No hope for the Irrelevance Claim
- PDF / 299,777 Bytes
- 21 Pages / 439.37 x 666.142 pts Page_size
- 27 Downloads / 169 Views
No hope for the Irrelevance Claim Miguel Egler1
The Author(s) 2019
Abstract Empirical findings about intuitions putatively cast doubt on the traditional methodology of philosophy. Herman Cappelen and Max Deutsch have argued that these methodological concerns are unmotivated as experimental findings about intuitions are irrelevant for assessments of the methodology of philosophy—I dub this the ‘Irrelevance Claim’. In this paper, I first explain that for Cappelen and Deutsch to vindicate the Irrelevance Claim from a forceful objection, their arguments have to establish that intuitions play no epistemically significant role whatsoever in philosophy—call this the ‘Orthogonality Claim’. I then argue that even under a charitable reading of their views Cappelen and Deutsch fail to establish the Orthogonality Claim. Lastly, I discuss empirical evidence that the Orthogonality Claim is false. The arguments in this paper will demonstrate that Cappelen and Deutsch cannot motivate the Irrelevance Claim and that their replies to recent experimental attacks on traditional methodology of philosophy do not succeed. Keywords Experimental philosophy Philosophical methodology Intuition Evidence
1 Introduction Recent empirical studies suggest that people’s intuitions are sensitive to a host of epistemically irrelevant factors—e.g., their culture, personality, and the order in which cases are presented to them (for a review: Machery 2017 ch. 2). These findings putatively raise concerns about the traditional methodology of philosophy, & Miguel Egler [email protected] 1
Arche´ Research Centre, University of St Andrews, 17–19 College St., St Andrews KY16 9AL, Scotland, UK
123
M. Egler
which is commonly regarded to rely on appeals to intuition. Call this the ‘experimentalist challenge’. Herman Cappelen and Max Deutsch have recently argued that this experimentalist challenge fails outright (Cappelen 2012; Deutsch 2015). Their argument for this conclusion rests on the (increasingly popular) view that intuitions do not play an evidential role in philosophy. I dub this view ‘Intuition Denial’ (henceforth ID).1 Both Cappelen and Deutsch contend that, given their arguments for ID, it naturally follows that: Irrelevance Claim: Experimental findings about intuitions are simply irrelevant for assessments of the methodology of philosophy. The central upshot of the Irrelevance Claim is that the experimentalist challenge turns out to be ultimately unmotivated. In this paper I argue that Cappelen and Deutsch fail to establish the Irrelevance Claim. In the first part of the paper, I briefly discuss their arguments to the effect that the Irrelevance Claim follows from ID (Sect. 2), and then discuss a forceful objection to their proposal (Sect. 3). I then explain that this objection does not succeed outright as Cappelen and Deutsch’s arguments for the Irrelevance Claim purport to motivate the following stronger claim: Orthogonality Claim: Intuitions play no epistemically significant role whatsoever in philosophy. In the second part of t
Data Loading...
