In response to the claims of partisans of Xphi, there has been a tendency to deny that intuition matters much in philosophy (or even exists for philosophical purposes recall recent discussion by Jennifer Nagel on Williamson here; a topic that Catarina and Brit have explored recently here; here, for more etc.)) But in my recent readings I found a lovely (critical!) account of the "rules of the game" in Maudlin:
The rules of the game in this sort of analytic project are relatively clear: any proposed analysis is tested against particular cases, usually imaginary, for which we have strong intuitions. The accuracy with which the judgments of the analysis match the deliverances of intuition then constitutes a measure of the adequacy of the analysis. Unfortunately, it is often the case that the question of how the intuitions are arrived at is left to the side: getting the analysis to deliver up the right results, by hook or by crook, is all that matters, and this, in turn encourages ever more baroque constructions. But if we care about intuitions att all, we ought to care about the underlying mechanism that generates them...--Tim Maudlin, The Metaphysics of Physics, 146-7.Now Maudlin's book got published in 2007. So, it is certainly possible that in response to Xphi and more general methodological self-reflection analytical philosophy is in a period of transition. But the "rules of the game" were once very clear, and we should be skeptical of claims to the contrary.
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