I know I've talked about this a lot. The thing is, whenever I explain something, there's always this nagging feeling in the back of my head that I'm not being perfect clear. So when I explain something that I've explained before, I always try to do it a little differently. My hope is that the more ways I explains something, the more likely it is that I'll be understood. So I tend to say the same things over and over again in different ways. This is just one iteration of my defense of knowledge by intuition. I think it's an important topic in epistemology when it comes to debates about religion because arguments for God and for morality often rely on first principles that can't be proved but can only be known by intuition, which a lot of people don't trust. So, here ye go.
I originally wrote this in response to somebody who said he shared my intuition that it was impossible for something to spontaneously come into existence uncaused out of nothing, but he did not trust the intuition since he doubted intuition as a reliable source of justified belief.
If I can persuade you that intuitive obviousness is a good reason to believe something, will you concede that it's impossible for something to come into existence uncaused out of nothing?
First question would be, if something seems intuitively obvious to you, does that always mean that it is true in reality?
Not necessary. There are three different kinds of things we know by intuition. But first let me explain what is meant by "intuition" because there is a colloquial use of the word, and there is a philosophical use of the word. The colloquial use of the word indicates a hunch, feeling, suspicion, etc. that something is true. That is not what I mean by intuition. In the philosophical sense, intuition is immediate knowledge upon reflection. That means there are some things you can know immediately just by thinking about them. By "immediate," I mean the knowledge isn't arrived at through induction, deduction, or any kind of inference.
Intuitive knowledge sits at the foundation of everything we know. For anything you know, one can ask, "How do you know that?" For most of the things you know, you should be able to give a reason. You believe A because of B. But then somebody can ask, "How do you know B?" And for any reason you give, somebody can ask, "How do you know that?"
One of two things will happen if you continue this conversation. Either you will get yourself into an infinite regress, or else you will arrive at some foundational item of knowledge that is not based on some prior reason or inference. So how do you know those things at the foundation if you don't know them on the basis of inference? The answer is that you know them by intuition. Without intuition, it would be impossible to know anything at all.
As an example, how might one know that they had just dropped a brick on their foot? There are a couple of things that come to mind. One is that they saw the event happen. Another is that they remember having seen the event happen. Another is that they can feel the pain from the brick hitting their foot. But these raise other questions. How do they know they saw it, remember seeing it, and felt it? Well, they don't know this on the basis of anything else. You have direct and immediate access to the content of your own mental states. All you have to do is attend to your subjective awareness. You know you feel pain simply because you feel it. There's no deeper reason. This is knowledge by intuition.
As I said, there are three categories of things we know by intuition. The first category is what I just explained--knowledge of our first person subjective awareness. Right now, I'm looking at what I take to be a computer screen. I believe that computer screen is there because I can see it, and I have no reason to think it's not there. But I could be mistaken. It's possible I'm dreaming, hallucinating, or that I'm plugged into the matrix, or I'm a brain in a vat. But what I cannot be mistaken about is that I perceive what I take to be a computer. So our knowledge of our own mental states is incorrigible. You can know what you are thinking with certainty.
The second category is knowledge of necessary truths. This includes the basic laws of logic, the axioms of geometry, and basic math. If you knew that Jim was taller than Bob, and Bob was taller than Dan, you'd be able to figure out that Jim is taller than Dan. And you'd be able to figure this out just by thinking about it. You can see the logical necessity of the rule of inference that comes into play. And you can tell, just by thinking about it that if two straight lines intersect, their opposite angles will be equal. You don't have to measure the angles to figure this out. You can know that this is a universal necessary truth that's true in all possible worlds. This is how you know that 2 + 2 = 4. You don't have to test that by going out in the world, seeing if it works with apples, then seeing if it works with planets, then seeing if it works with bottles of beer on the wall. You can tell, just by thinking about it and "seeing" with your rational mind that it is a necessary truth that will hold anywhere in the universe.
The third category is knowledge of synthetic a priori truths. These includes your knowledge that your senses are giving you true information about a real external world, your knowledge that your memories are giving you true information about a past that actually happened, your knowledge that the future will resemble the past (i.e. the uniformity of nature), which is how you are able to learn anything from experience, engage in science, and extrapolate from the observed to the unobserved. This third category also includes your knowledge of morality, causation, Ockahm's razor, other minds, that "ought" implies "can," that time is real, that you are an enduring self, that your cognitive faculties are reliable, and object permanence.
What all three categories have in common is that they all sit at the foundation of our knowledge, that they can be known a priori, and they do not require proof or demonstration. The first category differs from the second and third in the fact that it is knowledge of the internal world (your subjective mind), and the others are knowledge of reality outside the mind. The second differs from the first and third in the fact that these items of knowledge express necessary truths, but the items in the first and third categories are contingent truths. The third category differs from the first and the second in the fact that one can have absolute certainty about the first and second, but not the third. Each item in the third category is possibly false, and we do sometimes make mistakes concerning them.
For example, it is possible that there is no external world, and sometimes our senses do deceive us. It's possible that we were created five minutes ago complete with memories of a past that never actually happened, and sometimes our memories do deceive us. It's possible that the future will not resemble the past, and the laws of nature will be different tomorrow, and we do sometimes make hasty generalizations.
But just because something is possible doesn't mean it's reasonable to believe. We are perfectly rational in believing in the past, the external world, and the uniformity of nature in spite of the fact that we make these mistakes, and in spite of the possibility that we are mistaken. The general rule of thumb that everybody uses, whether they realize it or not, is that it's always more reasonable to affirm the obvious than to deny the obvious, and we should believe that things are just as they appear to be unless we have good reason to think they're not. That is what justifies our belief in the past, the external world, and the uniformity of nature.
Intuitive knowledge is knowledge that's just built into us. Nobody has to be taught that their senses are giving them true information about the world. Nobody has to be taught that if somebody contradicts themselves, they're lying. Nobody has to be taught that their feeling of pain actually indicates that they are in pain. We can, of course, hone these items of knowledge. We can be mindful of math, logic, and geometry so that we see them more clearly and able to use them. But the basic knowledge is just built in. So intuition is immediate knowledge upon reflection. It's what everything we know is based on.
So to answer your question, if something is intuitively obvious, then whether that indicates that it's always true in reality or not depends on which of the three categories you're talking about. If you're talking about the first two categories, then yes, they will always necessarily be true. If you're talking about the third category, then it's at least possible that they are not true.
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