Intuition
Philosophers like to point out different ways of acquiring knowledge. There's deductive reasoning, empirical knowledge, and intuition. Mathematicians (as an example) acquire knowledge using deductive reasoning. Scientists gain empirical knowledge by gathering data. And philosophers gather wisdom from their intuition. Consider these two passages from Britannica's page on intuition:
Moral philosophers from Joseph Butler to G.E. Moore have held that moral assertions record knowledge of a special kind. The rightness of actions is discovered by a special moral faculty, seen as analogous to the power of observation or the power of intuiting logical principles. This theory, like that which holds logical principles to be the outcome of intuition, bases its case on the self-evident and unarguable character of the assertions with which it is concerned.
Two further technical senses of intuition may be briefly mentioned. One, deriving from Immanuel Kant, is that in which it is understood as referring to the source of all knowledge of matters of fact not based on, or capable of being supported by, observation. The other is the sense attached to the word by Benedict Spinoza and by Henri Bergson, in which it refers to supposedly concrete knowledge of the world as an interconnected whole, as contrasted with the piecemeal, “abstract” knowledge obtained by science and observation. (link)
There seems to be two assumptions made by philosophers here:
1. Humans have an innate "intuitive" faculty.
2. We can readily rely on this faculty to obtain knowledge.
Objection to 1: The idea that we all possess intuitive faculties is a considerable assumption. How does on go about substantiating such a claim?
Objection to 2: Science often makes discoveries that are counter-intuitive. In fact, history shows us that scientific breakthroughs are made by challenging traditional assumptions and intuitions.
Thoughts?
Moral philosophers from Joseph Butler to G.E. Moore have held that moral assertions record knowledge of a special kind. The rightness of actions is discovered by a special moral faculty, seen as analogous to the power of observation or the power of intuiting logical principles. This theory, like that which holds logical principles to be the outcome of intuition, bases its case on the self-evident and unarguable character of the assertions with which it is concerned.
Two further technical senses of intuition may be briefly mentioned. One, deriving from Immanuel Kant, is that in which it is understood as referring to the source of all knowledge of matters of fact not based on, or capable of being supported by, observation. The other is the sense attached to the word by Benedict Spinoza and by Henri Bergson, in which it refers to supposedly concrete knowledge of the world as an interconnected whole, as contrasted with the piecemeal, “abstract” knowledge obtained by science and observation. (link)
There seems to be two assumptions made by philosophers here:
1. Humans have an innate "intuitive" faculty.
2. We can readily rely on this faculty to obtain knowledge.
Objection to 1: The idea that we all possess intuitive faculties is a considerable assumption. How does on go about substantiating such a claim?
Objection to 2: Science often makes discoveries that are counter-intuitive. In fact, history shows us that scientific breakthroughs are made by challenging traditional assumptions and intuitions.
Thoughts?
Comments (60)
Quoting Pantagruel
We definitely have intuitions, I agree. However, the OP is concerned about intuition as a mental faculty.
From my understanding, intuitions are developed from experience and practice. Doctors, for example, gain intuitions about medicine by treating patients. My question is, is it necessary to postulate intuition as a mental faculty that allows us to obtain metaphysical knowledge? We all have intuitions in our everyday lives, that is certain. But to go ahead postulating an intuitive mental faculty is surely unwarranted.
Is that a psychological fact, or speculation?
Quoting Pantagruel
And have you acquired any knowledge with your "highly-developed intuitive sense"? Perhaps you can give me an example.
Intuition has formed the basis of my professional career in troubleshooting computer systems. For a self-trained engineer, I have enjoyed considerable success. I feel it has guided my studies equally well. I've heard it described as "immerse yourself in your subject matter....and wait." I'd say that's accurate.
I know about the cognitive biases.
Quoting Pantagruel
That's similar to what I said.
