Intuition

We know about our immediate environment--about the people animals and things around us--by having sensory perceptions. According to a tradition that traces back to Plato we know about abstract reality--about mathematics morality and metaphysics--by having intuitions which can be thought of as intellectual perceptions. The rough idea behind the analogy is this: while sensory perceptions are experiences that purport to and sometimes do reveal how matters stand in concrete reality by making us aware of that reality through the senses intuitions are experiences that purport to and sometimes do reveal how matters stand in abstract reality by making us aware of that reality through the intellect. In this book Elijah Chudnoff elaborates and defends such a view of intuition. He focuses on the experience of having an intuition on the justification for beliefs that derives from intuition and on the contact with abstract reality via intuition. In the course of developing a systematic account of the phenomenology epistemology and metaphysics of intuition on which it counts as a form of intellectual perception Chudnoff also takes up related issues such as the a priori perceptual justification and knowledge concepts and understanding inference mental action and skeptical challenges to intuition.