Nicholas Rescher's Theory of Intuition

Abstract Nicholas Rescher was no stranger to the philosophy of mathematics or the philosophy of science, but his interests ranged to general epistemology and to the metaphysics of abstract objects. His epistemology combined Aristotle's insight that there are important propositions that can be known but not demonstrated with a conception of how we might intuitively apprehend such propositions. With admirable brevity, he provides a sketch of intuition as a rational capacity; a conception of its deliverances—which are specific intuitions—that allows for intuitive self-knowledge as well as for knowledge of what is external to the mind; and pragmatic criteria for choice among axiom sets. This paper traces some of his thinking about these matters and suggests how he successfully combines mathematical realism with a pragmatic theory of axiom choice in mathematics and theory choice in empirical science.