Objectivism’s “Sense of life” same as intuition?

[GlobalPlayer]

Objectivism’s “Sense of life” same as psychological term intuition?

Hello all you readers,

In “The Romantic Manifesto” Rand writes on page 32:

--> "…This leads many people to regard a sense of life as the province of some sort of special

--> intuition, as a matter perceivable only by some special, non-rational insight. The exact

--> opposite is true: a sense of life is not an irreducible primary, but a very complex sum; it

--> can be felt, but it cannot be understood, by an automatic reaction; to be understood, it has

--> to be analyzed, identified and verified conceptually."

I am currently reading a book on NLP (Neuro Linguistic Programming) which deals with intuition. I am not able to differentiate between what Rand calls the “sense of life” and intuition, though. In Rand’s terms the “sense of life” is: “… the pre-conceptual equivalent of a man’s metaphysics, an emotional, subconsciously integrated appraisal of man and of existence. “ ”It is the integrated sum of man’s basic values”

Rand states that by the time man reaches adolescence he usually becomes aware of the necessity to translate his “sense of life” into conscious terms. I always thought one becomes aware of the necessity to translate one’s intuitional view of the world into conscious terms. I personally recognized that I got to use my mind to not make the same mistakes I made before by following my gut feeling. I agree with the whole transition process because I have experienced it myself. But isn’t that the transition from intuition to reason and a conceptual philosophy?

What I read about intuition says it is like an emotional accountant that keeps record

of every win or loss I experience. That sound so much like what Rand called “sense of life” and its subconscious emotional integration that I really don’t know how to grasp the difference if there is one.

What is the difference?

Thank you all for participating!

GP

[LaszloWalrus]

"Intuition" is a slippery word which can be stretched so far it's almost meaningless. What do you mean by intuition?

[DavidOdden]

I always thought one becomes aware of the necessity to translate one’s intuitional view of the world into conscious terms. I personally recognized that I got to use my mind to not make the same mistakes I made before by following my gut feeling. I agree with the whole transition process because I have experienced it myself. But isn’t that the transition from intuition to reason and a conceptual philosophy?

People use the word "intuition" in a lot of ways. The correct understanding of "intuition" in man is roughly "highly unfocused, sloppy reasoning". A conclusion derived intuitively is one where you do not focus on the facts and the logic which lead to the conclusion, the peril of which is that the presumed facts may not exist or may be misidentified, and the steps in the logic will be quite faulty. My "intuition" about the outcome of an event this upcoming Tuesday is based on concrete knowledge of relevant facts which I could specifically detail, and it's because I've thought consciously about why one might X vs. Y that I can reach that conclusion with about 75% certainty. Others might reach the conclusion "intuitively" by not making explicit the connection between what they know and what will probably happen.

[aequalsa]

People use the word "intuition" in a lot of ways. The correct understanding of "intuition" in man is roughly "highly unfocused, sloppy reasoning". A conclusion derived intuitively is one where you do not focus on the facts and the logic which lead to the conclusion, the peril of which is that the presumed facts may not exist or may be misidentified, and the steps in the logic will be quite faulty. My "intuition" about the outcome of an event this upcoming Tuesday is based on concrete knowledge of relevant facts which I could specifically detail, and it's because I've thought consciously about why one might X vs. Y that I can reach that conclusion with about 75% certainty. Others might reach the conclusion "intuitively" by not making explicit the connection between what they know and what will probably happen.

An couple exceptions to this which may justify it's use are when time is of the essence, or no means of attaining hard facts is available. Without time to think, say wehn being attacked, the circumstance almost requires intuitive though. Concious thought is far to slow to block a punch. Another circumstance would be if you suspect someone is lying to you about something, say, something in their tone of voice, but have no way of affirming it. In that circumstance, you should not act as though they are lying but should take precautions to minimize the damage if it turns out that they are.

[DavidOdden]

An couple exceptions to this which may justify it's use are when time is of the essence, or no means of attaining hard facts is available.

Quite right: I didn't mean to imply that it's never proper to make a quick judgment especially in an emergency. Dithering will just get you slugged.

