Intuitions and Philosophical Practice
Philosophers are concerned with evaluating theories about such things as knowledge, justification, meaning, moral responsibility, and morally right action.2 Is knowledge simply justified true belief? Is a belief justified just in case it is caused by a reliable cognitive mechanism? Does a name refer to whatever object uniquely or best satisfies the description associated with it? Is a person morally responsible for an action only if she could have acted otherwise? Is an action morally right just in case it provides the greatest benefit for the greatest number of people all else being equal? When confronted with these kinds of questions, philosophers often appeal to philosophical intuitions about real or imagined cases.
We advance philosophical theories on the basis of their ability to explain our philosophical intuitions, and appeal to them as evidence that those theories are true and reasons for believing as such.To get a better sense of how this works, let's look at some examples. For a long time, philosophers thought that knowledge was simply justified true belief. Not anymore. Edmund Gettier (1963) changed our minds by presenting two hypothetical cases involving a person who has deduced a true belief q from a justified false belief that p and, on that basis, formed a justified true belief that q that doesn't seem to count as knowledge.3 Here's one of Gettier's cases:
Suppose that Smith and Jones have applied for a certain job. And suppose that Smith has strong evidence for the following conjunctive proposition:
(d) Jones is the man who will get the job, and Jones has ten coins in his pocket.
Smith's evidence for (d) might be that the president of the company assured him that Jones would in the end be selected, and that he, Smith, had counted the coins in Jones's pocket ten minutes ago.
Proposition (d) entails:(e) The man who will get the job has ten coins in his pocket.
Let us suppose that Smith sees the entailment from (d) to (e), and accepts (e) on the grounds of (d), for which he has strong evidence. In this case, Smith is clearly justified in believing that (e) is true.
But imagine, further, that unknown to Smith, he himself, not Jones, will get the job. And, also, unknown to Smith, he himself has ten coins in his pocket. Proposition (e) is then true, though proposition (d), from which Smith inferred (e), is false. In our example, then, all of the following are true: (i) (e) is true, (ii) Smith believes that (e) is true, and (iii) Smith is justified in believing that (e) is true. (Gettier 1963, p. 122)
Smith has the justified true belief that the man who will get the job has ten coins in his pocket. Yet, it doesn't seem that he knows this. Instead, it is supposed to be clear that Smith does not know that the man who will get the job has ten coins in his pocket even though his belief is both justified and true. (Usually, people think that what has gone wrong is that Smith doesn't have access to the appropriate truth-makers - or at least that what makes his belief justified is not what makes it true - and so he is lucky that his belief is true.) We are supposed to just see this, and this is supposed to count as sufficient evidence against the claim that a person knows that p just in case that person's true belief is justified.4 If Smith is justified in truly believing that the man who will get the job has ten coins in his pocket without knowing that it is true, then knowledge simply cannot be merely justified true belief.
Philosophical intuitions play a similar role in discussions about the nature of epistemic justification.
Consider, for example, the claim that a person's belief that p counts as justified just in case it is caused, or is causally sustained, by a reliable cognitive process. While many philosophers have found this claim quite attractive, most philosophers now agree that being caused, or causally sustained, by a reliable cognitive process isn't sufficient for a person's belief that p to count as justified. To see why, consider the following hypothetical case:Suppose a person, whom we shall name Mr. Truetemp, undergoes brain surgery by an experimental surgeon who invents a small device which is both a very accurate thermometer and a computational device capable of generating thoughts. The device, call it a tempucomp, is implanted in Truetemp's head so that the very tip of the device, no larger than the head of a pin, sits unnoticed on his scalp and acts as a sensor to transmit information about the temperature to the computational system of his brain. This device, in turn, sends a message to his brain causing him to think of the temperature recorded by the external sensor. Assume that the tempucomp is very reliable, and so his thoughts are correct temperature thoughts. All told, this is a reliable belief-forming process. Now imagine, finally, that he has no idea that the tempucomp has been inserted in his brain, is only slightly puzzled about why he thinks so obsessively about the temperature, but never checks a thermometer to determine whether these thoughts about the temperature are correct. He accepts them unreflectively, another effect of the tempucomp. Thus, he thinks and accepts that the temperature is 104 degrees. It is. Does he know that it is? (Lehrer 1990, pp. 163-64)
Truetemp's temperature beliefs are caused by a reliable cognitive process, and yet it doesn't seem like he knows that it is 104 degrees. In fact, it is supposed to be clear that Truetemp does not know that it is 104 degrees, and this is supposed to put pressure on the idea that a person's belief that p is justified if it is caused by a reliable cognitive process.
