An Analysis of the Centrality of Intuition Talk in the Discussion on Taste Disagreements

David Bordonaba-Plou

doi:10.14394/filnau.2021.0008

Authors

David Bordonaba-Plou Universidad de Valparaíso, Chile https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0788-9733

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.14394/filnau.2021.0008

Keywords:

intuition talk, taste disagreements, linguistic corpora, intuition respecting

Abstract

According to Cappelen (2012), analytic philosophers have traditionally used two arguments to defend the role of intuitions in philosophy. On the one hand, The Argument from Philosophical Practice claims that analytic philosophers rely on intuitions when defending their theories. On the other hand, The Argument from Intuition Talk contends that intuitions must play a prominent role in analytic philosophy because analytic philosophers use intuition talk profusely. Cappelen (2012) identifies three questions to be considered when assessing the Argument from Intuition Talk: a quantitative question, a centrality question, and an interpretative question. The available studies have mainly focused on the quantitative and interpretative questions. In this paper, I examine the centrality question, taking as a case study the literature on taste disagreements — a topic that has received significant attention in the philosophy of language in the last fifteen years. To this end, I first build a corpus with the most relevant works in the area and then examine the centrality of intuition talk. The results show that the use of intuition talk is central in the literature on taste disagreements, and that intuitions are taken as evidence in favor of a given theory if the theory can account for them.

