Intuition Talk is Not Methodologically Cheap: Empirically Testing the “Received Wisdom” About Armchair Philosophy

Ashton, Zoe; Mizrahi, Moti

doi:10.1007/s10670-017-9904-4

Cited by 10 publications

(6 citation statements)

References 42 publications

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“…11 For another example of applying the methods of data science to philosophy, see Ashton and Mizrahi (2017).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

What Isn’t Obvious about “Obvious”: A Data-Driven Approach to Philosophy of Logic

Mizrahi¹

2019

Advances in Experimental Philosophy of Logic and Mathematics

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It is often said that 'every logical truth is obvious' (Quine 1970: 82), that the 'axioms and rules of logic are true in an obvious way' (Murawski 2014: 87), or that 'logic is a theory of the obvious' (Sher 1999: 207). In this chapter, I set out to test empirically how the idea that logic is obvious is reflected in the scholarly work of logicians and philosophers of logic. My approach is data-driven. That is to say, I propose that systematically searching for patterns of usage in databases of scholarly works, such as JSTOR, can provide new insights into the ways in which the idea that logic is obvious is reflected in logical and philosophical practice, i.e., in the arguments that logicians and philosophers of logic actually make in their published work.

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“…11 For another example of applying the methods of data science to philosophy, see Ashton and Mizrahi (2017).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

What Isn’t Obvious about “Obvious”: A Data-Driven Approach to Philosophy of Logic

Mizrahi¹

2019

Advances in Experimental Philosophy of Logic and Mathematics

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“…For example, Andow (2015a) notes a significant increase in the use of intuition talk in academia and, particularly, in analytic philosophy: "the proportion of philosophy articles indexed in JSTOR indulging in intuition talk has grown from around 22 percent in the decade 1900-1909 to around 54 percent in the decade 2000-2009" (Andow 2015a: 190). In this same vein, Ashton and Mizrahi (2018) showed that analytic philosophers had begun to use intuition talk much earlier than in the 1940s. They did a search using the JSTOR corpus and the HathiTrust database, which allowed them to conclude that "intuition talk goes all the way to the 1800s" (Ashton, Mizrahi 2018: 599).…”

Section: The Argument From "Intuition" Talkmentioning

confidence: 98%

An Analysis of the Centrality of Intuition Talk in the Discussion on Taste Disagreements

Bordonaba-Plou

2021

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According to Cappelen (2012), analytic philosophers have traditionally used two arguments to defend the role of intuitions in philosophy. On the one hand, The Argument from Philosophical Practice claims that analytic philosophers rely on intuitions when defending their theories. On the other hand, The Argument from Intuition Talk contends that intuitions must play a prominent role in analytic philosophy because analytic philosophers use intuition talk profusely. Cappelen (2012) identifies three questions to be considered when assessing the Argument from Intuition Talk: a quantitative question, a centrality question, and an interpretative question. The available studies have mainly focused on the quantitative and interpretative questions. In this paper, I examine the centrality question, taking as a case study the literature on taste disagreementsa topic that has received significant attention in the philosophy of language in the last fifteen years. To this end, I first build a corpus with the most relevant works in the area and then examine the centrality of intuition talk. The results show that the use of intuition talk is central in the literature on taste disagreements, and that intuitions are taken as evidence in favor of a given theory if the theory can account for them.

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“…Finally, there is a fourth line of response, which is to point to empirical findings on philosophers' use of intuitions over time. In a recent paper, Ashton & Mizrahi (2018), building on the methodology of Andow (2015), examine the use of intuitions in philosophy publications from two major databases (JSTOR and HathiTrust). Their findings stand in stark contrast to the idea that the intuition-centric philosophy is an historical relic; far from peaking in (say) the 1960s, the proportion of philosophy publications containing intuition talk (i.e., use of the word 'intuition' and its cognates) has grown with each successive decade, with the highest proportion being found in the decade from 2000-2009 (the most recent decade studied) and the second-highest in 1990-1999.…”

Section: Intuitions Theories and The Mocmentioning

confidence: 99%

Why the Method of Cases Doesn’t Work

Suhler

2019

Rev.Phil.Psych.

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In recent years, there has been increasing discussion of whether philosophy actually makes progress. This discussion has been prompted, in no small part, by the depth and persistence of disagreement among philosophers on virtually every major theoretical issue in the field. In this paper, I examine the role that the Method of Cases (MoC) -the widespread philosophical method of testing and revising theories by comparing their verdicts against our intuitions in particular cases -plays in creating and sustaining theoretical disagreements in philosophy. Drawing on work from psychology, I argue that there is a fundamental incompatibility between (a) the structure of the theories that philosophers seek to construct using the MoC and (b) the structure of the concepts on which our case-specific intuitions are based. This incompatibility renders MoC-based philosophical theorizing unable ever to succeed by the very standards of adequacy that it sets for itself. And this, in turn, helps to explain the depth and persistence of theoretical disagreements -and, in certain ways, the lack of progress -in the many areas of philosophy where the MoC plays an important role.

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Intuition Talk is Not Methodologically Cheap: Empirically Testing the “Received Wisdom” About Armchair Philosophy

Cited by 10 publications

References 42 publications

What Isn’t Obvious about “Obvious”: A Data-Driven Approach to Philosophy of Logic

What Isn’t Obvious about “Obvious”: A Data-Driven Approach to Philosophy of Logic

An Analysis of the Centrality of Intuition Talk in the Discussion on Taste Disagreements

Why the Method of Cases Doesn’t Work

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