The Failure of Hope as an Epistemic Standard

Jonathan Weinberg (2007) attempted to show how to challenge intuitions empirically, without risking skepticism. In this paper, I raise several objections to his project. In the first section I will clarify and explain several terms. Specifically, what I mean when I use intuition in this paper and what Weinberg means by hopefulness. Clarification of these terms is essential to this paper, as both intuition and hopefulness have become somewhat muddled terms in recent literature. In the second section I will reconstruct Weinberg’s argument against philosophers’ appeals to intuition. Weinberg aims to show that philosophers’ appeals to intuitions are epistemically hopeless –i.e., not sensitive to its errors and hard to correct for its errors. In the third section, I will raise objections to hopefulness as an epistemic standard and to his evaluation of how perception does on the standard of hopefulness. In the fourth section I will explore how Weinberg could respond to these objections, and I will respond to the potential responses. Weinberg’s argument against intuitions as a source of evidence fails in showing that hopefulness is a necessary and correct epistemic standard for putative sources of evidence, because if correct, it results in full-blown skepticism

The Critique from Experimental Philosophy: Can Philosophical Intuitions Be Externally Corroborated?

Jonathan Weinberg (2007) criticizes so called armchair philosophers’ appeals to intuitions. Faulty intuitions, so the argument, cannot be detected and corrected since (among other reasons) intuitions cannot be corroborated by external evidence. I press a dilemma against Weinberg. On a broad reading of ‘corroboration’, Weinberg has not established that intuitions lack external corroboration. On a narrow reading, his critique is self-undermining and issues into general skepticism

Comments on William Perrin’s “The Failure of Hope as an Epistemic Standard”

10:00-10:50: “The Failure of Hope as an Epistemic Standard” By William Perrin (Pepperdine University) Comments by Colleen Hanson Chair: Samantha Lill

Thin, fine and with sensitivity: a metamethodology of intuitions

Do philosophers use intuitions? Should philosophers use intuitions? Can philosophical methods (where intuitions are concerned) be improved upon? In order to answer these questions we need to have some idea of how we should go about answering them. I defend a way of going about methodology of intuitions: a metamethodology. I claim the following: (i) we should approach methodological questions about intuitions with a thin conception of intuitions in mind; (ii) we should carve intuitions finely; and, (iii) we should carve to a grain to which we are sensitive in our everyday philosophising. The reason is that, unless we do so, we don’t get what we want from philosophical methodology. I argue that what we want is information that will aid us in formulating practical advice concerning how to do philosophy responsibly/well/better

The Methodological Necessity of Experimental Philosophy

Must philosophers incorporate tools of experimental science into their methodological toolbox? I argue here that they must. Tallying up all the resources that are now part of standard practice in analytic philosophy, we see the problem that they do not include adequate resources for detecting and correcting for their own biases and proclivities towards error. Methodologically sufficient resources for error- detection and error-correction can only come, in part, from the deployment of specific methods from the sciences. However, we need not imagine that the resulting methodological norms will be so empirically demanding as to require that all appeals to intuition must first be precertified by a thorough vetting by teams of scientists. Rather, I sketch a set of more moderate methodological norms for how we might best include these necessary tools of experimental philosophy

Aesthetic Comprehension of Abstract and Emotion Concepts: Kant’s Aesthetics Renewed

In § 49 of the Critique of the Power of Judgment Kant puts forward a view that the feeling of pleasure in the experience of the beautiful can be stimulated not merely by perceptual properties, but by ideas and thoughts as well. The aim of this paper is to argue that aesthetic ideas fill in the emptiness that abstract and emotion concepts on their own would have without empirical intuitions. That is, aesthetic ideas make these concepts more accessible to us, by creating image schemas that allow us to think about these abstract concepts in a way linked to sensory experience, thereby imbuing them with a more substantive meaning and understanding

Developing and Assessing Respect for Human Dignity in College Students

Academic institutions are now expected to engage in developing and assessing learning outcomes; however, responsibility outcomes, such as respect for human dignity (RFHD), can be particularly challenging. As part of our Biopsychology course and Sensation and Perception course over the past decade, we applied the scientist-educator model of learning and drew from the literature on prejudice reduction to develop our RFHD interventions, which involved face-to-face interactions with others who had sensory deficits or brain/spinal cord injuries. We iteratively created two pre-post measures to assess development of different aspects of RFHD: a Behavioral Tendencies Questionnaire and a 4-Factor RFHD Model Questionnaire. Recently, we modified the intervention and the assessments for adoption in our Class, Race, and Ethnicity in Society course. This paper reports findings from these three courses and a control course in engineering (n = 153). Findings support our two sets of hypotheses, regarding 1) the efficacy of the assessments to capture different likelihoods for interacting with others targeted by the interventions and changes over time in these factors, and 2) positive effects of the face-to-face intervention activities. This study demonstrates RFHD can be developed and assessed in a college course and provides new assessments for RFHD that are easily modified for a variety of types of others (e.g., individuals who are homeless versus blind or of a particular race). Click here to read the corresponding ISSOTL blog post

Philosophical Intuition and the Need for an Explanation

Traditionally, intuitions about cases have been taken as strong evidence for a philosophical position. I argue that intuitions about concept deployment have epistemic value while intuitions about matters of fact have none. I argue this by use of the explanationist criterion which contends that S is justified in believing only those propositions which are part of the best explanation of S’s making the judgements she makes. This criterion accords with scientific practice. Bealer suggests, as a defence of intuition, that naturalists rely on intuition in their arguments against intuition and thus that their arguments are self-undermining. But beliefs based on intuitions about the application of concepts, like ‘justification’ and ‘theory,’ are epistemically justified by the explanationist criterion. It is only intuitions about matters of fact which are rejected. Thus, epistemically-respectable intuitions about concepts are used to undermine intuitions about metaphysics. There is nothing self-undermining about this

Kant, Neo-Kantianism, and Phenomenology

This chapter offers a reassessment of the relationship between Kant, the Kantian tradition, and phenomenology, here focusing mainly on Husserl and Heidegger. Part of this reassessment concerns those philosophers who, during the lives of Husserl and Heidegger, sought to defend an updated version of Kant’s philosophy, the neo-Kantians. The chapter shows where the phenomenologists were able to benefit from some of the insights on the part of Kant and the neo-Kantians, but also clearly points to the differences. The aim of this chapter is to offer a fair evaluation of the relation of the main phenomenologists to Kant and to what was at the time the most powerful philosophical movement in Europe