Abstract
Do philosophers use intuitions? Should philosophers use intuitions? Can philosophical methods (where intuitions are concerned) be improved upon? In order to answer these questions we need to have some idea of how we should go about answering them. I defend a way of going about methodology of intuitions: a metamethodology. I claim the following: (i) we should approach methodological questions about intuitions with a thin conception of intuitions in mind; (ii) we should carve intuitions finely; and, (iii) we should carve to a grain to which we are sensitive in our everyday philosophising. The reason is that, unless we do so, we don’t get what we want from philosophical methodology. I argue that what we want is information that will aid us in formulating practical advice concerning how to do philosophy responsibly/well/better.
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Notes
For a helpful introduction, read Pust (2012). Negative positions include those of experimental philosophers, but others as well (e.g., Alexander and Weinberg 2007; Cummins 1998; Haslanger 2006; Hintikka 1999; Kornblith 2007; Machery et al. 2004; Mallon et al. 2009; Nichols et al. 2003; Weinberg 2007; Weinberg et al. 2001, 2012). Intuitions have been defended on a number of bases (e.g., Bengson 2013; Nagel 2012; Shieber 2012; Sosa 2009).
The thought that we should concentrate on the intuitions philosophers use is the idea behind the ‘expertise defence’ advanced and defended by a number of philosophers in response to challenges by experimental philosophers (Andow (?cite.Andow:forthcoming)forthcoming; Hales 2006; Horvath 2010; Kauppinen 2007; Ludwig 2007; Singer 1982, 2005; Sosa 2010; Williamson 2005, 2007, 2011).
I don’t intend to defend a principled positive account of the distinction between methodology and metamethodology, neither do I need to for my purposes. The point is simply to take a step back from particular projects in evaluative methodology and consider how such projects are best approached. The label ‘metamethodology’ provides a useful way to capture this for me. Use of this label doesn’t commit me to saying generally that ‘how should we evaluate x?’ is a meta [something] question.
One might think that it is not what in fact motivates you but what should motivate you which matters. For example, regardless of whether you want cheaper philosophy, perhaps you really ought to want more consistent philosophy. I am not sure about this. However, if that is right, then what I say in the rest of the paper still follows. This is due to the minimal/non-substantive nature of the motivation I consider in the next section. It doesn’t really seem plausible to say that one’s interest in evaluative methodology ought not to be motivated by wanting philosophy to be done well (where this is neutral as to precise axiology).
Not that tricky debates should always be avoided in philosophy. The rationale is that when debate A is very tricky (and is suspected to be intractable), settling debate A is unnecessary for making progress in debate B, and debate B is really what you want to settle, in that case there is good reason for you to avoid debate A.
The assumption that intuition-use is extant practice is fairly innocuous, as I do not suppose any particular account of what intuitions are or how philosophers use them. Philosophers definitely use the word ‘intuition’ in their philosophising. Indeed in some analytic publications the proportion of papers, in the period 2000-2009, indulging in intuition-talk is over 85 % (Andow 2015). Although the evaluation of extant practice is more interesting than that of how philosophy is done in some science fiction version of the profession, the evaluation of non-extant practices, e.g., historical methods may be of some interest.
I write in the first person plural. If your interest in having better methods is purely selfish, much the same lessons follow—just translate into the singular.
We could quibble about how to divide up the territory here. Methods of metaphilosophy are philosophical methods, might be the thought. Be that as it may, I take it the distinction I intend to track here is clear.
Of course, if you have some other motivation, then this might be no problem at all.
Weinberg and Alexander also note the further worry that insofar as any defence is supposed be a defence of traditional or current philosophical practice, those using thicker conceptions, e.g., intuitions*, run the danger of missing their target, as philosophers show few signs of using intuitions*. For, consider some of the various ‘thickeners’: having a deep sense of necessity, or being the result of conceptual competence. It might be thought rather implausible that currently or traditionally philosophers show a great deal of sensitivity to whether a judgement is accompanied by such a phenomenology or has resulted of a true conceptual competence.
Of course, there will be further decisions to be made. If we go for a thick conception, we will need to ask which. In fact, it is somewhat artificial to present the evaluative methodologist as facing a choice between thick and thin at such a general level. However, it is illuminating to think about what is at stake in approaching evaluative methodology with either kind of conception in mind.
Nado doesn’t claim all philosophers think intuition is to be evaluated monolithically but rather that this seems to be the default way of framing the debate. I am inclined to agree the debate does get framed this way, but won’t defend this claim. Another similar way the debate gets framed is by pitting Restrictionist against Cathedrist (e.g., Weinberg et al. 2012), i.e., by characterising those in the debate as pro- or anti-intuition simpliciter.
I don’t review the evidence Nado presents, nor the resultant picture of the mind. Suppose it is broadly right that psychology is this way.
I take it few people really think all intuitions deserve a negative evaluation, certainly given a thin conception of intuitions. Nonetheless, if all intuitions deserve a negative evaluation, the approach I recommend doesn’t prevent us from finding that out. One might, for example, find that there is an unreliable mechanism at the heart of all our intuition generating processes. The rejection of the monolithic approach is a rejection of being committed to only evaluating intuitions en bloc.
I should note that Nado says some things which suggest she thinks the carving might result in categories “like ‘moral intuition’, ‘epistemological intuition’, and so forth”. However, even in this case, she qualifies it: “This is indeed one possible way to re-carve the intuitive terrain, but I wish to emphasize that it is not the only possible approach. In fact, the evidence reviewed above suggests that the actual situation may be far more complicated; even within domains like moral or logical cognition, substantially different types of processing may be involved. If this is right, the epistemological features of philosophical methodology may be even more complex” (p.31–32).
