Abstract
We argue that the term “intuition”, as it is used in metaphilosophy, is ambiguous between at least four different senses. In philosophy of language, the relevant “intuitions” are either the outputs of our competence to interpret and produce linguistic expressions, or the speakers’ or hearers’ own reports of these outputs. The semantic facts that philosophers of language are interested in are determined by the outputs of our competence. Hence, philosophers of language should be interested in investigating these, and they do this by testing what we would say or understand in hypothetical communication situations. In the final section of the paper we suggest some methods for investigating these outputs which are independent of whether subjects report them, and hence which might be used as an alternative to the standard use of hypothetical cases.
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Notes
This assumption is shared by rationalist defenders of the method of cases, such as Bealer (1996), their experimental critics, such as Machery et al. (2004), and Weinberg (2007; Weinberg et al. 2001), as well as deflationists about intuitive judgments, such as Williamson (2007). See (Cappelen 2012) for a critical discussion of this assumption.
For an example, see Joshua Alexander’s discussion of the role of intuitions in philosophy and the x-phi criticism of it in (Alexander 2012).
This list doesn’t exhaust the options, of course. Perhaps philosophy isn’t a cognitive enterprise but rather a normative one.
We use the notion of an “ideal type” in Max Weber’s sense. As is argued in (Cohnitz and Häggqvist 2009) there are mixed cases too.
This distinction is similar to the distinction between constitutive and non-constitutive groundings for evidential relations, drawn in (Goldman 2007).
In this paper we mainly concentrate on the expertise defence to motivate our discussion of the role of intuitions in philosophical semantics. Devitt has also offered other arguments against the experimentalist challenge.
As an aside, it is worth mentioning that we do not believe that all areas of analytic philosophy use intuitions in such unproblematic ways. We take contemporary metaphysics to be an area where intuitions have a problematic epistemic status, although we will not argue for this claim here. Likewise, if Devitt at least gives a correct account of what he is up to in philosophy of language, then his project is in trouble.
Cf. (Baillargeon 2004).
We are using ‘systematization’ in lieu of a better word. We don’t consider systematization here to be revisionary and a form of normative regimentation, constructing order amongst our intuitions which isn’t initially there. Thus, on our understanding, folk physics is descriptive (even if it allows for a competence/performance-distinction).
We use single quotation marks for mentioning, and double quotation marks for using, a quoted expression.
In this paper we will call ‘first-level intuitions’ any outputs of an intuitive capacity that are considered constitutive of the capacity by an inquiry that has that capacity as its subject matter.
Besides, we can already master such sensorimotor skills before acquiring a first language.
Given an inquiry into an intuitive capacity, and first-level intuitions that are considered to be constitutive of the subject matter of that inquiry, we will call ‘second-level intuitions’ the outputs of the intuitive capacity of a person undertaking that inquiry to form expectations or beliefs about the subject matter of the inquiry.
This is meant to remind the reader that these theories are neither about intuitions, nor about the underlying psychological processes that lead to them. Of course, in the development of physical theories, intuitions of various sorts play a role.
Note that this involves at least two sources of error. On the one hand we might make a conceptual mistake and think that the mental state we assume somebody else (or ourselves) to be in falls into the wrong category (perhaps by refraining from classifying a mental state as an instance of knowledge when it’s not a case of certainty), on the other hand, we might just be bad at verbally reporting our mental state ascriptions (for whatever reason).
This also explains why thought experimentation is a more viable strategy for theorizing about reference than about (say) physics. Consider Devitt’s favourite example of expertise (e.g. in Devitt 2006, 104): a palaeontologist who is very skilled at distinguishing fossils of pig jawbones from other objects. In our terminology, she has highly reliable first-level intuitions about pig jawbones. Obviously, an intuition-independent theory of pig jawbones is available. Just as obviously, thought experimentation is not going to tell us much about what pig jawbones are. Suppose, however, that we are interested in finding out how our palaeontologist manages to distinguish the jawbones from the non-jawbones; which criteria is she using? (That is, suppose we are looking for a second-level theory of the palaeontologist’s first-level intuitions.) Now things change completely: presenting the palaeontologist with imaginary cases (hypothetical white stones with various perceptible features) might tell us a lot about what kinds of factors are guiding her first-level intuitions. (But there is no reason to assume that thought experimentation is our best way of studying her first-level intuitions; cf. our observation 1 above.).
