"well, you're also ultimately basing yourself on intuitions for things like logic, existence of mind-independent objects, Occamian priors, and all the other viewpoints that you view as intuitively plausible, so I can jolly well use whatever intuitions I feel like too."
It's true that a priori using intuition is about as good as using an intuitive tool like inductive reasoning. However, induction has a very very strong track record. The entire history of science is one of humans starting out with certain intuitive priors, and huge numbers of them being challenged by experimental evidence. Babies learn about the world using induction, so each one of us has a mountain of evidence supporting its usefulness. Once you perform a Baysian update on that evidence, intuition looks like a much less useful predictor of future events.
Sure, you can deny the validity of induction. You can also claim that "I think therefor I am" is invalid because it isn't based on anything. (What is this "therefore" concept? What is "I"? What does it mean to "exist"?) You can even decide when to use induction versus intuition based on whim or based on which conclusion you want to “prove”. It’s just that doing so is incoherent.
Yes, I did just use an informal form of inductive reasoning, by using observations of evidence to demonstrate that induction seems valid upon reflection. Yes, that makes me feel dirty inside. But you have to start somewhere, and we don't really have any better options. It should be noted that anyone who says "intuition is a better option" learned those 5 words through induction, and probably uses induction to override intuitions every day. It is mathematically provable that no mathematical system can assert its own soundness without becoming inconsistent. We can't prove the validity of induction using induction. The best we can do is try to falsify the hypothesis "induction is valid". If looking at the track record of induction seemed to indicate that it wasn't valid, then we'd have an even worse mess on our hands, but fortunately that isn't the case. If someone can come up with a better alternative to induction, they'd better be able to demonstrate that it is better.
Some would call that faith. I'd counter that faith is belief regardless of evidence, and this is forming beliefs based on all available evidence. If that's faith, then so is every belief about anything.
For a while now I've been trying hard to understand philosophical viewpoints that defer from mine. Somewhere along the line I've picked up or developed a lot of the LW-typical viewpoints (not sure if this was because of LW, or if I developed them earlier and that's what later attracted me to LW), but I know there are a lot of smart people out there who disagree with those viewpoints. I've tried to read articles and books on this, but they either don't address what I'm looking for somehow, or they're so technical that I have a hard time following them. I've also talked at some length with a philosophy professor, but our conversations often seem to end with me still being confused and the professor being confused about what it is I might be confused about.
I'm thinking maybe it'll help to get some input from people who do intuitively agree with my viewpoints, hence this post. So, can someone please tell me what the central arguments or motivations are for promoting the following:
Epistemology:
Ontology / philosophy of mind:
I suspect I'm having trouble with the ontology issues because of my trouble understanding the epistemology issues. Specifically, I keep getting the impression that most (all?) of the arguments for the ontology issues boil down to trusting philosophical intuitions and/or the way people use words. Something along the following lines:
Or the equivalent using the way people talk about things.
But this just seems totally ludicrous to me. If we trust cognitive science, evolutionary psychology, etc., and if those fields give us perfectly plausible reasons for why we might intuitively feel this way / talk this way, even if it didn't reflect the truth, then what could possibly be your motivation for sticking to your intuitions anyway and using them to support some grand metaphysical theory?
The only thing I can think of is that people who support using intuitions like this say, "well, you're also ultimately basing yourself on intuitions for things like logic, existence of mind-independent objects, Occamian priors, and all the other viewpoints that you view as intuitively plausible, so I can jolly well use whatever intuitions I feel like too." But although I can hear such words and why they sound reasonable in a sense, they still seem totally crazy to me, although I'm not 100% sure why.
Any help would be appreciated.