Quoting Wheatley
Intuitions in Philosophy: A Minimal Defense
Herman Cappelen
ABSTRACT
The claim that contemporary analytic philosophers rely extensively on intuitions as evidence is almost universally accepted in current meta-philosophical debates and it figures prominently in our self-understanding as analytic philosophers. No matter what area you happen to work in and what views you happen to hold in those areas, you are likely to think that philosophizing requires constructing cases and making intuitive judgments about those cases. This assumption also underlines the entire experimental philosophy movement: Only if philosophers rely on intuitions as evidence are data about non-philosophers’ intuitions of any interest to us. Our alleged reliance on the intuitive makes many philosophers who don’t work on meta-philosophy concerned about their own discipline: they are unsure what intuitions are and whether they can carry the evidential weight we allegedly assign to them. The goal of this book is to argue that this concern is unwarranted since the claim is false: it is not true that philosophers rely extensively (or even a little bit) on intuitions as evidence. At worst, analytic philosophers are guilty of engaging in somewhat irresponsible use of ‘intuition’-vocabulary. While this irresponsibility has had little effect on first order philosophy, it has fundamentally misled meta-philosophers: It has encouraged meta-philosophical pseudo-problems and misleading pictures of what philosophy is[/b]. (link)
What a mess!
“....Our knowledge springs from two main sources in the mind, first of which is the faculty or power of receiving representations (receptivity for impressions); the second is the power of cognizing by means of these representations (spontaneity in the production of conceptions). Through the first an object is given to us; through the second, it is, in relation to the representation (which is a mere determination of the mind), thought. Intuition and conceptions constitute, therefore, the elements of all our knowledge, so that neither conceptions without an intuition in some way corresponding to them, nor intuition without conceptions, can afford us a cognition. Both are either pure or empirical. They are empirical, when sensation (which presupposes the actual presence of the object) is contained in them; and pure, when no sensation is mixed with the representation. Sensations we may call the matter of sensuous cognition....”
(CPR, A50/B74)
I guess it is left to us whether the power for the “receptivity of impressions”, is theoretically distinguishable from observation. If it isn’t, then intuition as a source of knowledge “not based on, or capable of being supported by, observation”, is false.
Objection: The idea that we all possess intuitive faculties is a considerable assumption. How does on go about substantiating such a claim?
Rebuttal to the objection: That human sensory apparatus is affected by the impressions the world makes on them is provable scientifically and justified logically, hence not considerable as an mere assumption, and at the same time sustaining the claim for some sort of intuitive faculty or power by which such impressions are necessary constituents in a system.
———-
Objection: Science often makes discoveries that are counter-intuitive. In fact, history shows us that scientific breakthrough are made by challenging traditional assumptions and intuitions.
Rebuttal to the objection: That science makes breakthrough challenging extant intuitions, is sufficient presupposition for them, which supports the rebuttal to the first objection. That which is counter-intuitive doesn’t negate the power of intuition itself, but at most merely some content of it.
————
Quoting Wheatley
No. Intuition is for empirical knowledge alone, which concerns itself with the physical domain. Metaphysical knowledge, in its proper sense, is a priori, which concerns itself only with conceptions and their relations to each other. What we perceive requires intuition to understand; what we merely think, does not.
That an old system such as Kant’s has never been proven wrong doesn’t make it correct, just continuously useful, if only against which new systems are judged.
This is something I've thought a lot about, but haven't really done my homework on, so I'm stepping out a bit on thin ice based on 1) What little I have read and 2) My own experience of intuition.
Most human learning is not learning facts. Babies don't learn facts, they build themselves a world, at the start without language. That world view includes all the important information they need to live in the world. It's based on their observations of and interactions with the outside, but also on innate, instinctual capacities that all humans have. We, as fully grown humans, still carry that world around inside us, although it has grown and evolved as we've grown. The baby's, and our, worlds are not made up of facts. Most of the things we know have never been proven to us. In my understanding, and experience, that factless world is the basis of intuition.
People look down on intuition, but it is much more powerful and effective than what we call knowledge. Our intuition is the fundamental basis of our intellect. To not recognize its importance is mind-bogglingly arrogant.
Then I must be "mind-mindbogglingly arrogant". If I had to choose between a book that contains knowledge and a book that contains somebody's intuitions, I would choose the former. Simply put: it's better to know.
How so? If anything, science has introduced doubts about our intuitive ability. Presupposing them then would be counter-productive.
