It is important to acknowledge that we use the word “intuition” (and its cognates) in philosophical, scientific and everyday contexts in manifold ways (cf. Andow 2015). The present thesis does not aim at providing a theory of how we use the word “intuition”.
As Ole Koksvik notes:
[I]t is not an aim [...] to investigate the use of the word ‘intuition’ and its cognates in ordinary English. Uses of the word are highly varied, and of little value to the investigation of our target mental state. [...] The target of this inquiry is not the usage patterns of words, either in everyday situations or in philosophy. (Koksvik 2011, pp. 16 sq.)
I acknowledge that sometimes we mean this and sometimes we mean that when speaking of “intuition”; there is no onesingle item that we call “intuition”, but many.
Relatedly, the aim here is not to provide a theory of all the various things we call
“intuition”. What I offer here is an account of a specific phenomenon among the many things we call “intuition”. You might have noticed that I previously used the plural
“intuitions” rather than “intuition”. This is to delineate the topic of this thesis — as something that we refer to when using “intuition” as a countable noun — from things that we call “intuition” using the word as an uncountable noun. As an uncountable noun “intuition” usually refers to traits of people (Jung 1971; Myers 1962) or mental
capacities that we possess (e.g. Gl¨ockner and Witteman 2010). Psychologists often understand “intuition” in this sense: as referring to a capacity or system — often going by names such as the intuitive “System 1” that contrasts with the deliberate “System 2”
(Kahneman 2011) — that engenders “intuitive”, i.e. largely automatic and unconscious, processes (e.g. Epstein 2008; Evans 2008; Evans and Stanovich 2013; De Neys 2017).
This system and the processes it brings about, in turn, are often taken to ground the trait of intuition in people (Betsch 2008a). This capacity- or trait-reading of “intuition”
will not be at the forefront of my interest here.
Instead, I will be primarily concerned with “intuition” in its countable sense—and more specifically: when understood as mental states: intuitions. Note that by doing so I grant that sometimes when speaking of “intuition” or “intuitions”, we do not mean mental states at all (cf. Cappelen 2012). Perhaps when we say dismissively about a claim that somebody makes “Yeah...that’s just an intuition...” we don’t refer to a mental state but to a possibly non-mental content (which might sometimes be the content of a mental state) (see e.g. Bealer 1992, footnote 7; Molyneux 2014, p. 457). I grant that such cases might well exist. However, in this thesis such cases are not the ones I am mostly interested in. I am interested in “intuitions” understood as mental states.
At the same time, the present thesis will not be concerned with all the various things we call “intuition” in its countable sense—and not with all the mental states that we call intuitions. It will be concerned with mental states that we call “intuitions” and that exhibit certain features to be specified in this chapter—this will be my target state here.
So I think the only datum required by my theory is that sometimes we use the word
“intuition” to refer to mental states and to the target state in particular.5
Ideally, the theory to be elaborated here should be a good theory of the target state.
What makes a good theory of the target state? For starters: capturing and explaining the features of the target state. I will present a selection of these features. Mostly, I haven’t come up with these features myself. One finds these properties scattered in the intuition literature. The resulting list, call it the “feature profile of intuitions”, will not be exhaustive. It will be, however, fairly extensive. This is to grant that by and large my fellow intuition theorists are collectively onto something right with their descriptions of intuitions. Attention and resources are limited, however, and individual authors attend to some features and not to others.
5Or perhaps not even that is required (cf. Bengson 2014).
This neglect is sometimes coupled with a denial that intuitions have the features other authors have identified and used in their diagnosis of what kind of state intuitions are.
Such denials seem to be often motivated by metaphysical (or phenomenal) parsimony which seems to mandate being austere in the features one ascribes to intuitions so as to avoid commitment to the existence of a mysterious state with high complexity.
