Abstract
Rational intuitions involve a particular form of understanding that gives them a special epistemic status. This form of understanding and its epistemic efficacy are not explained by several current theories of rational intuition, including Phenomenal Conservatism (Huemer, Skepticism and the veil of perception, 2001; Ethical intuitionism, 2005; Philos Phenomenol Res 74:30–55, 2007), Proper Functionalism (Plantinga, Warrant and proper function, 1993), the Competency Theory (Bealer Pac Philos Q 81:1–30, 2000; Sosa, A virtue epistemology, 2007) and the Direct Awareness View (Conee, Philos Phenomenol Res 4:847–857, 1998; Bonjour, In defense of pure reason, 1998). Some overlook it; others try to account for it but fail. We can account for the role of understanding in rational intuition by returning to the view of some of the early Rationalists, e.g. Descartes and Leibniz. While that view carries a prohibitive cost, it does contain an insight that may help us solve the problem of giving understanding its due.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
Although I shall sometimes write simply of intuition, my concern here is with rational intuition, as opposed to intuition more broadly construed to include such things as hunches and “physical intuitions” (Bealer 2000). I do not claim that the four theories considered here are the only plausible contemporary accounts of rational intuition. Limited space requires a limited examination. A consideration of these theories shows how the problem at hand arises in a number of quite different contemporary views of rational intuition.
All the theories I shall examine allow for the possibility of someone’s intuiting (P). In the last section of the paper, I shall consider the possibility that (P) is beyond rational intuition.
Some may object: If, after the machine treatment, whenever I have a twenty-eight-speckled hen experience, it seems to me that I’m appeared to twenty-eight speckledly and I feel inclined to believe that I’m so appeared to, then that is sufficient for me to recognize my experience as an experience of twenty-eight speckles. Yet, suppose the machine treatment is a bit different. My neural connections are rewired so that, upon having a twenty-eight-speckled hen experience, it seems to me as if Zeus exists and I’m inclined to believe accordingly. That doesn’t mean that I now recognize my twenty-eight-speckled hen experience as an experience of Zeus. It just means that when I have the experience, it seems to me as if Zeus exists and I feel inclined to believe accordingly. The fact that, whenever I have an experience, things seem a certain way to me and I feel inclined to believe that they are that way is not sufficient for me to recognize the experience as an experience of things being that way.
After the machine modification, it seems to me as if I’m appeared to twenty-eight speckledly. For all I argue here, it may, all other things being equal, be more epistemically appropriate for me to believe that I am appeared to twenty-eight speckledly, if it seems to me as if I am so appeared to. My claim here is that even such a seeming state does not raise the epistemic status of my belief to the level of Edna’s belief that she is so appeared to, based on her recognition of the character of her experience.
The second and third birdwatchers may gain some epistemic support for their beliefs from the fact that it seems to them as if the bird is of a certain type. I do not claim that their beliefs are without epistemic merit, only that their beliefs lack the epistemic merit of the first birdwatcher’s belief.
The following objection was suggested by Ernest Sosa.
See Huemer (2001) for an additional and quite helpful discussion of Phenomenal Conservatism in general and as it applies to perception in particular.
If a “suitably full understanding” of fractions is simply one that leads P to seem true to us, then Elias and I both have such an understanding of fractions. The proposal assumes that we have, already within Phenomenal Conservatism, given an adequate analysis of the form of understanding integral to a rational intuition and absent from a merely machine-based one.
Note that some people, e.g. children, who gain knowledge by rational intuition never form, or even have the concepts to form, the meta-belief that their understanding of the proposition is “suitably full.”
Critics have raised a similar objection to Phenomenal Conservatism’s treatment of perceptual beliefs. It overlooks the fact that the cause of the perceptual seeming state can make a difference in the epistemic appropriateness of the resulting belief. See (Markie 2005, 2006; Bergmann 2008; Huemer 2006, 2007; Tucker 2010).
Where Huemer allows for our intuiting a false proposition, Plantinga does not allow for our seeing a false proposition to be true. He does, however, introduce the concept of a priori belief, which he defines as follows: “So what is it to believe p a priori? Take the conditions severally necessary and jointly sufficient for seeing that p is true; to believe p a priori is to meet the set of those conditions minus the truth conditions—that is, the condition that p be true in the case of seeing directly that p is true) and the condition that p follows from q (in the case of seeing indirectly that p is true.)” (p. 106). I shall concentrate on Plantinga’s account of (directly) seeing a proposition to be true. My points are equally applicable to his account of a priori belief.
Plantinga may take the peculiar phenomenology of rational intuition to include more than a proposition’s seeming to be (necessarily) true to us and our feeling inclined to believe it, but whatever the nature of this peculiar phenomenology, there’s no reason to think that the mathematics machine cannot produce it in us.
Consider Plantinga’s discussion of a similar case: “Suppose my cognitive faculties are redesigned by an Alpha Centaurian superscientist in an experimental mood; he modifies them in such a way that when I consider any proposition of the sort n is prime (where n is any of the first 10,000 natural numbers), it has for me the very appearance of necessity enjoyed by even the most elementary of elementary truths of arithmetic. I form the belief that n is prime, for some fairly large number n less than 10,000; chances are I form a false belief; but even if it happens to be true, I don’t know that it is. Here the problem is that this belief, though necessarily true, is not formed in me by virtue of faculties functioning properly and successfully aimed at truth” (p. 108).
Consider too Michael Bergmann’s (2006) account of empirical doxastic justification: S’s belief B is justified if and only if (i) S does not take B to be defeated and (ii) the cognitive faculties producing B are (a) functioning properly, (b) truth-aimed and (c) reliable in the environment for which they were ‘designed’. If we extend Bergmann’s account to cases of rational intuition, it offers a Plantinga-like account of why Elias’ rational intuition of (P) supports a justified belief and my machine-based intuition does not.
