Abstract
In traditional armchair methodology, philosophers attempt to challenge a thesis of the form ‘F iff G’ or ‘F only if G’ by describing a scenario that elicits the intuition that what has been described is an F that isn’t G. If they succeed, then the judgment that there is, or could be, an F that is not G counts as good prima facie evidence against the target thesis. Moreover, if these intuitions remain compelling after further (good faith) reflection, then traditional armchair methodology takes the judgment to be serious (though not infallible) evidence against the target thesis—call it secunda facie evidence—that should not be discounted as long as those intuitions retain their force. Some philosophers, however, suggest that this methodology is incompatible with epistemological naturalism, the view that philosophical inquiry should be sensitive to empirical observations, and argue that traditional armchair methodology must deemphasize the role of intuitions in philosophical inquiry. In my view, however, this would be a mistake: as I will argue, the most effective way to promote philosophical progress is to treat intuitions as having the (prima and secunda) evidential status I’ve described. But I will also argue that philosophical inquiry can produce a theory that is sensitive to empirical observations and the growth of empirical knowledge, even if it gives intuitions the prima- and secunda-facie evidential status that traditional armchair methodology demands—and thus that traditional armchair methodology, if properly practiced, need not be abandoned by naturalists, or even (except for a few exceptions) be much revised.
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Notes
Michael Devitt (2010a, Ch. 12, p. 252) contrasts ‘epistemological’ with ‘metaphysical’ naturalism, and David Papineau (2009) contrasts ‘methodological’ with ‘ontological’ naturalism. Papineau’s particular version (2009, p. 1) holds that
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Philosophical claims are synthetic, not analytic.
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Philosophical knowledge is a posteriori, not a priori.
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Central questions of philosophy concern actuality, not necessity; they are aimed at understanding the world, not the realm of metaphysical modality (though he does admit (p. 27) that modal reflection can help us determine whether claims about such things as identity and constitution are true in the actual world).
As I’ll argue, however, there are theories other than Papineau’s that (more or less) meet these conditions.
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See my (2004), (2009), (2011).
In my view, however, there are a (very) small number of exceptions, e..g. claims involving phenomenal concepts (and perhaps—though this is less plausible than one might imagine—other sorts of demonstratives). I have argued for this elsewhere (e.g. 2004, 2011) and will not discuss this question further here.
Some philosophers identify intuitions with intuitively compelling beliefs about whether item F belongs to category G, while others identify them with the (non-conceptual) bases of such beliefs—in Bealer’s (1996) terminology intellectual seemings, or in Sosa’s (2007) terminology as pulls to believe certain statements on the basis of our understanding of what is required for membership in that category. (Unlike Bealer (and perhaps Sosa), however, I would not suggest that intellectual seemings (or pulls to believe) have a purely rational source. All that should be required, in my view, is for it to seem compelling that, given what we know, an item with these characteristics is (or is not) a member of that category.)
One also needs to say something about the source of concrete-case intuitions, and what counts as enough ‘further reflection’ to give intuition-based judgments secunda facie evidential status.
I am grateful to an anonymous referee for pressing me to clarify my views on this question.
See his (2012),1.2.2, 6.2.1–3, 7.1 for a characterization of the distinctive (and problematic) features of intuitions. For the record, however, I share Cappelen’s worry (p. 131) about whether examination of the passages in which now-famous philosophical set pieces are originally introduced—that is, the ‘written evidence of philosophical practice’—provides the best examples of how these ‘cases’ are used in philosophical inquiry. Better, I think, to examine how they are presented to undergraduates by philosophers who, perhaps after struggling with tentative (and sometimes turgid) initial presentations, have come to believe that the scenario described is at least a prima facie counterexample worth discussing.
And thus I believe, contrary to Cappelen, that many (if not all) philosophical thought experiments attempt to present a scenario that elicits an ‘F but not G’ judgment that ‘seems true’ (or at least not easily dismissed—which I think would count as success enough for those attempting to test a thesis). I address the question of why these judgments should be taken seriously in Sect. 5.
