In this chapter I hoped to illustrate that intuitions are not only phenomenally conscious but also intentional states, often taking a proposition or propositional content as their
41Although one might have actively worked towards getting or losing them.
intentional object. This content they represent assertively, i.e. as true or false. And they motivate or push the subject to assent or dissent to what they represent as true or false. In doing so, however, they fall short of fully committing the subject to their contents, akin to perceptual experiences and unlike beliefs and judgments. Furthermore, intuition experiences are gradable in two ways: on the one hand, similar to the content of perceptual experiences they can be more or less determinate in the way they represent their contents. On the other hand, they can push you to assent or dissent more or less strongly. A peculiar feature of intuition experiences is that they exhibit phenomenal epistemic valence, i.e. they can directly represent their contents either as true (positive intuitions) or as false (negative intuitions). Positive intuitions feel genuinely different from negative intuitions even if their contents are the same. They constitute phenomenal polar opposites. Finally, intuition experiences are nonvoluntary, that is, intuitions are not under voluntary control but happen to one. So intuition experiences are 1) inten-tional, 2) assertive, 3) motivainten-tional, 4) noncommittal, 5) gradable in 5.1) content and 5.2) pushiness, 6) phenomenally epistemically valenced and 7) nonvoluntary.
In concluding this chapter, I want to address a caveat: it is possible that the summarised phenomenal features were not always salient to you in your own phenomenology. This is in part due to the relative homogeneity of the grouped propositions. The various clusters of propositions were supposed to jointly illustrate specific features characterizing instances of (correct or incorrect) positive, (correct or incorrect) negative or no intuitions.
Sometimes, however, such a homogeneous grouping fails to draw a phenomenal contrast between instances where we have intuitions and instances where we don’t (cf. Dechˆene et al. 2009). So here is a more heterogeneous list of propositions that might let the mentioned phenomenal features come to the fore in a starker contrast:
1. “1729 + 4773 = 6052”
2. “2 + 3 = 5”
3. “3 + 2 = 4”
4. “If P then not not P.”
5. “If P then not not not not not not P.”
6. “1729 is the smallest number expressible as the sum of two positive cubes in two different ways.”
7. “for all conditions, there is a set containing all and only the things meeting this condition.”
8. “There are as many numbers between 0 and 1 as there are between 0 and 1000000.”
9. “There are no differences but differences of degree between different degrees of difference and no difference.”
10. “Physical objects continue to exist when we do not perceive them.”
I hope that upon reading this mixed list of propositions, some of the described features have figured more prominently into your total phenomenal state. In case you wonder, here is how somebody whose phenomenology is perfectly attuned to the illustrative purposes of this exercise (you, I hope) would have experienced the propositions: 1) 1, 5, 6, 9 should have prompted no intuition experiences (although you might have engaged in inferential judgments upon e.g. counting the “nots” in 6 etc.). 2) 2, 3, 4, 7, 8, 10 should have prompted intuition experiences. 3) 2, 4, 7, 10 should have prompted positive intuition experiences whereas in the case of 7 the positive intuition experience is incorrect. 4) 3 and 8 should have prompted negative intuition experiences whereas in the case of 8 the negative intuition experience is incorrect.
You should have experienced various phenomenal contrasts between instances of 1), 3) and 4). 1) should have contrasted with 3) and 4) in that the phenomenal features char-acteristic of intuition experiences are absent in 1) and present in 3) and 4). Furthermore, although propositions in 3) and 4) prompt intuition experiences with most characteristic phenomenal features being roughly the same, they still contrast quite starkly. This is be-cause the phenomenal epistemic valence is positive in 3) and negative in 4). In fact, this difference in valence leads also to a valence-specific difference in assertiveness (asserting a proposition to be true vs. asserting a proposition to be false) and pushiness (push to assent vs. push to dissent). Finally, correct and incorrect intuitions prompted by 3) and 4) should not significantly differ when it comes to their phenomenology (although there might, of course, be differences in degrees of content-determinacy and pushiness).