It seems that Plantinga would endorse this result. He tells us that, “a self-evident proposition is such that a properly functioning (mature) human being can’t grasp it without believing it. This makes self-evidence a species-relative notion; there may be angels or Alpha Centaurians for whom quite different propositions are self-evident in this sense” (p. 109).
Sosa has indicated in correspondence that this is his preference and speculated that contextual factors may play a role in determining the required degrees of understanding, attraction and reliability.
Sosa speculates (p. 51) that all basis-dependent foundational justification may be virtue foundational justification, even as some cases of virtue foundational justification are not cases of basis-dependent foundational justification.
See Bealer (2000, pp. 8–9) for a discussion of a case similar to my mathematics machine example in which space aliens use telepathy to give a someone a contingently reliable faculty of guessing what is necessarily true.
See Bealer (1996) for a reply.
Conee’s and Bonjour’s position is of a piece with Richard Fumerton’s general characterization of the internalist approach to basic belief and knowledge:
“(T)he internalist wants to ground all justification on a ‘direct confrontation’ with reality. In the case of a non-inferentially justified belief, the internalist wants the fact that makes true the belief ‘there before consciousness’” (1995, p. 83).
Note the similarity between this problem in Conee’s and Bonjour’s accounts of rational intuition and the problem of the speckled hen, as it plays out for direct awareness theories of epistemically basic empirical beliefs. See, in particular, Fumerton (2005).
See Chisholm (1989) for an example of this general approach developed for a priori knowledge rather than rational intuition.
Plantinga is representative in his rejection of these implications and his association of them with a “traditional account” of rational intuition.
(T)he tradition also held that self-evident propositions… are such that we can’t even grasp or understand them without seeing that they are true. But is the idea that it is logically impossible (in the broadly logical sense) that I understand such a proposition and fail to see that it is true? There seem to be some such propositions, but surely there aren’t many—not nearly as many as, according to the tradition, there are self-evident truths. A better position, I think, is that a self-evident proposition is such that a properly functioning (mature) human being can’t grasp it without believing it. This makes self-evidence a species-relative notion (pp. 108–109).
The tradition also “displayed an unhappy penchant for the view that intuition is infallible” (p. 109).
Consider a similar difference, that between believing that (P) on the basis of expert testimony and believing that (P) on the basis of having deduced it from first-principles of mathematics. The latter is clearly epistemically superior to the former, but how? Each may be a case of justified belief or even knowledge. The latter involves more information, more justified beliefs or knowledge, but it is not just that. The additional information in the latter case provides an explanation of how it is that (P) is true. In proving (P) for oneself, one gains an explanation of how it is that (P) is true. There is epistemic value in having that explanation. Elias, in my example, directly intuits (P) without deducing it, but he is in a similar position. It only seems to him that (P) because he has other (justified) mathematical beliefs that provide an explanation of how (P) is true.
References
Bealer, G. (1996). ‘A priori knowledge:’ Replies to William Lycan and Ernest Sosa. Philosophical Studies, 81, 163–174.
Bealer, G. (2000). A theory of the a priori. Pacific Philosophical Quarterly, 81, 1–30.
Bergmann, M. (2006). Justification without awareness. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Bergmann, M. (2008). Externalist justification and the role of appearances. Unpublished.
Bonjour, L. (1998). In defense of pure reason. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Chisholm, R. (1989). Theory of knowledge. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.
Conee, E. (1998). Seeing the truth. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 4, 847–857.
Descartes, R. (1628). Rules for the direction of the mind, (J. Cottingham, R. Stoothoff, & D. Murdoch, Trans.). The philosophical writings of descartes. Cambridge: Cambridge (1985).
Fales, E. (1996). A defense of the given. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield.
Fumerton, R. (1995). Metaepistemology and skepticism. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield.
Fumerton, R. (2005). Speckled hens and objects of acquaintance. Philosophical Perspectives, 19, 121–139.
Huemer, M. (2001). Skepticism and the veil of perception. Lanham, Md: Rowman and Littlefield.
Huemer, M. (2005). Ethical intuitionism. Houndmills, UK: Palgrave Macmillan.
Huemer, M. (2006). Phenomenal conservatism and the internalist intuition. American Philosophical Quarterly, 43, 147–158.
Huemer, M. (2007). Compassionate phenomenal conservatism. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 74, 30–55.
Leibniz, G. W. (1973). 1686 Discourse on metaphysics (G. Montgomery, Trans.) Leibniz. La Salle, IL: Open Court Publishing.
Markie, P. (2005). The mystery of direct perceptual justification. Philosophical Studies, 126, 347–373.
Markie, P. (2006). Epistemically appropriate perceptual belief. Nous, 40, 118–142.
Plantinga, A. (1993). Warrant and proper function. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Sosa, E. (1996). Rational intuition: Bealer on its nature and epistemic status. Philosophical Studies, 81, 151–162.
Sosa, E. (2003). Epistemic justification: Internalism vs. externalism (with Laurence Bonjour). Oxford: Blackwell.
Sosa, E. (2007). A virtue epistemology. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Tucker, C. (2010). Why open minded people should endorse dogmatism. Philosophical Perspectives, 24(1), 529–545.
Acknowledgement
I am grateful to participants in the discussion for their helpful comments. I have benefitted from discussions of this material with Matt McGrath and from the very helpful criticisms of a referee for this journal.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Markie, P.J. Rational intuition and understanding. Philos Stud 163, 271–290 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-011-9815-1
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-011-9815-1