Intuitions as Doxastic Tendencies

This becomes clearer when one considers the accounts that claim that intuitions are not doxastic attitudes but doxastic tendencies which in contrast to doxastic attitudes can be noncommittal: intuitions are dispositions or inclinations to believe or judge. What it means to be a “doxastic” tendency can perhaps be straightforwardly understood: a tendency to believe or judge. This relaxes the notion of being “doxastic” compared to understanding “doxastic” as belief- or judgment-hood. Being “doxastic” is then only insofar informative about the nature of the tendency as it tells us what it is a tendency

for, i.e. what output it can generate or make more likely: namely beliefs or judgments.

It tells us something about the functional (rather than e.g. phenomenal) profile of the state so classified (cf. Nimtz 2010, pp. 363 sq.; Werner 2014, pp. 1768 sq.). However, many different states can have beliefs or judgments as their outputs. To name a few:

perceptual experiences can lead to corresponding judgments and beliefs (or make them more likely), beliefs lead to corresponding judgments, judgments lead to corresponding beliefs.

3.3.2.1. Dispositional Doxasticism

Let’s have a look at Dispositional Doxasticism first:

Dispositional Doxasticism: Intuitions are dispositions to believe or judge.

On the face of it, Doxastic Dispositionalist accounts on their own appear unequipped to account for even very basic features described in chapter 2, such as being occurrent and conscious.Being a disposition does not by itself explain phenomenological features.

Seemingly, it is rather in tension with a state having a phenomenology at all.⁵⁷ It seems generally accepted that experiential “mental phenomena are necessarily occurrent.

There are no dispositional experiential phenomena” (Strawson 2009, p. 159). It is thus unsurprising that Koksvik points out:

[T]he phenomenology of having an intuition is one of the facts about it. It is one of the things that needs to be explained. An account need not preserve appearances in the sense of vindicating our initial view of the phenomenology.

But there is pressure toeitherdo that, or to explain the appearancesaway: to explain why appearances are misleading. The problem with the dispositional account is that it does not seem capable of doing either. (Koksvik 2011, p. 95;

see also Pust 2014)

What should be clear is that by classifying intuitions as doxastic dispositions virtually nothing concerning the phenomenological features of intuition is elucidated. Rather, it remains a fact about intuitions that doesn’t square well with them being dispositions and has to beadditionally explained or stipulated. Note that this is even so if the functional profile of dispositions fits well with the functional profile of intuitions. Thus, classifying

57This is not to suggest that there is no sense in which one can be said to be disposed to experience or re-experience an intuition. This is presumably what we mean when we say “Anna has the intuition that torturing kittens for fun is wrong” while Anna is sleeping.

intuitions as doxastic dispositions can elucidatefunctional features of intuitions. All the same: it doesn’t fit well with thephenomenal profile of intuitions.⁵⁸

3.3.2.2. Inclinational Doxasticism

We are left with the candidate idea that intuitions are inclinations to believe or judge.

Inclinational Doxasticism: Intuitions are inclinations to believe or judge.

However, what are these inclinations? Inclinations do not seem to be some established canonical kind of mental state such as beliefs, desires, perceptual experiences, emotions or intentions. The notion of canonicity is supposed to capture that the existence and place of some mental states such as beliefs and perceptions are less controversial than the ones of others—such as the mentioned inclinations. ⁵⁹ On some reading, often invoked by opponents of Doxasticism, they just are dispositions. This reading runs into the aforementioned problems. However, this is not the only possible interpretation. For instance, Sosa 2007a defends an account of intuitions as some kind of inclinations to believe or attractions to assent which he calls “intellectual seemings”.⁶⁰ Although he does not make it the centre of his attention he describes these inclinations at some point as being conscious and having a phenomenology:

[I]ntuitive seemings remain distinctive conscious states in their own right, without collapsing into beliefs as is shown by paradoxes [...] On this account,

58There is also an important caveat concerning the functional role of intuitions. If intuitions are dispo-sitions, then we might be able to explain that intuitionscause beliefs or judgments by e.g. making them more likely. However, when it comes to the functional role of intuitions, the central project does not revolve around its causal role (which is, in fact, rather neglected) but around its rationalising or justifying role for judgments or beliefs (Bengson 2015, p. 723). While we can see how dispositions cause judgments or beliefs, it is unclear how dispositions could rationalise or justify judgments or beliefs: A disposition to judgethat p might explainthat I judgethat pbut it does not explainwhy it might have seemed reasonable or justified to me to judgethat p (Bengson 2015, p. 727; cf. Quinn 1993, pp. 235 sqq.; for this point being made against a dispositionalist account of pain see Bain 2013, S75 sq.). In other words, dispositions are explanatory or motivating but not normative or justifying reasons for judgments (cf. Alvarez 2017).

59Neither are inclinations canonical kinds of phenomenal states such as perceptual experiences and feelings (prominently comprising bodily feelings, emotional feelings and moods), i.e. mental states that relatively uncontroversially have a distinctive phenomenology.

60Note that “Doxasticism” is a term used by opponents of Doxasticsim to subsume a rather heterogen-uous class of theories. It is questionable whether this charitably captures what is essential about some theories so subsumed. It appears well possible that Sosa’s account of intuitions as conscious inclinations is one of the accounts which is not straightforwardly characterised as “doxastic”.

intuition is a conscious state of felt attraction (Sosa 2007c, pp. 51 sq., my emphasis).

