Intuition is the ability to acquire knowledge without recourse to conscious or needing an explanation. Different fields use the word "intuition" in very different ways, including but not limited to: direct access to unconscious knowledge; unconscious cognition; gut feelings; inner sensing; inner insight to unconscious pattern-recognition; and the ability to understand something instinctively, without any need for conscious reasoning. Intuitive knowledge tends to be approximate.
The word intuition comes from the Latin verb intueri translated as 'consider' or from the Late Middle English word intuit, 'to contemplate'. Use of intuition is sometimes referred to as responding to a "gut feeling" or "trusting your gut".
Jung said that a person in whom intuition is dominant—an "intuitive type"—acts not on the basis of rational judgment but on sheer intensity of perception. An extroverted intuitive type, "the Nature champion of all minorities with a future", orients to new and promising but unproven possibilities, often leaving to chase after a new possibility before old ventures have borne fruit, oblivious to his or her own welfare in the constant pursuit of change. An introverted intuitive type orients by images from the unconscious, ever exploring the psychic world of the archetypes, seeking to perceive the meaning of events, but often having no interest in playing a role in those events and not seeing any connection between the contents of the psychic world and him- or herself. Jung thought that extroverted intuitive types were likely entrepreneurs, speculators, cultural revolutionaries, often undone by a desire to escape every situation before it becomes settled and constraining—even repeatedly leaving lovers for the sake of new romantic possibilities. His introverted intuitive types were likely mystics, prophets, or cranks, struggling with a tension between protecting their visions from influence by others and making their ideas comprehensible and reasonably persuasive to others—a necessity for those visions to bear real fruit. Jung's discerning between intuitive types and sensing types was later used in the MBTI (Myers-Briggs Type Indicator), used as polar opposites on the mind.
Instinct is often misinterpreted as intuition. Its reliability is dependent on past knowledge and occurrences in a specific area. For example, someone who has had more experience with children will tend to have better instincts about what they should do in certain situations with them. This is not to say that one with a great amount of experience is always going to have an accurate intuition.
Intuitive abilities were quantitatively tested at Yale University in the 1970s. While studying nonverbal communication, researchers noted that some subjects were able to read nonverbal facial cues before reinforcement occurred. In they noted that highly intuitive subjects made decisions quickly but could not identify their rationale. Their level of accuracy, however, did not differ from that of non-intuitive subjects.
According to the works of Daniel Kahneman, intuition is the ability to automatically generate solutions without long logical arguments or evidence. He mentions two different systems that we use when making decisions and judgements: the first is in charge of automatic or unconscious thoughts, the second in charge of more intentional thoughts. The first system is an example of intuition, and Kahneman believes people overestimate this system, using it as a source of confidence for knowledge they may not truly possess. These systems are connected with two versions of ourselves he calls the remembering self and experiencing self, relating to the creation of memories in "System 1". Its automatic nature occasionally leads people to experience cognitive illusions, assumptions that our intuition gives us and are usually trusted without a second thought.
Gerd Gigerenzer described intuition as processes and thoughts that are devoid of typical logic. He described two primary characteristics to intuition: basic rules of thumb (that are heuristic in nature) and "evolved capacities of the brain". The two work in tandem to give people thoughts and abilities that they do not actively think about as they are performed, and of which they cannot explain their formation or effectiveness. He does not believe that intuitions knowledge; he believes that having too much information makes individuals overthink, and that some intuitions will actively defy known information.
Intuition is also seen as a figurative launch pad for logical thinking. Intuition's automatic nature tends to precede more thoughtful logic. Even when based on moral or subjective standpoints, intuition provides a base—one that people will usually start to back up with logical thinking as a defense or justification rather than starting with a less biased viewpoint. The confidence in are instantaneous feelings or judgments that we have surprising confidence in.
For Sri Aurobindo, intuition comes under the realm of knowledge by identity. He describes the human psychological plane (often referred to as in Sanskrit) as having two natures: The first being its role in interpreting the external world (parsing sensory information), and the second being its role in generating consciousness. He terms this second nature "knowledge by identity". Aurobindo finds that, as the result of evolution, the mind has accustomed itself to using certain physiological functions as its means of entering into relations with the material world; when people seek to know about the external world, they default to arriving at truths via their senses. Knowledge by identity, which currently only explains self-awareness, may extend beyond the mind and explain intuitive knowledge.
He says this intuitive knowledge was common to older humans (Vedic) and later was superseded by reason which currently organises our perception, thoughts, and actions and which resulted in a transition from Vedic thought to metaphysical philosophy and later to experimental science. He finds that this process, is actually a circle of progress, as He says that when self-awareness in the mind is applied to one's self and to the outer (other) self, this results in luminous self-manifesting identity; and the reason also converts itself into the form of the self-luminous intuitional knowledge.
Rajneesh believed human consciousness is in a hierarchy from basic animal to intelligence and intuition, and humans being constantly living in that conscious state often moving between these states depending on their affinity. He suggests that living in the state of intuition is one of the ultimate aims of humanity.
Advaita vedanta (a school of thought) takes intuition to be an experience through which one can come in contact with and experience Brahman.
David Hume has a more ambiguous interpretation of intuition. Hume claims intuition is a recognition of relationships (relation of time, place, and causation). He states that "the resemblance" (recognition of relations) "will strike the eye" (which would not require further examination) but goes on to state, "or rather in mind"—attributing intuition to power of mind, contradicting the theory of empiricism.
A different challenge to appeals to intuition comes from experimental philosophers, who argue that appeals to intuition must be informed by the methods of social science.
The metaphilosophy assumption that philosophy ought to depend on intuitions has been challenged by experimental philosophers (e.g., Stephen Stich). One of the main problems adduced by experimental philosophers is that intuitions differ, for instance, from one culture to another, and so it seems problematic to cite them as evidence for a philosophical claim. Timothy Williamson responded to such objections against philosophical methodology by arguing that intuition plays no special role in philosophy practice, and that skepticism about intuition cannot be meaningfully separated from a general skepticism about judgment. On this view, there are no qualitative differences between the methods of philosophy and common sense, the sciences, or mathematics. Others like Ernest Sosa seek to support intuition by arguing that the objections against intuition merely highlight .
Intuitionistic logic was devised by Arend Heyting to accommodate this position (it has also been adopted by other forms of constructivism). It is characterized by rejecting the law of excluded middle: as a consequence it does not in general accept rules such as double negation elimination and the use of reductio ad absurdum to prove the existence of something.
Intuition was assessed by a sample of 11 Australian business as a gut feeling based on experience, which they considered useful for making judgments about people, culture, and strategy.
|
|