The emperor's new intuitions

Abstract

Every major classical philosopher had a theoretical underpinning for his appeals to intuitions, e.g., realization of forms in the soul (Aristotle) or innate ideas (Descartes). Contemporary philosophers’ reliance on intuitions is an imitation of Chomsky’s alleged approach to grammar as a systematization of our syntactical intuitions. But unlike Chomsky, they are not Cartesians and, hence, have no justification for their intuitions. Moreover, to be useful, intuitions must have some explicit or implicit generality, unlike particular judgments of grammaticality. Intuitions are best viewed as applications to one’s own case of our normal means of finding out other people’s conceptual assumptions.