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A good summary article on intuitions in biology

The Studia Philosophica Estonia is not a journal I regularly read, but this article – “The Role of Intuitions in Philosophy” – is a good introduction to the topic, and it’s free. I tend to think that “intuition” is an empty word, myself. I like the phrase “traditional faculty view” for its ambiguity – the authors mean “the traditional view that intuitions are a faculty of mind”, but I immediately thought of “intuitions come from faculty members” [of some philosophy department].

3 Comments

  1. Felipe Morales Felipe Morales

    That reminded me of something I read today on Peter van Inwagen’s essay “Modal Epistemology”. I’ll quote: “[a philosopher who does ‘all sort or fanciful modal judgments’] is unaware that the modal beliefs he expresses or presupposes when he says ‘we’d have had more room if we’d moved the table up against the wall’… and the modal beliefs he gives such confident expression to in his writings… have quite different sources. The former have their source in our ordinary human powers of ‘modalization’… the latter have their source in his professional socialization, in ‘what his peers will let him get away with saying’.”

  2. MKR MKR

    What philosophers these days mean by the word ‘intuition’ today is pretty close to what Descartes meant by ‘preconceived opinion’, except that the former has an honorific connotation.

    • MKR MKR

      Oops. Delete the redundant word ‘today’ from that. I wish that this site allowed editing or deletion of comments.

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