The intuition motte-and-bailey

Philosophers are fond of insisting that we must rely on intuitions, and in fact do so. Critics and skeptics about the role of intuitions in philosophy are maligned, dismissed, or dismissed, often summarily and with little engagement with the substance of their concerns.

Let’s suppose we do need something we (myself included) would agree to call an “intuition” for doing philosophy. What are these intuitions? What is it that we’re required to accept? Discussion on what intuitions are is woefully underdeveloped, unresolved, and sparse in the philosophical literature. Yes, there are discussions about intuitions, but they don’t draw in that many philosophers, and the disputes surrounding them have not, as far as I can tell, ever reached any satisfactory conclusion, much less significant convergence or consensus.

When I’ve requested explanations of what intuitions are, how they work, what psychological processes are involved, and so on, I get a variety of responses. What I don’t get is a consistent, well-developed, clear, and compelling account of what intuitions are. I have been treated to the objection that I am demanding a complete or comprehensive theory, and that this is too much to ask for. Not so. If I asked psychologists what a “memory,” was, I would expect, and I am confident I’d find, quite a bit of substance to their responses. But I don’t demand that every issue be resolved, and that their response be that comprehensive. 

There are unresolved disputes and much to discover when it comes to what sorts of memory there are and how they work. One can take whole courses on memory and how it works: courses on the neuroscience and cognitive psychology of memory, and so on. If philosophers were working closely on devising an analogous approach to the study of intuitions, but were in an early phase of such research, I’d be more than satisfied. But they’re not doing that. Instead, most ignore such issues, and may consider concerns about the psychology of intuitions to be irrelevant.

I worry that this disengagement from providing much substance to the notion of a philosophical intuition, both empirically and in a broader, more generally philosophical sense, allows for a convenient motte-and-bailey. We may be told that we must have “intuitions,” whatever those are, but philosophers will often shift into or deploy more specific and substantive notions of intuitions that incorporate various philosophical positions they hold. 

Consider Mike Huemer’s ethical intuitionism. According to Huemer:

The intuitionist, I contend, should be a direct realist about ethics. He should not say that intuitions function as a kind of evidence from which we do or should infer moral conclusions. He should say that for some moral truths, we need no evidence, since we are directly aware of them, and that awareness takes the form of intuitions; that is, intuitions just (partly) constitute our awareness of moral facts. (pp. 121-122)

Why on earth would I, as a moral antirealist, grant that anyone (myself, Huemer, and so on) have intuitions of this kind? If I did grant this…I’d be a realist! This type of intuition integrates the notion of a kind of direct realist perspective. The fusion results in intuitions not even serving as evidence, so much as the intuition being, in part, the awareness of the moral facts.

I don’t think people have these kinds of intuitions. Remarks like these are why I am extremely wary of “conceding” or “granting” to proponents of the centrality of intuitions to philosophy that we “have” intuitions and “must” rely on them. I not only deny that we need intuitions of this kind to do philosophy, I deny that Huemer or anyone else “has” intuitions of this kind. If I’m correct, Huemer must be making some kind of error. I’m not sure what the error is. Dubious overreach in the inferences one feels entitled to make based on their phenomenology or experience? Some kind of error about what’s going on psychologically? I’m not sure.

I, at least, do not have anything like a capacity for direct awareness of “moral facts.” I have no idea what that would be like, and it strikes me as an utterly alien, magical way of thinking.

The quote above appears in McNaughton’s review of Huemer’s book, Ethical Intuitionism, which you can find here. As McNaughton says:

Apart from the unnecessary complexity of this view, taking the perceptual model seriously in this way simply encourages those critics of intuitionism who think that it claims that we can detect some strange kind of objects. 

It does seem to me that Huemer is making a claim of just this kind. I can’t quite tell from this remark, but the phrase “who think that it claims,” seems to me to pragmatically imply that what they think is mistaken. For instance, if I said that “My critics think I’m an error theorist,” this seems to me like it implies I’m not an error theorist, and that they’re mistaken in thinking this. I can’t quite tell though, and may be seeing a pragmatic implication where one wasn’t intended.

McNaughton goes on to say:

It would have been much simpler to drop the dualism of appearance and belief and interpret 'seems' statements in the moral realm doxastically. We could then adopt a familiar principle of doxastic conservatism that says that if we are inclined to believe that p, we are justified in so doing, unless countervailing evidence comes to light. 

Maybe this would be better, but this seems like a different position than Huemer’s. 

Given this more specific notion of what an intuition is, and broader and less specific notions, I I worry philosophers may vacillate, without even realizing it, between the motte of some undifferentiated and benign notion of an “intuition” and the bailey of various specific conceptions of intuitions.

Depending on what one takes an “intuition” to be, it may be a fairly trivial matter that I and others have them, and that we “need” them. At the same time, the notion of intuition any particular philosopher has in mind in other contexts may be mysterious, or presumptuous, and highly contestable. To challenge the latter does not entail a challenge of the former. Until and unless philosophers get clear on what they’re even talking about when they discuss intuitions, equivocation and vacillation and confusion about what we’re even talking about will persist. 

At present, I see little sign of that changing. I worry that this is to the benefit of much of analytic philosophy: obscurantism behind a superficial veil of clarity and rigor can’t survive the critical light of linguistic clarity. Shine a disambiguating light on much of what contemporary analytic philosophers are up to, and one won’t find monsters under the bed. I suspect we’ll find nothing at all.