In Defense of Intuitions

A New Rationalist Manifesto

A. Chapman, A. Ellis, R. Hanna, T. Hildebrand, H. Pickford

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781137347954
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Epistemology in Philosophy

A reply to contemporary skepticism about intuitions and a priori knowledge, and a defense of neo-rationalism from a contemporary Kantian standpoint, focusing on the theory of rational intuitions and on solving the two core problems of justifying and explaining them.

Part 1

Rationalism Redux: Rational Intuitions and Contemporary Philosophy

1.1

The Self-Imposition of Authoritative Rational Intuition

Andrew Chapman

I Introduction

I think that all philosophers and scientists, and all investigators of any sort, already appeal to rational intuitions. Moreover, I think that these investigators, in fact, require of themselves that they appeal to rational intuitions. Furthermore, I think this self-imposition, this self-requiring of an appeal to rational intuitions, is a constitutive component of the self-created projects that investigators currently engage in and that if investigators were able to stop requiring of themselves that they appeal to rational intuitions, their projects would look radically different from how they currently look. Finally, I think that this self-imposition of a demand to appeal to rational intuitions also shows that all philosophers, all empirical scientists, and all rational investigators of any kind already believe in the existence and accessibility of authoritative rational intuitions – i.e., intrinsically compelling or self-evident and essentially reliable rational intuitions, whose evidence is delivered to belief by a properly-functioning cognitive mechanism – and that we therefore have sufficiently good reason to believe that there exist some authoritative rational intuitions. Or, at least, that is what I hope to prove in this chapter.

This chapter has two parts. First, I will present a taxonomy of apriorist arguments, that is, arguments for the claim that a priori knowledge is not only possible, but often actual. It is my hope in providing this taxonomy to extend high-quality work already in the literature. My reason for attempting this taxonomy is, itself, twofold. First, I hope to extend the conceptual resources available to those who discuss apriorist arguments, and second, I hope to identify an under-used, a minority, apriorist argument-style – the argument from self-imposition. Second, building on my identification of a minority apriorist argument-style in the first part, I will show that there exists a self-imposed connection, self-imposed by investigators themselves, between central aspects of the projects of philosophy and the natural sciences and the existence of robust, non-trivial, non-stipulated a priori knowledge, accessible by rational intuitional means. That is, I will show that investigators already require of themselves that they appeal to authoritative rational intuitions, and therefore that their self-created projects already require authoritative rational intuitions. I will claim that since it is the case that investigators already require of themselves that they appeal to authoritative rational intuitions, we should trust investigators in believing that a priori knowledge and authoritative rational intuitions are not just possible, but actual.

Part 1 Definitions and taxonomy

II Rational intuition and the a priori

While many things have been called “intuitions” in the literature,¹ I am concerned with a specific sort of mental act, state, or process that has been historically called rational intuition. My definition is at once broad enough to include many things that philosophers want to call “intuitions,” but, in all likelihood, not broad enough to include things that all philosophers, even those who study something they call “intuition,” would call “intuitions.”² In any case, I will use the term “rational intuition” in the following way.

Rational intuition: A self-conscious or reflective taking of a proposition to be necessarily true and a priori.

I want to leave this definition broad, because I think that even this definition excludes many things that people would call “intuitions.”For example, it should be obvious, from my inclusion of “a priori” that roughly half of the things that Kant specifically calls “intuitions” or Anschauungen are excluded by this definition – since he allows for empirical or a posteriori Anschauungen as well as for pure or a priori Anschauungen – as well as excluding all of what some contemporary neo-rationalists call “physical intuitions.” Further, it should be obvious, from my inclusion of “self-conscious or reflective,” that nearly all of the things that the proponents of contemporary Experimental Philosophy, a.k.a. X-Phi, call “intuitions”³ are excluded by this definition.