‘How a linguistic expression E refers’ is our shorthand for, roughly, ‘whether external factors can play a role in determining what E refers to, and if so, which kinds of external factors: causal chains, or underlying essences, or the judgments of experts, or…’.
A similar account of conceptual analysis is defended in (Cohnitz 2006).
Later in the paper, Jackman discusses how different systematizations could lead to pluralism in the concept of reference, such that it would be correct for Asians to say about us and our usage of ‘Gödel’ that the latter “refers” to Schmidt. But this seems to assume that what is at issue is a conceptual analysis of REFERENCE. No doubt, ‘reference’ is a technical term with a specific, regimented meaning in philosophy of language. But, as we have argued elsewhere (Cohnitz and Haukioja 2013), theories of reference are accounts of how terms of certain semantic types refer; there is no reason to assume that such theories would fall out of a conceptual analysis of a technical term like ‘reference’. But if, on this latter conception, a second-level theory of our first-level intuitions about the reference of expressions would normatively influence our intuitions, then philosophers would end up speaking a language different from ordinary English, and it’s not clear why philosophers should be interested in that. (Note that, on the other hand, it is attractive to have regimented technical concepts, even if they diverge from those expressed by terms in ordinary English. See Cohnitz 2006 for details.).
For details, see (Cohnitz and Haukioja 2013).
Depending on how ‘should’ is understood here, it could also be an instance of some other type of intuition, but certainly not a linguistic one.
As will hopefully become clear below, this isn’t a linguistic intuition if judged by the same criterion which makes the judgment that the proper name ‘Gödel’ refers to Gödel and not to Schmidt a “metalinguistic intuition” in the quote above (i.e. by taking the statement expressing the judgment at face value and checking what it seems to be about). As we explain below, there is—also according to this criterion—a sense in which there is a linguistic intuition encapsulated in the judgment that Gödel should not have taken credit for the work: the linguistic intuition in this case is the speaker’s intuitive choice to use the name ‘Gödel’, rather than some other expression, in reporting his or her moral intuition.
Unless beliefs about such empirical generalizations are part of linguistic competence. As we will explain below, we only need to assume that there is such a thing as linguistic competence; we don’t need to make any strong assumptions about its realization in the human mind/brain.
There is a trend in metaphilosophy to argue for the epistemic purpose of a certain methodology on the basis of what would make most sense given that we use that methodology. This form of argument strikes us as bizarre, since it puts methodologies first and the epistemic interests second. It’s like, “hey, since we don’t want to leave these comfy armchairs, what could we be interested in, so we can study it from here?”
Remember that Devitt classifies metalinguistic judgments on the basis of their syntax, not on the basis of the source of the judgment.
That meaning is consciously available to us, and thus in principle reportable, should arguably be taken as a fundamental fact that a theory of meaning has to accommodate (cf. Smith 2006).
“Not dogs” are vegetarian hot dogs, also sometimes called “pickle dogs”, cf. Wikipedia (2012).
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Acknowledgments
The material in this paper was presented at various conferences and workshops during the last months. We would like to thank those audiences, the anonymous referees for this journal, Alex Davies, Michael Devitt, Nat Hansen, Sören Häggqvist, Ole Koksvik, Genoveva Martí, Jennifer Nagel, and John Perry for helpful comments. Research on this paper was supported by the Thyssen Foundation, Estonian Science Foundation grants SFLFI11085E, IUT20-5, and ETF9083, and Norwegian Research Council grant 212841.
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Cohnitz, D., Haukioja, J. Intuitions in Philosophical Semantics. Erkenn 80, 617–641 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10670-014-9666-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10670-014-9666-1