Intuition As Evidence:the Role Of Intuition In Contemporary Analytic Philosophy

"Appeal to intuition" is a very prevalent phenomenon in contemporary analytic philosophy. It is widely used in many philosophical methods, such as Conceptual Analysis, Thought Experiment, Reflective Equilibrium, etc. Intuition as a kind of doxastic resources about analysis and argument provides philosophical analysis and theory building with supportive evidences and defensive reasons. Every taches in the Standard Philosophical Method almost appeals to intuition in order to make clear the boundaries of fundamental use in theories or concepts so that we can realize coherence with people’s faith, commonsense and knowledge, etc. Those that correspond with intuitive judgments are generally considered to be right and acceptable. Otherwise, they are wrong and unacceptable. So, intuition assumes a basic evidence status. But the evidence status of intuition is also being queried:on the one hand, the unstability and fallibility of intuition make it show up unreliability in the reality; on the other hand, the diversity of intuition tends to lead people to hold different or even completely conflict intuitions. Some people think that intuition is uncalibrated, and therefore without justification and unworthy of trust in epistemology. Since the emergence of Gettier counterexample, the discussions of intuition have boomed constantly. Especially the rise of experimental philosophy has pushed intuition on the prime position of reflection in the past ten years. But, at present the theoretical depth and technique level of experimental philosophy haven’t been beyond predecessors too much. As a new exploration for the future of philosophy, its positive significance is getting more and more people’s recognition and support. It also provokes our profound rethinking about intuition’s structure, mechanism and function, etc. In the studies of intuition, it is not only a kind of "Intellectual Seeming" of psychological states but also "Dispositional Propositional Attitude" and "Spontaneous Judgment". But intuition is different from perception, belief and commonsense, it has many characteristics, such as stability, fallibility and strong conviction, etc. In this essay, I attempt to defend for intuitive knowledge and intuitive ability from moderate naturalism position and reliabilism viewpoint, and the ultimate goal is to defend for the validity of intuition-based Standard Justificatory Procedure and the autonomy of philosophical discipline in methodology.