|
|
|
|
|
|
by bobcostas55
4200 days ago
|
|
|
>It would be profoundly counterintuitive if there were no clouds, or no cathodes, or no humans, and that is probably enough to reject the position I really hate it when philosophers make "arguments by intuition". It's almost always used to justify denying some aspect of reality, or even worse, some ethical tradition. |
|
|
Precisely. When you see what you're calling an argument by intuition, you can be sure that the writer will soon arrive at a comfortable proposition that makes you and him feel good and doesn't overturn any sacred cows.
Elsewhere in this thread a commenter claimed philosophy hadn't solved any of the problems posed by Socrates thousands of years ago. In fact, it has. The problem is many of these problems are subject to "proofs by intuition" which make us feel good and let us dismiss the counterevidence supplied by reason and thereby continue the "debate" in perpetuity.
Take for example, free will. The philosophical answer to the question of free will is that there is no question: the idea is confused nonsense. But (at least nowadays) we have a "feeling" of free will, and it upsets people to imagine they're not the captain of their fate, so the argument by intuition prevails. A similar objection goes along the lines of "but what would we do about criminals if they don't have free will! it would be unfair to punish them!" ergo free will exists because otherwise it would makes us feel bad.
I don't mean to pick on free will - the same goes for most of the other old questions. The argument by intuition as you say is worst in ethics - anything that doesn't "feel right" is wrong.