Scepticism About Intuition

Long after Pyrrho, epistemology wrestles with scepticism about our knowledge of the external world. We know about the external world through perception. But that knowledge is hard to understand. Because perception seems to be our only means to assess its own reliability, we appear to be caught in a kind of epistemic circle: how can we rationally trust a faculty whose trustworthiness can be known only in part through its own use? And so we face the philosophical threat of scepticism. But scepticism about our knowledge of the external physical world is not to be embraced: the threat is philosophical, even academic. Even when we are puzzled and philosophically threatened, we justly do not yield. Epistemology wrestles, too, with scepticism about other sorts of knowledge. We know about the past through memory. That knowledge is hard to understand. Memory appears to be essentially involved in any assessment of its own reliability and thus we appear to be caught in a kind of epistemic circle. Here too, perhaps a bit surprisingly, scepticism has no charm. We know other sorts of things too. We know that 2+2=4, and moreover that 2 plus 2 could not but equal 4; that nothing is both true and not true—indeed that nothing could possibly be true and not true (and that it could not possibly be that there were anything both true and not true); that whatever has a shape is extended, necessarily so, and so on. We use the term ‘intuition’ for the faculty by which we know these things. Perhaps ultimately, according to the best explanation of this knowledge, it is essentially grounded in perception (or memory, or perhaps introspection). But no such position is, prima facie, plausible. Pre-philosophically, intuition appears to be a sui generis faculty delivering a priori knowledge. This intuitive knowledge is hard to understand. Since intuition seems to be our only means to assess its own reliability, we appear to be caught in a kind of epistemic circle. And so we face the threat