LAUSR

What are intuitions? Do they exist as distinctive mental states? Do they have an epistemic function? Can we discern specific features that characterize intuitions? Questions like these are widely debated by present-day philosophy, as the following brief overview shows. In contemporary philosophical literature appeals to intuition are frequent. It is suggested that intuition may have heuristic or even probative value. In a manner which is thought to be analogous to the use of empirical observations in the sciences, intuitions are often treated as the primary evidential basis of a philosophical inquiry. According to many, a philosophical theory must not contradict an intuition about a hypothetical case. Conversely, when the consequences of a theory agree with intuitions, the theory is regarded in a positive way. Such an approach has been challenged. It has been noted that saying ‘Intuitively, P’ often amounts to an attempt to avoid arguments to support P, stopping further discussion. On the other hand, in defence of the relevance of intuition, appeal is made to commonsense. According to the defenders of the use of intuitions in philosophy, it is a virtue to preserve our commonsense views and it is obvious that such views do not require further arguments. According to their opponents, however, common sense is merely an untrained view of reality forged by experience in a familiar world of objects, distances, and durations – a view which has been made irrelevant by advances in science. Commonsense intuition has nothing to say about black holes, quantum vacuum fluctuations, DNA or geological history spanning across four billion years. Why should it be helpful in metaphysics? Discussions about the epistemological role of intuitions have spread. Some of those who favour intuition mention the variegated list of propositions that cannot be justified by experience, introspection, or memory: logical principles, mathematical truths, analytic propositions, colour or shape exclusion