| Intuitions are often treated in philosophy as a basic evidential source to confirm/discredit a proposed definition or theory; e.g. intuitions about Gettier cases are taken to deny a justified-true-belief analysis of 'knowledge'. Recently, Weinberg, Nichols & Stitch (WN&S) provided evidence that epistemic intuitions vary across persons and cultures. Insofar as philosophy of this type (Standard Philosophical Methodology---SPM) is committed to provide conceptual analyses, the use of intuition is suspect---it does not exhibit the requisite normativity. I provide an analysis of intuition, with an emphasis on its neural---or connectionist---cognitive backbone; the analysis provides insight into its epistemic status and proper role within SPM. Intuition is initially characterized as the recognition of a pattern..;The epistemology of 'recognition' is analyzed, again, to deny that traditional computation is capable of capturing human acts of recognition.;Fodor's informational semantics, his Language of Thought and his Representational Theory of Mind are analyzed and his arguments denied. Again, the purpose is to deny traditional computational theories of mind.;Both intuition and a theory of concepts---pragmatic conceptualism ---are developed within the connectionist computational paradigm. Intuition is a particular sort of occurrent signal, and a concept is a counterfactually defined set of signals. Standard connectionist theory is significantly extended to develop my position, and consciousness plays a key functional role. This extension---taking connectionism seriously---is argued to be justified on the basis of the failure of the traditional computing paradigm to account for human cognition.;The metaphysics of 'pattern' is analyzed for the purpose of denying that traditional symbolic computation is capable of differentiating the patterns of interest.;Repercussions for the use of intuition in SPM are developed. Variance in intuition is characterized---and expected---as a kind of bias in the network, either inherent or externally-provoked. The WN&S data is explained in the context of this bias. If SPM remains committed to the use of intuition, then intuition must be taken as a part of a larger body of evidence, and it is from experts---not the folk---that intuitions should be solicited. |
