When are intuitions reliable? Compression, population ethics, etc.
Intuitions are the results of the brain doing compression. Generally the source data which was compressed is no longer associated with the intuition. Hence from an introspective perspective, intuitions all appear equally valid.
Taking a third-person perspective, we can ask what data was likely compressed to form a given intuition. A pro sports players intuition for that sport has a clearly reliable basis. Our moral intuitions on population ethics are formed via our experiences in every day situations. There is no reason to expect one persons compression to yield a more meaningful generalization than anothers’—we should all realize that this data did not have enough structure to generalize to such cases. Perhaps an academic philosopher’s intuitions are slightly more reliable in that they compress data (papers) which held up to scrutiny.
When are intuitions reliable? Compression, population ethics, etc.
Intuitions are the results of the brain doing compression. Generally the source data which was compressed is no longer associated with the intuition. Hence from an introspective perspective, intuitions all appear equally valid.
Taking a third-person perspective, we can ask what data was likely compressed to form a given intuition. A pro sports players intuition for that sport has a clearly reliable basis. Our moral intuitions on population ethics are formed via our experiences in every day situations. There is no reason to expect one persons compression to yield a more meaningful generalization than anothers’—we should all realize that this data did not have enough structure to generalize to such cases. Perhaps an academic philosopher’s intuitions are slightly more reliable in that they compress data (papers) which held up to scrutiny.