{"id":824,"date":"2025-04-18T18:02:30","date_gmt":"2025-04-18T18:02:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cjai.co.uk\/?post_type=usersubpost&p=824"},"modified":"2026-02-02T18:53:06","modified_gmt":"2026-02-02T18:53:06","slug":"fickle-intuitions-and-the-case-for-humility","status":"publish","type":"usersubpost","link":"https:\/\/cjai.co.uk\/?usersubpost=fickle-intuitions-and-the-case-for-humility","title":{"rendered":"Fickle Intuitions and the Case for Humility"},"content":{"rendered":"

Back when I was doing research in a cognitive neuroscience lab, I got to play with all kinds of cool technical tools. For some reason, it was the out-of-place, out-of-his-depth philosophy grad who turned out to be surprisingly good at handling the brain-imaging equipment, especially the delicate task of fitting the cap with optodes onto participants\u2019 skulls. (Optodes are sensors that measure the levels of oxygenated and deoxygenated haemoglobin in the blood \u2013 a neat way of detecting areas of increased neural activity.) I was psyched! Finally, I had some irrefutable (\u201chard\u201d) evidence to back up my arguments, and it was provided by a tool with a sciencey, irrefutable-evidence-producing-sounding name: fNIRS (functional near-infrared spectroscopy).<\/p>\n

Now, back in the comfy philosopher\u2019s armchair, my toolkit looks very different. One of the main instruments at my disposal is what Daniel Dennett famously called\u00a0\u201cintuition pumps\u201d\u00a0\u2013 thought experiments designed to spark a gut reaction, that unmistakable \u201cWell, of course!\u201d or \u201cSurely not!\u201d (Dennett, 2013). A personal favourite of mine is Judith Jarvis Thomson\u2019s \u201cpeople seeds\u201d thought experiment, which she uses to defend the permissibility of abortion. One might claim that if a woman engages in intercourse knowing contraception isn\u2019t foolproof, she bears some responsibility for the resulting fetus. But does that make her morally obligated to carry it to term? If we open a window in a stuffy room and a burglar climbs in, we are partly responsible \u2013 but that doesn\u2019t give the burglar a right to stay. The same seems to hold even for innocent people, and even more so when precautions were taken, as the following thought experiment is desgined to show:<\/p>\n

People-seeds drift about in the air like pollen, and if you open your windows, one may drift in and take root in your carpets and upholstery.\u00a0 You don\u2019t want children, so you fix up your windows with fine mesh screens, the very best you can buy.\u00a0 As can happen, however, and on very, very rare occasions does happen, one of the screens is defective and a seed drifts in and takes root. Does the person-plant who now develops have a right to the use of your house? Surely not \u2013 despite the fact that you voluntarily opened your windows, you knowingly kept carpets and upholstered furniture, and you knew that screens were sometimes defective (Thomson, 1971, p. 59).<\/p>\n

These kinds of thought experiments are especially common in ethics, but even in my own philosophical backyard \u2013 the philosophy of mind \u2013 they\u2019re everywhere. Just say \u201czombies\u201d to a philosopher and watch the debate unfold (Chalmers, 1997). The point is: in philosophy, intuitions aren\u2019t just decorative. They\u2019re foundational. They often form the bedrock of the more formal, structured arguments we end up building.<\/p>\n

Take another classic example, this time from epistemology: Gettier\u2019s challenge to the justified true belief (JTB) theory of knowledge (Gettier, 1963). Imagine Smith goes to the station, sees a clock that reads 19:15, and forms the justified belief that it\u2019s 19:15. After all, clocks are usually reliable. Twist: the clock is broken. Double twist: it\u00a0actually\u00a0is 19:15. What are the odds? Smith had a belief that was both justified and true \u2013 but surely, he didn\u2019t\u00a0know\u00a0that it was 19:15, right? Here\u2019s the argument laid out more formally:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Smith has a non-knowledgeable justified true belief.<\/li>\n
  2. If S has a non-knowledgeable justified true belief, the JTB theory of knowledge is false.<\/li>\n
  3. Therefore, the JTB theory of knowledge is false.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    How do we arrive at (1)? Well, intuition. That ineffable something that tells us how things stand. Something so basic, immediate, and clear that it doesn\u2019t seem to need further justification or argument.<\/p>\n

