Tuesday, April 30, 2013
Think from the Spleen
Thank you for your thoughtful considerations of ways of knowing. I though we made great headway in our work to understand faith in particular and feel poised to do likewise with instinct. In the mean time, would you please use your next post to investigate intuition? Begin by writing a working definition, then determine whether it is a discrete way of knowing or a combination of others. Explain your justifications for your decision. Finally, detail the ways of knowing you employed to arrive at your conclusions. I have absolute faith that you can do this. Prove me right by Thursday morning.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Without looking at a dictionary definition, I think intuition is:
ReplyDeleteA sudden thought or idea that pops into our minds that we perceive as truth, despite the fact that we have absolutely no evidence to support it. Mother's intuition, for example, when a mother suddenly knows that something bad has happened to her child even though she has gotten no news nor any indication that such a thing has happened.
Now, according to Wikipedia, intuition is:
the ability to acquire knowledge without inference and/or the use of reason.
Personally, I don't think there is such a thing as intuition, because I don't believe we can know something if we are not given any indication. For example, if my hypothetical daughter goes to a high school party, I am not just suddenly enlightened with the fact that something bad happened to her and decide to call it intuition. If I feel that she may be in trouble, it is because she is going somewhere which may not be the safest and most responsible place for her to be. I am using logic, and drawing upon memory and experience (sense perception and logic) to make that judgement.
However, this may be one-sided because I myself have not experienced intuition. Emotions have no physical form and so cannot be directly observed, yet almost everyone has experienced them and so their existence is not questioned. Intuition also has no physical form. However, just because certain people experience it and others don't doesn't necessarily mean that it doesn't exist. Perhaps it is a way of knowing that can be used by only a certain group of people.
To arrive at my conclusion, I used language, reasoning, sense perception and emotion. Language because I think in English and form sentences which express my ideas in English, reasoning because I weighed the arguments for and against the existence of intuition as well as its application as a way of knowing, sense perception to read the internet definition and draw upon past experiences from my memory, and emotion because everything is subjective. I do not recall having any particularly strong emotions during my examination of intuition, but I am sure that my emotions have unconsciously led me to my conclusion.
Intuition: the ability to understand something without need for a reason.
ReplyDeleteI am not 100% sure that I believe what I am about to write, however I cannot come up with anything substantial to counter it.
I do not think that intuition is a discrete way of knowing, because I think that in some way one must have been presented with the knowledge. Whether it be something that occurred when you were a baby or something that happened in a dream. Intuition is a mostly a combination of reason and emotion, with other ways of knowing thrown into the mix. Intuition is also based on opinion, that can be shifted by your community, family, religion or culture. This can potentially be justified by the idea that everybody thinks they know a certain number of things for certain. However they may not be able to tell you why, and if they can then chances are they have been practicing for a while.
To get to this conclusion, I looked up intuition as a way of knowing, because I really had no idea what I was looking for or trying to think about. After I read some definitions and articles to started using reasoning to figure out a well developed thought. Then with my aggravated emotion of not having a story to help explain what I was thinking, I came up with a conclusion that mildly supports my ideas.
When I think of intuition I think of a spur of the moment idea or unconscious reaction to something that just happened that triggered it. As Karen said, a “gut” response, something that you believe is correct, but may not know why. I am not sure if this is a way of knowing but I think that it is a combination because based on my definition, you would need prior knowledge that might trigger the idea, or a specific sense may remind you subconsciously and make your mind think of something else. I don’t know if intuition is something of discrete knowledge because when I think of intuition I involve other senses and use memories, I think that all of these guided intuitive acts.
ReplyDeleteI do not know if I have experienced intuition, but I know I have experienced many “reactions” meaning something triggered me to think or act a certain way. This may be because of a feeling, or a sight...really anything.
