Experimental philosophers have surveyed the intuitions of laypersons triggered by philosophical thought-experiments like Gettier-cases. They found out that their intuitions exhibit a significant and pervasive amount of variation and that this variation stems from very idiosyncratic factors. Experimental philosophers of the so-called restrictionist stripe infer from this variation that intuitions are not reliable and should not be used in philosophical inquiry. In my talk, I want to elaborate a certain strategy in defense of traditional methodology, according to which the intuitions of experts should be privileged in philosophical inquiry. The main purpose of my talk will be the offer a detailed characterization of the expertise that philosophers possess and that implies that their intuitions are more reliable than the intuitions of laypersons. I want to relate my version of the so-called expertise response to other responses to the negative conclusions of experimental philosophers that exist in the literature and discuss some novel objections to it that were raised in a recent paper by Weinberg, Buckner, Gonnerman and Alexander (2010).

Diskussion zum Vortrag.