    But wait. Something that both scientists and philosophers aren\u2019t particularly good at is stepping back now and then to ask whether the tools they\u2019re using are actually appropriate for the job at hand. Is an fMRI scanner \u2013 loud, sterile, and deeply unnerving \u2013 really the best way to study something as embodied and performative as acting? (Yes, this was an actual study: actors had to lie perfectly still so as not to disrupt the scan, and simply\u00a0imagine\u00a0delivering their lines. Such studies cost tens of thousands of pounds.) Doubts notwithstanding, it\u2019s easy to see why this kind of methodological introspection doesn\u2019t happen all that often. If scientists constantly questioned their basic tools, progress would grind to a halt. A more cynical take is that, once you\u2019ve built an entire career around a certain technique or approach, you\u2019re not exactly thrilled when someone comes along and starts poking holes in it.<\/p>\n

    If you\u2019re a philosopher reading this, don\u2019t feel too smug just yet. The intuitions you build your arguments on aren\u2019t exactly bulletproof either. In fact, they\u2019re highly malleable \u2013 and influenced by a whole range of external factors that can seriously shape our judgment. One of the earliest studies to show this was by Petrinovich and O\u2019Neill (1996), who found that simply rewording the trolley problem (\u201csave\u201d wording vs. \u201ckill\u201d wording) significantly affected whether participants thought it was acceptable to sacrifice one person to save five. And it\u2019s not just the phrasing \u2013 culture matters too. Gold et al. (2014) showed that participants from non-Western countries like China were significantly less likely to choose the utilitarian option. And, again, a personal favourite: Schnall et al. (2008) found that feelings of disgust \u2013 induced, for example, by leaving a full bag of garbage in the testing room \u2013 reliably led to harsher moral judgements across a range of scenarios. And this malleability isn\u2019t just an ethics problem. Similar findings have emerged in epistemology too (Swain et al., 2008).<\/p>\n

    Now, I\u2019m not saying we should abandon intuitions. It\u2019s hard to imagine what philosophy would even look like without them. (In fact, I used intuitions myself when questioning the use of fMRI to study acting! They really are everywhere.) My point is just that intuitions are fickle \u2013 and we philosophers would do well to keep that in mind as we craft our thought experiments about people-seeds, zombies, and trolleys. Intuitions are a tool \u2013 but like any other tool, say neuroimaging methods \u2013 they\u2019re imperfect.That should give us pause. It should humble us, maybe even prompt us to dial down our confidence in some of our most cherished arguments or conclusions. After all, we \u2013 and our intuitions \u2013 might one day be proven wrong. And this is especially worth remembering in what is arguably the most heated debate in philosophy today: the one surrounding AI.<\/p>\n

    In the case of AI, our intuitions are bound to be especially volatile, given that new models with new capabilities are being released practically every month. Our judgments will also vary based on how much time we spend interacting with these systems, creating a wide spread of intuitions about autonomy, agency, rationality, and the like. A third factor is generational: intuitions about AI will shift over time, and children growing up with artificial agents will likely have very different gut reactions than those of us who met ChatGPT in adulthood. A study by Druga et al. (2017) showed that children who grow up using voice assistants like Alexa and Google Assistant often attribute feelings, thoughts, or at least social agency to these systems \u2013 even when explicitly told they don\u2019t have them. Sure, we can tell them they\u2019re anthropomorphising (however you\u2019d explain that to a child), but those impressions are likely to be deeply ingrained. So how will they respond to intuition pumps about, say, the ethical status of AI when they\u2019re the ones running the show?
    \nThis is something we should all try to keep in mind when engaging in debates about AI. As someone who\u2019s recently spent a lot of time at conferences and discussion groups on the topic, I\u2019ve noticed that these debates can get unusually heated \u2013 and often, ad hominem. Far more so than in other academic settings (a possible exception is consciousness science \u2013 you can imagine what conferences on AI consciousness look like). To give you one example: I recently witnessed a fellow researcher describe AI as \u201cdemonic\u201d, and anyone engaging with it as complicit in a betrayal of near-Luciferian proportions. Just by using ChatGPT, I started to feel guilty \u2013 like an intern at Cyberdyne Systems, about to launch Skynet. Yes, the language was strong \u2013 but also, to some extent, understandable. To say that the stakes are high is a massive understatement. We\u2019re grappling with questions about discrimination, job displacement, and perhaps even existential risk. And we need to get them right. But in doing so, we should also stay aware that we might get them\u00a0wrong. The conversation would be healthier \u2013 and ultimately more productive \u2013 if we recognized that the tools we use to form our views aren\u2019t divinely sanctioned. They\u2019re fallible. And if someone else\u2019s intuitions don\u2019t match our own, that doesn\u2019t make them deluded, or demonic.<\/p>\n

    Bibliography<\/strong><\/p>\n