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human
Why are intuitions taken so seriously in philosophy?

Initially, it seems like an obvious component of critical thinking that we don't just accept our intuitions at face value. Anyone who has experience with how science proves things, or even with having his or her intuitions frequently turn out wrong in everyday life, should know that intuitions are not a valid form of proof. Moreover, neuroscience and psychology indicate that our only means of access to reality is through sensory input to our brain - there is no independent evidence for a reliable non-sensory faculty. So we have a lot of observational evidence against the reliability of intuition.

In spite of this, intuition is frequently appealed to in every branch of philosophy. Metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, philosophy of religion, you name it. Although I think philosophy is valuable in principle, I see this current practice as a serious problem for the credibility and value of philosophy as an academic discipline.

The standard argument for intuition seems to be that there are things that we want to say are knowledge that we don't know how to account for using actual evidence, so we have to grant the validity of these extra areas of knowledge as being based on intuition. This is backwards, though - either these areas of knowledge have an as yet unknown sensory basis, or they are not areas of knowledge. It is not rational to posit that intuition is reliable when (a) there is very good evidence that intuition is not reliable, and (b) the only reason to do so is that you don't like it that some of your beliefs aren't actually knowledge. This is not dogmatic of me, quite the opposite - I am asking for evidence, which is not dogmatic, and the intuitionist is holding on to an intuition for which there is no evidence in its favor and significant evidence against it, which is virtually the definition of dogmatism.

I think philosophy needs to face this problem head on, not just appeal to incredulity when its intuitions are challenged. So, is there some argument or evidence in favor of taking intuitions seriously that academic philosophers are privy to that I haven't heard of yet?
gpt
> there is no independent evidence for a reliable non-sensory faculty.

There's all sorts of evidence for reliable non-sensory faculties.  Mathematical inferences, deductive inferences, inductive inferences, abstractions, and so forth are ubiquitous aspects of human cognition with excellent track records.

> ...intuition is frequently appealed to in every branch of philosophy. Metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, philosophy of religion, you name it.

This is a contentious view of what's going on in philosophy.  Moreover, it's unclear just what you might mean by intuition, which often has a very specific sense in mind which might not be the sense someone unfamiliar with the background of the argument would have in mind.  Sometimes 'intuition' is short-hand for one's background beliefs, sometimes sensible evidence is counted as a kind of intuition, sometimes what is *prima facie* evidence is counted as an intuition...  Could you give a specific example of the sort of thing you have in mind and are objecting to?

> The standard argument for intuition seems to be that there are things that we want to say are knowledge that we don't know how to account for using actual evidence...

Count you give an example?

> This is backwards, though - either these areas of knowledge have an as yet unknown sensory basis, or they are not areas of knowledge.

This judgment assumes that the only basis of knowledge is sensation, but hardly anyone would agree to this premise, and in general it seems wildly untenable.