>It would be like saying our senses aren’t reliable because people sometimes sense things that aren’t there
The analysis is at too high a level to be meaningful. There are many circumstances when senses are more unreliable than they're reliable. Let's say that the visual sense makes people believe colors are out there painted on objects. This is not true, and you don't need to use your visual sense to convince yourself it's not true - you can just imagine a priori different ways for color to exist, like for example as a function of your visual system interacting with photons and with other parts of your brain. And imagination isn't some necessarily reliable sense either, since using it to navigate the world will probably go very bad for you.
>After all, we have intuitions about lots of things that seem (seem!) super-duper obvious: the external world (that we’re not brains in vats), that other people have minds (that my wife isn’t just a cleverly programmed android), about identity through time (that I am substantially the same self-person today that I was ten years ago), about contingency (that certain things could have been otherwise—or not at all), about possibility and impossibility (that I could possibly work at Jersey Mike’s, but could not have been an ostrich), about causality, logic—and, of course, various moral matters as well (that murder is wrong and ought not be done).
This reads to me like repeating a cult ritual or mantra or hypnotic command. "I know I experience the holy ghost." "We all submit to the almighty God." It has a coercive force behind it, like the speaker is trying to gaslight you into believing there is no war in Ba Sing Se. Idk how to place it.
I think there's something to your remark. And I think this is a general problem in philosophy: I think a lot of analytic philosophy involves a kind of passing down of "received wisdom." There's something almost quasi-religious about it, and I find it unappealing. I really disliked the adoration people heaped on renowned dead philosophers. They were often treated more as saints than thinkers of their times.
Much of analytic philosophy has the whiff of incense to it, and it's remarkable many of those engaged in it don't seem to notice.
I'm a bit unclear what you're getting at. I think I experience mental states where I am disposed to believe something (but not certain), or it "seems likely", or "feels right", and I think this picks out the common sense of the word "intuition". Do philosophers assign some more technical, and ontologically heavier, meaning to the term?
However, I don't think my intuitions in themselves are reliable guides to the truth of any matter - they have to be stated precisely and tested in some way. And when I do that, I find that they're often inconsistent with one another, or with something else I already consider that I know. They're also background-dependent: folk physics represents common intuitions about how the world works (and is more or less what Aristotle systematized). But anyone who internalized high school and frosh mechanics will have replaced them with a new set of intuitions, based largely on Newton. And if one goes on to take courses on relativity and QM, they'll further modify or replace those intuitions.
In ethics, I think the proposition "People (and not just me) ought to be happy" starts as an intuition, at least. If I had to justify that, I would probably appeal to some sort of contractarianism (e.g.. the most reliable way to keep me happy is to be embedded in a society of happy people, ergo I should encourage that sort of society). But my desire for the basic principle precedes that justification, and constitutes a stance (in your sense) that I assume. Possibly many or all of my ethical stances start as intuitions.
>>I'm a bit unclear what you're getting at. I think I experience mental states where I am disposed to believe something (but not certain), or it "seems likely", or "feels right", and I think this picks out the common sense of the word "intuition". Do philosophers assign some more technical, and ontologically heavier, meaning to the term?
I'm talking about the use of intuition among philosophers when they're doing philosophy, not the term as its used in ordinary language. Philosophers may or may not be using it in a way that matches any particular ordinary usage. To determine that this is the case we'd have to figure out how ordinary people use the term (and they use it in multiple ways, so that's already going to make things challenging), and then find out how philosophers are using the term (and they're also using it in multiple ways).
Some uses of the term among philosophers probably do overlap with some ordinary uses of the term. But it's not clear which ones, or how often, or how many don't overlap, and when they don't, what those philosophers do mean.
You mention a disposition to believe. But note that this is just *one* of several accounts given by the SEP entry on intuitions, and that entry (a) isn't exhaustive at all and (b) doesn't even comprehensively cover ordinary uses of the term, either. See here:
Note, too, that I quoted sections on intuitions as sui generis states. Do you take yourself to have those? If you're not sure, you can read the section in the SEP intuition article in the link above.
As far as whether philosophers assign some technical, or heavier notion: some do, some don't. Philosophers are just not very clear about what they're doing. And some will insist that their "technical" uses are actually just specific forms of ordinary use, though I don't think those who make such claims have actually done any empirical work to establish that this is the case.
In my experience ordinary people use the word intuition to mean some sort of paranormal sense that something is or will go wrong. In my college courses in philosophy there was never any explanation of what phillosophical intuitions were supposed to be and I thought they were synonymous with "gut feelings" which are also underdescribed in ordinary usage - and in philosophy the intuition lovers will usually start their explanation of intuitions by saying they are not gut feelings. So I never knew and still don't know what people mean by the term.
