What should philosophers do with “deceptive” intuition pumps? Restrictionism vs reformism

Philosophers commonly use thought experiments to elicit intuitions that serve as evidence for or against philosophical theories. Daniel Dennett calls such thought experiments “intuition pumps” and expresses concern that some of them are “deceptive” in that they elicit conflicting intuitions and thus lead to conflicting conclusions. What, then, should philosophers do with “deceptive” intuition pumps? Dennett proposes what might be called restrictionism, according to which philosophers should restrict the use of deceptive intuition pumps. In this paper, however, we argue that it faces what we call the problem of over-restriction: if philosophers restrict the use of deceptive intuition pumps, then they end up restricting the use of so many intuition pumps that they cannot continue philosophical inquiry. Then, as an alternative, we propose reformism, according to which philosophers should continue the use of deceptive intuition pumps after reforming them. We argue that reformism is more attractive than restrictionism, because it deals with the deceptiveness of intuition pumps while avoiding the problem of over-restriction. Overall, through criticizing Dennett’s restrictionism, we aim to illuminate the attractiveness of reformism, which has been underappreciated as a response to the deceptiveness of intuition pumps, and to call for future research in the reformist research program.