Platonic knowledge by intuition

pp. 131-144

in: Colin Cheyne, Knowledge, cause, and abstract objects, Berlin, Springer, 2001

Abstract

Intuition has been suggested as the means by which we gain platonic knowledge.¹ An immediate problem is that the term "intuition" is employed with a wide range of meanings.² If these uses of the term have anything in common, it is that intuition is related to the acquisition of belief by a process that is apparently immediate and non-inferential. I shall identify those uses that are most often associated with the purported acquisition of platonic knowledge and show that none of them refers to a process that both exists and could perform as claimed. It is important to examine each notion separately. There is the danger that evidence for one intuitive process may be adduced as evidence for another, somewhat different, process. One process may genuinely yield some sort of knowledge, but be incapable of yielding platonic knowledge. The other ,if it existed, might yield platonic knowledge, but any evidence for the former would, of course, be irrelevant to the existence of the latter.