Forming Impressions: Expertise in Perception & Intuition
Elijah ChudnoffHow can the sensory & intellectual impressions that lie at the foundation of our knowledge themselves be informed by our knowledge? In Forming Impressions: Expertise in Perception & Intuition, Chudnoff addresses this & other questions that derive from trying to understand the improvability of our basic sources of knowledge. At the extreme of improvement lies expertise, & there is a wealth of research on the structures & mechanisms underlying expert perception & expert intuition that promises to illuminate the nature & significance of improvements to these sources of knowledge in general.
Taking this cue, the first part of the book lays the groundwork for the rest by elaborating an interpretation of the psychology of expertise. The second part develops a setting for thinking about the epistemology of expert perception & expert intuition. The third part of the book explores the significance of the resulting view of intuition & its improvability for recent debates about philosophical methodology. Chudnoff defends a rationalist view of the role of intuition in philosophy that can be traced back to classic works on methodology such as Descartes' Rules & Spinoza's Emendation of the Intellect.