4 thoughts on “Kripke on Intuitions”

1. Admittedly that was a pretty weak response by Kripke, but it does belie the difficulty of assessing the data from these X-Phi surveys. Putting aside all the potential worries about methodology, etc. Let’s suppose the data is correctly interpreted as the X-Phiers have suggested, e.g. that referential intuitions co-vary with non-rational influences like culture. What are we supposed to make of that exactly? Does it follow that Kripke is wrong about reference?

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2. I wouldn’t say that Colin. But I would say, as Devitt does, that this kind of data counts as evidence against Kripke’s arguments (though as Devitt points out as well it is easily over-ridden)

   At the very least what it would show is that you cannot rely on inuitions alone to settle the matter…

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3. hmmm I can tentatively go along with your final claim there, but I think all of this needs to be taken with a large grain of salt until (a) there is a much larger volume of X-Phi studies that bear out similar results and (b) these studies address some of the going methodological concerns about how X-Phi has thus far been conducted.

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4. Yeah, I totally agree with you about your (a) and (b) but the grain of salt shouldn’t be large enough to get you something like Kripke’s response!

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