In Defense of Intuitions ─ A New Rationalist Manifesto

Most contemporary philosophers (71.1%, according to a recent survey) believe that a priori knowledge is really possible. Indeed, since the late 1980s there has been a renewed and steadily growing interest in rationalism and the a priori; and gradually what George Bealer has dubbed a rationalist renaissance has emerged onto the contemporary philosophical scene. At the same time, however, even despite this renaissance, the core notion of rational intuition has not been either adequately defended or fully developed, especially as regards solving its two core problems:

(1) how rational intuitions can sufficiently justify beliefs, and
(2) how to explain the real possibility of rational intuitions.

Given that unstable dialectical situation, this book is an attempt to respond critically, directly, and decisively to the most important contemporary skeptical anti-rationalist attacks on intuitions and a priori knowledge in philosophy, and to defend neo-rationalism from a contemporary Kantian standpoint, with a special focus on the theory of rational intuitions and on solving its two core problems.

Andrew D. Chapman is a doctoral candidate in philosophy at the University of Colorado, Boulder, USA. He also
holds a master's degree from Northern Illinois University.

Addison Ellis is a PhD candidate in philosophy at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA. He also holds a Master's degree from the University of Colorado at Boulder.

Robert Hanna is a professor of philosophy at the University of Colorado, Boulder, USA, and the author or co-author of four books—Kant and the Foundations of Analytic Philosophy [2001], Kant, Science, and Human Nature [2006], Rationality and Logic (2006), and Embodied Minds in Action (co-authored with M. Maiese, 2009). He has also held research or teaching positions at Cambridge University (UK), Monash University (AU), Yale University (USA), and York University (CA).

Tyler Hildebrand is an Acting Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the University of Washington, Seattle, USA. He holds a Ph.D. in Philosophy from the University of Colorado at Boulder, and his papers have appeared in Philosophical Studies and Philosophers' Imprint.

Henry W. Pickford is Assistant Professor of German, and affiliated with Philosophy, at the University of Colorado, Boulder, USA. He is the author of The Sense of Semblance: Philosophical Analyses of Holocaust Art and articles in journals including Modernism/Modernity, German Quarterly, MLN, Tolstoy Studies, and Architectural Theory Review, and is the editor and translator of Adorno's Critical Models: Interventions and Catchwords.