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The introductory chapter presents the current status of the debate concerning linguistic intuitions, starting with their early use in the Chomskyan tradition. It introduces the two main questions discussed in the volume: the justification question, which asks for a theoretical rationale for using linguistic intuitions as evidence in the study of language; and the methodology question, which asks whether formal methods of gathering intuitions are epistemically and methodologically superior to informal ones. The introduction also provides summaries of the remaining chapters and explains how they contribute to the debates raised by these two questions.

For more than a decade, there has been lively debate on the question of why we are justified in using acceptability judgments as evidence in linguistics. More surprisingly, there has also been extensive debate over what the received view on this issue is among generative linguists. This second question has received as much attention as the justification question, if not more; yet no agreement has been reached so far. The voices of generative linguists themselves have been largely missing in these debates. Do generative linguists in fact believe in a Voice of Competence, as Devitt suggests? This chapter presents the results of a study that surveyed generative linguists to answer just that question. These results, overall, offer evidence against the hypothesis that VoC is the received view in current generative linguistics.

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