The Audacity of Hopeful Philosophical Appeals to Intuition
Jun 19th, 2009 by Jonathan
The Audacity of Hopeful Philosophical Appeals to Intuition, Version of 8 July, 2009. Under review.
According to some critics, traditional armchair philosophical methodology relies in an illicit way on intuitions. But the particular structure of the critique is not often carefully articulated—a significant omission, since some of the critics arguments for skepticism about philosophy threaten to generalize to skepticism in general. In a recent paper, Jonathan Weinberg has articulated a version of the critique that is sensitive to this worry: traditional philosophical methods are importantly flawed, Weinberg says, in that they are in a technical sense hopeless. I argue that Weinberg’s critique of traditional methods is insufficiently attentive to the practices in which philosophers actually engage. I will conclude, with reference to a number of philosophical case studies, that contrary to Weinberg’s claim, philosophical practices are rather hopeful indeed.