I think it can—sometimes—be reasonable to stand by your intuition even if you can’t reason it out.
How very Lewis Carrollean of you. Except that Carroll’s absurdities were always founded in logic and involved contradicting ‘common sense’, while this point is founded in common sense and contradicts logic.
It might be appropriate to act on such an intuition, and it is always appropriate to acknowledge its existence, but to ‘stand by it’ implies a claim to justification for the assertion, and that is clearly ruled out.
perhaps i should have phrased it as ‘...stand by your intuition for a while—even if you can’t reason it out initially—to give yourself an adequate chance to figure it out’
No, “to figure out” in such a case would mean to find evidence that you suspected might exist, but weren’t sure about it.
If you are able to delay action while performing research motivated by your initial intuition, it can mean the difference between life and death. It has happened.
that implies that the only correct intuition is one you can immediately rationally justify.
Wrong. An intuition is correct if it matches reality.
Accepting an intuition is only rational if it can be rationally justified, in which case the intuition isn’t needed, is it?
science is basically a means to determine whether initial intuitions are true.
No, science is a methodology to determine whether an assertion about reality should be discarded. If it merely dealt with initial intuitions, it’s usefulness would be exhausted once the supply of initial intuitions had been run through.
I haven’t been able to work out your stance on philosophy of science—have you written about it? You seem at times to be a Popperian, like in the statement “science is a methodology to determine whether an assertion about reality should be discarded.”
But a Popperian would expect a scientist to accept an intuition and stand by it until it gets refuted—thus, “conjectures and refutations”. It sounds like you’d like propositions to only be spoken aloud if they’re logically deducible, and in that case there would be little use to try to empirically refute them.
Indeed, and that is why it’s wrong to say that attempts to rationally justify statements about reality are “almost certainly going to produce an ad hoc Just-So Story”.
science is basically a means to determine whether initial intuitions are true.
No, science is a methodology to determine whether an assertion about reality
should be discarded. If it merely dealt with initial intuitions, it’s usefulness
would be exhausted once the supply of initial intuitions had been run through.
I’m not sure what the second sentence there is taking “initial intuitions” to mean, but I don’t think there’s any substantial disagreement between our statements.
Indeed, and that is why it’s wrong to say that attempts to rationally justify statements about reality are “almost certainly going to produce an ad hoc Just-So Story”.
That’s not what I said.
I have no interest in helping to generate a Gish Explosion. Please confine yourself to addressing arguments I actually make, rather than straw men.
But perhaps you are saying that the sentence I’ve embedded it in does not reflect what any thing you said? If so, it’s not mean to—it’s describing the point I was making, and to which your response included that quoted text.
Essentially, my last comment was trying to point out what I’d originally said had been misinterpreted in the Just-So Story bit, even though I didn’t do a great job of making this clear. Of course you may argue that you didn’t misinterpret me, but I certainly wasn’t trying to put words into anyones mouth.
Just to start off, the quoted text is something you said.
No, the quoted text includes a fragment of what I said. Your statement about what I said is wrong as a whole.
it’s describing the point I was making,
The point you were making has nothing to do with the discussion that’s going on. That’s called a non-sequitur, and it’s a traditional rhetorical fallacy.
this point is founded in common sense and contradicts logic.
You wouldn’t agree that it is sometimes (usually, even!) a bad idea to throw out all rules in a system that you don’t see a use for, especially when you cannot claim to understand the system as a whole?
How very Lewis Carrollean of you. Except that Carroll’s absurdities were always founded in logic and involved contradicting ‘common sense’, while this point is founded in common sense and contradicts logic.
It might be appropriate to act on such an intuition, and it is always appropriate to acknowledge its existence, but to ‘stand by it’ implies a claim to justification for the assertion, and that is clearly ruled out.
perhaps i should have phrased it as ‘...stand by your intuition for a while—even if you can’t reason it out initially—to give yourself an adequate chance to figure it out’
Any ‘figuring out’ is almost certainly going to produce an ad hoc Just-So Story.
Rationalists do not ignore their intuition. Nor do they trust it. If they don’t have a rational justification for a principle, they don’t assert it.
They don’t negate it, either.
No, “to figure out” in such a case would mean to find evidence that you suspected might exist, but weren’t sure about it.
If you are able to delay action while performing research motivated by your initial intuition, it can mean the difference between life and death. It has happened.
Finding new evidence is not “figuring out”. That refers to cognitive processing, not evidence discovery.
[edit: included quote]
that implies that the only correct intuition is one you can immediately rationally justify. how could progress in science happen if this was true?
science is basically a means to determine whether initial intuitions are true.
Wrong. An intuition is correct if it matches reality.
Accepting an intuition is only rational if it can be rationally justified, in which case the intuition isn’t needed, is it?
No, science is a methodology to determine whether an assertion about reality should be discarded. If it merely dealt with initial intuitions, it’s usefulness would be exhausted once the supply of initial intuitions had been run through.
I haven’t been able to work out your stance on philosophy of science—have you written about it? You seem at times to be a Popperian, like in the statement “science is a methodology to determine whether an assertion about reality should be discarded.”
But a Popperian would expect a scientist to accept an intuition and stand by it until it gets refuted—thus, “conjectures and refutations”. It sounds like you’d like propositions to only be spoken aloud if they’re logically deducible, and in that case there would be little use to try to empirically refute them.
Indeed, and that is why it’s wrong to say that attempts to rationally justify statements about reality are “almost certainly going to produce an ad hoc Just-So Story”.
I’m not sure what the second sentence there is taking “initial intuitions” to mean, but I don’t think there’s any substantial disagreement between our statements.
That’s not what I said.
I have no interest in helping to generate a Gish Explosion. Please confine yourself to addressing arguments I actually make, rather than straw men.
I’m not trying to be a jerk. Let me try to explain things, as I don’t think I communicated my point very clearly.
Just to start off, the quoted text is something you said.
But perhaps you are saying that the sentence I’ve embedded it in does not reflect what any thing you said? If so, it’s not mean to—it’s describing the point I was making, and to which your response included that quoted text.
Essentially, my last comment was trying to point out what I’d originally said had been misinterpreted in the Just-So Story bit, even though I didn’t do a great job of making this clear. Of course you may argue that you didn’t misinterpret me, but I certainly wasn’t trying to put words into anyones mouth.
No, the quoted text includes a fragment of what I said. Your statement about what I said is wrong as a whole.
The point you were making has nothing to do with the discussion that’s going on. That’s called a non-sequitur, and it’s a traditional rhetorical fallacy.
You wouldn’t agree that it is sometimes (usually, even!) a bad idea to throw out all rules in a system that you don’t see a use for, especially when you cannot claim to understand the system as a whole?