Jes Golden

This dissertation examines a neglected subtype of intuition: intuition in the bodily mode. In the philosophical literature, intuition is commonly conceived as an intellectual seeming and discussed in the context of thought experiments. While intellectual seemings might characterize the philosophical intuitions we have about knowledge and free will, this dissertation takes as its subject those intuitions that present not intellectually, but viscerally. I argue that intuitions have modes of presentation, and that examining intuition through this lens illuminates the structural, epistemic, and ethical dimensions between intuitions in different modes of presentation. Intuitions in the bodily mode—or what I call gut feelings—have valenced evaluative content. Because gut feelings present in the bodily mode, they invite inquiry into what parts of our affective, relational, and life history might underlie intuition. My argument proposes an enactive approach to using and justifying gut feelings by coming into relationship with one’s embodied epistemology: the experiences, habits, dispositions, and histories that are likely to have shaped one’s intuitions within a particular domain. I also discuss problems of justification for intuition and suggest that domains of degree opacity or transparency determine whether we ought to take an internalist approach to justification or a pragmatic externalist approach. Chapter 1 examines the possibility of distinguishing an account of intuition in the bodily mode from philosophical intuitions as they are commonly discussed. I apply the Fregean notion of mode of presentation to argue that some instances of intuition are presented through visceral seemings, and that the bodily feelings therein are not incidental, but are constitutive of this type of intuition. I argue that intuitions in the bodily mode carry evaluative, valenced, and intentional content that reorients us, and further, that this mode of presentation introduces epistemic concerns distinct from those in an intellectual mode of presentation. Chapter 2 discusses the nature of embodied phenomenology in gut feelings and argues for an epistemic distinction between gut feelings and emotion. I consider an objection that gut feelings are reducible to an embodied appraisal account of emotion. In response, I argue that gut feelings have an epistemic signature that distinguishes them from emotion: an essential incongruity between the valence one experiences toward the object of intuition and the valence one expects to experience given everything else that one knows about the object of the intuition. When this valence incongruity is resolved, the gut feeling either disappears or is epistemically upgraded to a belief, and I suggest that this is because intuition has counterfactual phenomenal truth conditions. Lastly, I note that my account of gut feelings is phenomenologically identical to certain cases of anxiety. I propose that this is an explanatory virtue of my account that tracks the phenomenal character of anxiety and gut feeling. Chapter 3 discusses the relationship between justification and phenomenal character in philosophical intuitions. I consider the argument that intuition is prima facie justified because it shares a presentational phenomenal character with perception. I intervene by considering how the phenomenal character of intuition can upgrade or downgrade justification by giving hints about whether a given intuition has inferential domain transparency or inferential domain opacity, with each requiring different justificatory strategies. I ultimately argue for an enactive approach to intuition that views intuition as one kind of skillful perception. While intuition is sometimes an example of skillful engagement with the world, as with expertise, it can also be a disorienting departure from skillful engagement. An enactive framework for justification invites inquiry into potential intuition-forming processes in cases with domain transparency, and in cases with significant domain opacity, a pragmatic reliabilism. In Chapter 4, I apply the arguments of Chapter 3 to emotions and gut feelings. Valenced content—present in both emotion and gut feeling—can skew epistemic appraisals, or it can reveal content that might not have been accessible through other means. I compare emotion and gut feelings to touch, which features both a subjective pole (e.g., our own sensations) and an objective pole (e.g., the information touch reveals about the world). I suggest that we can bolster justification for gut feelings by examining the subjective pole, which refers to what our gut feelings reveal about one’s own states, patterns, history, and habits of appraisal. I propose embodied epistemology as a framework for pursuing this inquiry. By coming into a felt, inferential, and hypothetical relationship with the etiologies, processes, histories, and assumptions that are likely to underlie gut feelings in particular domains, we become more justified in relying on gut feelings to tell us about ourselves, our relationships, and the world. I close with comments about how the process of honing our gut feelings is a moral, experimental, and creative route to greater self-knowledge.