How reliable are intuitive or introspective judgments? This question has produced lively debates in two respective discussions. In this commentary I will try to show that the two phenomena of introspective and intuitive judgments are very closely related, so that the two separate philosophical debates about them can substantially inform each other. In particular, the intuition debate can profit from conceptual tools that have already been introduced to discussions about the reliability of introspection. Especially the distinction between scaffolded and freestanding judgements, which has been developed by Tim Bayne & Maja Spener (2010), can be used to more carefully investigate intuitions with respect to their epistemic reliability. After briefly applying this framework to some paradigm cases of “philosophically interesting” intuitions, I will come to the conclusion that most of these must be regarded as freestanding judgments and thus cannot play the role of reliable sources of evidence that they are supposed to play in some discussions in contemporary epistemology and methodology.
Epistemic reliability | Experimental philosophy | Global pessimism | Local pessimism | Phenomenology of certainty | Philosophical intuitions | Scaffolded vs. freestanding judgments | Thought experiments