[JMeganSnow]

It's not really that conscious thought is slow, it's that it's too deliberate; you have to, somehow, isolate the one relative piece of information from everything that's coming at you in order to think about it consciously. Your subconscious, however, is a machine for picking out what's important at any given moment. The problem is that you learn what's important almost as a statistical average of your experiences, so everyone is going to have subtly different subconscious integrations, if not wholly conflicting ones.

[aequalsa]

It's not really that conscious thought is slow, it's that it's too deliberate; you have to, somehow, isolate the one relative piece of information from everything that's coming at you in order to think about it consciously. Your subconscious, however, is a machine for picking out what's important at any given moment. The problem is that you learn what's important almost as a statistical average of your experiences, so everyone is going to have subtly different subconscious integrations, if not wholly conflicting ones.

Being deliberate is also slow in this context. Fighting is almost wholly subconciously done. If someone were to punch me and I thought "right-hook-moving-toward-my..." !THUMP! "...-head...." it would be totally ineffective. You conciously consider things when learning, but at the point of execution it should be fairly automated. There are too many facts to consider simultaneously to be effective while deliberate. By having your movement automated you are able to be concious and deliberate with the more strategic aspects of fighting, but the actual movement has to be responsive without concious thought or it will be far too slow.

[GlobalPlayer]

Yeah nice answers...

...but how about the difference/connection between sense of life and intuition?

In my current view intuition reads as the emotional accountant that keeps the record of every win or loss that I experience thereby growing/ developing with every choice made. Fuck those ideas of the clearvoyance or something supernatural...I just don't understand what the emotional factor in my choices is...I come from a big city and there's a lot going on around me that I don't even notice consciously...then when something catches my attention I realize that I already had an implicit knowledge of it - a gut feeling. Is that intuition or the sense of life or what is that? I am sure it's a phenomenon of the psyche but what is it called? I don't see the difference between the subconsciuos integrating mechanism Rand invented and called sense of life and the idea that seems more used to me called intuition...

Thanks for your participation!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Global Player

[aequalsa]

I don't see the difference between the subconsciuos integrating mechanism Rand invented and called sense of life and the idea that seems more used to me called intuition...

I think a sense of life is a more broad concept then intuition. It is your overall sense of the world. I forget the exact wording, but I think Rand described it as the sum of all of your emotional evaluations of the world. Intuition probably plays a part in the development of your sense of life, but I do not believe that they are synonomous. Intuition as I understand it, is as close as you can properly get to using emotions as a form of cognition. As you describe, you can be aware of a number of different things which you do not conciously consider. You can act on it immediately if no better knowledge is available or use it as a starting point to think about it conciously.

What I am not sure about is if intuition is the starting point of induction. Do you always have that emotional sense of integration prior to any new inductively grasped fact?

[Dave27]

I think a sense of life is a more broad concept then intuition. It is your overall sense of the world. I forget the exact wording, but I think Rand described it as the sum of all of your emotional evaluations of the world.

I agree with this. Sense of life is very broad, whereas intuition is usually about a single given subject or event. Maybe sense of life could be defined as "the sum of all your intuitive valuations about life in general?"

[RationalBiker]

Well, if it will help, here is some more of what The Romantic Manifesto has to say about 'sense of life';

A sense of life is formed by a process of emotional generalization which may be described as a subconscious counterpart of a process of abstraction, since it is a method of classifying and integrating. But it is a process of emotional abstraction: it consists of classifying things according to the emotions they invoke—i.e., of tying together, by association or connotation, all those things which have the power to make an individual experience the same (or a similar) emotion.

The integrated sum of a man's basic values is his sense of life.

[JMeganSnow]

What I am not sure about is if intuition is the starting point of induction. Do you always have that emotional sense of integration prior to any new inductively grasped fact?

I'm confused.

Intuition is an evaluation that your subconscious performs using information that you may not have consciously registered. It has nothing to do with logical thought, inductive or otherwise, except that you may form a subconscious evaluation based on the results of your conscious thinking if you repeat it enough times to program it into your subconscious.

Induction and deduction are forms of logic, and logic is only useable by your conscious mind.

[aequalsa]

I'm confused.

Intuition is an evaluation that your subconscious performs using information that you may not have consciously registered. It has nothing to do with logical thought, inductive or otherwise, except that you may form a subconscious evaluation based on the results of your conscious thinking if you repeat it enough times to program it into your subconscious.

