How intuitions work
Just as seeing a tree gives you reason to believe it’s there, sensing that a stranger is creepy gives you reason to walk away- by Marc A MoffettRead on Aeon.
Intuitions are immediate feelings or reactions that something is right or wrong, safe or risky, without relying on explicit reasoning. For example, a person might decline to enter a stranger’s car because they feel an instinctive discomfort, even if they cannot explain why. These intuitions are often dismissed as irrational or merely based on heuristics, but they play a crucial role in helping people navigate the world. Unlike formal reasoning, which follows step-by-step logic, intuitions present situations as having a certain character—such as a person being creepy or an email being fraudulent—without requiring justification. Despite their importance, intuitions are frequently undervalued in both everyday life and academic discussions, where they are sometimes seen as unreliable or secondary to more structured forms of knowledge.
Philosophers often focus on rational intuition, a specialized form of intuition used in disciplines like philosophy, logic, and mathematics. For instance, a rational intuition might involve recognizing that the statement 2 + 2 = 4 is true without needing to prove it. However, everyday intuitions—such as feeling that a deal is suspicious—share similarities with rational intuitions. Both involve a sense that something is a certain way, without the need for explicit justification. The article argues that these two types of intuition are not as different as they may seem. Instead, they may both stem from the same basic cognitive capacity, which presents facts or propositions as true in a direct, unmediated way, much like how perception presents the world to us.
Thought experiments are imaginary scenarios used by philosophers to explore concepts like ethics or knowledge. Two classic examples are the trolley problem and the fake barn case. In the trolley problem, introduced by philosophers Philippa Foot and Judith Jarvis Thomson, a person must decide whether to push a bystander onto the tracks to stop a runaway trolley and save five people. Most people intuitively feel that pushing the bystander is wrong, even if it saves lives. In the fake barn case, proposed by Carl Ginet, a person sees what appears to be a barn but later learns they were in an area filled with fake barn facades. Despite the belief being true, people intuitively feel that the person does not know it is a barn. These intuitions arise without explicit reasoning and shape how we think about moral and epistemic concepts.
Intuitions are not limited to philosophical thought experiments; they also appear in everyday decision-making. For example, when deciding whether to tell a friend about a spouse’s infidelity, a person might imagine the conversation and the pain it would cause. The feeling of pain that arises in this imagined scenario can act as a reason not to disclose the information, even if it is not a decisive argument. This process mirrors the way intuitions function in thought experiments. The key feature is that the reason emerges directly from the understanding of the situation, without the need for formal reasoning. The article emphasizes that intuitions are not merely passing thoughts but have an epistemic pull—they guide actions and beliefs by presenting themselves as revealing how things must be in a given scenario.
Justification is the idea that beliefs must be supported by reasons to be considered true or reliable. However, philosophers have long debated how beliefs can be justified without relying on an infinite chain of other beliefs. This is known as the regress problem. One solution is foundationalism, which suggests that some beliefs are justified independently of others, serving as a foundation for further reasoning. Perception is often cited as an example: when you see a tree, your visual experience justifies your belief that there is a tree, without needing additional reasons to trust your senses. This breaks the regress because the justification does not depend on prior beliefs. The article uses this framework to argue that intuitions might function similarly, providing justification without requiring further support.
Perception provides a model for understanding how intuitions might justify beliefs. When you see a tree, your visual experience presents the tree as real and present, giving your belief that there is a tree a kind of justification. This is called presentational phenomenology—the way a mental state feels like it is revealing reality. The article introduces the theory of quasi-perceptualism, proposed by philosopher John Bengson, which suggests that intuitions work in the same way. For example, if a stranger gives you a creepy vibe, your intuition presents them as untrustworthy, just as perception presents a tree as real. Both involve a felt quality that makes their content seem true, even without explicit reasoning. This theory aims to explain why intuitions can have rational force.
The idea that intuitions have a distinct *intellectual phenomenology*—a felt quality that presents their content as true—faces a challenge known as the *absent intuition problem*. Some people report that they do not experience any special feeling or quality when they have an intuition, such as in thought experiments. If intuitions lack this phenomenology, then the quasi-perceptualist explanation of their epistemic force may not hold. Philosopher Timothy Williamson and others argue that this suggests intuitions might justify beliefs in a different way, without relying on a special experiential quality. This challenge calls into question whether the presentational phenomenology of perception is even necessary for justification, as some conditions like *derealisation disorder* show that experiences can feel normal but lack a sense of reality.