Clearly, these remarks do not do justice to Cappelen’s bold and bracing challenge to the widespread contention that an essential feature of philosophical method is the (explicit or implicit) appeal to ‘intuition’. This would require a more extensive discussion. However, though I’ve suggested, in the text, that a more liberal characterization of what goes on when philosophers appeal to intuition (or intuition-based categorical judgments) can escape some of his objections, there is another objection I’d like to address, namely, his critique of the ‘so-called method of cases’. In the body of the paper I’ve referred uncritically to intuitions (intuitive judgments) about ‘cases’, e.g. Gettier cases, trolley cases, Frankfurt cases, and other scenarios designed to raise the question of whether something presented as an F must be, or could fail to be, a G—and Cappelen maintains that there is much that is problematic in philosophers’ appeal to such cases. He argues (p. 190; see also p. 132) that ‘when we say that philosophers appeal to cases, what we mean is that they draw our attention to philosophically significant features of the world (or the way the world could have been)’. This seems correct, but (in my view) it also seems to capture what most philosophers think they’re doing when they appeal to Gettier cases, trolley cases, and the like, namely, presenting evidence that there is at least a prima facie counterexample to a philosophical thesis. Cappelen continues, however (p. 190), that ‘describing such cases is hardly a method...[Moreover] it encourages the view that when we discuss cases, the subject matter is the description given of the world...not the described feature of the world’. I agree with the latter contention, but insofar as philosophical method includes testing a thesis against potential counterexample, it seems that ‘appeal to cases’ can indeed be a legitimate part of philosophical method.
Insofar as claims based on these intuitions are regarded as knowable a priori, Devitt argues, armchair methods are incompatible with naturalism, since ‘there is (2010a, p. 253), ‘only one way of knowing, the empirical way that is the basis of science’.
He writes: ‘this [empirical] way of knowing is holistic...we have no good reason to think that our troublesome knowledge of mathematics, philosophy, and logic could not be accommodated within this holistic empirical picture’. Though Devitt here claims that logic and mathematics, in addition to ‘philosophy’, can be known in the ‘empirical way’, I’ll confine my attention to our knowledge of philosophical theses about such things as knowledge, moral action, and freedom—and of the philosophical intuitions on which this knowledge is based. Compare this chapter, p. 275, and Ch. 12 (pp. 257–258).
Unlike Devitt, who rejects the a priori entirely as (2010b, p. 287) ‘mysterious, even mystical’, perhaps (p. 290) ‘occult’, Papineau holds that philosophical naturalists can accept the possibility of a priori knowledge. On his view, however, a priori knowledge extends only to ‘analytic’ truths such as ‘Triangles have three angles’ or ‘Saffron is yellow’, and thus is empty, uninformative—and completely irrelevant to philosophy, which ‘consists of synthetic theorizing, evaluated against experience’. Papineau, like Devitt, contends (forthcoming, p. 5), that in their well-known thought experiments, ‘Kripke and Gettier were appealing to familiar empirical assumptions about names and knowledge respectively, rather than to purely conceptual intuitions’.
Even if (p. 4) this is merely ‘empirical information that is part of pre-existing thought, as opposed to information prompted by novel evidence’.
Once again, these would be cases that involve phenomenal concepts derived from introspection. See note 3.
Of course, if armchair methods that give special status to concrete-case intuitions can face the ‘tribunal of experience’ even indirectly, they cannot yield knowledge that is strictly a priori. Some traditional philosophers may thereby regard any such version of armchair methodology as fatally flawed. However, even if the distinction I sketch between scientific and armchair methodology cannot count as the distinction between the empirical and the a priori as traditionally conceived, it seems (more or less) extensionally equivalent to the distinction that traditional philosophers have wanted to draw and defend.
And thus any experimental philosophers persuaded by (Cappelen (2012), Ch. 11) to give up the practice of canvassing philosophical intuitions will find many suggestions for other things to do.
Weatherson’s four criteria (2003, pp. 8–9) for judging a theory are:
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Counterexamples count against it—but (a) ones that generate stronger intuitions that they are correct count more, and (b) obscure or fantastic cases count against a theory less, and (c) if we can explain why we have a mistaken intuition, this permits us (in many cases) to reject it.
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Analyses can’t have too many unacceptable theoretical consequences.
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Concept should be analyzed in theoretically significant terms.
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Analysis must be simple.
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Utilitarians, after all, do often argue in this way. For example, consider the well-known ‘dirty hands’ response to anti-utilitarian arguments, in which it is argued that one’s discomfort at the prospect that one would be held responsible gets in the way of one’s judgment about what it is morally right to do.