If Truetemp doesn't know that it is 104 degrees even though his true belief that it is was caused by a reliable cognitive process, then clearly something more is needed in order to justify our beliefs than the mere fact that they are caused by a reliable cognitive process. It may be necessary that they are, but it clearly isn't sufficient.We've looked at two examples of the role that intuitions play in contemporary epistemology. Of course, the role of intuitions in contemporary philosophy is hardly limited to epistemology. Let's consider a widely discussed example from the philosophy of language. According to the descriptivist theory of reference, there is a description associated with every proper name. This description specifies a set of properties and an individual object is the referent of a given proper name just in case it uniquely or best satisfies the description; that is, just in case it possesses all of the properties, or possesses more of the properties than does any other object, that are associated with the proper name. By contrast, according to the causal theory of reference, a proper name is introduced into a linguistic community for the purpose of referring to a specific individual. The name then continues to refer to that individual so long as its uses are linked to that individual through a causal sequence of successive uses; that is, so long as one's use of that name to refer to that individual object has been acquired from someone else's use of that name to refer to that individual object and so on back to the point at which the name was first introduced to refer to that individual object.
class=a0 style='text-indent:18.0pt;line-height:105%'>Which view is right? Prior to the 1970s, most analytic philosophers were descriptivists, believing that names refer to those objects that uniquely or best satisfy the descriptions associated with them. This changed (at least for a time) with the publication of Naming and Necessity (Kripke 1980).5 There, Saul Kripke provided a series of powerful arguments against the descriptivist theory. The most famous of these arguments begins by describing a person who says that Godel is the man who proved the incompleteness of arithmetic. This person knows enough mathematics to be able to give an independent account of the incompleteness theorem, but all that this person knows about Godel is that he was the man who proved the incompleteness of arithmetic. With this in mind, Kripke asks readers to consider the following hypothetical case:Suppose that Godel was not in fact the author of this theorem. A man named ‘Schmidt', whose body was found in Vienna under mysterious circumstances many years ago, actually did the work in question. His friend Godel somehow got a hold of the manuscript and it was thereafter attributed to Godel (pp. 83-84).
According to the descriptivist theory of reference, when our fictional protagonist says that Godel is the man who proved the incompleteness of arithmetic, he is referring to Schmidt because it is Schmidt who uniquely satisfies the description associated with the name ‘Godel' (namely, the person who proved the incompleteness of arithmetic). Yet, it doesn't seem like he is referring to Schmidt; instead, it seems like the person is referring to Godel (even if some of his beliefs about Godel have turned out to be false). And, it is a strike against the descriptivist theory that it is at odds with this intuition. The fact that the descriptivist theory of reference tells us that the person is referring to Schmidt when it seems obvious to us that the person is referring to Godel suggests that it is not the case that names refer to those objects that uniquely or best satisfy the descriptions associated with them. By contrast, the causal theory of reference successfully explains why it seems to us like the person is referring to Godel: his use of the name is appropriately linked to the introduction of the name to refer to Godel. The ability of the causal theory of reference to explain why it seems like the person is referring to Godel suggests that reference is fixed by the initial act of naming and that later uses of a name succeed by being causally linked to this initial act.
In addition to playing a significant role in epistemology and the philosophy of language, philosophical intuitions also play a significant role in contemporary discussions about the relationship between free will and moral responsibility.
