The Varieties of Philosophical Expertise

Abstract

Proponents of the expertise defense have often tended to link philosophical expertise with improved intuition - thus potentially undermining the claims of 'negative' experimental philosophy. Authors like Deutsch and Cappelen, meanwhile, have denied that intuition plays a substantive role in philosophical theorizing. I'll try to present a view of philosophical expertise that is, first, more amenable to the Deutsch/Cappelen view of philosophical inquiry, and second, perfectly compatible with the ambitions of negative experimental philosophers. On my view, philosophers do possess a variety of forms of expertise - but many of these are non-intuitive, and none of them suffice to undermine the challenge of experimental philosophy.