Do humans have intuition?

[GlobalPlayer]

What I am trying to figure out is, if humans actually have intuition or if the idea of Sense of Life which Rand introduced is much more to the point. I find for myself, that since I have discovered the concept "Sense of Life" my life has been improving alot, because I am now able to understand my feelings even better than before. In the beginning I was kinda disconnected from my emotions but SoL fixes exactly that issue. What bugs me though is the concept "intuition". Rand writes in the Romantic Manifesto 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. "

She makes clear the point, that SoL isn't an irreducible primary, and needs to be analyzed by a rational method to be understood instead of accepting it as a never analyzable intuition.

Since I read this for the first time I have been wondering what I now need the concept "intuition" for. It is like its whole meaning disappeared because I can now understand where that feeling comes from and that it has a cause that can be rationally analyzed.

To me the term "intuition" has become an empty concept. There doesn't exist any referent in the world that matches its definition. Instead I use the term "Sense of Life" and I'm a doing perfectly fine. To assure I am not evading anything in my argumentation I would ask you for a brief statement whether you agree with me or have other opinions on this.

GP

Edited November 25, 2006 by GlobalPlayer

[IAmMetaphysical]

"Intuition" and "sense of life" are not the same. One is mystical and one is merely implicit, or sub-conscious. One derives their sense of life through the senses and through some method of integration of your sensory data, but for the most part this is done without directed conscious effort. That is why it may seem to be "intuitive" to some who introspect only at the superficial level. "Intuition" on the other hand is supposed to be non-sensory, and somehow innate or some sort of other way at arriving at belief or knowledge or what have you. I do not think that humans posses this ability so in an important sense, it is an "empty concept." If we were to give it a referent, it would be a label for a form of whim-worship, and feeling-obedience; basically one makes up whatever one "feels" like doing, and calls it "intuition."

[intellectualammo]

Sense of Life...SoL

How appropriate, when pronounced as "soul".

Edited November 25, 2006 by softwareNerd

[khaight]

"Intuition" on the other hand is supposed to be non-sensory, and somehow innate or some sort of other way at arriving at belief or knowledge or what have you. I do not think that humans posses this ability so in an important sense, it is an "empty concept." If we were to give it a referent, it would be a label for a form of whim-worship, and feeling-obedience; basically one makes up whatever one "feels" like doing, and calls it "intuition."

I completely disagree with this. The subconscious mind is a powerful integrating mechanism. It takes in sensory data and ties them together to reach conclusions and evaluations. These evaluations can bubble up into the conscious mind without a simultaneous conscious awareness of the sensory data that was integrated to produce them. Those evaluations are what I describe as 'intuitions'. I use them all the time in my job, when I'm troubleshooting. Often I'll get a sense that 'the problem is in this part of the system' without immediately being able to explain why. If I use that sense, and focus in on that part of the system, I am generally able to bring the facts underlying that evaluation into my conscious mind. The overall process is something like:

Sense data -> subconscious awareness -> subconscious evaluations -> conscious awareness of evaluation -> conscious awareness of sense data

This isn't whim worship. It's a rational grasp of the psychoepistemological relationship between the conscious and subconscious parts of the human mind. Now, if you *stop* at the 'conscious awareness of evaluation' state, and don't go on to consciously identify the facts underlying the evaluation, then I'd agree that it's a form of whim-worship. Sometimes the subconscious evaluations are *wrong*, and only the conscious mind can identify and correct those errors.

Basically I think 'intuitions' are one way in which the conscious mind experiences the evaluative conclusions reached by the subconscious in certain contexts. An interesting followup discussion (which I haven't given much though to) would be the similarities and differences between intuitions and emotions.

[Cogito]

Basically I think 'intuitions' are one way in which the conscious mind experiences the evaluative conclusions reached by the subconscious in certain contexts. An interesting followup discussion (which I haven't given much though to) would be the similarities and differences between intuitions and emotions.

If we use your definition of intuition(which I'm not sure is the correct one), the difference between intuition and emotion is that intuition is a subconscious metaphysical judgment while emotion is a subconscious value judgment.

[IAmMetaphysical]

Since intuition is usually posited as against reason, I think it would necessarily have to stop at the "conscious evaluation" stage. If you disagree, then we'll have to agree to disagree as I am not too interesting in having a debate about this subject.