Yes, this is exactly my experience. I was assured they don't mean what ordinary people mean. But I wasn't told what they do mean. I repeatedly asked. I even designed my own course on intuitions and even after reading a bunch of papers it remains unclear.
Very interesting. I just take 'intuition' to refer to conscious thought. So I have intuitions about philosophy because I've consciously thought about various topics. I might think that there's a burglar upstairs but that's not a conscious thought, that's a belief about what's upstairs.
Philosophers are definitely not typically referring to conscious thought when they talk of intuitions, at least most of the time. One of the most common features of intuitions is that they're non-inferential; whatever is prompting the intuition is supposed to happen outside conscious awareness. There's lots of ways of using the term; I don't at all think you're "using it wrong." Its many uses is one of the key problems I am pointing to: it's just not clear what philosophers take themselves to be doing.
I wonder if: Intuitions are such that conviction(A) that x is true or false is accompanied by another conviction(A1) that conviction(A) is missing or valid in justification (for now). Whereas a belief is a conviction(B) accompanied by another conviction(B1) that conviction(B) is justified.
Belief is a taking for granted, as valid or justified, the inferential process for one's convictions about one's thoughts, perceptions, feelings, etc.
Intuitions are convictions about one's thoughts, perceptions, feelings, etc. with a degree of confidence about the inferential process.
'I'm not really sure that mouse is working' is a belief. 'I'm not sure why, but I'm not really sure that mouse is working' is an intuition.
The first statement does not question the unassuredness. It takes it for granted that it's true. The second questions the unassuredness's inferential validity.
In the case where one is 100% sure that their conviction's inferential trail is true. It is still an intuition. So, ' I am 100% confident that my conviction that I am not sure if the mouse is working is inferentially justified' is an intuition. This is why Philosophers tend to see intuition as a powerful tool. Once you start questioning your convictions inferential validity you no longer believe.
I think one of the reasons intuitions are confusing are because they’re private. They’re the linguistic-like thoughts that bounce around in around in our brains.
Now we can have a belief that McDonald’s as a company sell more food than any one hotdog street vendor, say. But this as a linguistic-esque conscious thought may never have formed. Now it is still true that we ‘think’ McDonald’s sells more food than the the vendor. But it becomes an ‘intuition’ only when we stop to mull it over, and then express it with words.
>It would be like saying our senses aren’t reliable because people sometimes sense things that aren’t there
The analysis is at too high a level to be meaningful. There are many circumstances when senses are more unreliable than they're reliable. Let's say that the visual sense makes people believe colors are out there painted on objects. This is not true, and you don't need to use your visual sense to convince yourself it's not true - you can just imagine a priori different ways for color to exist, like for example as a function of your visual system interacting with photons and with other parts of your brain. And imagination isn't some necessarily reliable sense either, since using it to navigate the world will probably go very bad for you.
>After all, we have intuitions about lots of things that seem (seem!) super-duper obvious: the external world (that we’re not brains in vats), that other people have minds (that my wife isn’t just a cleverly programmed android), about identity through time (that I am substantially the same self-person today that I was ten years ago), about contingency (that certain things could have been otherwise—or not at all), about possibility and impossibility (that I could possibly work at Jersey Mike’s, but could not have been an ostrich), about causality, logic—and, of course, various moral matters as well (that murder is wrong and ought not be done).
This reads to me like repeating a cult ritual or mantra or hypnotic command. "I know I experience the holy ghost." "We all submit to the almighty God." It has a coercive force behind it, like the speaker is trying to gaslight you into believing there is no war in Ba Sing Se. Idk how to place it.
I think there's something to your remark. And I think this is a general problem in philosophy: I think a lot of analytic philosophy involves a kind of passing down of "received wisdom." There's something almost quasi-religious about it, and I find it unappealing. I really disliked the adoration people heaped on renowned dead philosophers. They were often treated more as saints than thinkers of their times.
Much of analytic philosophy has the whiff of incense to it, and it's remarkable many of those engaged in it don't seem to notice.
I'm a bit unclear what you're getting at. I think I experience mental states where I am disposed to believe something (but not certain), or it "seems likely", or "feels right", and I think this picks out the common sense of the word "intuition". Do philosophers assign some more technical, and ontologically heavier, meaning to the term?
However, I don't think my intuitions in themselves are reliable guides to the truth of any matter - they have to be stated precisely and tested in some way. And when I do that, I find that they're often inconsistent with one another, or with something else I already consider that I know. They're also background-dependent: folk physics represents common intuitions about how the world works (and is more or less what Aristotle systematized). But anyone who internalized high school and frosh mechanics will have replaced them with a new set of intuitions, based largely on Newton. And if one goes on to take courses on relativity and QM, they'll further modify or replace those intuitions.