What are these [intellectual] seemings? It is helpful to compare deliberation on a choice or the pondering of a question, where we “weigh” reasons pro or con. Switching metaphors, we feel the “pull” of conflicting considerations.

No matter the metaphor, the phenomenon itself is familiar to us all. There is something it islike to feel the pull of contrary attractions as we deliberate or ponder. (Sosa 2007a, pp. 47 sq., his emphasis)

This seems to distinguish inclinations from dispositions.⁶¹ However, we are not told what kinds of states inclinations are. Although Sosa claims that we are familiar with the phenomenon, he does not tell us whether inclinations just belong to some canonical kind of mental state or whether they are a mental kind of their own.

John Bengson is the only one who appears to make some steps in the former direc-tion, drawing on Tamar Schapiro’s treatment of inclinations (Bengson 2015; cf. Schapiro 2009). Schapiro analyses inclinations as cases of “unmotivated” desires characterised as “motivational states that exert an influence on the will [...] independently of de-liberation”, being “necessarily action-oriented” (Schapiro 2009, p. 230). Against this background, Bengson at some point explicitly diverges from a dispositional reading of inclinations. He subsumes inclinations under “familiar” kinds of states (as apparently Sosa) and labels inclination theories as “doxastic” and “minimalist” (e.g. Bengson 2015, pp. 712 sqq.).

At the same time, Bengson, inspired by Schapiro, suggests that inclinations are akin to conscious desires (e.g. ibid., p. 727, fn 19). What does that mean? Are inclinations (some kind of) desires? If inclinations are some kind of desires, then they are indeed familiar and minimalist but it is hard to see in what sense they are “doxastic” apart from being in some curious way a desireto believe or to judge, perhaps similar to wishful thinking. This would perhaps equip Inclinational Doxasticism with resources to account

61Or, if one – seemingly contradictory – takes being a disposition as being compatible with having a phenomenology (thus being conscious and occurrent), it at least spells out further features of the specific dispositions that intuitions are which are not implicated solely in virtue of being a disposition (cf. Werner 2014, pp. 1768 sq.). This is, being a disposition is a functional description and is wholly uninformative when it comes to phenomenology while it might becompatible with having a phenomenology (see main text above). Compare that for example with what we learn about the phenomenology of a mental statemerely by learning that it is a perceptual experience or an emotion.

for the pushiness of intuition experiences. However, it would sit ill with the assertiveness of intuition experiences, and in fact, with their justificatory epistemic role.

Now, if inclinations are only in some way similar to desires but not desires, then it is again open what kind of states they are. Are inclinations perhaps just a kind of their own? Then they might somehow be doxastic but a theory that introduces the new kind of inclinations to our mental ontology would hardly be called “minimalist”. It rather appears “inflationist”. In any case, inclinations turn out to have as unclear a place in our mental ontology as intuitions. That makes inclinations unfit to be a point of departure for explaining the features intuitions have in terms of what kind of states they are, for inclinations themselves would require such an explanation.

To emphasize: If we want to classify intuition experiences by identifying them with other states, it would be progress if this identification would be with states that we know more about than about intuition experiences themselves. This would allow us to tap into a richer body of knowledge about intuitions. On any count, such a classification would have to do more explanatory work than the mere deployment of a suggestive new label such as “inclinations” or an “ontologically free-floating” re-description of the features intuition experiences have (or a combination of both).⁶²

To sum up on Doxasticim: Simple Doxasticism and Dispositional Doxasticism have their merits in being ontologically parsimonious and, in virtue of identifying intuitions with beliefs or judgments or dispositions to believe or judge, they seem to straightforwardly satisfy epistemic desiderata. However, these approaches fail quite thoroughly to account for the features of intuition experiences. On the other hand, Inclinational Doxasticism seems to do slightly better on phenomenological grounds but it leaves us with big question marks regarding ontology (as well as epistemology).

Here is a rough and ready comparison between intuitions and doxastic states that illus-trates what is wrong with Doxasticism:

62This is not to downplay the value of careful (phenomenological) analysis of intuitions.

A comparison of features between intuitions and doxastic states

It appears that Doxasticism as a theory of intuition experiences is insufficient:

Insufficiency of Doxasticism(ID):

(ID-P1) Doxasticism is true if it can accommodate the feature profile of intuitions.

(ID-P2) Doxasticism can either not acknowledge the feature profile of intuitions (Simple and Dispositional Doxasticism) or it cannot explain it (Inclinational Doxasticism).

(ID-C1) Therefore, Doxasticism cannot accommodate the feature profile of intuitions.

(ID-C2) Thus, Doxasticim is false (or at least incomplete).

On any count, if intuition experiences are some kinds of doxastic states, they will be ratheratypical doxastic states or “doxastic” in a sense that rather bends the term. This suggests that in the absence of an independent argument, the stipulation that intuition experiences are doxastic states becomes rather unmotivated andad hoc. And even if a case can be made for the possibility to identify intuitions with doxastic states this does not preclude that a better case can be made for identifying intuitions with some other kind of states. Either way one does have a case for looking further for a more suitable and informative identification.