This principle of parsimony, be it metaphysical or phenomenal (or both), is widely endorsed in the whole gamut of philosophy of mind. Levy, for instance, voices that “we ought to avoid multiplying mental states unnecessarily, we need to ensure that we are postulating exotic states and processes only when they are truly needed” (Levy 2016, p. 9;
see also Egan 2011, p. 67; Quilty-Dunn 2015, p. 277). An analogous parsimony principle concerning phenomenal properties is outlined by de Vignemont: “one should not posit additional phenomenal properties in one’s mental ontology when one can account for them by appealing to other properties” (de Vignemont 2019, p. 268). Specifically, with intuitions in mind, Lynch reminds us of “a good commandment to live by, philosophically speaking. Namely, thou shalt not posit mysterious faculties without necessity” (Lynch 2006, p. 231).
It is, thus, unsurprising that Paul Boghossian’s repeated worry targets the obscurity of intuitions resulting from their somewhat mysterious ontological status:
To be sure, the idea that we possess a quasi-perceptual faculty—going by the name of ‘rational intuition’—the exercise of which gives us direct insight into the necessary properties of the world, has been historically influential.
It would be fair to say, however, that no one has succeeded in saying what this faculty really is nor how it manages to yield the relevant knowledge.
’Intuition’ seems like a name for the mystery we are addressing, rather than a solution to it. (Boghossian 2000, p. 230)
The single most influential consideration against rational insight theories can be stated quite simply: no one has been able to explain—clearly enough—
in what an act of rational insight could intelligibly consist. That is, no one has been able to say how some cognitive act, of a sort that we might plausibly enjoy, is able to yield immediate knowledge of the modal properties of properties
If the theory of rational insight is to serve as a genuine explanation for how we are able to have such a priori knowledge, rather than simply acting as a
placeholder for such an explanation, it must consist in more than a suggestive label; it must somehow lay bare, in appropriate detail, how some capacity that we have gets to work on the properties we are able to think about so as to disclose their natures. (Boghossian and Bonjour 2001, p. 635)
One of the upshots of the present thesis will be that the complexity of the allegedly mysterious state is real but that the mystery around it is not. Restraint on behalf of metaphysical parsimony is thus unwarranted. We can embrace the existence of the state with all its complexity—with all its features.
But since the list will not be exhaustive: Why these features? First, as already men-tioned, this is what others say. I am, by and large, persuaded by what they say and find the mentioned features in my own phenomenology (and hope that you will too).
Second, I think that together they constitute a cluster of properties that will capture only instances of the target state, although probably not all of them.6
I think this is a good start. And starting from there will also help us see how one can accommodate the fact that some instances of the target state might lack some of the features on the list (or have additional ones).7 The third point is methodological:
the bulk of the features are phenomenal properties. Now it seems that phenomenal properties constitute a comfortable point of departure for philosophical inquiry for the simple reason that we are able to access and to say something informative about such features without leaving the armchair. Phenomenology, in contrast to subjects better reserved for experimental work such as descriptive claims about unconscious causes (i.e.
aetiology), appears as a proper province for a philosophy of mind that is concerned with describing the psychological nature of a specific mental state. This is not to say that such analytic armchair phenomenology is not without limitations but to say that it is a viable approach tophenomenally circumscribed targets. Furthermore, it does not imply that we have to stick to phenomenology and refrain from theoretical and empirical investigation beyond appearances. The idea is rather that appearances are a promising point of departure to engage in such further inquiry.
6I think that there are features among them that are found in all and only in instances of the target state.
That is, features that are had by all and only by instances of the target state. These features aremost diagnostic for intuitions while other features intuitions might share with other states. To anticipate:
I think these features are assertiveness and epistemic phenomenal valence that I will introduce in 2.2.2 and 2.2.6 respectively (you find reasons for this assessment in chapter 7, especially section 7.4). Nevertheless, sticking only to these features would conceal much of the exciting complexity of intuitions.
7Note that some of these features might not be independent and might (together with other features) imply or entail other features on the list and not on the list.
So let me put some flesh on the bones of these abstract considerations and without further ado give you a quick outlook on what is to come in this chapter.