Philosophy without Intuitions This page intentionally left blank Philosophy without Intuitions Herman Cappelen 1 3 Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, OX2 6DP, United Kingdom Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries # Herman Cappelen 2012 The moral rights of the author have been asserted First Edition published in 2012 Impression: 1 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, by licence or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above You must not circulate this work in any other form and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Data available Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Library of Congress Control Number: 2012930985 ISBN 978–0–19–964486–5 Printed in Great Britain on acid-free paper by MPG Books Group, Bodmin and King’s Lynn For Rachel This page intentionally left blank Acknowledgements I was, for a long time, convinced that philosophizing, at least as I had been trained to do it, relied essentially on intuitions and that the absence of a good account of their reliability revealed deep foundational flaws. I managed to partially repress those concerns until I started running a project on philosophical methodology with my colleague Jessica Brown at the Arché Centre at the University of St Andrews. Work on this project convinced me that my earlier concerns were unfounded and that this book was worth writing. I’m particularly grateful to Jessica Brown, Jonathan Ichikawa, Yuri Cath, and to the many PhD students and visitors who contributed to our work. I owe a great debt to my colleagues at the Centre for the Study of Mind in Nature at the University of Oslo, where the material was presented in seminars co-taught with Olav Gjelsvik. I also learned a great deal from him in a seminar we gave on Timothy William- son’s The Philosophy of Philosophy.Reflections on that book and conversa- tions with Williamson have shaped my thinking about all issues having to do with philosophical methodology. Along the way, I have profited from discussion with and comments from many people, including Derek Ball, John Bengson, Einar Bøhn, David Chalmers, Stew Cohen, Max Deutsch, Josh Dever, Tamar Gendler, Olav Gjelsvik, Carsten Hansen, John Hawthorne, Torfinn Huvenes, Henry Jackman, Kirk Ludwig, Anna-Sara Malmgren, Jennifer Nagel, Dilip Ninan, Bjørn Ramberg, François Recanati, Marco Ruffino, Jona- than Schaffer, Daniele Sgaravatti, David Sosa, Ernie Sosa, Rachel Sterken, Andreas Stokke, Brian Weatherson, Jonathan Weinberg, Timothy Wil- liamson, and two anonymous referees for Oxford University Press. Early drafts of chapters were presented at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, University of Texas, Austin and Rutgers University. I would like to thank audiences at these events. Those early drafts were significantly improved by detailed comments from Jennifer Nagel, Jonathan Weinberg, and Ernie Sosa. Daniele Sgaravatti provided indispensable help as my research assistant over two years. He and Margot Strohminger also proofread the entire manuscript, correcting many, many errors both of typography and content. viii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This is my fourth book project with Peter Momtchiloff as my editor at OUP and I am grateful to him for help and support over these years. My greatest debt is to Rachel, who made writing this book possible. The book is dedicated to her. Contents 1. Intuitions in Philosophy: Overview and Taxonomy 1 Part I. The Argument from ‘Intuition’-Talk Introduction to Part I 25 2. ‘Intuitive’, ‘Intuitively’, ‘Intuition’, and ‘Seem’ in English 29 3. Philosophers’ Use of ‘Intuitive’ (I): A Defective Practice and the Verbal Virus Theory 49 4. Philosophers’ Use of ‘Intuitive’ (II): Some Strategies for Charitable Reinterpretation 61 Appendix to Chapter 4: Williamson on Intuition as Belief or Inclination to Believe 83 5. Philosophers’ Use of ‘Intuitive’ (III): Against the Explaining Away of Intuitions 88 Part II. The Argument from Philosophical Practice Introduction to Part II 95 6. Centrality and Philosophical Practice 98 7. Diagnostics for Intuitiveness 111 8. Case Studies 130 9. Lessons Learned, Replies to Objections, and Comparison to Williamson 188 10. Conceptual Analysis and Intuitions 205 11. A Big Mistake: Experimental Philosophy 219 Concluding Remarks 229 Bibliography 231 Index 239 Detailed Contents 1. Intuitions in Philosophy: Overview and Taxonomy 1 1.1 The role of intuitions in the self-conception of contemporary analytic philosophers: Centrality 2 1.2 Two arguments for Centrality: the Argument from ‘Intuition’-Talk and the Argument from Philosophical Practice 4 1.3 ‘Intuition’ in Centrality 7 1.4 More on how to interpret