Induction and deduction are forms of logic, and logic is only useable by your conscious mind.

I am too

I am thinking about that initial step of recognizing a cause and effect or pattern that leads you to the more concious thought.

On occasions when I have gained some new knowledge through induction, I seem to be aware of the circumstance for some time before I finally make the concious evaluation. Not sure if that is more clear. Obviously it is an issue I am struggling with.

[JMeganSnow]

If I were to be really strict, I'd say that your new idea wasn't yet isolated, identified, and integrated . . . you've observed something, but you haven't connected it up to the other things you know yet, correct? Sometimes when I'm having difficulty with an integration, I'll mull it over for a long time, and then suddenly bam it's all clear, like a last puzzle piece slotting into place: a Eureka! moment. Sometimes people like Einstein or Newton will refer to this as a kind of "intuition", like the answer just comes to you. In reality, you've just been thinking about it the entire time, and your brain finally sorted out the parts that were bugging you.

Whereas I think I was referring to more of a "hunch" type situation, where you know something, but you're not sure how or why you know it (and good luck trying to explain it to someone else) because you've picked up on something really subtle, but you may not be able to consciously recall the situations that led you to form that conclusion.

It's like when you first meet someone and you instantly dislike them for no apparent reason. You work with them for months and no matter what you do you're never able to overcome the fact that you just don't like them. Then you realize that they act exactly like someone you met years ago that was an absolute jerk, a creep, a pathological liar. Then they're fired under mysterious circumstances, and you realize that you evaluated their character perfectly after knowing them for five minutes.

That's what I mean when I use the term "intuition"; you encounter something that should be completely new to you, but you already have it all figured out because you've seen it before even if you don't remember.

[aequalsa]

That's what I mean when I use the term "intuition"; you encounter something that should be completely new to you, but you already have it all figured out because you've seen it before even if you don't remember.

I think we are on the same page, though, I don't think you meant this, but for clarity's sake, I don't think intuition is isolated to dealing with people. A similiar example could be imagined with charactaristics of objects where you have observed some similiar trait. Curvedness(?) of a ball for example, allowing it to roll. Then when seeing an object that was not a ball but had curvedness you might notice the trait before making the concious realization that it was similiar in that specific way. The point is that induction requires some examples to establish a connection or pattern.

So, in the example you provide, the missing piece is not limited to your remembering having met someone or something similiar. The thing I am lthinking of is that first step. It is that level of discomfort that is causally related to some information that you have sensed but not percieved maybe? You feel something is wrong or important in some way, then later you might think about it to sort it out. At that point it becomes a concious thought and provides you with the new integratable information. That first feeling you get that something requires thought or investigation which later leads to induction which I think might be an essential beggining to being able to induct in the first place. My subjective experience of it is that it happens fairly automatically. I observe something, feel that something is off, then think about it and hopefully resolve the issue in my mind.

[davidmsc]

My impression of "sense of life" is that is refers to an outlook on the world. I think that someone (Rand?) once compared it to a pair of glasses -- you know how some people talk about putting on "rose-colored glasses" and enjoying a happy, rosy view of life and the world? Sense of life is sort of like that -- it's the lens through which you view the world. It seems to me that it is both innate and deliberate -- sometimes it is a natural reaction or interpretation of events, and other times you have to figuratively "put on your glasses" with your Objectivist sense of life in order to interpret an event or situation.

[Felix]

In “The Romantic Manifesto” Rand writes on page 32:

--> "…This leads many people to regard a sense of life as the province of some sort of special

--> intuition, as a matter perceivable only by some special, non-rational insight. The exact

--> opposite is true: a sense of life is not an irreducible primary, but a very complex sum; it

--> can be felt, but it cannot be understood, by an automatic reaction; to be understood, it has

--> to be analyzed, identified and verified conceptually."

I think sense of life and intuition are two different things. I read this quote to mean that sense of life is your general feeling towards life itself. Your basic outlook on life. It is, as Rand said, based on tons of experience, too much experience to untangle.

Intuition, on the other hand, means that you have an unidentified hunch about a certain topic, regarding a certain question, and let your feelings be your guide instead of reason, basically.

Edited July 20, 2006 by Felix