The Self-Imposition of Authoritative Rational Intuition

Abstract

I think that all philosophers and scientists, and all investigators of any sort, already appeal to rational intuitions. Moreover, I think that these investigators, in fact, require of themselves that they appeal to rational intuitions. Furthermore, I think this self-imposition, this self-requiring of an appeal to rational intuitions, is a constitutive component of the self-created projects that investigators currently engage in and that if investigators were able to stop requiring of themselves that they appeal to rational intuitions, their projects would look radically different from how they currently look. Finally, I think that this self-imposition of a demand to appeal to rational intuitions also shows that all philosophers, all empirical scientists, and all rational investigators of any kind already believe in the existence and accessibility of authoritative rational intuitions - i.e., intrinsically compelling or self-evident and essentially reliable rational intuitions, whose evidence is delivered to belief by a properly-functioning cognitive mechanism — and that we therefore have sufficiently good reason to believe that there exist some authoritative rational intuitions. Or, at least, that is what I hope to prove in this chapter.