The development of philosophical intuitions

Team: Katarzyna Kuś, Bartosz Maćkiewicz

Philosophical expertise has been an important topic in experimental philosophy. Its defenders maintain that philosophical education provides the preparation needed to evaluate thought experiments in different areas of philosophy, and that only professional philosophers’ intuitions have the epistemic standing required for philosophical argument. These claims are often discussed in relation to empirical findings.

A weakness of earlier studies, including studies of philosophical experts’ intuitions, is their reliance on data collected at a single point in time (for example, Livengood, Sytsma, Feltz, Scheines and Machery 2010; Schwitzgebel and Cushman 2015; Tobia, Chapman and Stich 2013). Such studies may show that philosophers, as a social group, have different intuitions from the rest of the population, rather than that philosophical education changes intuitions. Alternative explanations cannot be ruled out: people whose intuitions already agree with those considered standard in a field may be more likely to become professional philosophers, with education itself playing no causal role.

Given these alternatives, longitudinal studies provide a more appropriate approach, allowing us to investigate whether philosophical intuitions change over time as a result of university study. Earlier longitudinal findings reported by Ethan Landes suggest that philosophical intuitions remain stable. However, the five-week interval between measurements may be too short to capture their development. Our proposed three-year study is the first on this timescale and is intended to contribute substantially to the debate about philosophical expertise.

The study addresses whether sustained philosophical training affects the content and strength of philosophical intuitions. Our working hypothesis is that changes not detected in earlier studies will emerge over a longer period.