What is intuition and how important is it?

[Whateverist]

As with the thread I started called "Are we becoming too literal?" I place this one here not to engender debate though it is fine with me for people to discuss or debate what they like here on the topic of intuition. This time instead of an article by a different author relating to Iain McGilchrist's book The Matter With Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions and the Unmaking of the World, bring you his own words as best I could transcribe them. I have the Kindle version and have maxed out on the amount of notes I am permitted to take from it and I hadn't taken any notes from this chapter as it all seemed plain and obvious to me in an intuitive sort of way. As a result I have transcribed only the final two summary paragraphs from Chapter 17, Intuitions claims on truth because transcribing just isn't any fun.

McGilchrist divides his book into three sections Part 1 is titled The Ways To Truth, Part 2 is titled The Hemispheres & The Paths To Truth and Part 3 is titled What Then Is True? In Part 2 there are three chapters devoted to science, three more to reason and then three to Intuition. Below are the final two paragraphs of Chapter 17. Just FYI, Chapter 18 is titled 'The untimely demise of intuition' and Chapter 19 is titled 'Intuition, imagination and the unveiling of the world'.

I will be reading any responses I and will respond when I can and as I have something to add but I do not claim to have a formal understanding of McGilchrist's take on intuition nor do I have any rational understanding of intuition of my own . The chapter is just 52 pages and gives numerous examples from studies which support what he says about intuition. But of course neither science nor reason can encompass intuition, it is entirely the other way around. Yet all three of the 'pathways' work together ideally. None in isolation is as good. Recently on the thread @IndigoChild5559 started on the Monte Hall problem someone remarked that @PureX was reliant on intuition. I'd say we all are whether or not we recognize that. Those who do generally do a better job with reason IMHO. Other active in IndigoChild's thread were @Heyo , @Evangelicalhumanist , @It Aint Necessarily So , @Stevicus , @Debater Slayer , @Quintessence and many more than my tired fingers want to at- at this time. Feel free to at- some yourself.

“Intuition appears to be something that, while inevitably fallible, is often more reliable, much quicker, and capable of taking into account many more factors, than explicit reasoning, including factors of which we may not even be consciously aware. It also underlies motor, cognitive and social skills, and is the ground of the excellence of the expert. The attempt to replace it with rules and procedures is a typical left hemisphere response to something it does not understand - a response that is, alas, powerfully destructive. We inhabit a world in which reason is needed more than ever before, yet in which reason is so narrowly conceived that it drives out true understanding. For that we would have had to learn respect for the power of intuition, not as opposed to reason, but as both grounding it, and the means for it to fulfill its potential in making judgements in life.

In Also Sprach Zarathustra, Nietzsche wrote: ‘The body is a great sage, a Many with One purpose, a war and peace, a flock and a shepherd .. There is more sense in thy body than in thy best wisdom.” He saw that what he calls the ‘body’ (namely all that lies outside the conscious stare of the left hemisphere) understands a purpose that includes the free and the determined together, conflict and harmony together, multiplicity and unity as one; and understands that opposites coincide. Words that are worth bearing in mind throughout the rest of this book.”

 

[The Hammer]

A many with one purpose. Neat.

 

[Heyo]

But of course neither science nor reason can encompass intuition, it is entirely the other way around. Yet all three of the 'pathways' work together ideally. None in isolation is as good.

It never was "intuition versus reason". Most complex problems can't be solved by reason alone. Reason doesn't tell us how to tackle a problem or where to begin. (That's only for trivial problems for which we have an algorithm handy.)
Intuition is the unconscious process, trained by previous experiences, that gives us an idea on how to solve a problem.
For trivial problems, intuition is often the solution. In fact, most of what we do on a daily basis is driven by intuition.
The problem arises when intuition is seen as the solution to a complex problem.
Those are the kind of problems that require thinking. You can't stop at your intuition, you have to make sure the intuition isn't an illusion.

"For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong." - H. L. Mencken

 

[IndigoChild5559]

As with the thread I started called "Are we becoming too literal?" I place this one here not to engender debate though it is fine with me for people to discuss or debate what they like here on the topic of intuition. This time instead of an article by a different author relating to Iain McGilchrist's book The Matter With Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions and the Unmaking of the World, bring you his own words as best I could transcribe them. I have the Kindle version and have maxed out on the amount of notes I am permitted to take from it and I hadn't taken any notes from this chapter as it all seemed plain and obvious to me in an intuitive sort of way. As a result I have transcribed only the final two summary paragraphs from Chapter 17, Intuitions claims on truth because transcribing just isn't any fun.

McGilchrist divides his book into three sections Part 1 is titled The Ways To Truth, Part 2 is titled The Hemispheres & The Paths To Truth and Part 3 is titled What Then Is True? In Part 2 there are three chapters devoted to science, three more to reason and then three to Intuition. Below are the final two paragraphs of Chapter 17. Just FYI, Chapter 18 is titled 'The untimely demise of intuition' and Chapter 19 is titled 'Intuition, imagination and the unveiling of the world'.

I will be reading any responses I and will respond when I can and as I have something to add but I do not claim to have a formal understanding of McGilchrist's take on intuition nor do I have any rational understanding of intuition of my own . The chapter is just 52 pages and gives numerous examples from studies which support what he says about intuition. But of course neither science nor reason can encompass intuition, it is entirely the other way around. Yet all three of the 'pathways' work together ideally. None in isolation is as good. Recently on the thread @IndigoChild5559 started on the Monte Hall problem someone remarked that @PureX was reliant on intuition. I'd say we all are whether or not we recognize that. Those who do generally do a better job with reason IMHO. Other active in IndigoChild's thread were @Heyo , @Evangelicalhumanist , @It Aint Necessarily So , @Stevicus , @Debater Slayer , @Quintessence and many more than my tired fingers want to at- at this time. Feel free to at- some yourself.

Good thread.

Our sense of intuition has evolved because it is adaptive, not infallible. That makes it very, very practical, and I see no problem with people using intuition. I just think it is also beneficial to remember that it is also unreliable.

I also think that some people have a much better sense of intuition than others. A detective who has worked hundreds and hundreds of cases has an intuition built on experience that a newby doesn't yet have. And also, some people are simply born with a better sense of how to read emotions in others, making their social intuitions more reliable.

 

[osgart]

You would have to understand all the relationships, rules/laws that apply to any situation for a reliable intuition to develope. Intuition is a developed sense and feel of what is actually going on, or a wrong sense and feel based on incomplete or error prone understandings.

The sense and feel of intuition is based on how are mental models work. Intuition follows a logical order of things. Logic alone is not enough though. One has to listen to the whole matter to gain intuition that not only makes sense, but actually has reliability.

Intuition can be either direct, or more abstract. It ranges from simple to complex or a combination of.