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    What is the (recent) history of the term ‘intuitions’ in philosophy?

    By Catarina Dutilh Novaes

    As reported a few weeks ago, I’ve been working on a paper with my student Leon Geerdink (for a volume on the history of early analytic philosophy being edited by Chris Pincock and Sandra Lapointe) where we elaborate on a hypothesis that I first presented in a blog post more than 3 years ago: that the history of analytic philosophy can to a large extent be understood as the often uneasy interplay between Russellianism and Mooreanism, in particular with respect to their respective stances on the role of common sense for philosophical inquiry. In the first part of the paper, we present an (admittedly superficial and selective) overview of some recent debates on the role of intuitions and common sense in philosophical methodology; in the second part we discuss Moore and Russell specifically; and in the third part we discuss what we take to be another prominent instantiation of the opposition between Russellianism and Mooreanism: the debate between Carnap and Strawson on the notion of explication.

    The paper is now almost ready (and we’d be happy to share the draft if anyone is interested), but one puzzle remains: when and how did the term ‘intuitions’ begin to be used in the philosophical literature in its current sense(s)? (As argued by C.S.I Jenkins, the term seems to be used in different senses in the current debates.) As established by Leon, Russell and Moore do not use the term ‘intuitions’ in any of these senses (and in particular, not in the sense of common sense and folk beliefs); instead, they use the term in the technical, largely Kantian, sense of immediate knowledge. We have not found occurrences of the term in the Carnap/Strawson debate either.

    Does anyone know the answer to this pressing question? The SEP entry on intuitions is silent on the history of the terminology, and I haven’t found any discussions of this issue in the recent papers I’ve been reading for this project (maybe I’m missing something?). Not much hinges on this matter for the purposes of my paper with Leon, but it did make us curious. Perhaps our knowledgeable readers know the answer? We hope so!

     

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    17 responses to “What is the (recent) history of the term ‘intuitions’ in philosophy?”

    1. K Avatar
      K

      https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=sites&srcid=ZGVmYXVsdGRvbWFpbnxqYW1lc2FuZG93MnxneDozNjQ3ODU3ODA0YTFjOWEx

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    2. James Andow Avatar
      James Andow

      Hi Catarina, The paper you are working on sounds super interesting. As Mike indicated on twitter, I have done some relevant work on this, although I think it probably raises more questions than it settles. There is a copy of my paper (forthcoming in Metaphilosophy) here: http://www.academia.edu/7893523/How_Intuition_Exploded
      James

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    3. Catarina Dutilh Novaes Avatar
      Catarina Dutilh Novaes

      Thanks, James! Maybe you can give us a short version of the story here, so as to entice others to read your paper? (I’ll read it for sure anyway!)

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    4. Moti Mizrahi Avatar
      Moti Mizrahi

      There is some evidence that the history of ‘intuition’ as “intellectual appearance” (or seeming) is older than what we might think. Since the URL to the Google Books tool is too long, I am posting this link to Twitter where you can see the search results:
      https://twitter.com/motimizra/status/526724432631717888
      Those who care to use the tool and look through the results more carefully may be able to find gems like this one:
      https://twitter.com/motimizra/status/526725460072620032

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    5. Paul Livingston Avatar
      Paul Livingston

      Hi Catarina,
      This might be helpful (if you haven’t seen it already): http://philpapers.org/rec/HINTEN-2

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    6. James Andow Avatar
      James Andow

      So, I don’t know how relevant my work is to your project, but here is a brief informal precis for those who are interested.
      It is somewhat of a received wisdom that philosophers use the word ‘intuition’ much more now than they once did. This has provoked some metaphilosophical speculation about what methodological changes might underlie this terminological change. In the paper, I report a quantitative study of the use of the word ‘intuition’ which puts the received wisdom to the test. The received wisdom passes the test — philosophers do use the word ‘intuition’ much more now than they used to. However, the metaphilosophical speculation doesn’t — the explosion is unlikely to be sign of any important shift in philosophical methodology or practice since (a) almost every other academic discipline has seen an increase in intuition-talk, and (b) the explosion is evident even outside the academy.

