Jonathan Jenkins Ichikawa
Posted in Philosophy on Jul 15th, 2011
Benjamin Jarvis and I have been working for some time now on a book manuscript on mental content, rationality, and the epistemology of philosophy. I posted a TOC of our first draft last summer. Since then, we’ve received some helpful comments from reviewers, and have revised extensively; we now have a full new draft, which [...]
Posted in Philosophy on May 13th, 2011
Suppose that Katie is sitting out in the sun. Here are two propositions: (1) It is sunny. (2) Jonathan is wearing glasses or Jonathan is not wearing glasses. It’s pretty plausible to develop the case in such a way that each of (1) and (2) would be rational for Katie to believe, and irrational for [...]
Posted in Philosophy on Apr 26th, 2011
I spent the last week at the APA Pacific in San Diego. I have several topics inspired there that I’m hoping to write up quick blog posts about, including some philosophical and nonphilosophical ones. In general, I think I’m going to start using this blog for a bit more extraphilosophy content. I’ll start that not-right-now, [...]
Posted in Philosophy on Apr 9th, 2011
Suppose somebody has a false intuition about an a priori matter. Is she justified in believing its content? Many plausible answers, of course, will begin with “it depends…”. On what does it depend? Ernie Sosa thinks that among the things upon which it depends is whether the false intuition derives from “some avoidably defective way”; such [...]
Posted in Philosophy on Mar 30th, 2011
I’m thinking about a point that Ernie Sosa has made in response to survey-based experimental philosophy challenges. As we all know, some critics have argued that certain experimental results challenge traditional armchair philosophy. In particular, for example, Weinberg, Nichols, and Stich found that there seemed to be a systematic divergence of epistemic intuitions depending upon [...]
Posted in Philosophy on Aug 31st, 2010
As you may have noticed, I haven’t been posting here much lately. That’s for a couple of reasons. One is that, as many of you will know, my personal life has lately been very exciting. Carrie Jenkins and I are recently engaged to be married. So that’s pretty awesome. It also means I’m spending a [...]
Posted in Philosophy on Feb 18th, 2010
I know that there is snow outside; this knowledge is based in part on my visual experience. When I look out the window, I have experiences that partially constitute seeing snow. I also know that squares have four sides. Arguably, this knowledge is independent of experience, depending only on my conceptual competence, or rational capacities, [...]
Posted in papers, publications on Jun 20th, 2009
Explaining Away Intuitions, (2010) in Studia Philosophica Estonica, special issue on intuitions. Refer to published version, available here. What is it to ‘explain away’ an intuition? Philosophers often attempt to explain intuitions away, but it is often unclear what the success conditions for their project consist in. I attempt to articulate these conditions, using several [...]
Posted in papers on Jun 20th, 2009
Intuitions and Begging the Question. Under Review. Version of 4 July, 2009. What are philosophical intuitions? There is a tension between two intuitive criteria. On the one hand, many of our ordinary beliefs do not seem intuitively to be intuitions; this suggests a relatively restrictionist approach to intuitions. (A few attempts to restrict: intuitions must [...]
Posted in papers on Jun 20th, 2009
Sosa on Virtues, Perception, and Intuition. Version of 19 January, 2009. I critically evaluate Ernest Sosa’s (2007) contrast between intuitive justification and perceptual justification. I defend a competence-based approach to intuitive justification that is continuous with epistemic justification generally.
Posted in papers on Jun 20th, 2009
Who Needs Intuitions? Two Experimentalist Critiques Version of 9 January, 2011. To appear in Booth and Rowbottom, (eds.) Intuitions, Oxford University Press. A number of philosophers have recently suggested that the role of intuitions in the epistemology armchair philosophy has been exaggerated. This suggestion is rehearsed and endorsed. What bearing does the rejection of the centrality [...]