Intuition (from the Latin for “look into”) refers to the capacity
of knowing or understanding through direct insight, without rational
analysis or deductive thinking. It can also refer to the mysterious
psychological ability to obtain such knowledge. Intuition’s very
immediacy is often considered the best evidence of its accuracy, but the
rationalist approach will tend to dismiss it as vague and unreliable.
Nevertheless, it is difficult to imagine an intellectual system that
makes no use of some sort of intuitive apprehension of reality. The
rational discourse eventually leads to intuitive insights that, in turn,
can be used as building blocks for further reasoning. Because of its
very nature, intuition is thus very difficult to define through logical
discourse and its meaning can best be conveyed through suggestive hints.
The nature of intuition
Intuition in everyday life
Because of its immediacy, intuition can be seen as a largely unconscious
form of knowledge. Intuition differs from an opinion since opinion is based
on experience, while an intuition is held to be affected by previous
experiences only unconsciously. Intuition also differs from instinct,
which does not have the experience element at all. Intuition is
trans-intellectual, while instinct is pre-intellectual. A person who has
an intuitive opinion cannot immediately fully explain why he or she
holds that view. However, a person may later rationalize an intuition by
developing a chain of logic to demonstrate more structurally why the
intuition should be considered as valid. Intuition does not mean to find
a solution immediately, though it does mean the solution comes
inexplicably. Sometimes it helps to sleep one night. There is an old
Russian maxim: "The morning is wiser than the evening" ("Утро вечера
мудреннее").
Intuition is one source of common sense. It is also an essential
component of induction to gain empirical knowledge. Sources of intuition
are feeling, experiences and knowledge. A situation which is or appears
to be true but violates our intuition is called a paradox. Some systems
also act in a counter-intuitive way. Attempts to change such systems
often lead to unintended consequences.
The sixth sense
Intuition is thought as the sixth sense (there are five basic
senses). Recent scientific research has found some evidence for the
existence of this sixth sense. The key question is how to interpret
these findings. Apparently there are lots of unconscious processes that
happen within a person and when those unconscious signals become strong
enough, a conscious thought is experienced. For example, a person might
be walking in a dark alley and suddenly get the feeling that something
is wrong. Her intuition has become strong enough to warn her about the
possible danger. The information that contributes to the intuition comes
from different hardly noticeable observations about the environment
that a person doesn't consciously register.
In this case, intuition refers to the capacity to unconsciously bring
together a variety of subliminal observations obtained in a perfectly
rational way. This process reaches a point where it triggers a response
in our system before it even becomes conscious, an immediacy that can
save precious time. We “sense” danger before finding the time to put
together consciously the elements that are indicative of it. Such
findings are perfectly compatible with scientific thought. But there is
an additional dimension that is more open to discussion, that of sensing
the presence of, e.g., danger, without any sensory perception that
would provide us the elements for subconscious though processes. In that
case, we would not simply pick up bits of information without being
aware of it – our mind would directly feel something through
non-material communication.
In most cases, when someone states that he or she “intuitively” feels
something, there is not much reflection on the nature of that intuition,
neither is there any particular claim to supersensory perception. From a
theoretical perspective, however, this issue raises questions about the
nature of reality and the scope of the human mind’s activity.
Intuition in Philosophy
Intuition and the foundation of knowledge
If one is to avoid infinite regress – one argument being used to justify
another, and so on without end – there must be an ultimate starting
point to any thought process. In the history of philosophy, this view is
known as foundationalism, the belief that it is possible to
establish a system of knowledge that is based on irrefutable truths. It
is easy to argue that such ultimate, secure knowledge must involve some
sort of intuition, or knowledge that is immediate and indisputable, all
further knowledge being an extrapolation of it.
Most past philosophers have assumed the existence of such a starting
point. Otherwise, it would not even have been possible for them to
design their system, since they would, from the start, have known that
their undertaking was unjustifiable. An exception were the skeptics, who
precisely believed that there was no such starting point. Only
recently, in the twentieth century, have thinkers generally begun to
doubt the possibility of any “safe” knowledge. This has led to the
appearance of views such as deconstructivism for which every system, no
matter how well structured, in the end amounts to nothing more than
personal opinion and prejudice or, at the very best, an interpretation
that is no more justified than any other.
