Intuition: A discussion of recent philosophical views

The use of intuition abounds in modern analytic philosophy. In particular, intuition is considered evidence that is used in the analysis of concepts, often in an attempt to find the individually necessary and jointly sufficient conditions of the concept under consideration. Alternatively, intuition is used as evidence that one or more of the proposed necessary conditions is unacceptable, as in Gettier counterexamples to the classical analysis of knowledge. This view of intuition can be thought of as a form of rationalism. However, in the middle part of the 20th century intuition cam under attack through the influence of Quine's project of naturalizing philosophy. The two very general positions on intuition are: (a) intuition provides evidence, but only of necessary truths or (b) intuition does not provide evidence at all.; I critically analyze the philosophical positions on intuition of many modern philosophers. I pay particular attention to the defense of moderate rationalism presented by Bealer and Bonjour, who place intuition at the heart of rationalism. I criticize their respective views by arguing that their defenses are viciously circular because they overtly appeal to intuition in order to defend intuition as a source of evidence. I further criticize the inability of the moderate rationalists to defend their stipulation that intuition must be of apparent necessary truths.; On the positive side, I defend that intuition is best thought of as a basic source of evidence that provides evidence for both necessary and some contingent truths. This is how I split the difference between (a) and (b) from above. This view has many virtues, with one if its primary virtues being its ability to account for contingent, grammatical intuitions of he sort used in modern day linguistics. Finally, I argue that my view is more amenable to modern evolutionary psychology by giving a genealogy of intuition.