What is the Role of Intuition in Various Areas of Knowledge?

[Dresden]

here is a project that I am doing for theory of knowledge:

evaluate the roles of intuition in the areas of knowledge (ethics, mathematics, natural sciences, human sciences, the arts and history)

any thoughts? I've had problems finding resources to analyse, so any help would be great!

 

[Wellsi]

have you got a definition for intuition? because of the nature of language it might means something different to me than to the next person, so if we all have a common basis to argue from it might help?

 

[Dresden]

ive defined intution as 'immediate knowing of something without the conscious use of reasoning' or thereabouts...yeah loose i know, but anyone who wants to redefine intution, please be my guest!

 

[Wellsi]

well intuition can lead us from just an idea to a concrete discovery... have you ever done an experiment where you just "had a feeling" on what to do or what to change to make it work. Perhaps intuition is more of a combination of intelligence and knowing of something before hand in your unconciousness coming out?

 

[Chaos' lil bro Order]

I think Wellsi is on to something.

I think intuition is a part of the 'Anima' that resides in the unconsious. The task or problem you are working on may have already been solved in this domain, but you are unable to bare it to conscious yet. I'd speculate this could be because the various neuronal areas of your brain that 'hold' the key facts integral to the solution, are only sparsely connected. If their connections were stronger, you mind would be conscious of their connections and your intuition would be closer to an 'idea'.

 

[Wellsi]

ok, well its a matter of some people believe that we are born knowing everything already. We just don't "know that we know it" and have to commit it to memory from our unconciousness.
You could argue that in your essay but you need counter-arguments right?

 

[Dresden]

so chaos, are you suggesting that all humans have an innate disposition to all knowledge, only we don't have the connections yet? i mean, I've never worked on anything to do with intuition and the areas of knowledge. besides, if it were true that all humans contain all knowledge, why are we as we are, needing to learn more?

 

[Dresden]

yeah i do need the counter arguments...maybe i can set up a psychology-style essay with the different viewpoints on literally the brain, as IT utilises intuition...do you disagree?

 

[Chaos' lil bro Order]

so chaos, are you suggesting that all humans have an innate disposition to all knowledge, only we don't have the connections yet? i mean, I've never worked on anything to do with intuition and the areas of knowledge. besides, if it were true that all humans contain all knowledge, why are we as we are, needing to learn more?

No I would never suggest that. I don't think humans are born with an inate disposition to all knowledge.

I do think that all of our sensory experience, from inside your mother's womb to the present day, is stored within the brain. I think it is stored in the unconscious. Very little of this can be readily accessed by the conscious mind due to the huge amount of data your conscious would have to sift through. I picture a giant library filled with books (representing the unconscious) and a unitary librarian (representing the conscious) searching through all the books for a certain memory. Books looked for more often are easier to find since your librarian knows generally where to find them.

To me, intuition is this: The librarian has read every book in the library at least once at some point in time. The location of each book in the library is in constant flux, in other words the books hops from bookcase to bookcase in a random order. This is the unconscious shuffling facts and ideas around. By chance, every once in a while, a very interesting series of books find themselves beside each other. For Einstein, this interesting series of books may have been about Lorentz's Transformation, Newton's Gravity and Rutherford's Electrons. As it happens, these 3 books once combined in the unconscious, were intuited as a new theory, that theory which became Relativity. If the librarian happens to walk by the trio at the right time, this intuition becomes a conscious idea.

Most intuitions are very light intuitions and go largely unnoticed since the library is big and the librarian small.




Sorry if this post is too metaphorical, or not spell checked. I'm feeling quite lazy right now.

 

[Dresden]

this may be true, in that intuition is how strong the connections are, or how quickly new connections can be made (which is probably more correct), but i feel we are getting away from the question here...how is it applied in the areas of knowledge? THATS the bit that's getting to me!

 

[artrocket]

I've read from a book that defined intuition as "knowledge at the cellular level." I agree with this description.