Perennial philosophy, on the other hand, is a contemporary movement of
thought that considers the various philosophical schools to be mere
variants of an underlying, age-old vision or “Weltanschauung”
that is common to all cultures and intuitively grasps what is essential
about life. Elaborate systems, as they have been proposed throughout the
ages, would then be the (often misleading) "tip of the iceberg." It
would, again, take insight or intuition to grasp the underlying truth
that transcends specific formulations.
Intuition in the history of philosophy
Intuition rarely appears as a major, separate issue in the history of
philosophy. It is rather an underlying theme that has been present at
least since Plato. Plato was a thoroughly rational thinker. However, for
him, knowledge culminated with the intuitive knowledge (Gk. νόησις
[nóêsis]) of the Good, which he believes resides in the soul for
eternity. In his dialogues, Meno and Phaedo, this form of
knowledge is related to the notion of anamnesis, the process by which
one regains consciousness of pre-existing knowledge that was hidden in
the depth of one’s soul. Plato uses the example of mathematical truths
to show that they are not arrived at by reasoning but present in our
mind in dormant form and accessible to our intuitive capacity. Plato’s
intuitive views were continued by the mystical Neo-Platonism of his
later followers.
Rationalism and irrationalism
Though practically all philosophies contain some elements of both,
rationalist philosophies stress the importance of reasoning in the quest
for certainty, while irrationalism and forms of intuitionism stress the
non-rational or irrational element that implies intuition.
For most thinkers, intuition and reason are complementary and are meant
to work harmoniously in the human quest for truth and meaning, the issue
being which element should be emphasized over the other. Others see
that relationship as a paradoxical, even conflictual one, as evidence by
French philosopher Blaise Pascal’s assertion that “heart has its
reasons that are unknown to reason.”
Mainline philosophical thought, at least in the West, has always
emphasized clarity of rational thinking over intuition, whether that
thinking was based on deduction from innate ideas (the great
metaphysical systems) or on sense experience (British Empiricism).
However, there has always been a powerful, though less visible strand of
more intuitive thought – schools of thought that emphasize the
irrational or non-rational over the rational. In the middle ages, there
was a powerful mystical trend represented, among other, by Meister
Eckhart, Hilegard von Bingen, and Jakob Böhme. That view emphasized
intuitive knowledge of God over rational knowledge or tradition.
Kant and intuition
In the philosophy of Immanuel Kant, intuition is one of the basic
cognitive faculties, equivalent to what might loosely be called
perception. Kant held that our mind casts all of our external intuitions
in the form of space, and all of our internal intuitions (memory,
thought) in the form of time. For Kant, then, intuition refers to the
mental forms in which we perceive external phenomena (time and space).
It has nothing to do with intuitive understanding as it is generally
understood. Kant also denied that we possess what he called intellectual intuition,
i.e., the capacity to intuit entities that are beyond the dimensions of
time and space, hence beyond our experience. Such entities include God,
freedom, and eternal life. For Kant, all that is said about these
entities is empty speculation and it can never be the object of
theoretical knowledge. It can neither be proved nor disproved. Kant,
however, went on to state that, on moral grounds, it was legitimate for
our mind to assume the reality of these entities and that the universe
seems to imply a designer. Since this cannot be justified based on
theoretical reasoning, it can be said that Kant nevertheless assumed
some sort of intuitive knowledge about the ultimate, though he never
called it such. His famous statement that the “starry heavens above and
the moral law within" filled him ”with ever increasing wonder” can be
taken as an expression of such intuitive insight.
Intuitionism is a position in philosophy of mathematics derived from
Kant's claim that all mathematical knowledge is knowledge of the pure
forms of the intuition - that is, intuition that is not empirical (Prolegomena, 7).