In ethics, I think the proposition "People (and not just me) ought to be happy" starts as an intuition, at least. If I had to justify that, I would probably appeal to some sort of contractarianism (e.g.. the most reliable way to keep me happy is to be embedded in a society of happy people, ergo I should encourage that sort of society). But my desire for the basic principle precedes that justification, and constitutes a stance (in your sense) that I assume. Possibly many or all of my ethical stances start as intuitions.
>>I'm a bit unclear what you're getting at. I think I experience mental states where I am disposed to believe something (but not certain), or it "seems likely", or "feels right", and I think this picks out the common sense of the word "intuition". Do philosophers assign some more technical, and ontologically heavier, meaning to the term?
I'm talking about the use of intuition among philosophers when they're doing philosophy, not the term as its used in ordinary language. Philosophers may or may not be using it in a way that matches any particular ordinary usage. To determine that this is the case we'd have to figure out how ordinary people use the term (and they use it in multiple ways, so that's already going to make things challenging), and then find out how philosophers are using the term (and they're also using it in multiple ways).
Some uses of the term among philosophers probably do overlap with some ordinary uses of the term. But it's not clear which ones, or how often, or how many don't overlap, and when they don't, what those philosophers do mean.
You mention a disposition to believe. But note that this is just *one* of several accounts given by the SEP entry on intuitions, and that entry (a) isn't exhaustive at all and (b) doesn't even comprehensively cover ordinary uses of the term, either. See here:
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/intuition/
Note, too, that I quoted sections on intuitions as sui generis states. Do you take yourself to have those? If you're not sure, you can read the section in the SEP intuition article in the link above.
As far as whether philosophers assign some technical, or heavier notion: some do, some don't. Philosophers are just not very clear about what they're doing. And some will insist that their "technical" uses are actually just specific forms of ordinary use, though I don't think those who make such claims have actually done any empirical work to establish that this is the case.
In my experience ordinary people use the word intuition to mean some sort of paranormal sense that something is or will go wrong. In my college courses in philosophy there was never any explanation of what phillosophical intuitions were supposed to be and I thought they were synonymous with "gut feelings" which are also underdescribed in ordinary usage - and in philosophy the intuition lovers will usually start their explanation of intuitions by saying they are not gut feelings. So I never knew and still don't know what people mean by the term.
Yes, this is exactly my experience. I was assured they don't mean what ordinary people mean. But I wasn't told what they do mean. I repeatedly asked. I even designed my own course on intuitions and even after reading a bunch of papers it remains unclear.
Very interesting. I just take 'intuition' to refer to conscious thought. So I have intuitions about philosophy because I've consciously thought about various topics. I might think that there's a burglar upstairs but that's not a conscious thought, that's a belief about what's upstairs.
Philosophers are definitely not typically referring to conscious thought when they talk of intuitions, at least most of the time. One of the most common features of intuitions is that they're non-inferential; whatever is prompting the intuition is supposed to happen outside conscious awareness. There's lots of ways of using the term; I don't at all think you're "using it wrong." Its many uses is one of the key problems I am pointing to: it's just not clear what philosophers take themselves to be doing.
I wonder if: Intuitions are such that conviction(A) that x is true or false is accompanied by another conviction(A1) that conviction(A) is missing or valid in justification (for now). Whereas a belief is a conviction(B) accompanied by another conviction(B1) that conviction(B) is justified.
Belief is a taking for granted, as valid or justified, the inferential process for one's convictions about one's thoughts, perceptions, feelings, etc.
Intuitions are convictions about one's thoughts, perceptions, feelings, etc. with a degree of confidence about the inferential process.
'I'm not really sure that mouse is working' is a belief. 'I'm not sure why, but I'm not really sure that mouse is working' is an intuition.
The first statement does not question the unassuredness. It takes it for granted that it's true. The second questions the unassuredness's inferential validity.
In the case where one is 100% sure that their conviction's inferential trail is true. It is still an intuition. So, ' I am 100% confident that my conviction that I am not sure if the mouse is working is inferentially justified' is an intuition. This is why Philosophers tend to see intuition as a powerful tool. Once you start questioning your convictions inferential validity you no longer believe.
I think one of the reasons intuitions are confusing are because they’re private. They’re the linguistic-like thoughts that bounce around in around in our brains.
Now we can have a belief that McDonald’s as a company sell more food than any one hotdog street vendor, say. But this as a linguistic-esque conscious thought may never have formed. Now it is still true that we ‘think’ McDonald’s sells more food than the the vendor. But it becomes an ‘intuition’ only when we stop to mull it over, and then express it with words.