Quoting Mww
I agree.
Biology, in short the more you do in life specifically the choices that result in a dopamine "net positive" aka reward are neural pathways that are "carved out" as an old instructor of mine would say.. the more you seem to "intrinsically" lean toward them. This could be essentially what that "gut feeling" is. Which makes sense as far as the whole evolutionary advantage process argument goes. Why would you not learn from your mistakes and successes and wish to either avoid or repeat them respectively from every fiber of your being? It would only be logical to assume that those who do would live longer, gain more rewards and avoid more hazards than someone who does not.
Or.. it could be something a bit more.. metaphysical. Spooky, even. Again we wouldn't know for certain if either is the case let alone mutually exclusive.
It doesn't seem right to use Kant's system as standard to judge other systems merely on the bases that Kant's system hasn't been disproved. The fact that Kant has never been refuted is just a testament to how hard it is to refute a philosophical position. That being said, I have no reason to accept Kant's philosophy, nor his ideas about intuition.
It seems like we have a grainy picture of a, well, Platonic morality, an ideal-case scenario of what right and wrong are but, like a bad scientific theory, time and again the model we have in our heads fails to match the reality on the ground - a square peg in a round hole situation. On more occasions than we can count we've demonstrated errors in our intution. Is morality a mistake, a logical boo-boo, an unrealistic concept that has no place in the actual world?
On the flip side, there have been cases where our intuitions were bang on target - some of our conjectures have been proven right/true.
To make the long story short, intuition/insight can't be dismissed outright but they can't be given the nod of approval its proponents are fighting for.
Not a standard in juxtaposition to its falsification, but to its explanatory novelty.
Quoting Wheatley
Can’t challenge something that comes after the challenge, right? Seems like any challenge of anything implies a necessary temporal order.
Quoting Wheatley
Generally speaking, yes. On the other hand, it could be a testament to how hard it is to refute a logical proof that grounds a philosophical position.
There are other senses of intuition than Kant’s. All I’m saying is that the link can be interpreted as conflicting with one of its referents.
:up:
You are right to object against those two assumptions.
Their foundations are nothing more than a "Texas sharpshooter fallacy" or confirmation bias.
Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky's life-work was all about counting ALL the "bullets" on the sharpshooter's Target board!
They not only find statistical issues with all our Heuristics, they demolished intuition and any assumption that matched the above two!.
The work of those two Psychologists ended up winning a Nobel Prize...listen...in Economics!
Yes, Economists immediately understood the power of this knowledge and the real life implications in our economies!
Now, we know about the bad performance of intuition in epistemology for almost 20 years now(2002 Nobel of economics) but we still have pseudo philosophers, sophists and religious people recycling the same claims in favor of intuition and selectively pointing the hits and totally ignoring the huge volume of misses.
This practice, once again, highlights the problem with "Philosophy". Most people assume that they can do meaningful philosophy without the need to be scientifically informed on the subject.
For those who are interested in finding out how many years this research lasted and what were the result they can read Daniel's book "Thinking Slow and Fast", or listen him talk about his findings in panels and lectures all over the internet.
Thanks for addressing this topic.
Your response has ignored the content of my post.
I have nothing to say about the content of your post because (like you said) it is based on anecdotal evidence.
I didn't agree with your conclusion. So I responded to that.
You also made the jump from talking about facts in your second paragraph to talking about knowledge in your third paragraph. I don't believe knowledge consists of facts. A physicist professor can be very knowledgeable about physics, but that knowledge is not merely a collection of facts. Their knowledge may include a deep understanding of the physical world, mathematics, and a background of related things.
Intuition is a subjective personal source for suggesting possible beliefs which is far from being a source of any kind of knowledge. Intuitions are deeply psychological, exactly the sort of thing rational philosophy should be distancing itself from.
Intuitions are guesses but not raw guesses. For example, mathematical or artistic intuition starts with loading one's mind with everything already known on some narrow topic. Then subconsciously, which means without rational deliberation, testing many combinations of possibilities, even while sleeping, which pop into the conscious mind suddenly with a best fit guess to a problem. The result can remembered and further developed rationally.
