Recent experimental studies indicate that epistemically irrelevant factorscan skew our intuitions, and that some degree of scepticism about appealing to intuitionin philosophy is warranted. In response, some have claimed that philosophers areexperts in such a way as to vindicate their reliance on intuitions—this has becomeknown as the ‘expertise defence’. This paper explores the viability of the expertisedefence, and suggests that it can be partially vindicated. Arguing that extant discussionis problematically imprecise, we will finesse the notion of ‘philosophical expertise’in order to better reflect the complex reality of the different practices involved inphilosophical inquiry. On this basis, we offer a new version of the expertise defencethat allows for distinct types of philosophical expertise. The upshot of our approachis that wholesale vindications or rejections of the expertise defence are shown to beunwarranted; we must instead turn to local, piecemeal investigations of philosophicalexpertise. Lastly, in the spirit of taking our own advice, we exemplify how recentdevelopments from experimental philosophy lend themselves to this approach, andcan empirically support one instance of a successful expertise defence.
Recent experimental studies indicate that epistemically irrelevant factors can skew our intuitions, and that some degree of scepticism about appealing to intuition in philosophy is warranted. In response, some have claimed that philosophers are experts in such a way as to vindicate their reliance on intuitions-this has become known as the 'expertise defence'. This paper explores the viability of the expertise defence, and suggests that it can be partially vindicated. Arguing that extant discussion is problematically imprecise, we will finesse the notion of 'philosophical expertise' in order to better reflect the complex reality of the different practices involved in philosophical inquiry. On this basis, we offer a new version of the expertise defence that allows for distinct types of philosophical expertise. The upshot of our approach is that wholesale vindications or rejections of the expertise defence are shown to be unwarranted; we must instead turn to local, piecemeal investigations of philosophical expertise. Lastly, in the spirit of taking our own advice, we exemplify how recent developments from experimental philosophy lend themselves to this approach, and can empirically support one instance of a successful expertise defence.
Empirical findings about intuitions putatively cast doubt on the traditional methodology of philosophy. Herman Cappelen and Max Deutsch have argued that these methodological concerns are unmotivated as experimental findings about intuitions are irrelevant for assessments of the methodology of philosophy—I dub this the ‘Irrelevance Claim’. In this paper, I first explain that for Cappelen and Deutsch to vindicate the Irrelevance Claim from a forceful objection, their arguments have to establish that intuitions play no epistemically significant role whatsoever in philosophy—call this the ‘Orthogonality Claim’. I then argue that even under a charitable reading of their views Cappelen and Deutsch fail to establish the Orthogonality Claim. Lastly, I discuss empirical evidence that the Orthogonality Claim is false. The arguments in this paper will demonstrate that Cappelen and Deutsch cannot motivate the Irrelevance Claim and that their replies to recent experimental attacks on traditional methodology of philosophy do not succeed.
Recent empirical studies raise significant methodological concerns about the use of intuitions in philosophy. According to one prominent line of reply, these concerns are unwarranted since the empirical studies motivating them do not control for the putatively characteristic phenomenology of intuitions. This paper makes use of research on metacognitive states that share the phenomenology of intuitions to argue that this reply fails. Furthermore, it shows how empirical findings about these metacognitive states can help philosophers make better informed assessments of their warrant for relying on intuitions in inquiry.
The historically-influential perceptual analogy states that intuitions and perceptual experiences are alike in many important respects. Phenomenalists defend a particular reading of this analogy according to which intuitions and perceptual experiences share a common phenomenal character. The phenomenalist thesis has proven highly influential in recent years. However, insufficient attention has been given to the challenges that the phenomenalist thesis raises for theories of intuitions. In this paper, I first develop one such challenge. I argue that if we take seriously the idea that intuitions and perceptual experiences have a common phenomenal character, then an analogous version of the familiar problem of perceptual presence arises for intuitions. I call this the 'problem of intuitive presence'. In the second part of the paper I sketch a novel enactivist solution to this problem.
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