Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-54dcc4c588-br6xx Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-10-01T11:35:34.954Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
Coming soon

The Indispensability of Intuitions

Expected online publication date:  22 December 2025

Marc A. Moffett
Affiliation:
The University of Texas

Summary

The idea that human beings possess a substantive source of non-experiential evidence (intuitions) has been ridiculed as mystical or hopelessly mysterious. This Element argues that intuitions are neither. On the contrary, it argues that intuitions are a ubiquitous and familiar feature of our cognitive lives and that their evidential status is no more puzzling than that of any other source of evidence. The author does not, however, parry this accusation by assimilating intuitions to less metaphysically uncomfortable entities. Assimilation is futile. Rather, they treat intuitions as their own kind of sui generis intentional states. But unlike many treatments of intuition, the focus is not on their role in the “a priori” disciplines. Instead, the author argues that eschewing intuitions undermines our knowledge on a very broad scale; they are epistemically indispensable. This Element constitutes a sustained argument for this conclusion.

Information

Type
Element
Information
Online ISBN: 9781009544450
Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Accessibility standard: Unknown

Accessibility compliance for the PDF of this Element is currently unknown and may be updated in the future.

Save element to Kindle

To save this element to your Kindle, first ensure no-reply@cambridge-org.demo.remotlog.com is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

The Indispensability of Intuitions
Available formats No formats are currently available for this content.
×

Save element to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

The Indispensability of Intuitions
Available formats No formats are currently available for this content.
×

Save element to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

The Indispensability of Intuitions
Available formats No formats are currently available for this content.
×