ABSTRACT
The empirical turn has created an undercurrent of scrutiny regarding the relevance of disciplines such as philosophy and theology due to assumptions about the limitations of their epistemology. This article seeks to recognize that disciplines that are lauded as most relevant due to their reliance on empiricism as their main form of epistemology often rely upon intuition for making decisions in the research process. After delineating this process using Anthropological research as an example, I draw a parallel between descriptions of how intuition can be understood and used as a means of knowing in the work of Kant and several theologians with descriptions of how intuition is relied upon and necessarily emerges as a critical epistemology in the more traditionally empirically grounded discipline Anthropology. This parallel is offered as the launching place for connections between these disciplines through further examination of the use of intuition as an epistemology and hopes to equate the epistemo- logical integrity of disciplines such as philosophy and theology that admit to the use of intuition with those that are considered empiri- cal which rely upon intuition yet may not admit to its use overtly.
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Notes
1. Puddephatt, Shaffir and Kleinknecht, Ethnographies Revisited, 1–2.
2. Davies, Reflexive Ethnography, 5.
3. Geertz, The Interpretation of Culture, 6.
4. Davies, Reflexive Ethnography, 30.
5. Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures, 6.
6. Ibid.
7. Ibid.
8. Ingold, Being Alive, 75.
9. Hoffman, “Learning to See,” 29–30.
10. Ibid.
11. Ibid., 37.
12. Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, A19/B33.
13. Bauer, “A Peculiar Intuition,” 226.
14. Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, A19/B33.
15. Ibid.
16. Bauer, Nathan, “A Peculiar Intuition,” 231.
17. Bealer, George, ‘A Priori Knowledge,” 121.
20. See above 17, 129.
21. Ibid., 125.
22. Ibid.
23. Ibid., 126.
24. Altamirano, The Belief in Intuition, 157.
25. Ibid., 38.
26. Ibid., 73.
27. Hoose, Intuition and Moral Theology, 605–6.
28. Ibid., 603.
29. See above 24, 118.
30. Ibid., 99.
31. Ibid., 120–1.
32. Ibid., 51.
33. Ibid., 120.
34. Ibid., 156.
35. Hoose, Intuition and Moral Theology, 605.
36. Ibid., 623.
37. Ibid., 620–624.
38. Aquinas, Summa theologiae 1–2, q. 94
39. Hoose, Intuition and Moral Theology, 620.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Jamie L. Howard
Jamie L. Howard completed her PhD at Durham University in 2020, focusing on experiences of hope in the Indian Hindu and Indian Christian diaspora in Chicago. After lecturing as an adjunct for two years for Durham University, she has transitioned to working as a clinical therapist at Finishwell Group, and also serves on the staff of One Way Ministries where she is the project lead in a three year project focused on prayer for Hindus. She is interested in enhancing anthropological methods by equipping researchers with therapeutic training as well as in continuing her focus on hope lived in specific populations.