How to challenge intuitions empirically without risking skepticism

Midwest Studies in Philosophy 31 (1):318–343 (2007)
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Abstract

Using empirical evidence to attack intuitions can be epistemically dangerous, because various of the complaints that one might raise against them (e.g., that they are fallible; that we possess no non-circular defense of their reliability) can be raised just as easily against perception itself. But the opponents of intuition wish to challenge intuitions without at the same time challenging the rest of our epistemic apparatus. How might this be done? Let us use the term “hopefulness” to refer to the extent to which we possess a good capacity for the detection and correction of the errors of any fallible source of evidence. I argue that we should not trust putative sources of evidence that are substantially lacking in hopefulness (even if they are basically reliable), and that we are indeed already operating under such a norm in our ordinary and scientific practices. I argue further that the philosophical practice of the appeal to intuitions is, in these terms, badly hopeless...

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Jonathan Weinberg
University of Arizona

References found in this work

Knowledge and its limits.Timothy Williamson - 2000 - New York: Oxford University Press.
Reasons and Persons.Derek Parfit - 1984 - Oxford, GB: Oxford University Press.
In Defense of Pure Reason.Laurence BonJour - 1998 - Cambridge University Press.

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