Intuition, metacognition, and philosophical inquiry

Abstract

This thesis examines whether appeals to intuition provide warrant for philosophical positions and claims. Recent empirical studies suggest that people’s intuitions are sensitive to a host of epistemically irrelevant factors. Some philosophers (Critics) take these findings to motivate scepticism about the traditional methodology of philosophy, which is often taken to rely on intuitions. In reply, others (Defenders) have argued that these empirical studies fail to support any such methodological worries. One type of argument given by Defenders is that empirical studies about intuitions are simply irrelevant for assessing the methodology of philosophy. A second type of argument is that empirical studies need to be refined before they can be fruitfully used in debates about the methodology of philosophy: for instance, some Defenders have suggested that empirical studies must account for the distinctive phenomenology of intuitions; whereas others have argued that these studies should focus exclusively on the intuitions of philosophers—which, they claim, are not prone to the deleterious effects found to afflict the intuitions of non-philosophers.

In this thesis, I argue that the most prominent arguments both for and against scepticism about the methodology of philosophy are problematic. I defend instead a moderate position according to which intuitions can warrant philosophical positions and claims, but that philosophers should engage with findings in cognitive psychology in order to make better informed assessments of when to trust their intuitions, and when to refrain from relying on them in inquiry. In chapter 1, I argue that empirical findings about intuitions are indeed relevant for assessments of the traditional methodology of philosophy. In chapter 2, I appeal to recent work in cognitive psychology on the feeling of rightness to argue that a phenomenological conception of intuition does not insulate philosophical methodology from the relevant empirical concerns. In chapter 3, I argue that philosophical training can in some cases give rise to a kind of expertise that shields philosophers from the deleterious effects of biases on their intuitions; but, I contend that further empirical studies are required to establish what those cases are. And against Critics, I argue in chapter 4 that even if intuitions show marked variation with respect to epistemically irrelevant factors, this does not entail that we should be sceptical about their use in philosophical inquiry. Lastly, in chapter 5 I explore the proposal that intuitions provide warrant for philosophical positions and claims because they enable understanding of why their contents are true.