There has been some recent work in tackling the dependence on intuitions.
The Experimental Philosophy (X-Phi) movement has been doing some very interesting stuff examining the role of intuition in philosophy, what intuitions are and to what extent they are useful.
One of the landmark experiments was doing surveys that showed cross cultural variation in responses to certain philosophical thought experiments, (for example in what cases someone is acting intentionally) e.g. Weinberg et al (2001). Which obviously presents a problem for any Philosophical argument that uses such intuitions as premises.
The next stage being explaining these variations, and how by acknowledging these issues you can remove biases, without going too far into skepticism to be useful.
To caricature the problem, if I can’t trust certain of my intuitions I shouldn’t trust them in general. But then how can I trust very basic foundations, (such as: a statement cannot be simultaneously true and false) and from there build up to any argument.
This area seems particularly relevant to this discussion, as there has been definite progress in the very recent past, in a manner very consistent rationalist techniques and goals.
[This is my first LW post, so apologies for any lack of clarity or deviation from accepted practice]
You’re right that there has been lots of progress on this issue in the recent past. Other resources include the book Rethinking Intuition, this issue of SPE, Brian Talbot’s dissertation, and more.
In fact I’m writing up a post on this subject, so if you have other resources to point me to, please do!
Weinberg is awesome. He’s going to be a big deal, I think.
Yup! Most of analytic philosophy’s foundation has been intuition, and, well… thar’s yer problem right thar!
There has been some recent work in tackling the dependence on intuitions. The Experimental Philosophy (X-Phi) movement has been doing some very interesting stuff examining the role of intuition in philosophy, what intuitions are and to what extent they are useful.
One of the landmark experiments was doing surveys that showed cross cultural variation in responses to certain philosophical thought experiments, (for example in what cases someone is acting intentionally) e.g. Weinberg et al (2001). Which obviously presents a problem for any Philosophical argument that uses such intuitions as premises.
The next stage being explaining these variations, and how by acknowledging these issues you can remove biases, without going too far into skepticism to be useful. To caricature the problem, if I can’t trust certain of my intuitions I shouldn’t trust them in general. But then how can I trust very basic foundations, (such as: a statement cannot be simultaneously true and false) and from there build up to any argument.
This area seems particularly relevant to this discussion, as there has been definite progress in the very recent past, in a manner very consistent rationalist techniques and goals.
[This is my first LW post, so apologies for any lack of clarity or deviation from accepted practice]
Welcome to LW!
You’re right that there has been lots of progress on this issue in the recent past. Other resources include the book Rethinking Intuition, this issue of SPE, Brian Talbot’s dissertation, and more.
In fact I’m writing up a post on this subject, so if you have other resources to point me to, please do!
Weinberg is awesome. He’s going to be a big deal, I think.