The philosophical or mathematical method starts with one of these private guesses made into a public hypothesis. Public hypotheses are tested by other people to assess usefulness. This sort of public knowledge can remain as a best explanation until something better or more complete comes along.
:party:
Np.
I take it that you agree with me (and Plato) that the assessment of any sort of knowledge based on psychological intuition has to be dead wrong?
Edit: Since most people in the Western hemisphere are asleep at this hour, I'll dissolve another take from the OP Quoting Wheatley
This is not wrong, it's just nonsense. As I already pointed out, intuitions are private psychological hunches based on what each of us has already learned. Public scientific discoveries are almost always counterintuitive, otherwise they would have been known to the ancients' intuitions.
Science is counterintuitive because the world that scientific instruments measure is different from our inborn naive intuitions of what the world we imagine ought to be. The fault is with our subjective psychological intuitions and not with objective scientific instruments. The scientific world is totally hidden from the naive conceptions of un-instrumented primitives like us.
Intuition is a heuristic that is used to make sense of a situation and inform our decisions or opinions. They are based on generalisations biases and previous experiences.
Intuition is more of guessing than "knowing" and a Nobel awarded scientific study showed that statistically our intuition performs really bad.
So even if intuition is an ability of our brains to make guesses without all the facts, our modern environment renders it a disability due to its high rates of failure.
It's not a credible path to knowledge and in any case we can never accept any Intuitive guess on face value without objective evaluation.
Knowledge refers to instrumentally valuable statements that are in agreement with current facts of reality.
I'll reply again. :smile:
Quoting magritte
I wouldn't say "any kind of knowledge". I believe that we all have personal knowledge that is not shared with the public.
Quoting magritte
Intuitions are not guesses, guesses are guesses. Saying intuitions are guesses would make intuitions interchangeable with guesses. Thus we could stop talking about intuitions and start talking about guessing. I personally do now know exactly what intuition is. It's one of those fuzzy words/concepts.
Quoting magritte
I wouldn't say "dead wrong". I would agree that intuitions are not a contribution to public knowledge.
Quoting Wheatley
Quoting Wheatley
Quoting magritte
It is nonsense if we assume your definition of intuition.
Public scientific discoveries always go against our best guesses and hunches, otherwise, the ancients would have known our science.
I wouldn't say that the scientific world is totally hidden from our view, The scientific world is right there in front of us. Science only offers us a better and more accurate understanding of the natural world. It is true that science gathers data that were previously inaccessible to ordinary people, but that doesn't imply that science replaces what humans ordinarily believe. Science only adds to public knowledge, it doesn't take anything away from us ordinary people.
I don't believe there is an exact definition of "intuition". Dictionaries provide definitions, however, we don't use dictionaries in philosophy.
Exactly. It all seems uncertain to me.
The intellect is no less flawed than the intuition. They both have their strengths and weaknesses. But even better when they work together.
In one of the more abstract courses in college math, the prof presented much material in rapid succession with many of the proofs peppered with "it is intuitively obvious that blahblah". After class I admitted that those steps were not intuitively obvious to me and I asked for guidance. He said that those proofs were intuitively obvious to any mathematician and I would see that after a few more math courses.
The picture of intuition I have already presented is the one to be found in some Plato (perhaps the Meno and Theaetetus). According to the SEP, is also the median position to be found in modern philosophy as
S has the intuition that p if and only if S is disposed to believe p
This emphasizes the psychological disposition component of personal belief applicable to epistemology. The advantage is that my nasty reference to many scientific instrumental worlds can be ignored for the sake of argument.
You are using generalizations and heuristics to conclude that intuition doesn't work. In other words, you are not being rigorous but relying on "intuition" to dismiss intuition.
You need to study the actual publication or read the impact this study had and still has in our economic theory and applications or read Kahneman's book that analyzes the methods and their conclusions.
Scientific methods do not include heuristics or generalizations in their Descriptive Frameworks.
I understand that you are trying to protect an ideology that might be based solely on intuitive claims but you don't get to accuse science and its methods for using heuristics or generalizations.
