Abstract

Since the dawn of the contemporary intuition debate 20 years ago, lots of progress has been made on the epistemology of intuitions. At the same time, very little progress has been made on the matter of what intuitions are. This confusion about the metaphysics of intuitions has stood in the way of further progress on the epistemology of intuitions. In this talk, I argue many of the impasses involving intuitions can be resolved by paying attention to the metalinguistics of “intuition”. I argue for three main theses. First, there are distinct communities of users of “intuition”. Second, metaphilosophers do not have one distinct use of “intuition” and indeed different metaphilosophers pick out different mental states with the word. Third, this variety of uses of “intuition” is good – most metaphilosophical uses of “intuition” pick out useful categories of mental states – but metaphilosophers should not see themselves as having incompatible accounts of intuitions. Doing so will clear up or dissolve a number of longstanding debates among metaphilosophers, including the relevance of experimental philosophy to philosophical methods, whether or not intuitions are factive, and why non-metaphilosophical use of “intuition” seems so loose.