Philosophical Intuitions
نویسنده
چکیده
What exactly is a philosophical intuition? And what makes such an intuition reliable, when it is reliable? is paper provides a terminological framework that is able answer to the rst question, and then puts the framework to work developing an answer to the second question. More specically, the paper argues that we can distinguish between two dierent “evidential roles” which intuitions can occupy: under certain conditions they can provide information about the representational structure of an intuitor’s concept, and under dierent conditions, they can provide information about whether or not a property is instantiated. e paper describes two principles intended to capture the dierence between the two sets of conditions—that is, the paper oers a principle that explains when an intuition will be a reliable source of evidence about the representation structure of an intuitor’s concept, and another principle that explains when an intuition will be a reliable source of evidence about whether or not a property is instantiated. e paper concludes by briey arguing that, insofar as philosophers are interested using intuitions to determine whether or not some philosophically interesting property is instantiated by some scenario (for instance, whether knowledge is instantiated in a Gettier-case), the reliability of the intuition in question does not depend on whether or not the intuition is widely shared.
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