Catarina confronts the canard that we "philosophers don’t rely on intuitions."
From a recent review by one of our very best philosophers:
"In Part One ("Demoralizing Marriage"), Brake focuses on the ethical significance of marriage for the individuals involved. Chapter 1 discusses whether marriage involves a promise. First, she argues that the typical marriage vows -- "to love, honour, and cherish, until death us do part" -- cannot literally be taken as promises. It is not clear that we can promise love at all. If we could, it would follow, counter-intuitively, that divorce counts as promise-breaking. Then she considers what strikes me as a more plausible suggestion"--Ralph Wedgwood.
That's the whole argument. Now from the way Wedgwood phrases the matter, it's not clear to me (really) if he believes that "If we could, it would follow, counter-intuitively, that divorce counts as promise-breaking" or if he is just summarizing the book's view. (I first inclined to the former, but now hedging my bets.) It doesn't matter, because the appeal to intuition goes unremarked here. We philosophers are so used to doing this that we can't help ourselves saying "it is not clear that," etc. Now I am willing to believe that Wedgewood never formed an intuition on the matter--he clearly just means to convey that either he (or the reviewed book) finds a view silly/dumb (whatever--pick your favorite). But it is basically an argument from authority that hides behind bogus intuitions or the language of intuitons..
I am no party to the first order debate, by the way (except, ahum, that I got married this year).
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