This is a good example of an argument that assumes a distinction between the concrete-case intuitions about category membership elicited by a thought-experiment, and other reactions (such as revulsion) to the description of the scenario in question. But although it is not easy to make this distinction, it seems that further ‘good faith’ reflective scrutiny can do a reasonable job. I discuss this question further in Sect. 4.
For example, consider Sosa’s (2007) suggestion that the clash in intuitions supporting evidential and reliabilist theories of knowledge is best resolved by taking each set of intuitions to reflect a different concept of knowledge.
There is also recent work on the Gettier problem (Schroeder, forthcoming) that presents new characterizations of what it is to have knowledge that encompasses features that most theorists agree to be necessary for knowledge, and argues that it rules out Gettier cases as well, and also some recent work (Wasserman, forthcoming) on what it is to be an intentional action that helps to explain and perhaps resolve some ‘theoretical tangles’ involving the relation between doing A intentionally and having an intention to do A.
Now I suppose that some (future) theory of cognition could be relevant to some of these cases. For example, some philosophers (McGinn 1989; Nagel 2000) suggest that the reason thought-experiments involving zombies and disembodied minds seem so compelling as counterexamples to materialism is that we are incapable (at least for now) of formulating concepts that display a link between the mental and the physical. Perhaps empirical investigation can confirm this hypothesis, and if so, give us reason to dismiss those intellectual seemings as due to some (temporary or permanent) cognitive deficit. My own view is that this is implausible; that if there is an explanation for why intuitions about zombies and disembodied minds are to be discounted, it will proceed from further reflection about the nature of our phenomenal concepts and the mechanisms by which they refer—which, of course, can be accomplished from the armchair. But even if this is a plausible explanation of our anti-materialist intuitions, it’s hard to see how the concrete-case intuitions about whether something is knowledge, justification, freedom, or moral action that retain their pull under reflective scrutiny could be shown to be products of some conceptual lacuna or cognitive deficit.
See also Goldman (2010). Sosa also invokes stability, over time, in the judgment of a single individual, but this criterion shares many of the problems of the first.
Sosa also suggests that if there are stable and enduring disagreements about thought-experiments among different populations, even after all precautions have been taken, we can conclude that that the populations are using different concepts, and thus that ‘supposed intuitive disagreements...are to a large extent spurious, that different epistemic values are in play, and that much of the disagreement will yield to a linguistic recognition of that fact...’ (2007, p. 69). But here too it’s plausible to regard such disagreement as due to a divergence in our concepts of knowledge only if we are able to recognize that there are distinct concepts, deployed by ourselves and ‘the other’, that could both have some claim to the name of knowledge. And this too is a matter of what we, individually, find intuitively compelling after due reflection. (One can say the same about divergences in one’s own intuitions over time.) It seems, therefore, that even the plausibility of an explanation of intuitive disagreement depends on how it fares in the standard back-and-forth of philosophical dialectic. There are others (e.g. Cummins 1998) who have raised similar worries about whether philosophical intuitions can be ‘calibrated’, and take the negative answer to show that intuitions should be discounted altogether. My view is that this shows that (careful) armchair methodology is all that we’ve got, and thus the question is whether it can be vindicated in some other way.
However, the considerations marshaled in the previous section suggest that no such considerations would be relevant to philosophical intuitions.
These reconsiderations and revisions can occur even after considerable thought has been given to the topic. For example, Judith Thomson, in her (2008) has revised her characterization of what is going on in some of the trolley cases that have been important in her own inquiry.
For example, if we understand knowledge (as some do) as true belief produced by a reliable mechanism, it is easy to see how empirical evidence could play a role in overturning an initial judgment that S does or does not know that p. If we learn that S has had a run of true beliefs about the emotional states of others, or about which ticket will win the lottery, then—not knowing much about the source of these beliefs—it may seem intuitive that these are merely lucky guesses. But if scientists determine that S’s beliefs are generated by the right sort of mechanism, then consulting this empirical information would presumably diminish the intuitive force of this initial judgment, just as learning that the stuff in the lakes and streams on Twin Earth is composed of XYZ molecules diminishes the intuition that S and her counterpart mean the same thing when calling that stuff ‘water’.
Papineau has suggested, if not fully endorsed, the claim that knowledge should be treated as a natural kind. And see Kornblith (2002), for a firm endorsement of the view.