It is my claim, then, that intuitions of the sort specifically relevant to this chapter and to this book, i.e., rational intuitions, and apriority of the sort specifically relevant to this chapter and this book, are intimately intertwined with one another. Kant, one of the (if not just the) first systematic and most careful commentators on apriority, says of it:

It is therefore at least a question requiring closer investigation, and one not to be dismissed at first glance, whether there is any such cognition independent of all experience and even of all impressions of the senses. One calls such cognitions a priori, and distinguishes them from empirical ones, which have their sources a posteriori, namely in experience. The former expression [“a priori”] is nevertheless not yet sufficiently determinate to designate the whole sense of the question before us. For it is customary to say of many a cognition derived from experiential sources that we are capable of it or partake in it a priori, because we do not derive it immediately from experience, but rather from a general rule that we have nevertheless itself borrowed from experience. So one says of someone who undermined the foundation of his house that he could have known a priori that it would collapse, i.e., he need not have waited for the experience of it actually collapsing. Yet he could not have known this entirely a priori. For that bodies are heavy and hence fall if their support is taken away must first have become known to him through experience. In the sequel therefore we will understand by a priori cognitions not those that occur independently of this or that experience, but rather those that occur absolutely independently of all experience. Opposed to them are empirical cognitions, or those that are possible only a posteriori, i.e., through experience.⁴

According to Kant’s definition, then, a cognition is a priori depending on no less than five of its features: (i) its epistemic status – which is what I shall be primarily interested in and focusing on in this chapter – as well as (ii) its modal status, (iii) its semantic status, (iv) its psychological status, and (v) specific characters of its source.⁵ Following Kant, then, I will use the term “a priori” in the following way.

Apriority: A property possessed by a judgment, or proposition, insofar as that judgment or proposition is underdetermined in warrant, and also in modal force, semantic content, and psychological constitution, by all actual and possible sensory episodes and/or contingent natural facts.⁶

Apriority is a status enjoyed by non-empirical justification (as well as by non-contingent modality, robustly normative meaning, and innate psychological constitution), and by correspondingly justified beliefs and knowledge, according to the source of the relevant justification (or modality, meaning, or psychological constitution) in the same way that aposteriority is a status enjoyed by justification (as well as by modality, meaning, and psychological constitution), and by correspondingly justified beliefs and knowledge, according to the source of the relevant justification. But just as there is⁷ a properly-functioning cognitive mechanism that transmits internalistic a posteriori justification to the conscious cognitive agent (sight, hearing, etc.), so too is there a properly-functioning cognitive mechanism that transmits internalistic a priori justification to the conscious cognitive agent. As properly-functioning, this is the cognitive mechanism to which the agent can appeal in search of justification in appropriate instances. In the case of a priori justification, this properly-functioning cognitive mechanism is rational intuition.

Some views of rational intuition see it as an intermediary between a priori evidence and the conscious cognitive agent, while other views see rational intuition as the creator, partial or otherwise, of a priori evidence. On the former view, rational intuition really is analogous to, e.g., sight, in that it delivers to the conscious cognitive agent evidence that is separate from the delivering process. On the latter family of views, rational intuition is a creative process, or is a constituent of a creative process, usually within the mind of the conscious cognitive agent, which process creates, assembles, etc. a priori evidence that is not entirely metaphysically separate from the process of rational intuition itself. I will not, here, take a stand which of these view better suits philosophical and scientific evidence. What is important is that everything I have to say in this chapter is compatible with any of these views.

Rational intuitions can sometimes rise to the level of authoritativeness. Authoritative rational intuitions are all and only those rational intuitions that are intrinsically compelling or self-evident, via special internalist/phenomenological, conviction-inducing features of the evidential process delivered to belief by a properly-functioning cognitive mechanism, and also essentially reliable, via special externalistic/worldly, luck-avoiding features that non-accidentally or necessarily connect belief with its necessary-truth-makers, in a way that is fully appropriate for yielding a priori knowledge. Another way to put this is that if a priori knowledge is possible, then authoritative rational intuitions must be as well; if a priori knowledge is actual, then authoritative rational intuitions must be as well; and if a priori knowledge is necessary (simpliciter or for something else), then authoritative rational intuitions must be as well. When a priori knowledge⁸ is actual, then it is a priori knowledge via authoritative rational intuition.

