WIPS: Evan Sommers

Locke defines an idea as “whatsoever is the Object of the Understanding when a Man thinks” (EHU I.i.8). Kant defines an intuition as “that… at which all thought as a means is directed as an end” (1787, A19/B33). Both posits characterize a broad class of mental representational states defined (at least partly) in terms of availability to a domain-general subject-level mental capacity—in this case, thought. This talk characterizes a broad class of neural vehicles suited to be vehicles for such representational states. I call these neural vehicles of intuition. I show how neural vehicles of intuition fall out of two models of the dynamical behavior of visual neurons, I offer a definition of neural vehicles of intuition that generalizes over both these models, and I offer a series of clarifications to ward off possible objections.