Location
Tacoma, Washington
Event Website
http://webspace.pugetsound.edu/facultypages/atubert/philosophyconference2019.htm
Start Date
1-2-2019 10:00 AM
End Date
1-2-2019 10:50 AM
Description
Jonathan Weinberg (2007) attempted to show how to challenge intuitions empirically, without risking skepticism. In this paper, I raise several objections to his project. In the first section I will clarify and explain several terms. Specifically, what I mean when I use intuition in this paper and what Weinberg means by hopefulness. Clarification of these terms is essential to this paper, as both intuition and hopefulness have become somewhat muddled terms in recent literature. In the second section I will reconstruct Weinberg’s argument against philosophers’ appeals to intuition. Weinberg aims to show that philosophers’ appeals to intuitions are epistemically hopeless –i.e., not sensitive to its errors and hard to correct for its errors. In the third section, I will raise objections to hopefulness as an epistemic standard and to his evaluation of how perception does on the standard of hopefulness. In the fourth section I will explore how Weinberg could respond to these objections, and I will respond to the potential responses. Weinberg’s argument against intuitions as a source of evidence fails in showing that hopefulness is a necessary and correct epistemic standard for putative sources of evidence, because if correct, it results in full-blown skepticism.
Rights
Type
event
Included in
The Failure of Hope as an Epistemic Standard
Tacoma, Washington
Jonathan Weinberg (2007) attempted to show how to challenge intuitions empirically, without risking skepticism. In this paper, I raise several objections to his project. In the first section I will clarify and explain several terms. Specifically, what I mean when I use intuition in this paper and what Weinberg means by hopefulness. Clarification of these terms is essential to this paper, as both intuition and hopefulness have become somewhat muddled terms in recent literature. In the second section I will reconstruct Weinberg’s argument against philosophers’ appeals to intuition. Weinberg aims to show that philosophers’ appeals to intuitions are epistemically hopeless –i.e., not sensitive to its errors and hard to correct for its errors. In the third section, I will raise objections to hopefulness as an epistemic standard and to his evaluation of how perception does on the standard of hopefulness. In the fourth section I will explore how Weinberg could respond to these objections, and I will respond to the potential responses. Weinberg’s argument against intuitions as a source of evidence fails in showing that hopefulness is a necessary and correct epistemic standard for putative sources of evidence, because if correct, it results in full-blown skepticism.
https://soundideas.pugetsound.edu/psupc/psupc2019/friday/2