Our philosophical intuitions do not rain down on us as manna from heaven; they are generated by algorithms in the human brain. Our philosophical intuitions, indeed, are how these particular cognitive algorithms feel from the inside. To dissolve a philosophical dilemma, it often suffices to understand the cognitive algorithm that generates the appearance of the dilemma - if you understand it in sufficient detail; it is not enough to say "An algorithm does it!" for this might as well be magic. It takes a detailed step-by-step walkthrough.
Michael Vassar has observed that conventional philosophers seem to be spectacularly bad at understanding that their intuitions are generated by cognitive algorithms - instead seeming simply to take them at face value. This may be why many master-level reductionist works have been written by Artificial Intelligence people rather than professional philosophers; obvious cases in point being Gary Drescher and (ahem) Eliezer Yudkowsky.
This is first explained in the sequence on words.
[Category:Concepts]