Intuition, rationality and reliability

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to discuss the role and validity of intuitions in the epistemic field, in particular the role of so-called rational intuitions and their characteristic of access to certain items of a priori knowledge or belief. The assumption of centrality of intuitions in philosophical argumentation will be analyzed. This assumption gives an evidential role to an intuition I that a subject S has regarding a proposition P. In other words, this intuition would be a reliable process to access the truth value of such a proposition, fulfilling the role of conductor of truth. The truth-conduciveness criterion is usually associated either with a belief or with an item of knowledge, and affirming that an intuition is reliable implies that it is a way of accessing the truth value of a certain item of knowledge or belief. Following Cappelen, here I affirm that the assumption of centrality is wrong, firstly because a rational intuition is not intended to ground, justify or evidence the truth or falsity of a belief or knowledge, but rather to fulfill a propaedeutic role and transmitter role before the determination of that truth value. There is, therefore, a criterion of dispensability in the epistemic role that corresponds to an intuition and an indirect epistemic defeater role via discarding hypotheses.