Despite the fact that authoritative rational intuitions are intrinsically compelling or self-evident, cognitively virtuous, and essentially reliable, and thereby are infallible as a matter of synthetic, strong metaphysical, or non-logical, necessity (although they are not infallible as a matter of analytic, weak metaphysical, or logical, necessity – it is consistently conceivable that they are false), however, rational intuitions as such, contrary to Descartes and other classical rationalists, need not be infallible in any way. Most contemporary philosophers interested in a priori knowledge believe that apparent a priori knowledge can be undermined or overridden in one of three ways: (i) a priori evidence, (ii) direct empirical evidence, (iii) indirect empirical evidence. A priori factors can override apparent a priori knowledge when, for example, it is discovered that apparent a priori knowledge that-P is incompatible with other apparent a priori knowledge that-Q, and that-Q is more justified than that-P. For example, undergraduate students of ethics might initially be tempted to think that moral nihilism is true, given the truth of evolution by natural selection coupled with the pro-attitude or dogma of scientism. However, when presented with arguments against scientism and in favor of moral realism (e.g., the argument from moral progress), it becomes evident to them that moral realism is true and that scientism is either an unwarranted pro-attitude or a false dogma. But these arguments, in favor of moral realism and against scientism, are a priori in nature. Hence, it is possible for these undergraduates to have their a priori nihilist beliefs undermined by a priori arguments.

Direct empirical evidence can also override apparent a priori knowledge when, for example, an instance of an A that is not a B is discovered when a subject is a priori justified in believing that all As are Bs. For example, apparently some Catholics do not consider the Pope a bachelor, even though they do believe he is an unmarried male. But this collective belief was discovered only after performing a posteriori investigations, including surveys and such. We believed, and were justified in believing, a priori, that all unmarried males are bachelors; and then later, that justified belief was overridden by a new justified belief that some unmarried males are not bachelors, even though most of them are. One branch of the constructive arm of the project of X-Phi is predicated on apriority’s ability to be overridden by aposteriority. Some experimental philosophers suggest that we should update our a priori concepts in light of a posteriori evidence.⁹

Indirect empirical evidence can undermine apparent a priori knowledge when empirical factors prove that our reliance on some a priori justificatory method is itself suspect, problematic, or unjustified in a way that infects our apparent justification. In cases like these, empirical evidence does not itself undermine a priori knowledge; empirical evidence points to a problem with some specific piece of knowledge, some range of knowledge, or some method for the attempted achievement of knowledge. The negative project of X-Phi is an example of indirect empirical evidence apparently undermining apparent a priori knowledge. In this negative project, experimental philosophers attempt to show that certain a priori methods are unreliable in some way, and that since they are unreliable in this way, they are unable to support a priori knowledge.

III A taxonomy of arguments for the a priori

Arguments for apriority of knowledge are, on my construal of rational intuition, also arguments for possible or actual authoritative rational intuitions. If a priori knowledge is possible, then there must be some properly-functioning cognitive mechanism by which the cognitive agent acquires this a priori knowledge via intrinsically compelling or self-evident evidence, and that properly-functioning cognitive mechanism is rational intuition. There must also be some metaphysically robust relation that non-accidentally or necessarily connects rational-intuitional belief with the necessary-truth-makers of that belief, thereby ruling out the skeptical possibility of knowledge-undermining cognitive-semantic luck.¹⁰ In this section, I will be primarily referring to arguments for apriority of knowledge. However, the reader should remember the deep connection between these arguments and authoritative rational intuition.

III. 1 Direct arguments

There exist two broad genera of arguments for the existence of a priori knowledge, or what I will call direct and indirect apriorist arguments. Direct apriorist arguments attempt to prove that we do possess some knowledge or justification, and that this knowledge or justification is, in fact, genuinely a priori in nature. Such arguments are often broadly ostensive in nature, and conform to the following pattern: “We all agree that (or it is evident that, or it would be perverse to deny that) we possess knowledge that 2 + 2 = 4 (or that all bachelors are unmarried, or that the sum of the interior angles of a regular Euclidian triangle is 180 degrees, or that the pointless suffering of the innocent is intrinsically bad), but such knowledge is underdetermined by (or could not have been derived from or outstrips) (possible or actual) contingent sensory experiences (or empirical evidence). Therefore, such knowledge is a priori and is actual.”

The benefit of a direct argument is that it is rationally persuasive if an interlocutor is willing to accept its premises. Interlocutors are, in effect, shown that they already believe that we possess a priori knowledge. If interlocutors are persuaded by such arguments, their serving of crow is sm...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Introduction: The Old Rationalism and the New Rationalism
• Part 1 Rationalism Redux: Rational Intuitions and Contemporary Philosophy
• Part 2 Rationalism Regained: The Benacerraf Dilemmas and Rational Intuitions in Mathematics, Logic, and Philosophy
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index