Over at New APPS, Catarina Dutilh Novaes has an interesting post about a project she is working on with her graduate students. The project is about the origins of analytic philosophy in general and the history of the use of intuitions as evidence in philosophy in particular.
One question Catarina and her students are trying to answer is the following: "when and how did the term ‘intuitions’ begin to be used in the philosophical literature in its current sense(s)?"
In comments, Catarina reports a suggestion "that philosophers adopted the intuitions-terminology under the influence of Chomsky and other linguists." In line with Catarina’s report, Daniel Garber writes in the comments section:
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.
In this post, I would like to suggest that intuition-talk is much older than we might think. Since I don’t have graduate students (but I do have a lot of undergraduates this semester :), I will merely suggest that, and present some preliminary evidence to that effect. (One more paper to write.)
Using this Google Books tool, we can find out how far back intuition-talk goes.
We can see that intuition-talk goes back to the eighteenth century. We can also zoom in on search results to see how the terms are used. Here are three examples:
- Truth is an amiable and delightful object to the eye of the mind, but is not easily apprehended by the bulk of mankind; especially if it be remote from common observation, or abstracted from sensible experience. It requires strict attention as well as an acute perception to take it up in its pure and intellectual appearance, and the memory must be tenacious to retain it long in that simple form (Fordyce 1768, p. 329).
- Upon the validity of this intellectual intuition (a direct application of Descartes’ appeal to the authority of consciousness), the very axioms of Spinoza’s system must wholly rest (Morell 1847 p. 184).
- The more clearly we see any thing to be moral, the more sensibly we feel ourselves under a moral obligation to perform it. This being a matter of common intuition, and universal experience, all that is necessary to convince us of its truth, is to bring it directly before our minds (Alexander 1852 p. 49).
Moti, thanks for the interesting post.
However, are we not talking about two different meanings of "intuition", so that they are little more than homophones?
1) "intuition" as a translation of Descartes' intuitus is a faculty for acquiring knowledge, parallel to sense perception and able to seize only clear and distinct things (such as basic mathematic truths).
2) "intuition" as it is used in contemporary analytic philosophy treats philosophers and readers of philosophy as "native speakers" of the philosophical enterprise, whose irreflective views may have some relevance to solve also complex issues, such as the degree of acceptable compatibilism in the theory of free will.
Posted by: Elisa Freschi | 10/30/2014 at 04:22 AM
I should have added that "intuition" in the second sense seems a close relative to "common sense" as argued for by some English empiricists.
Posted by: Elisa Freschi | 10/30/2014 at 04:23 AM
Hi Elisa,
Thanks very much for your comment. I think you are right that there is more than one sense of “intuition.” My point is that all of them date back much earlier than the 1950s or 1960s.
Posted by: Moti Mizrahi | 10/30/2014 at 09:34 AM
Cool to see this discussion carrying on over here! I am definitely sympathetic to the general tenor of your post. Indeed, I made a very similar point in my PhD thesis using examples of use gleaned through JStor.
I am going to take the chance to link to the paper I linked to over at Caterina's post here too, as the main thrust is pretty sympathetic to your thoughts in this post https://www.academia.edu/7893523/How_Intuition_Exploded
In the paper, I present evidence that casts severe doubt at least on the idea that the influence of Chomsky is the most important explanatory factor when it comes to the prevalence of intuition-talk in philosophy today.
The paper is forthcoming in Metaphilosophy.
(Sorry for indulging in a little self-promotion)
Posted by: James Andow | 10/30/2014 at 12:21 PM
Hi James,
No need to apologize. I look forward to reading your paper.
Posted by: Moti Mizrahi | 10/30/2014 at 01:02 PM