Your Appeals to Intuition Have No Power Here!

Abstract

In this paper, I argue that appeals to intuition in Analytic Philosophy are not compelling arguments because intuitions are not the sort of thing that has the power to rationally persuade other professional analytic philosophers. This conclusion follows from reasonable premises about the goal of Analytic Philosophy, which is rational persuasion by means of arguments, and the requirement that evidence for and/or against philosophical theses used by professional analytic philosophers be public (or transparent) in order to have the power to rationally persuade other professional analytic philosophers. Since intuitions are not public (or transparent) evidence, it follows that appeals to intuition are not compelling arguments for and/or against philosophical theses because they lack the power to rationally persuade other professional analytic philosophers.

Reference the untouchable. On the limits of revising concepts using the method of cases

“…However, several authors have argued that the conclusions of the method of cases can be directly justified not by intuitions but by arguments (Williamson, 2007;Cappelen, 2012;Deutsch 2010Deutsch , 2015Mizrahi, 2021;Tałasiewicz 2021;Horvath, 2022). These arguments could take different forms depending on their theoretical aim (see e.g.…”