[khaight]

If we use your definition of intuition(which I'm not sure is the correct one), the difference between intuition and emotion is that intuition is a subconscious metaphysical judgment while emotion is a subconscious value judgment.

Or perhaps a subconscious factual judgement as against a subconscious value judgement. Simply an evaluation that, given X and Y, Z has to be true.

[khaight]

Since intuition is usually posited as against reason, I think it would necessarily have to stop at the "conscious evaluation" stage. If you disagree, then we'll have to agree to disagree as I am not too interesting in having a debate about this subject.

Don't just accept the definition that most people give to a term as the correct one. Sometimes concepts in widespread use with invalid definitions are based on valid observations of real phenomena, incorrectly conceptualized. In such cases we need to identify the valid underlying observations and reconceptualize the concept in valid terms.

Leonard Peikoff once said (I think in "Understanding Objectivism") something to the effect that emotions are a valuable cognitive tool -- not as a standard of truth, but as a means of telling you that your subconscious thinks something is important. I consider intuition to be similar. It's your subconscious telling you that it thinks it has made an integration relevant to whatever your conscious mind is thinking about. Learning how to respond rationally to these intuitions, by teasing out and explicitly identifying the facts your subconscious used to make the integration, can make your thinking more powerful and flexible. At least, I've found that to be the case.

[DavidOdden]

"Intuition" refers to the results or faculty of reaching a conclusion without being aware of the elements that work together to reach the conclusion. Example: if you're a native speaker of English, you know instantly and intuitively that "*Car the my Bill wants buy to not" is not grammatical, even though you did not consciously think of all the rules of English and whether this sentence does or does not conform. You know intuitively how to drive from work to home, but you don't know intuitively how to drive to my house. Sometimes the facts and relationships are so well-established and tightly integrated that you don't need to set aside all other matters and focus all of your mental energies on locating the sugar or a hammer; sometimes, you have to carefully and explicitly reason to the conclusion about that hammer. Often, people use intuition as a trump card, for example saying "I have an intuition that candidate A would work better for us than candidate B", which in plain English means "I have some hidden agenda that I don't want to reveal, or some irrational association, and I don't want to examine the matter further. So I want to make it be a personal insult to me for you to reject my inuition". Being the jerk that I am, I tend to ask people for the source of their intuitions, at least if the topic is important.

[GlobalPlayer]

david,

your statement hit me the most. Because what you said is what I used to think of intuition, but it has been replaced by SoL...If you could tell me where you draw the line between intuition and SoL id be glad to listen. If I now had to say where I think your line is it would be the following:

Intuition is a process on a subconscious level which is the result of being familiar with the situation one is in and doesn't need to consciously think about it anymore to know what one is going to do. One has lived through it a 1000 times and knows intuitively the next step in the chain of events.

Example: One intuitively knows how to drive a car after 20 years of car driving experience. One doesn't need to look at the stick to change gears anymore. Your intuition can fail you, when for example switching to a car with automatic gearshift or vice versa.

SoL still happens on a subconscious level but in contrast to intuition it integrates value-judgments and emotions from all aspects of life while intuition integrates factual experience and its integrations are epistemological rather than aesthetically. This means that one can even have an intuition about having a SoL. If one has experienced the functioning of one's emotion-integrating-mechanism (SoL) many times one doesn't need to think about it anymore to know that it is there and how it works.

In other words: SoL gives you a hint bout what is important (to you) while intuition gives you a clue about what could be true.

Bullshit?

Edited November 25, 2006 by GlobalPlayer

[IAmMetaphysical]

Don't just accept the definition that most people give to a term as the correct one.

I don't.

I can see what you mean though about the connection people make with intuition and SoL, but I would say that SoL is a subconscious metaphysical judgement(assessment) and intuition is a subconscious ethical judgement, as in, I have an inutition of what to do in this situation. So in that sense yes, they are tied to one another. But the key subconscious connection that is missing between the two is epistemology, what would that be? Still sense of life? Sense of self?

I still think that most people treat intuition as a higher form of attaining knowledge than reason, so while the concept itself may not be whim-worship, most people treat it that way. That is not argument, just an observation. Conceptually, intuition need not be whim-worship.