Tyrrell_McAllister comments on Your Evolved Intuitions - Less Wrong

15 Post author: lukeprog 05 May 2011 04:21PM

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Comment author: Tyrrell_McAllister 05 May 2011 05:45:13PM *  4 points [-]

For example, it seems unlikely that we evolved a mechanism that gives us reliable intuitions about the metaphysical possibility or impossibility of zombies.

It's outside the scope of your article, but one thing that I find curious is that people nonetheless do have strong intuitions about philosophical questions for which natural selection wouldn't instill an intuitive answer. Since these intuitions aren't shaped by natural selection, different people, even within the same culture, can have very different intuitions on the same question (e.g., A-theory vs. B-theory of time). Nonetheless, each person feels that his or her own intuitive answer is almost unavoidable. Whence these intuitions and our strong confidence in them?