One genuine loss involved in adopting a thin conception is that of a rhetorical device. Thin conceptions of intuitions make claims like ‘the evidence you present doesn’t show that intuitions are unreliable’ somewhat implausible, and being able to say such things is an asset to the restrictionist’s opponent. However, while natty turns of phrase are nice, they don’t constitute strong reasons to adopt a view. One still make the same points if you conceive of intuitions thinly, e.g., ‘the evidence you present shows that some intuitions are unreliable, but doesn’t show that [a particular subset of intuitions which I use in philosophising] are unreliable’.
In fact, it isn’t clear the distinction between hopeful and hopeless practices doesn’t amount to the distinction between having reliable and unreliable practices. However, I won’t argue for this here. Others have noted close connections between the reliability of source and the hopefulness of our relying on that source (see Brown 2013; Horvath 2010), although, not the apparent equivalence of considerations of hope and reliability (at the level of our use of a source).
An anonymous referee thought this might be irrelevant as it isn’t within the remit of philosophy to be sensitive to etiology in this way. (1) I don’t agree, and (2) my point here isn’t to say that philosophers aren’t doing their job, it is simply that we can’t tell which intuitions come from which mechanisms (by and large) and that, accordingly, knowing, for instance, that intuitions from mechanisms XYZ are unreliable, won’t be of any help, as we can’t identify which intuitions come from those mechanisms.
Moreover, I don’t mean to be dismissive about the extent to which we can be sensitive to etiology. For instance, if it turned out that intuitions from process A made my ears wiggle and intuitions from other processes didn’t, then I could track this distinction from the armchair. I don’t intend to restrict the methodologist to investigating distinctions between intuitions with etiologies which, for example, present themselves in the content of the intuitions, or are otherwise directly introspectable.
Remember that this conclusion concerns only how one should think about intuitions when doing evaluative methodology. It is not advocated, on this basis, as the correct account as to what intuitions actually are.
Thanks to Jennifer Nagel for this suggestion.
An anonymous referee asks what empirical data I would allow an IPA to detect. The answer is, in principle, any! The only restrictions will be practical ones. This is the reason why I specified that IPAs must be cheap and easy. There is no point in evaluative methodologists busying themselves with distinctions which philosophers could track while philosophising but only with the help of an fMRI scanner. We can’t be expected to do all our philosophising from within an fMRI machine. The information and advice provided should be able to be of practical help to philosophers which necessitates that the devices required are not too expensive or cumbersome to use.
My point is similar in kind to Nado’s. Nado (2014) notes that the methodological literature has been distracted by the idea of a monolithic evaluation of intuitions. I note a similar distraction.
Weinberg & Alexander themselves remain fairly quiet concerning how one should think about intuitions independently of the dialectical implications of adopting certain conceptions in the debate between cathedrist and restrictionist. Weinberg and Alexander (2014) also mention Cullen (2010), Bengson (2013), and Kauppinen (2007) among the culprits. 23 My point is similar in kind to Nado’s. Nado (2014) notes that the methodological literature has been distracted by the idea of a monolithic evaluation of intuitions. I note a similar distraction.
I take this to be the central point of Cappelen’s (2012) criticism of experimental philosophy, although there are a lot of subtleties in Cappelen’s work too, which I don’t have time to get in to.
I imagine that some will still want to object in the following way. Characterise intuitions incorrectly and when you go away and investigate ‘intuitions’ you won’t be conducting a methodological examination of intuitions. That is important. You want to know about the role of proof in philosophy, you better not end up looking at the role of evidence in philosophy. We want to know about the role of intuitions in philosophy, and, that being so, it is really important that methodologists are working with the right account of intuitions. First, let me be clear that I think the way I claim we should think about intuitions in evaluative methodology is the correct way to think about them for that project—even if it doesn’t provide an accurate characterisation of some special kind of mental state deserving of the label ‘intuition’. However, if someone were really to insist that some other way of thinking about intuitions was correct, then my response would be to distance myself from the project of doing the evaluative methodology of intuitions. If the methodologist who takes my advice doesn’t end up doing the evaluative methodology of intuitions, but of something else, then I am not too concerned. So long as they produce information which we can use to make philosophy better, that’s what I think is important—that’s what I think we all think is important.
A second suggestion might be to look at the empirical literature on intuitions in other domains, e.g., Kahneman and Klein (2009). Of course, there are many reasons to be cautious when doing this (see Andow (?andow_forth)forthcoming, for a related discussion). Perhaps psychologists, financiers, weather forecasters, and so on, may not be talking about the same ‘intuitions’ as us philosophers. Perhaps our practices are relevantly different, e.g., intuitions (if they are used) in weather forecasting are used to predict the future. Perhaps the empirical work has not been sufficiently careful to distinguish distinct mental phenomena, etcetera. Nonetheless, making educated guesses about the distinctions which might be relevant for our purposes, informed by looking at the distinctions found to be relevant to the reliability of things called ‘intuitions’ in other areas, is an improvement on just guessing.
Thanks to an anonymous referee for this last suggestion.
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Acknowledgements
Thanks to Greg Currie, Jules Holroyd, audiences in Nottingham and Vienna and anonymous reviewers for this journal whose comments on this material were very helpful. Acknowledgement is also due to the AHRC for support in the form of a PhD scholarship.
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Andow, J. Thin, Fine and with Sensitivity: A Metamethodology of Intuitions. Rev.Phil.Psych. 7, 105–125 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13164-015-0247-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13164-015-0247-2