References

Alwood A., Schroeder M. (2009), “From Outside the Ethics,” Ethics 119(4), 805-813. https://doi.org/10.1086/605308
Andow J. (2015a), “How ‘Intuition’ Exploded,” Metaphilosophy 46(2), 189-212. https://doi.org/10.1111/meta.12127
Andow J. (2015b), “How Distinctive is Philosophers’ Intuition Talk?,” Metaphilosophy 46(4-5), 515-538. https://doi.org/10.1111/meta.12151
Andow J. (forthcoming), “If Philosophers Aren’t Using Intuitions as Evidence, What Are They Doing?,” Dialectica.
Ashton Z., Mizrahi M. (2018), “Intuition Talk Is not Methodologically Cheap: Empirically Testing the ‘Received Wisdom’ about Armchair Philosophy,” Erkenntnis 83, 595-612. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10670-017-9904-4
Baker P. (2006), Using Corpora in Discourse Analysis, London: Continuum.
Baker P., Gabrielatos C., McEnery T. (2013), Discourse Analysis and Media Studies: The Representation of Islam in the British Press, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511920103
Baker C., Robson J. (2015), “An Absolutist Theory of Faultless Disagreement in Aesthetics,” Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 98(3), 429-448. https://doi.org/10.1111/papq.12102
Barker C. (2009), “Clarity and the Grammar of Skepticism,” Mind & Language 24(3), 253-273. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-0017.2009.01362.x
Barker S. (2010), “Cognitive Expressivism, Faultless Disagreement, and Absolute but Non-objective Truth,” Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 110, 183-199. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9264.2010.00283.x
Baz A. (2012), When Words Are Called for: A Defense of Ordinary Language Philosophy, Cambridge–London: Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.4159/harvard.9780674064775
Binderup L. (2008), “Brogaard’s Moral Contextualism,” The Philosophical Quarterly 58(232), 410-415. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9213.2007.543.x
Bluhm R. (2013), “Don’t Ask, Look! Linguistic Corpora as a Tool for Conceptual Analysis” [in:] Was dürfen wir glauben? Was sollen wir tun? Sektionsbeiträge des achten internationalen Kongresses der Gesellschaft für Analytische Philosophie e.V., M. Hoeltje, T. Spitzley, W. Spohn (eds.), DuEPublico, 7-15. https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:hbz:464-20130612-081113-3
Bluhm R. (2016), “Corpus Analysis in Philosophy” [in:] Evidence, Experiment and Argument in Linguistics and Philosophy of Language, M. Hinton (ed.), Oxford: Peter Lang, 91-109.
Brogaard B. (2008), “Moral Contextualism and Moral Relativism,” The Philosophical Quarterly 58(232), 385-409. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9213.2007.543.x
Brogaard B. (2009), “Introduction to Relative Truth,” Synthese 166(2), 215-229. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-007-9288-0
Cappelen H. (2012), Philosophy without Intuitions, Oxford: Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199644865.001.0001
Capraru M. D. I. (2016), “Objective Truth in Matters of Taste,” Philosophical Studies 173(7), 1755-1777. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-015-0577-z
Carter J. A. (2014), “Disagreement, Relativism and Doxastic Revision,” Erkenntnis 79, 155-172. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10670-013-9450-7
Caton J. N. (2020), “Using Linguistic Corpora as a Philosophical Tool,” Metaphilosophy 51(1), 51-70. https://doi.org/10.1111/meta.12405
Clapp L. (2015), “A Non-alethic Approach to Faultless Disagreement,” Dialectica 69(4), 517-550. https://doi.org/10.1111/1746-8361.12104
Cohnitz D., Marques T. (2014), “Disagreements,” Erkenntnis 79, 1-10. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10670-013-9442-7
Colomina-Almiñana J. J. (2015), “Disagreement and the Speaker’s Point of View,” Language and Dialogue 5(2), 224-246. https://doi.org/10.1075/ld.5.2.02col
Cohen L. J. (1986), The Dialogue of Reason, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Desagulier G. (2017), Corpus Linguistics and Statistics with R: Introduction to Quantitative Methods in Linguistics, Cham: Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-64572-8
Díaz J. (2016), “Evaluative Disagreements,” Teorema: Revista Internacional de Filosofía 35(1), 67-87.
Egan A. (2014), “There’s Something Funny About Comedy: A Case Study in Faultless Disagreement,” Erkenntnis 79, 73-100. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10670-013-9446-3
Eriksson J., Tiozzo M. (2016), “Matters of Ambiguity: Faultless Disagreement, Relativism and Realism,” Philosophical Studies 173(6), 1517-1536. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-015-0561-7
Francén R. (2010), “No Deep Disagreement for New Relativists,” Philosophical Studies 151(1), 19-37. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-009-9414-6
Glanzberg M. (2007), “Context, Content, and Relativism,” Philosophical Studies 136(1), 1-29. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-007-9145-5
Glanzberg M. (2009), “Semantics and Truth Relative to a World,” Synthese 166(2), 281-307. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-007-9285-3
Goldman A. (2007), “Philosophical Intuitions: Their Target, Their Source and Their Epistemic Status,” Grazer Philosophische Studien 4, 1-26. https://doi.org/10.1163/9789401204651_002
Gries S. T. (2017), Quantitative Corpus Linguistics with R: A Practical Introduction, New York: Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315746210
Hales S. D. (2014), “Motivations for Relativism as a Solution to Disagreements,” Philosophy 89(347), 63-82. https://doi.org/10.1017/S003181911300051X
Hansen N. (2014), “Contemporary Ordinary Language Philosophy,” Philosophy Compass 9(8), 556-569. https://doi.org/10.1111/phc3.12152
Hansen N. (2015), “Experimental Philosophy of Language” [in:] Oxford Handbooks Online, Oxford: Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199935314.013.53
Hansen N., Chemla E. (2015), “Linguistic Experiments and Ordinary Language Philosophy,” Ratio 28(4), 422-445. https://doi.org/10.1111/rati.12112
Haslanger S. (2007), “‘But Mom, Crop-Tops Are Cute!’ Social Knowledge, Social Structure and Ideology Critique,” Philosophical Issues 17, 70-91. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1533-6077.2007.00123.x
Hîncu M. (2015), “Predicates of Personal Taste and Faultless Disagreement,” Logos & Episteme 6(2), 160-185. https://doi.org/10.5840/logos-episteme20156210
Hintikka J. (1999), “The Emperor’s New Intuitions,” Journal of Philosophy 96(3), 127-147. https://doi.org/10.2307/2564660
Hinton M. (2020), “Corpus Linguistics Methods in the Study of (Meta)Argumentation,” Argumentation. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10503-020-09533-z
Hunston S. (2002), Corpora in Applied Linguistics, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139524773