Chapter 3
Intuitions and Where (Not) to Find Them: Extant Theories of Intuitions
3.1. Introduction: Intuitions for Philosophy
Now that we have a firmer grasp on the target state, namely intuitions, it is time to go into the theories that have been proposed about it. In the present chapter, I will review extant theories of intuition. These theories, however, should be savoured with some caution. The reason why is that they tend to be developed with a specific goal in mind: intuition theorists engage with the general question “What are intuitions?” in order to provide an answer to the more specific question “Are intuitions justifiers?”. As Elijah Chudnoff notes:
Some philosophers think that intuitions are a source of justification [...] for beliefs [...]. Other philosophers are more skeptical. They doubt that intu-itions are a source of justification for beliefs [...]. The motivation to defend one or the other of these orientations, non-skeptical or skeptical, drives most discussions about intuition. As a consequence most of these discussions fo-cus on issues that seem to bear immediately on the epistemological status of intuitions [...] Prior to all these questions, however, is the question: What are intuitions? Depending on what intuitions are, they might or might not be reliable, they might or might not possibly justify beliefs [...], they might
or might not be embarrassed by recent experimental studies, and they might or might not be coherently foresworn. (Chudnoff 2011b, p. 625)
This narrow epistemological take is a consequence of the largely metaphilosophically mo-tivated intuition debate within which intuition theorizing is embedded. This is because many philosophers accept Herman Cappelen’s “Centrality thesis”:
Centrality (of Intuitions in Contemporary Philosophy): Contempo-rary analytic philosophers rely on intuitions as evidence (or as a source of evidence) for philosophical theories. (Cappelen 2012, p. 3)42
The implications of this thesis, in turn, are well captured by Michael DePaul and William Ramsey:
In contemporary analytic discussions [...] “intuition” has become the name for whatever it is that might provide philosophy with a distinctive method and hence preserve it as a separate (in principle) intellectual domain. Our disagreement about the nature and epistemic authority of intuitions is at root a battle for the preservation of philosophy as an autonomous field of inquiry (DePaul and Ramsey 1998, p. 7).
I won’t belabour the fact that contemporary intuition theorizing seems to be overly metaphilosophically motivated and thus concerned with the epistemology of intuitions but simply note it for now. One of the consequences, anyway, is the occasional lack of clarity on whether claims about e.g. the similarity between intuition and other mental states are to be understood epistemologically or metaphysically (or both). On the face of it, it seems it is one thing to say that some state is like another state when it comes to its epistemology and quite another to say the same when it comes to its metaphysics.
Baring, of course, the possibility that the epistemology of a state exhausts its nature, i.e. metaphysics. In fact, one does find such approaches:
I propose to identify intuitions [...] by their putative justificatory role in philosophical practice: intuitions are responses that are putatively either foundational [...] or quasi-foundational justifiers for philosophically relevant non-empirical belief (Kauppinen 2013, p. 361).
42There are some who deny this descriptive claim about philosophy (Earlenbaugh and Molyneux 2009;
Cappelen 2012; Molyneux 2014; Deutsch 2015). Nado calls members of this comparatively small faction in the debate “intuition deniers” (Nado 2016). Some have explicitly attempted to refute intuition denial (Bengson 2014; Andow 2017; Nado 2017) while others have directly argued that philosophersdo use intuitions as evidence (Climenhaga 2018).
Be it as it may, after noting that the theories to come could be understood as making claims about the epistemology of intuitions or about the metaphysics of intuition (or both), I will assume that they are to be understood as proposals about the nature of intuitions and not (or not only) as proposals about the epistemology of intuitions. After all, what I am after here is a psychological kind, not an epistemological kind (cf. Koksvik 2011).
Note further that individual claims that a theory makes about intuitions can be true without making thereby the whole theory true. Conversely, a theory as a whole can be false without negating the truth of some of its individual component claims. Why this obvious point? Because, on the one hand, I think that the claims that different theories make regarding the individual features of intuitions are by and large on the right track.
This is what Chapter I was about. On the other hand, I think that the overarching theoretical frameworks in which these claims are embedded are mistaken.
Here’s a bird’s eye view on the frameworks proposed so far. A few say intuitions probably do not exist (e.g. Smith 2000, pp. 23 sq.). Call this Eliminativism about intuitions.
Others claim that intuitionsarejudgments or beliefs (see e.g. Lewis 1983, p. x; Plantinga 1993; Van Inwagen 1997, p. 309; Williamson 2004, 2007; Lynch 2006; Ludwig 2007). Call thisSimple Doxasticism. Yet others claim that intuitionsaredispositions (e.g. Sosa 1996, 1998; Earlenbaugh and Molyneux 2009) or inclinations (or attractions or temptations) to judge or believe (e.g. Van Inwagen 1997, p. 309; Sosa 2006, 2007c,a; Boghossian 2009).
Call this Dispositional Doxasticism and Inclinational Doxasticism respectively. Taken together, these views constitute the family of intuition theories called Doxasticism.43 Then there are those opposed to Doxasticism. They maintain that intuitions are pre- and non-doxastic. This faction typically uses perceptual experiences as an analogy to anal-yse intuitions. Such Perceptualism is not to be understood literally: No one is claiming that intuitionsareperceptual experiences. Instead, they either claim that intuitions and perceptual experiences belong to the same kind of superordinate state such as “seem-ings” or “presentations” (e.g. Bealer 1992; Bengson 2015) or that there are instructive similarities between intuitions and perceptual experiences without committing to further ontological linkage (e.g. Koksvik 2011; Chudnoff 2013c). Call themQuasi-Perceptualism orComparative Perceptualism respectively. In what follows I’ll zoom in on the various views and their issues.
