More specific to the argument at hand, why should a debate about reliability of intuitions disqualify philosophy? Do you believe this is a settled debate? And if so, on what grounds is it settled?
The center of the issue is that you can’t answer these questions empirically.
I’m not sure what you mean there. Didn’t Luke just present empirical evidence that our intuitions do vary? That answers the question. Our intuitions vary, therefore any way of conducting philosophy based on assuming they don’t is wrong.
Richard: myron isn’t disputing that it’s wrong to presuppose the uniformity of all intuitions. (Though ‘intuitions vary’ is too crude a way of putting it; do all intuitions vary?) He’s claiming that it’s a straw-man to treat more than a handful of modern philosophers as committed to the uniformity of all intuitions. (It would be helpful at this stage for people on both sides to start quoting prominent philosophers weighing in on this very issue. The argument will get nowhere without shared data.)
And, it bears emphasizing: The question of whether certain sorts of intuitions are reliable is partly independent of the question of whether intuitions vary anthropologically. Some mathematical logicians disagree about whether ¬∀x(Fx) intuitively implies ∃x(¬Fx), but very few mathematicians conclude from this disagreement that our mathematical intuitions never give us insight into the truth.
1) Sometimes you can still get useful work done with wrong assumptions (e.g. Newtonian Physics)
2) Bugmeister was talking about rejecting modern philosophy, which isn’t the same as only rejecting “any way of conducting philosophy based on assuming they don’t [vary]”.
I’m not sure what you mean there. Didn’t Luke just present empirical evidence that our intuitions do vary? That answers the question. Our intuitions vary, therefore any way of conducting philosophy based on assuming they don’t is wrong.
Richard: myron isn’t disputing that it’s wrong to presuppose the uniformity of all intuitions. (Though ‘intuitions vary’ is too crude a way of putting it; do all intuitions vary?) He’s claiming that it’s a straw-man to treat more than a handful of modern philosophers as committed to the uniformity of all intuitions. (It would be helpful at this stage for people on both sides to start quoting prominent philosophers weighing in on this very issue. The argument will get nowhere without shared data.)
And, it bears emphasizing: The question of whether certain sorts of intuitions are reliable is partly independent of the question of whether intuitions vary anthropologically. Some mathematical logicians disagree about whether ¬∀x(Fx) intuitively implies ∃x(¬Fx), but very few mathematicians conclude from this disagreement that our mathematical intuitions never give us insight into the truth.
1) Sometimes you can still get useful work done with wrong assumptions (e.g. Newtonian Physics)
2) Bugmeister was talking about rejecting modern philosophy, which isn’t the same as only rejecting “any way of conducting philosophy based on assuming they don’t [vary]”.