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    7. Catarina Dutilh Novaes Avatar
      Catarina Dutilh Novaes

      Hi Paul, no, I hadn’t see this paper until today! You can count on Hintikka to bring in some historical context (one of the many good things about him). So thanks!

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    8. Catarina Dutilh Novaes Avatar
      Catarina Dutilh Novaes

      Thanks!

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    9. Catarina Dutilh Novaes Avatar
      Catarina Dutilh Novaes

      There’s some overlap between your project and ours, as our point is that what is now often referred to as ‘intuitions’ was problematized in terms of the notion of common sense by e.g. Russell and Moore. We also emphasize the continuity in philosophical methodology in analytic philosophy (albeit with two main strands, the Moorean conservative and the Russellian revisionary). It has been suggested (by Leon and Also Joshua Alexander on FB) that philosophers adopted the intuitions-terminology under the influence of Chomsky and other linguists.

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    10. James Andow Avatar
      James Andow

      Similar ideas have struck me before — about a difference in usage between these two periods. However, in my thesis research I also found quite a lot of evidence of common themes between use of ‘intuition’ in philosophy journals at around the turn of the C20th and more contemporary use. And I made a case for a stronger continuity than one might think at first glance.
      I’d like to read your paper. Perhaps we can exchange manuscripts?

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    11. Daniel Garber Avatar
      Daniel Garber

      My own suspicion is that intuitions entered analytic philosophy in the late 1950s or early 1960s from Chomsky’s transformational grammar program. There the idea is that intuitions about grammaticality are the data, and we build theories to capture and systematize those intuitions. It is a short distance from there to what philosophers now do with intuition. But this is just a guess. One would have to poke about and see if the dates are right, and the influences seem plausible. But it seems significant that Rawls refers to this idea in Chomsky in A THEORY OF JUSTICE, a book that was in progress in the 1960s.

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    12. Anon Avatar
      Anon

      Have you looked at the OED?

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    13. G Avatar
      G

      The word “intuition” is used in two quite different senses. One sense involves simply our gut or immediate reaction to a specific case “of course I don’t think I’m obliged to remain attached to the violinist” But there is also another and much older use of the word that refers to an immediate sort of knowledge that is not dependent on truth. So Moore’s belief “I know I have a hand” is the former sort of intuition, but his claim to knowledge of good as a simple indefinable property relies on the second sort, which goes probably all the way back to the Aristotle and Plato (i think), and is the same sort of thing that Descartes talks about when he uses the phrase “light of nature.”

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    14. Enzo Rossi Avatar
      Enzo Rossi

      I would’ve thought another source could be Sidgwick’s “intuitionism” — also an influence on Rawls, interestingly. I do find the above comment on Chomsky (and Rawls) plausible.

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    15. Enzo Rossi Avatar
      Enzo Rossi

      I would’ve thought another source could be Sidgwick’s “intuitionism” — also an influence on Rawls, interestingly. I do find the above comment on Chomsky (and Rawls) plausible.

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    16. James Andow Avatar
      James Andow

      (As I urge, in my paper – linked above) I think that it is important to recognise the extent to which intuition-talk in philosophy is part of a much wider phenomenon. The data I present show that use of intuition-talk has been on the increase in almost every single academic discipline, in English fiction writing, and in Time magazine. While this data doesn’t speak to the ways intuition-talk might be different in those different places, it does suggest that there is something important going on which is rather more general. We shouldn’t forget the possibility that changes in philosophers’ use of intuition-talk, and the heritage of contemporary philosophers’ intuition-talk, might be firmly rooted in the use of intuition-talk in English more generally. From within, it is very tempting to reach solely for philosophy-specific influences such as Chomsky, Sidgwick, Bergson, … etc. But, while these are surely part of the picture, I’m inclined to suggest that they are not the major players.

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    17. Frank O'File Avatar
      Frank O’File

      If Sidgwick, then presumably also Ross and (though I’m not so sure about this) Prichard.

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