For example, many arguments for incompatibilism, the view that free will and moral responsibility are incompatible with causal determinism, rely on the principle that a person is morally responsible for her actions only if she could have done otherwise. If it's true that a person is morally responsible for her actions only if she could have done otherwise, and causal determinism entails that, given the actual past and the laws of nature, we can only perform those actions that we do perform, then causal determinism is incompatible with moral responsibility. But is this principle, commonly referred to as the principle of alternative possibilities, true? Harry Frankfurt (1969) gives us reason to worry that it is not. Frankfurt has readers imagine a person named Jones who has decided for reasons of his own to perform some action, but who is then threatened by another person with a penalty (one so harsh that any reasonable person would submit to the threat) unless he performs precisely that same action. Jones is neither an unreasonable man who acts without considering the consequences of his actions nor a man who is “stamped by the threat” such that “[g]iven the threat he would have performed that action regardless of what decision he had already made” (Frankfurt 1969, p. 832). Instead,[t]he threat impressed him, as it would impress any reasonable man, and he would have submitted to it wholeheartedly if he had not already made a decision that coincided with the one demanded of him. In fact, however, he performed the action in question on the basis of the decision he had made before the threat was issued. When he acted, he was not actually motivated by the threat but solely by the considerations that had originally commended the action to him. It was not the threat that led him to act, though it would have done so if he had not already provided himself with a sufficient motive for performing the action in question. (Frankfurt 1969, p. 832)
According to the principle of alternative possibilities, Jones is not morally responsible for his action because he could not have done otherwise. Yet, it seems like he is morally responsible for his action. Jones decided to perform the action before the threat was made, and he acted on the basis of this decision and not on the basis of the subsequent threat. But, if Jones is morally responsible for his action, then a person may be morally responsible for his actions even if it is impossible for him to do otherwise - particularly, when the circumstances that make it impossible for him to do otherwise don't actually cause him to act in the first place.
Let's look at one more example, this time from normative ethics. Many moral philosophers believe that it is morally impermissible to cause harm unless doing so is the unavoidable side effect of an action intended to bring about a morally good state of affairs. While it is permissible to bring about harmful side effects in the course of bringing about some morally good state of affairs, it is impermissible to bring about those same harmful effects as a means of bringing about that state of affairs. One reason moral philosophers have had for endorsing this view, which is commonly called the doctrine of double effect, is that it helps to explain why we respond differently to the following two hypothetical cases:
Trolley:
Suppose that you are the driver of a trolley. The trolley rounds a bend, and there comes into view ahead five track workmen, who have been repairing the track. The track goes through a bit of a valley at that point, and the sides are steep, so you must stop the trolley if you are to avoid running the five men down. You step on the brakes, but alas they don't work. Now you suddenly see a spur of track leading off to the right. You can turn the trolley onto it, and thus save the five men on the straight track ahead. Unfortunately... there is one track workman on that spur of track. He can no more get off the track in time than the five can, so you will kill him if you turn the trolley onto him. (Thomson 1985, p. 1395)
Transplant:
[I]magine yourself to be a surgeon, a truly great surgeon. Among other things you do, you transplant organs, and you are such a great surgeon that the organs you transplant always take. At the moment you have five patients who need organs. Two need one lung each, two need a kidney each, and the fifth needs a heart. If they do not get those organs today, they will all die; if you find organs for them today, you can transplant the organs and they will all live. But where to find the lungs, the kidneys, and the heart? The time is almost up when a report is brought to you that a young man who has just come into your clinic for his yearly check-up has exactly the right bloodtype, and is in excellent health. Lo, you have a possible donor. All you need to do is cut him up and distribute his parts to the five who need them. You ask, but he says, “Sorry. I deeply sympathize, but no.” (Thomson 1985, p. 1396)
The doctrine of double effect explains why it seems morally permissible to redirect the trolley but not to sacrifice the healthy patient. In the trolley case, we do not intend to kill one worker as a means to saving the other five. His death is the unavoidable side effect of an action intended to bring about a morally good state of affairs. By contrast, we do intend to kill the healthy patient in order to save the other patients. His death is the means by which we would bring about a morally good state of affairs. By stipulating that it is morally permissible to bring about harmful side effects in the course of bringing about morally good states of affairs, but not to use harmful means to bring about morally good ends, the doctrine of double effect makes sense of our intuitions about these two cases, and this counts in its favor.6
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