A few days ago I mentioned a paper on how the "intuitions" of
Analytic Philosophy might well just be folk traditions. I
noticed a paper today by Tim Williamson that can be seen to a
rejoinder to that perspective as well as quite relevant to the
whole Continental vs. Analytic discussion I've had the last few posts.
(here and here)
I must confess that after thoroughly enjoying Williamson's
Knowledge and Its Limits I am quickly coming to see
Williamson as one of my favorite philosophers. The basic
perspective that Williamson is critiquing sees Analytic Philosophy
as at best making clear our folk traditions about some subject
matter. (Frank Jackson takes that view, I believe) From there
come the implications of those folk traditions, such as whether our
concept of free will and our concept of determinism are compatible.
Some suggest that the ultimate content of Analytic Philosophy ends
up being our individual psychological states - returning Analytic
Philosophy to some of its roots in Brentano and others. Williamson,
on the other hand, sees these views as bad epistemology.
I first came upon Williamson's paper from Brian Weatherson's blog. The paper is "Philosophical 'Intuitions' and Skepticism About Judgment" He starts off with a quote I've added to my philosophy quote list. (The quotes in the upper right) "When contemporary analytic philosophers run out of arguments, they appeal to intuition." Williamson though quite ingeniously uses this to argue that what we call intuitions really are just ordinary judgments. The skeptical arguments regarding intuition in Analytic Philosophy really are just more of the same old skepticisms we find in epistemology. ("Did you really see that?) More specifically, the skepticism is possible simply because of "an impossible ideal of unproblematically identifiable evidence." That is to say, there is no ground from which we can link our beliefs about the outside world. That's not to say we can't know, we can't believe, or can't have reasons. (Anymore than Derrida denies those) It does suggest though, that how we conceive of the elements of intuition has to be rethought somewhat and not taken for granted as uncontroversal starting points for philosophy.
Those who read my post earlier on the whole Analytic/Continental divide and where in "broke" in Husserl probably see quite readily the parallel. Williamson, of course, doesn't bring up the issue of transcendence. But the critique of Husserl's transcendent idealism and the implications of that in phenomenology seem quite similar. If we tie intuition to judgment, the obvious question then becomes, what are we judging? The move to phenomenology appears, to me at least, rather natural. Those of you who read the article, will note reference to phenomenology in Williamson's argument. Indeed I note, both here and in his other writings on epistemology, a lot of parallels with Continental thought. (I don't know if there is any actual influence)
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Blogged by Clark Goble