43Chudnoff was, as far as I can tell, the first one to talk of “Doxasticism” and “Perceptualism” in the context of intuitions (Chudnoff 2011b).
3.2. No Intuitions?
There are those who deny the existence of mental states that are appropriately called
“intuitions”. Here is a rather clear statement of such “Eliminativism” about intuitions:
[What] exactly is an intuition? One rarely encounters clear statements of their nature. If an intuition is a thought, why employ a term suggesting it is anything less than that? If intuition is a particular type of thought, what type? If an intuition is an emotion or feeling, what distinguishes intuition from ill-founded feelings? [...] Are intuitions desires? Hunches? Stubborn convictions that a person refuses to surrender? The point is, we cannot be sure whether we have such things, let alone what role they play in providing moral guidance, until we know precisely what intuitions are. One suspects that the absence of definition, keeping intuition afloat as a hazy “something”
between a thought and a feeling, may hide the fact that there are no such things. (Smith 2000, pp. 23 sq.)44
Taking such a position is often motivated by the air of mystery surrounding the topic of intuition (see section 2.1). The most straightforward way to understand Eliminativism is as the thesis that the term “intuition” has no extension. It might have an intension but there are no things that fit it and to which the term could extend. Intuitions are thus like Swampmans, Orfolei, Flying Spaghetti Monsters or Phlogiston: they do not exist.
Eliminativism: The term “intuition” has no extension—intuitions do not exist.
Another motivation to adopt Eliminativism is the highly varied use of the word “in-tuition” and its cognates, sometimes not referring to mental states at all, but e.g. to commonsensical ideas or linguistic devices used to hedge epistemic risk.45 Embracing Eliminativism, however, seems to be a premature response to such polysemy. “Intuition”
sometimes means this and sometimes means that, depending on the context etc. That is, intuitions are not like Swampmans or Flying Spaghetti Monsters but more like bats.
44For other philosophers who seem to embrace something resembling Eliminativism see Ayer 1956, p. 31;
Fumerton 1990, p. 6; Cappelen 2012.
45Looking outside of philosophy one finds psychologists noting something similar about “intuition”:
“There are as many meanings for the term intuition as there are people using it.” (Betsch 2008b, p. 3) In fact, intuition “has been given so many different meanings, some opposite to others, that it makes one wonder whether the term has any meaning at all.” (Epstein 2008, p. 23)
The polysemy of the word “bat” does not lead us to deny the existence of a winged mammal that navigates space through sonar; nor the existence of an elongated tool used to hit objects. It seems perfectly fine to continue to engage in debates about how exactly bats navigate space, what it is like to be a bat or whether wooden bats are preferable to metal ones. Just be clear what you mean by “bat”.
Perhaps intuitions are not (only) like bats but they’re also like chefs. Colloquially, “chef”
is often synonymously used with “cook”. So perhaps “intuitions” are synonymous to some other, less confusing term. In fact, perhaps everything that can be said about intuitions can be said in less ambiguous terms, maybe using a few more words than just one. If (some of) the things that we call intuitions exist and if all these things can be called by less ambiguous names, then perhaps the most reasonable position to adopt is not Eliminativism but Reductionism about intuitions, i.e. the thesis that intuitions are best understood as other familiar mental states. Perhaps one could then adopt Eliminativism regarding the term “intuition”, petitioning to purge it from our language practice on behalf of clarity. This is what Smith in part alludes to in the quote above. In any case, Eliminativism as atheory of intuition experiences appears clearly insufficient:
Insufficiency of Eliminativism(IE):
(IE-P1) Eliminativism is true if it can accommodate (i.e. acknowledge and explain) the feature profile of intuition experiences (“intuitions”, from now on).
(IE-P2) Eliminativism cannot (and does not want to) accommodate the feature profile of intuitions.
(IE-C1) Therefore, Eliminativism is false.
Coming back to the things we call intuitions: another possibility is that (some of) the things that we call intuitions exist and that some but not all of these things can be called by less ambiguous names. That is: there are states among the various things to which the term “intuition” extends for which there is no better pre-theoretical term than “intuition”. Perhaps there is something characteristic and substantial that we call
“intuition” and that has not yet been sufficiently theoretically elucidated to count as well-understood. This is what I, together with non-reductive Perceptualists, think is the case.46 I’ll introduce positions from both sides in turn, starting with one that is often stylised as a form of Reductionism about intuitions: Doxasticism.