Centrality 12 1.5 Burning questions for proponents of Centrality: the pessimists, the enthusiasts, and the concerned 17 1.6 Rejection of Centrality: Philosophy without intuitions 18 Part I. The Argument from ‘Intuition’-Talk Introduction to Part I 25 2. ‘Intuitive’, ‘Intuitively’, ‘Intuition’, and ‘Seem’ in English 29 2.1 The adjective ‘intuitive’ and the adverb ‘intuitively’ 30 2.2 ‘Intuitive’ as a hedge 36 2.3 The noun phrase ‘intuition’ 39 2.4 ‘Seem’ and ‘intuitive’ 42 2.5 Taking stock 47 3. Philosophers’ Use of ‘Intuitive’ (I): A Defective Practice and the Verbal Virus Theory 49 3.1 Constructive vs. defective theoretical terms 50 3.2 Problems for ‘intuition’ in philosophy 52 3.3 Disagreement over the theoretical role of intuitions 55 3.4 Are unreflective uses of ‘intuitive’ meaningless? 57 4. Philosophers’ Use of ‘Intuitive’ (II): Some Strategies for Charitable Reinterpretation 61 4.1 First strategy: Simple Removal 63 DETAILED CONTENTS xi 4.2 Second and third strategies: Snap and Pre-Theoretic 65 4.3 The three strategies at work: Some complicated mixed cases 71 4.4 Taking stock 77 4.5 No appeal to special feelings, conceptual competence, or default justificatory status 77 4.6 Back to Centrality and AIT: None of these interpretative strategies are Centrality-supporting 81 Appendix to Chapter 4: Williamson on Intuition as Belief or Inclination to Believe 83 5. Philosophers’ Use of ‘Intuitive’ (III): Against the Explaining Away of Intuitions 88 5.1 The argument against Explain 89 5.2 Is there some intellectually useful activity that’s mistakenly classified as ‘explaining away intuitions’? 92 Part II. The Argument from Philosophical Practice Introduction to Part II 95 6. Centrality and Philosophical Practice 98 6.1 Methodological rationalism 99 6.2 The influence of methodological rationalism 105 7. Diagnostics for Intuitiveness 111 7.1 Features of the intuitive 111 7.2 Some initial qualifications 114 7.3 More on the features of the intuitive 117 7.4 Summary and additional reflections on how to operationalize appeals to intuitions 128 8. Case Studies 130 8.1 Perry on the problem of the essential indexical 132 8.2 Burge on individualism and the mental 139 8.3 Thomson’s violinist in “A Defense of Abortion” 148 8.4 Thomson and Foot on trolley cases 158 8.5 Three epistemology cases: Lotteries, Truetemp, and fake barns 163 8.6 Cappelen and Hawthorne on disagreement, predicates of personal taste, and relativism about truth 175 xii DETAILED CONTENTS 8.7 Bernard Williams on personal identity and the fear of the prospect of torture 179 8.8 Chalmers on zombies 182 8.9 Conclusion 187 9. Lessons Learned, Replies to Objections, and Comparison to Williamson 188 9.1 What cases are: some generalizations 188 9.2 Objections and replies 193 9.3 Williamson on Evidence Neutrality, psychologizing the evidence, and analyticity 200 10. Conceptual Analysis and Intuitions 205 10.1 Hyperbole about intuitions leads to hyperbole about conceptual analysis 205 10.2 Are there any conceptual truths, and, if so, are they philosophically significant? 210 10.3 Conclusion: Centrality as a sectarian thesis 217 11. A Big Mistake: Experimental Philosophy 219 11.1 Experimental philosophy: Positive and negative 219 11.2 The big objection to experimental philosophy: It attacks a practice that doesn’t exist 221 11.3 Experimental philosophy without intuitions? 224 11.4 Experimental philosophy and the expertise defense of traditional philosophy 227 Concluding Remarks 229 Bibliography 231 Index 239 1 Intuitions in Philosophy: Overview and Taxonomy The claim that contemporary analytic philosophers rely extensively on intuitions as evidence is almost universally accepted in current metaphilosophical debates and it figures prominently in our self-conception as analytic philosophers. No matter what area you happen to work in and what views you happen to hold in those areas, you are likely to think that philosophizing requires constructing cases and making intuitive judgments about those cases. A theory of a topic X isn’t adequate unless it correctly predicts intuitive responses to X-relevant cases. This assumption also underlies the entire experimental-philosophy movement: if philosophers don’t rely on intui- tions, why would anyone do experiments to check on intuitions? Our alleged reliance on the intuitive makes many philosophers who don’t work in metaphilosophy concerned about their own discipline: they are unsure what intuitions are and whether they can carry the evidential weight we allegedly assign to them. The goal of this book is to argue that this concern is unwarranted since the claim is false: it is not true that philosophers rely extensively (or even a little bit) on intuitions as evidence.