The “Unreliability” of Epistemic Intuitions

Debate over the status of intuitions in philosophical practice is marred by an ambiguity about “unreliability.” Many authors, including Boyd and Nagel in this volume, have defended the reliability of intuitions in the baseline accuracy sense of “on balance, right more often than wrong.” We agree that intuitions should likely be considered reliable in that sense. But that is not the sense in which their reliability has been under attack. Rather, the sense of reliability most relevant for understanding experimentalist critiques of intuitions is trustworthiness, for which baseline accuracy is perhaps a necessary, but by no means sufficient condition.