cases presented by a
philosopher to a philosophically naive subject unaware of the
nature of the discipline (Scholl 2007: 580; Cullen 2010; Ludwig 2007).
Bengson (2013) argues that it is plausible that many survey responses
are often not indicative of subjects' intuitions but are instead
the product of guesses, hunches, or inferences.



Some proponents of survey methods claim that such worries have very
low prior probability and should not be taken seriously without
experimental confirmation. Those who raise them, however, claim to
have significant independent evidence of their general relevance
(Cullen 2010; Scholl 2007) or their importance in producing the
particular results at issue (Bengson 2013). Some of these problems
seem difficult to control for without engaging subjects in something
like philosophical dialogue and dialectic (see Kauppinen
2007)--i.e., by doing philosophy with them--which is thought
by many experimental philosophers to be a form of biasing or data
contamination.



A final worry, of relatively recent vintage, concerns the extent to
which the results in question are reproducible or robust. A number of
recent studies have provided reason to think that many published
psychological results are not reproducible, with studies in social
psychology being especially likely to fail attempts at reproduction.
Exactly what to make of this fact and how to respond to it is a matter
of much current debate, but it should be noted that experimental
philosophers have begun to pay attention to the problem and to seek
replication of their results. The issue is quite complicated and the
research moving quickly, but it appears that quite a few of the claims
of cultural or gender differences have not proved robust
(Seyedsayamdost 2014, 2015; Adleberg et al. 2014). These claims of
variation, as noted below, have been the primary empirical basis of
skepticism regarding the evidential value of intuition.



Nothing precludes experimental philosophers from circumventing some of
the concerns just noted by using experimental paradigms other than the
administering of surveys. They may use reaction-time studies from
cognitive psychology (Arico et al. 2011), empirical evidence from
neuroscience (Allman and Woodward 2008; Greene et. al. 2001),
evolutionary biology, or other sources. While such sources of evidence
are not subject to the difficulties of surveys, they also appear
unlikely to produce direct evidence of use to the verification project
or the variability project because these projects require responses to
the abstract and detailed linguistic descriptions of cases one
typically presents in philosophical analysis. Indeed, Scholl (2007)
suggests that the most methodologically satisfactory experimental
philosophy will be primarily a version of the sources project
implicating rather low-level processes immune, in virtue of their
modularity, from the interpretive and pragmatic difficulties outlined
above.


### 4.3 Experimental Philosophy and Skeptical Challenges



The sources project is, as noted above, often presented as a possible
means of justifying skepticism regarding some class of philosophical
intuitions. An analogy suggested by Knobe and Nichols (2008) is to
debunking explanations of religious beliefs. Theorists engaged in such
projects argue that religious belief (or religious experience on which
such belief is based) is produced by some questionable process such as
wish fulfillment, desire for a father figure, cultural indoctrination,
etc. It is then argued (or assumed) that this fact about the source of
the belief (or its direct internal ground) undermines the epistemic
credentials of such beliefs.



This may suggest that some skeptical proponents of the sources project
aim to motivate an instance of the Argument from Unreliability
 (SS3.3).
 As an example, consider Greene's fMRI-based arguments (Greene
et al. 2001; Greene 2003, 2007) against certain
"characteristically deontological" intuitions in ethics.
The primary experimental data on which his argument is based is the
fact that portions of the brain independently implicated in emotional
reaction are more active when subjects consider cases giving rise to
characteristically deontological intuitions than when they consider
cases giving rise to characteristically consequentialist intuitions.
However, critics will allege
 (SS3.3)
 that attempts to show that a process is unreliable (independent of
disagreement) require independent access to the target domain and such
intuition-independent access seems lacking for most of the target
domains of philosophical inquiry. In this vein, Berker (2009) argues
that the best argument in Greene's work rests largely on other
*intuitions* about the general normative insignificance of the
factors within hypothetical cases to which Greene believes
deontological intuitions are responsive. (See Unger 1996 for an
entirely *a priori* criticism of many "characteristically
deontological" intuitions for their apparent responsiveness to
intuitively normatively insignificant factors.)



The aforementioned analogy to debunking explanations of religious
belief might also be taken to suggest a version of the Argument from
Lack of Explanatory Necessity
 (SS3.4.1).
 According to that argument, the provision of an explanation of the
occurrence of the intuitions in question (the intuit*ings*)
which does not appeal to the truth of their contents (the
intuit*eds*) undermines belief in their contents. The role of
experimental work might be thought to be to support the factual
premise of that argument (see Greene 2003: 849 for such a suggestion).
As we have seen
 (SS3.4.2),
 critics will claim that the argument relies on a questionable
normative premise and violates the non-self-undermining constraint.
They may also suggest that the plausibility of the non-normative
premise of the argument derives from very general armchair (perhaps
even entirely *a priori*) reflections on the contents of the
intuitions, their truth-makers, and the nature of explanation. If so,
then the experimental investigations are idle.



Some proponents of the variation project present us empirical evidence
of disagreement between intuitions in order to motivate a version of
the Argument from Intrasource Inconsistency
 (SS3.3.2).
 Some critics of skepticism motivated by the variation project claim,
contrary to what was suggested earlier
 (SS2.4),
 that intuitions are *not* treated as evidence or reasons in
philosophical inquiry (Deutsch 2015; Williamson 2007; Cappelen 2012).
Whether such a maneuver really evades whatever skeptical implications
follow from disagreement depends on whether disagreements of belief
are epistemologically less troubling than variations in non-doxastic
justifiers.



Though critical of the variation project, Sosa's suggests that




> 
> 
> there will definitely be a *prima facie* problem for the appeal
> to intuitions in philosophy if surveys show that there is extensive
> enough disagreement on the subject matter supposedly open to intuitive
> access. (Sosa 2007)
> 
> 
> 



Relevant to determining whether the antecedent of Sosa's
conditional is satisfied are the methodological concerns about survey
methods noted above and their ability to support claims of
*intuition* disagreement. Relevant to determining the
possibility of the antecedent of Sosa's conditional being
satisfied are the distinctively *a priori* concerns raised
above
 (SS3.4.2)
 about the possible extent of disagreement, about how the existence of
widespread disagreement could be justifiably believed to exist
 (SS3.3.2),
 and, importantly, about the non-self-undermining constraint.


## 5. Further Research



In light of the foregoing, it seems that further research on the
following issues would be especially beneficial.



The first is determining the precise conditions under which epistemic
circularity is problematic. Though some epistemic circularity appears
unavoidable, this would aid in determining the relative initial
epistemological standing of intuition and perception.



The second is determining the exact actual and possible extent of
intuitive disagreement and the proper response to such disagreement.
This would enable the proper evaluation of what appears to be the most
serious sort of skeptical argument.