Removing those practice WAS the main reason why we came up with science in the first place.
OK dude
You can read all about his awarded study(methodologies and foundings) in his book which for academic reasons( I suppose) is available in PDF format all over the internet for free.
You can also watch his lectures and talks on the subject.
http://dspace.vnbrims.org:13000/jspui/bitstream/123456789/2224/1/Daniel-Kahneman-Thinking-Fast-and-Slow-.pdf
Quoting magritte
Okay. I guess we all need to keep in touch with more up-to-date contemporary philosophy.
Emerson will call it the genius that each of us have, but it is more in relation to an opportunity than something innate. Is it unobjectionable to say we all have different interests, are attracted to different things? We can be drawn into the world (Heidegger). Not that we are the cause of making our will known, our are grasping some knowledge special to us, but in the sense of our knowing our way, which one is ours (or ignoring it). We can make that intelligible not by intention or our meaning, but because of the interests and identities and distinctions and ordinary criteria embedded in our culture and lives--our conformity to it Emerson calls it, or our aversion from it.
To call it a "faculty" is a picture which would lead us to want to know the nature of it, it's source, it's constitution, it's authority, it's power, etc. This sets it up as part of human nature, rather than as part of the human condition, a place we at times find ourselves in.
An example will perhaps illustrate the difference between intuition and logic:
Say you visit a store to buy some things. You're not paying attention (like all of us) to what you're doing. Picking up a few items you rush back to the clerk at the counter. You absent-mindedly place the items you want to buy on the table. The clerk then scans the items and tells you, without batting an eyelid, "that'll be $3000 sir."
Intuition: You picked up, what?, a maximum of 3 items. To be on the safe side let's make that 5. You remember glancing at the most expensive item you chose and you recall the last time you bought one it was around $20. A back-of-the-envelope calculation (5 × $20 = $100). The clerk has made a mistake or the calculator is broken.
Logic: You ask the clerk to tell you the price of each item. You turn on the calculator app on your phone and do the math. You look at the cashier/clerk, disapprovingly of course, and tell her she's made a mistake.
Intuition: :brow:
Logic: :nerd:
Response to thread:
Quoting Pantagruel
I hear that cats have fast reactions. Does their physical ability (strength, dexterity, etc.) benefit from this over time?
Quoting Nickolasgaspar
An uncomfortable truth (full disclosure: I took no more than a single undergrad course). Still, its hard to find people willing to even talk about philosophy... and I guess it's a kind of therapy for some of us. Or just a way to kill time for shut-ins. Maybe we need a new thread: What is the value of this forum? :wink:
Quoting Miller
The flaw of the intellect is surely its laziness. However, its outputs are statistically more valuable. See, e.g. the work by Kahneman that @Nickolasgaspar;619917 has spoken of.
Quoting Yohan
@Nickolasgaspar;619917 was referencing work which is indeed scientifically rigorous. The book title is actually "Thinking, Fast and Slow". My main criticism is that Kahneman isn't able to pick an audience: the book is both too long and dense for leisure reading, and not technical enough for scientific reference. Still, it's a good travel companion.
Quoting magritte
:up:
Quoting TheMadFool
This has raised more questions for me: you've put the multiplication into "intuition", and it is clearly some very simple maths, but I'm not sure I wouldn't have put it into "logic"/"intellect"... Maybe the divide is not so sharp...
Intuition seem to be more of an emotion - it feels right/it feels wrong.
Logic - it's right/it's wrong.
That's why I alwats felt/believed that realization (feeling the truth e.g. an equation) is more important than "mere" comprehension
As others here have said, it quickly gets into the realm of psychology...
:up: I had a different opinion up until I read what you wrote!
Now where did I read that? :chin:
Why are farmers so far down the Hackliste?
Did you know?
Astronomy, science, then math (the rest is history) were all simply byproducts of farming? A farmer should be proud as hell that his profession opened the doors to civilization as we know it. Who would've thought such was the truth? I definitely wouldn't but that's because I wasn't paying attention. :joke:
The intellect is superior, says the intellect.
Meanwhile god laughs at your plans.