Huvenes T. T. (2014), “Disagreement Without Error,” Erkenntnis 79, 143-154. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10670-013-9449-0
Jackson F. (1982), “Epiphenomenal Qualia,” The Philosophical Quarterly 32(127), 127-136. https://doi.org/10.2307/2960077
Knobe J. (2007), “Experimental Philosophy,” Philosophy Compass 2(1), 81-92. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-0017.2009.01370.x
Knobe J., Nichols S. (2007), “An Experimental Philosophy Manifesto” [in:] Experimental Philosophy, J. Knobe, S. Nichols (eds.), New York: Oxford University Press, 3-14.
Kölbel M. (2004), “Faultless Disagreement,” Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 104(1), 53-73. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.0066-7373.2004.00081.x
Kölbel M. (2008), “Truth in Semantics,” Midwest Studies in Philosophy 32 (1), 242-257.
Kölbel M. (2009), “The Evidence for Relativism,” Synthese 166(2), 375-395. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-007-9281-7
Kompa N. (2015), “Contextualism and Disagreement,” Erkenntnis 80, 137-152. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10670-014-9663-4
Koopman C. (2012), “Pragmatist Resources for Experimental Philosophy: Inquiry in Place of Intuition,” The Journal of Speculative Philosophy 26(1), 1-24. https://doi.org/10.5325/jspecphil.26.1.0001
Kornblith H. (2014), “Naturalism and Intuitions” [in:] A Naturalistic Epistemology: Selected Papers, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 158-177. https://doi.org/10.1093//acprof:oso/9780198712459.003.0011
Kripke S. A. (1980), Naming and Necessity, Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
Lasersohn P. (2005), “Context Dependence, Disagreement and Predicates of Personal Taste,” Linguistics and Philosophy 28, 643-686. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10988-005-0596-x
Lasersohn P. (2009), “Relative Truth, Speaker Commitment, and Control of Implicit Arguments,” Synthese 166(2), 359-374. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-007-9280-8
Lasersohn P. (2011), “Context, Relevant Parts and (Lack of) Disagreement over Taste,” Philosophical Studies 156(3), 433-439. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-010-9625-x
Ludwig K. (2010). “Intuitions and Relativity,” Philosophical Psychology 23(4), 427-445. https://doi.org/10.1080/09515089.2010.505877
López de Sa D. (2015), “Expressing Disagreement: A Presuppositional Indexical Contextualist Relativist Account,” Erkenntnis 80, 153-165. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10670-014-9664-3
MacFarlane J. (2014), Assessment-Sensitivity: Relative Truth and its Applications, New York: Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199682751.001.0001
MacFarlane J. (2005), “Making Sense of Relative Truth,” Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 105, 305-323. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.0066-7373.2004.00116.x
Machery E., Mallon R., Nichols S., Stich S. (2004), “Semantics, Cross-Cultural Style,” Cognition 92(3), B1-B12. https:// doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2003.10.003
Miščević N. (2018), “Predicates of Personal Taste: Relativism, Contextualism or Pluralism?,” Croatian Journal of Philosophy 18(3), 385-401.
Moltmann F. (2010), “Relative Truth and the First Person,” Philosophical Studies 150(2), 187-220. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-009-9383-9
Moltmann F. (2012), “Two Kinds of First-Person-Oriented Content,” Synthese 184(2), 157-177. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-010-9730-6
Montminy M. (2009), “Contextualism, Relativism and Ordinary Speakers’ Judgments,” Philosophical Studies 143(3), 341-356. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-008-9203-7
Nado J. (2016), “The Intuition Deniers,” Philosophical Studies 173(3), 781-800. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-015-0519-9
Odrowąż-Sypniewska J. (2013), “Paraconsistent vs. Contextual Solutions to Sorites,” Polish Journal of Philosophy 7(2), 21-36. https://doi.org/10.5840/pjphil2013728
Palmira M. (2014), “The Semantic Significance of Faultless Disagreement,” Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 96(3), 349-371. https://doi.org/10.1111/papq.12038
Partington A., Duguid A., Taylor C. (2013), Patterns and Meanings in Discourse: Theory and Practice in Corpus-Assisted Discourse Studies (CADS), Amsterdam: Library of Congress. https://doi.org/10.1075/scl.55
Putnam H. (1975), Mind, Language and Reality. Philosophical Papers, vol. 2, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511625251
Rose D., Danks D. (2013), “In Defense of a Broad Conception of Experimental Philosophy,” Metaphilosophy 44(4), 512-532. https://doi.org/10.1111/meta.12045
Rowley M., Robinson E. J. (2008), “Moral Contextualism and Moral Relativism,” The Philosophical Quarterly 58(232), 385-409. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9213.2007.543.x
Shieber J. (2012), “A Partial Defense of Intuition on Naturalist Grounds,” Synthese 187, 321-341. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-010-9864-6
Sinclair J. (2004), Trust the Text: Language, Corpus and Discourse, London: Routledge.
Stojanovic I. (2007), “Talking about Taste: Disagreement, Implicit Arguments, and Relative Truth,” Linguistics and Philosophy 30(6), 691-706. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10988-008-9030-5
Stojanovic I. (2012), “Emotional Disagreement: The Role of Semantic Content in the Expression of, and Disagreement Over, Emotional Values,” Dialogue: Canadian Philosophical Review 51(1), 99-117. https://doi.org/10.1017/S001221731200025X
Strickland B., Suben A. (2013), “Experimenter Philosophy: The Problem of Experimenter Bias in Experimental Philosophy,” Review of Philosophy and Psychology 3(3), 457-467. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13164-012-0100-9
Tallant J. (2013), “Intuitions in Physics,” Synthese 190, 2959-2980. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-012-0113-z
Tallant, J., Andow, J. (2020), “English Language and Philosophy” [in:] The Routledge Handbook of English Language and Digital Humanities, S. Adolphs, D. Knight (eds.), Routledge, 440-455. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003031758-23
Weatherson B. (2009), “Conditionals and Indexical Relativism,” Synthese 166(2), 333-357. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-007-9283-5
Weinberg J. M. (2007), “How to Challenge Intuitions Empirically without Risking Skepticism,” Midwest Studies in Philosophy 31, 318-43. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1475-4975.2007.00157.x
Williamson T. (2007), The Philosophy of Philosophy, Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1002/9780470696675
Wright C. (2007), “New Age Relativism and Epistemic Possibility: The Question of Evidence,” Philosophical Issues 17, 262-283. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1533-6077.2007.00133.x