No, intuition is vaguer and looser. My belief in the external world is not a dogma; it can be cashed out in lots of ways. Likewise my belief that freedom is betterthan slavery is susceptple to variosu interpretations. Besides, "intuition" doesn't have the invidious charge of "dogma." I have intuitions, you have dogmas, she's just pigheaded.
But I have an intuition
>>that
>>the external world is independent of my beliefs and desires.
>
>This should be too difficult to confirm in communication with others
>though!
You lost me here.
>
>> The thought is that intuirions are preflective, not terribly considered,
>>but more or less strongly held judgments that we try to systematize in
>>reflective equilibrium.
>
>Yeah, an intuition is like a Gadamerian prejudice, but one that can be
>brought into reason - and, in fact, must be formulated in terms of reasons
>if we're going to have a discussion about it that is anything other than
>trivial.
>
That's your dogma. Most people organize their intiotiosn in terms of stories, narratives, schemas, visions, ideals, which are anything but trivial, and about which they can have deep discussions--but not what you would call reasoned ones.
>
>True enough, but having an intuition about the existence of God is
>pragmatically distinct from having a belief in God. If I say, "I
>intuitively think that God exists" I'm putting this forward as a
>proposition: God exists. If I say, "I believe that God exists" there is a
>behavioural component to this, it entails that on is also going to act as
>though God exists.
That's how you use the words, not me. This line of discussion isn't interesting unless yous hwo there is some special point to using them your way.
I think our confusion here lies on a semantic
>level -
>can we agree that there is a pragmatic distinction, at least in theory,
>between rules for action and propositions about the world? (between
>describing the world and acting in it).
Yeah, sure, practical and theoretiacl reason, goes way back.
>
>>A belief, in good pragmatic
>>> > fashion, is a rule of behaviour.
>
>
>>No, that's just behaviorism.
>
>Absolutely not! Behaviorism is completely incompatible with what I'm
>putting forward here. Behavioralism, and I'm no specialist here, fails to
>grasp the distinction between interactive and instrumental action - it is
>completely antithetical to the communicative approach.
I'll take your word for it. Just so long as you don't deny that there's an internal representative character to "belief," we are on the same page. As I say, your use of "belief" and "intuition" is highly specialized and technical, and not the same as mine. I mean by belief what ordinary people do, and while "intuition" is a sort of pragmatist technical term, it just means "something I'd like to be able to say." It could have an action-guiding component. Moral intuitions do.
>
>If one believes something and does not act on that belief, then shouldn't
>it make sense to question whether or not they actually believe it? (if
>there is a discrepancy between what is said and what is done, then we have
>reason to suspect either some sort of self-deception or incompetence).
Sure, but the reason I suspect that desite all the razzle-dazzle, this is really behaviorism, is that there are lots of beliefs one never acts on. I've never till now acted on my belief that Ulaan Bator is the capitol of Mongolia, and my action consisted in justing expressing the belief. Surely there was no reason to doubt that I believed it, or that I have many similar beliefs, that I never act on. If I acted contrary to the truth of the proposition, maybe, but that is different. ANd most philosophical beliefs have no behavioral consequences. What are the behavioral consequences of a belief in the external world?
--jks
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