The cognitive source of philosophical intuitions: Troubles for the etiological project

Abstract

The advent of experimental philosophy has generated a renewed interest in the nature of philosophical intuitions. This has led many to assume that understanding the psychological processes that generate philosophical intuitions will provide a much needed source of answers for various questions about their nature. It is widely assumed that if we are to gain a good sense of the reliability of philosophical intuitions (and the degree to which experimental philosophy challenges their role in philosophy) it is critical to learn more about the sort of cognitive faculties and processes that produce them. However, here, I'm going to present a more pessimistic outlook about what we should expect from such a project in the case of philosophical intuitions. More specifically, I'll suggest that there are two central problems that prevent a deeper understanding of the cognitive source of intuitions from doing much of what we would like it to do. The first problem is that for an important range of philosophical intuitions, it is doubtful that there is a stable set of cognitive processes and mechanisms generating them that is sufficiently universal to allow for the sort of generalizations we would like. Philosophical intuitions are likely created by an assortment of varying psychological operations, and that learning about how a particular intuition is created is unlikely to tell us much about how other intuitions are formed. In short, there is no faculty of intuition in any meaningful sense. I call this the "Etiological-Diversity Problem". The second problem stems from the fact that one of the primary things we want knowledge of the intuition-producing cognitive machinery to tell us about is the reliability of the intuitions they produce. However, this expectation gets the normal order backwards. The evaluation of cognitive processes or mechanisms typically requires a prior evaluation of the normative status of the states it produces in different contexts, distinguishing proper functioning and competence from improper functioning and performance errors by virtue of the quality of the mechanism's output. It is far less clear how this order can be reversed. Consequently, it is hard to see how an understanding of intuition-producing mechanisms will allow us to evaluate the epistemic status of philosophical intuitions without already having such an evaluation in hand. I call this the "The Secondary Calibration Problem". The upshot is that even though I believe there is much to learn about the etiology of intuitions that will be useful, these problems severely hamper our ability to answer many of the central questions we have about the nature and trustworthiness of philosophical intuitions.