To be sure, as Weatherson and others argue, the theories that emerge when ‘recalcitrant’ intuition-backed judgments are rejected may be simpler, but, as I’ve argued, simpler theories are not always satisfying—and if the intuitive judgments that conflict with them are compatible with the empirical evidence, there seems to be no particular reason (other than simplicity) for a naturalist to reject them.
This, presumably, is because it’s hard to see how further empirical discoveries or methodological shifts could conflict with any views we now hold about the nature of these phenomena or the norms that govern them. But perhaps I’m being just as shortsighted as those who thought that planetary orbits had to be circular, or that vacuums could not exist.
These mechanisms would work, Papineau suggests (ms p. 11), by ‘tak[ing] in information which do[es] not presuppose the relevant categories, and us[ing] it to arrive at judgments about who knows what, and which words name which things, and when someone is the same person as someone else, and so on’. This suggestion may be another way of fleshing out Sosa’s 2005, 2007, 2008 suggestion that some intuition-based judgments should be treated as analogous to perceptual illusions.
Except, perhaps, for those attempts to imagine certain scenarios that inherit built-in constraints on perception. In these cases, Sosa’s analogy between recalcitrant intuitions and perceptual illusions may be apt.
In addition, in examining the mechanics of armchair reflection both now and throughout the history of philosophy, there seem to be many cases in which empirical findings have influenced concrete-case intuitions, for example, the dispute between Locke and Descartes about whether ‘our concept of body’ requires only that bodies be spatially extended, or also ‘solid’, and Locke’s primary-secondary quality distinction. (See my 2004 for further discussion of cases such as these.) And if empirical considerations can influence one’s initial, seemingly rational, judgments, why shouldn’t they also be able to effect change (for an individual or community) in what intuitively seems required to be an item of some particular kind? For example, consider a description of a biological creature that is functionally equivalent to ourselves when in pain, but is not undergoing C-fiber stimulation (or whatever it is that goes on in human brains when we are in pain). We would presumably judge that the creature is not in the same brain state as we are when in pain—and if so this scenario may seem to support functionalism, rather than the identity theory. However, some philosophers (e.g. Bechtel and Mundale (2009) note that neuroscientists, in practice, individuate types of neural states more liberally—requiring them, for example, to share only a common structure and pattern of firing—and thus the scenario need no longer be considered to be one in which the creatures do not share our brain states. Here, it seems, any change of mind would be due to the willingness to accept this redescription, which clearly would be influenced by empirical information.
This need not mean, however, that these judgments have any particular distinctive phenomenology.
For example, they may derive from extrapolating from clear cases of the phenomenon in various ways, or they may be products of natural selection. The important question, however, is not how they arise, but whether they can be revised in the light of empirical information.
As Papineau puts it (forthcoming, p. 15), in endorsing a Ramsey-Carnap-style approach to philosophical theory construction, ‘if meaning doesn’t depend on what theory is accepted, rejecting a meaning-constituting theory applies no pressure whatsoever to change meanings. Correspondingly, if you would continue to maintain that ‘there are Fs’ even though you came to reject T, the obvious inference to draw is that T is not criterial for Fs...[but]...[e]ven on the Ramsey-Lewis view, speakers could in principle change the meaning of ‘F’ if they came to reject some criterial T, and so end up saying ‘there are Fs’ even if F has previously by definition required T’.
Externalists claim that the usage of a term by one’s linguistic community can determine what one means by the term, whether or not one has cognitive access to that usage; meanings, they say, ain’t (or ain’t exclusively) in the head. But it seems equally trsue that one’s actual exposure to differences in the way one’s community uses a term can imperceptibly change the way one applies the term, and even explicitly attempts to explain its meaning. What ain’t in the head, in this case, is any recognition that one is applying the term any differently than before.
Note, by the way, that this argument is different from the argument made by BonJour, etc. that intuitions can be evidence for philosophical theses because we have the intuition that this is the case.
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Acknowledgments
I am grateful to Kadri Vivhelin, Michael Devitt, and an anonymous reviewer for Synthese for comments and criticisms that have improved both the substance and the presentation of this paper.
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Levin, J. Armchair methodology and epistemological naturalism. Synthese 190, 4117–4136 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-013-0253-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-013-0253-9