Post-Kantian thinkers
Beginning with Kant’s successor Fichte, who believed in intellectual intuition, German Idealism
(Hegel and particularly Schelling) stressed the mind’s capacity to have
direct access to the ground of reality. Together with the emotionally
laden current of Romanticism, their philosophies accounted for decades
of stress on intuition at the beginning of the nineteenth century.
Subsequent philosophers favoring intuition in one form or another
include Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Bergson and other thinkers of the first
magnitude. For Henri Bergson, whose thought was intent on overcoming
Kant’s agnosticism, intuition was the key to cognition
Phenomenology, as introduced by Edmund Husserl around 1900, offers a
very intellectual approach to the philosophical quest and its discourse
is eminently rationalistic. However, its foundation is the assumption
that entities of all kinds are first perceived by the mind before they
can be analyzed. Phenomena are thus “given” to the mind or intuited by
it.
Ethics and intuitionism
In moral philosophy, intuitivism amounts to a belief that our mind is
able to immediately, intuitively make the distinction between what is
right and wrong. This question is important in metaethics, i.e., the
discussion over the ultimate grounding of ethical theories.
Intuition and religion
Theology
Various forms of theology emphasize scriptures, tradition and spiritual
or mystical experiences to various degrees. There has always been
tension between these elements. While some insist that God can only be
known directly (i.e., intuitively) “within one’s heart,” most traditions
insist that such knowledge can be deceptive and that full knowledge of
God (beatific vision) is not accessible in this life, hence the need for
dogma based on revelation and tradition.
During the Romantic period, German theologian Friedrich Schleiermacher
came to emphasize the role of feeling, closely related to intuition, in
religious experience. His groundbreaking contribution influenced many
later thinkers, among them Ernst Troeltsch, Rudlof Otto and Paul
Tillich, all of whom emphasized the role of intuition over an exclusive
reliance on reason or tradition.
Spiritual intuition
The notion of intuition eventually leads to the question of
supersensible, non-material, or spiritual knowledge. Such knowledge has
been claimed by mystics and spiritualist of all traditions and all ages.
In western history, Hildegard von Bingen and Emmanuel Swedenborg have
been among the most famous spiritualist thinkers. The presupposition of
spiritualism is that the human mind has the capacity to relate to a
non-material realm where the limitations of time and space do not apply,
hence immediate, intuitive knowledge is possible.
Intuition in psychology
A well-known statement about the way our brain works is due to the
renowned Neuropsychologist and Neurobiologist Roger Wolcott Sperry.
According to him, intuition is a right-brain activity while factual and
mathematical analysis is a left-brain activity
Intuition is one of Swiss psychologist Carl Jung's four 'psychological
types' or ego functions. In this early model of the personal psyche,
intuition was opposed by sensation on one axis, while feeling was
opposed by thinking on another axis. Jung argued that, in a given
individual, one of these four functions was primary — most prominent or
developed — in the consciousness. The opposing function would typically
be underdeveloped in that individual. The remaining pair (on the other
axis) would be consciously active, but to a lesser extent than the
primary function. This schema is perhaps most familiar today as the
“Myers-Briggs Type Indicator.”
Intuition in decision making
Intuition is not limited to opinions but can encompass the ability to
know valid solutions to problems and decision making. For example, the
Recognition Primed Decision (RPD) model was described by Gary Klein in
order to explain how people can make relatively fast decisions without
having to compare options. Klein found that under time pressure, high
stakes, and changing parameters, experts used their base of experience
to identify similar situations and intuitively choose feasible
solutions. Thus, the RPD model is a blend of intuition and analysis. The
intuition is the pattern-matching process that quickly suggests
feasible courses of action. The analysis is the mental simulation, a
conscious and deliberate review of the courses of action.
An important intuitive method for identifying options is brainstorming.
Women's Intuition
This phrase is often used by men and women when a woman makes a
statement or proposition that is intuitive. This phrase may be
considered sexist by some, since it can be read to imply that women use
intuition because they are incapable of rational thought, or read to
imply that women are better than men because of said intuition. Gender
differences in intuitive perception are the object of various
psychological experiments.