Trusting Intuitions

Abstract

This chapter questions the account presented in Chapter 12 along several lines. It argues, for example, that the account of intuitions is too limited; that it cannot account for the wide variety of propositions (including contingent propositions) that philosophers frequently call ‘intuitions’. Moreover, the account requires the existence of a distinct ‘faculty of intuition’ over and above the more usual faculties, including our conceptual faculties. The chapter suggests an alternative, ‘minimalist’, model of intuitions, one according to which an intuition is merely something one finds believable without knowing why one finds it believable. On this view, intuitions may indeed be the result of reliable belief-forming abilities, but those abilities may be nothing more mysterious than a conjunction of the usual sources of our beliefs.