One could say that this idea is intuitive in and of itself, and if the average, or majority of humanity were to read this text and primarily think yeah, that seems about right, we would all possess an intuitive faculty.
If only he could share with me what they were. :smile: For the sake of argument, let us assume this laughing deity exists. Did He create the world intuitively, in your view? I only ask, because someone once said that God does not play dice...
“Husserl’s brand of intuition has nothing to do with a view of intuitions as mere sensations of a strictly subjective nature with no real objective reference, no matter how strong the sensations are. An intuitive experience is not a revelation of a hitherto hidden reality to a passive consciousness, a sort of mundane annunciation in which one is impregnated with truth without really knowing how.
For Husserl, the concept of intuition is required on both the ontological and epistemological levels in order to ground the concepts of truth and knowledge, and it is nothing more than a generalization of the notion of perception.”(Jairo Da Silva)
The simplest sense impressions; color , sound ,touch sensation, are examples of basic intuitions for Husserl prior to their being synthetically connected into higher order objects.
It stopped being funny a long time ago. :grin:
I think in the context of this thread we can view truth as what is, and knowledge as what we know about what is. So what constitutes knowledge is pre-established, already known, readily proveable facts. Intuition, on the other hand, is more of a quick, short hand assessment of what *appears* to be accurate
.
Most people must draw conclusions in a time and resource constrained environment. This is where intuition really come in handy.Almost everyone admits that neither they nor humanity knows EVERYTHING. So you can say that within any field of knowledge there remains an element of the unknown. That's where "learning" comes in. When one attempts to learn, they must draw upon what they already know (knowledge) while also advancing into what they don't know. Often, when all the facts are not yet known, one must use their intuition to bridge the gap between the unknown and the known, since the known alone is not enough.
Intuition can clearly be improved by knowledge. Look at the example @the affirmation of strife gave earlier
It appears to one's intuition that a librarian would fit Steve's personality better than a farmer. However, one could intuitively know Steve was more likely to be a farmer if they were simply knowledgeable of statistical analysis or knew a lot about psychology.
Now, here is the more subtle part. Just as one's intuition can be improved by their knowledge, one's knowledge can be improved by their intuition. In the example that @TheMadFool gave us,
...you use your knowledge (this is how much groceries should cost) to fuel your intuition ($3000 is to much to pay for groceries) to then make more intuitive judgements (this asshole cashier overcharged me!) to then finally come to a "conclusion" (sometimes cashiers overcharge you). That useful conclusion was only reached because you had a very negative gut reaction to a number the cashier gave you. Knowledge only provided the information; your intuition proppeled you into reactions. Intuition is like a less accurate, more fluid knowledge that allows you to react quickly enough to grow and learn in real life situations. Without that ability, you wouldn't encounter as much learning experiences as you otherwise would, and then you wouldn't accrue as much knowledge.
My point is that knowledge and intuition should be used together, and the idea that one is superior to the other is really creating a false dichotomy, a real non-problem.
Quoting Joshs
....what is it that connects?
....connected synthetically, with what?
....connected into what higher order object?
....where does the higher order object reside?
....what is the function of such object?
Quick little one-word answers, or short phrases, would be fine.
All perceptual experiences are based on associative
synthesis, wherein ‘higher’ senses are constituted out of simpler ones drawn from memory on the basis of likeness and similarity. ‘Real’ spatial objects are concatenations of new sense data, memory and expectations.
Ok. Thanks.
Sit with friend in room, his goal is to ask you, do you know that this pen sit on table, (you didnt notice it in concious), you try hard, is maybe answer in the air - intuition ?
But we don't have to choose between those two, we can use both and use both well. In fact we all rely on intuition all the time. Some of better, some worse at specific areas of being intuitive and many experts have excellent intuition. We don't have the luxury of using only knowledge. If we waited for everything to be verified in that way, we could not live. Further in applying knowledge, interpreting knowledge steps in doing this would involve intuition. Or do involve it, I should have said.
Doing so appears to be specifically religiously motivated, as a retrospective (presumably, retroactive) justification for holding a particular religious belief.