On Intuitions and Experience—The Marriage (and Divorce) of Phenomenology and Metaphysics

Abstract

The link between intuitions and metaphysics is a strong and important one, and there is hardly any metaphysical discussion where intuitions do not play a crucial role. In this chapter, I first offer some quite general critical considerations about the role of intuitions in metaphysical debates, and I then focus on a particular kind of intuitions, namely those that come, at least partly, from experience. There seems to be a route from experience to metaphysics, and this is the core of my interest here. In order to better understand such ‘arguments from experience’ and the kind of relationship there is between this type of intuitions and metaphysical theories, I examine several cases where a kind of experience-based intuition seems to motivate or support a metaphysical theory. At the end of the day, I argue that this route is a treacherous one, and that in all of the cases I concentrate on, phenomenological considerations are in fact orthogonal to the allegedly ‘corresponding’ metaphysical claims.