The myth of the method of cases

Abstract

Recently, characterizations of the standard method of philosophy that invoke reliance on intuition have come under question. Increasingly, philosophers are now characterizing philosophical inquiry as merely relying on 'judgments' rather than intuitions, and/or as primarily employing argumentation rather than brute appeal to the self-evident. Yet philosophers who move away from 'intuition' often retain a picture of philosophical inquiry upon which it centrally relies on 'cases'. Traditional ideas of the 'method of cases' portray it as involving use of intuition; can it be understood in an intuition-neutral manner? I'll explore a few different ways of characterizing the method of cases, arguing that none particularly accurately portray current practices of philosophical inquiry. I conclude that the role of reliance on cases has been dramatically overblown in recent philosophers' methodological self-conception. It's this, much more than the supposed 'myth' of reliance on intuition, that constitutes our most common metaphilosophical misunderstanding.