46However, I do not think that this has to lead to Non-Reductionism about intuitions.
3.3. Intuitions and Doxastic States
“Doxasticists” (Chudnoff 2011b) are considered “reductionists” (Koksvik forthcoming) or “minimalists” (Bengson 2015) since they take intuitions to be reducible to a rela-tively “familiar” class of mental states such as (some subset of) beliefs or judgments (Simple Doxasticism) or (some subset of) dispositions or inclinations to believe or judge (Dispositional Doxasticism, Inclinational Doxasticism).47 The subsets of the states in question are often taken to be individuated by a specific kind of content (e.g. modal, abstract, commonsensical or counterfactual) and/or aetiology (e.g. positively such as based on sheer understanding or conceptual competence or negatively such asnot based on memory, inference, introspection etc.).48 Here are Ludwig, a Simple Doxasticist, constraining the aetiology of intuition to understanding or conceptual competence and Sosa, a Doxastic Inclinationist, constraining the content and aetiology of intuitions to modal content and to our capacity for understanding respectively (for a discussion of these constraints see next section):
I will use “intuition” to mean an occurrent judgment formed solely on the basis of competence in the concepts involved in response to a question about a scenario, or simply an occurrent judgment formed solely on the basis of competence in the concepts involved in it (in response, we might say, to the null scenario). (Ludwig 2007, p. 135)
S rationally intuits that p if and only if S’s attraction to assent to <p> is explained by a competence (an epistemic ability or virtue) on the part of S to discriminate the true from the false reliably (enough) in some subfield of modally strong propositional contents that S understands well enough, with no reliance on introspection, perception, memory, testimony, or inference (no further reliance, anyhow, than any required for so much as understanding the given propositional content). (Sosa 2007a, p. 58)
47I borrow the overarching terms “doxastic attitudes” for beliefs and judgments and “doxastic tenden-cies” for doxastic dispositions and inclinations from Bengson 2015. I use the term “doxastic states”
to refer to and capture both.
48We will see that introducing such constraints is not unique to the doxastic camp but can also be found among Perceptualists (Bealer 1999; Brogaard 2013, p. 279).
3.3.1. Intuitions as Doxastic Attitudes
Assume, with Simple Doxasticism, that intuitions are doxastic states such as beliefs or judgments. Unfortunately, what “doxastic” exactly means is not clear. The way the distinction between doxastic and non-doxastic accounts is drawn , often suggests that being “doxastic” just is being a belief or judgment, i.e. it denotes belief- or judgment-hood.49 Thus:
Simple Doxasticism: Intuitions are beliefs or judgments.
At first glance, it seems plausible that in certain contexts we do in fact call some kinds of judgments or beliefs “intuitions”. Van Inwagen, for example, states that philosophers
“call their philosophical beliefs intuitions because ‘intuition’ sounds more authoritative than ‘belief”’ (Van Inwagen 1997, p. 309). It thus appears uncontroversial that some-times when philosophers speak of “intuitions” they mean some kind of judgment or belief.50
What kinds? Let me clarify a bit more: beliefs can be dispositional or they can be occur-rent; judgments, while essentially occurrent, are sometimes unconscious and sometimes conscious. In fact, perhaps the only way beliefs can be conscious and occurrent is in the form of conscious judgments (Crane 2013). A state or event that is conscious can be phenomenally and/or access conscious (Block 1995; Bayne and Chalmers 2003). It might also be reflexively conscious. By that I mean that a subject is conscious or aware of being in a certain mental state, sometimes but not always additionally to this mental state being phenomenally and access conscious as well. Consider Crane’s illustration for the case of worry:
[C]onsciously worrying is not the same as being conscious that one is wor-rying. One could become conscious that one is worried about one’s finances by discovering something about one’s behaviour, say; and one could do this without undergoing the kinds of inner events which constitute conscious wor-rying. (Crane 2001, p. 106)
49In other philosophical contexts “doxastic” is sometimes used to mean that the content of a mental state has or can be described as having a propositional structure. This, however, cannot be meant here since both, doxastic and non-doxastic theorists of intuitions consider intuitions to be states that can be described as having propositional contents.
50And, as Koksvik points out,sometimes when we talk of conscious belief we actually mean intuition experiences (Koksvik 2011, p. 192).
Consciously worrying is here to be understood as a phenomenally conscious state. On the other hand, whatever state one is in when one becomes consciousthat one worries, say thinking about one’s behaviour, one is at this point reflexively conscious of one’s worry while not necessarily being consciously worrying, i.e. one’s worry being phenomenally conscious.51
I take it that if something has a phenomenology it is also conscious and if something
I take it that if something has a phenomenology it is also conscious and if something