This is a hard topic to tackle because we (students of SBS) don’t know all of the functions of the brain nor do I fully understand all of the ways of knowing. I have come to the conclusion that intuition is not a concrete way of knowing because in coming to my conclusion I have used my senses, and emotion. Emotion, because this is frustrating and confusing for me and senses because I know from experiences that I think of many things because of a trigger, but it is because of past memories and feelings. This is a hard part of the knowledge world for me to understand but is something I want to learn more about.
In my opinion, intuition is a kind of feeling that comes directly out of my mind in response to my surroundings. It does not have to have a specific reason, but it may also be changed by my personal experience. For instance, when I see an ice rink, I would think about ice skating although it is not only used for ice skating. Along with that, a subtle feeling of happiness would also rise up in my mind because I like ice skating. It has become my intuition due to my personal experience of ice skating. Another example can be that I meet a person, and I think she is very nice. I consider it as a kind of intuition, but I cannot find a specific reason for it. Maybe my intuition is influenced by her appearance, body shape, voice, and etc., but I cannot think of a reason right away in my mind.
ReplyDeleteBased on my definition of intuition, I believe that there are certain areas where intuition can overlap with other ways of knowing, especially reasons, emotions and language. Just like what I have mentioned above, intuition can be based on a reason. Although I may not think of that, there is something present that has shaped my mind, and those factors make me feel what I feel. For example, I think the girl is nice because she has a good voice which I may not notice on purpose. Also, intuition can be related to emotions. I can use the same example to prove this. My intuition can be changed by my mood. If I am happy, there may be a higher possibility for me to think that the girl is nice; if I am angry, the situation can be reversed. From my own experience, I believe that language is an important factor of intuition. If somebody is telling me something in my native language, I would have a quicker intuition, and sometimes, more intuitions because of my deeper understanding of my native language. Thus, I think that intuition cannot be considered as a discrete way of knowing.
I arrived at my conclusion by sense perception, reasoning, and language. First, I had to use my eyes to read this post, which was sense perception. Then, I have to interpret the post, which required my knowledge of language. After those, I used reasoning to write my own post.
An instinctive reaction or thought; understanding or knowing something without necessarily having an explanation. When you’re behaving intuitively, one of the only and best explanations of why is, “I just know.” That is where my definition came from. It can be a discrete way of knowing, but it can also be not. However, my experience has been that either due to previous experience(s), reasoning or emotion, instinct appeared. In nature, where there are simpler beings, animalistic instinct or natural tendencies are more obvious and thus instinct can be noted as a discrete way of knowing. To realize this, I used memory to recount scenes on Animal Planet and Discovery and reasoning to remind myself that humans are not the only beings to consider. I decided it could and could not be a discrete way of knowing through reasoning as well, because most of the time, instinct is attached to emotion. For instance: “We shouldn’t do it. I have a bad feeling.” It could be a discrete way of knowing as well because living beings react without knowing why they did that or how they knew to.
ReplyDeleteHere is my definition of what instinct is-
ReplyDelete“Instinct- an involuntary action or reaction”
These actions are not given thought, they are not processed. All of us have them and some might have stronger instincts than others.
I think instinct is a way of knowing because we can employ it like the other ways of knowing in order to obtain knowledge. Additionally I think we use instinct with other ways of knowing. If we are accepting faith as a way of knowing then some people may accredit their instincts to an idea they believe in that they cannot prove exists. Emotion sometimes uses instinct because in some cases we may feel something that has not yet been given thought.
I believe that intuition and instinct are very much alike and that they can be defined the same way. Here is a definition for intuition that I find is very close to the definition of instinct, “Intuition: The act or faculty of knowing or sensing without the use of rational processes”.
I know in class we eliminated experience as a way of knowing because it pretty much encompasses all the other ways of knowing, but I think this is the best way I can describe how I figured out what instinct is. I have experienced mine or other people’s instincts. One possible way of knowing I used was sense perception, I have experienced instinct by seeing it with other people.
I think of intuition as an innate response someone has towards stimuli. It is involuntary and cannot be controlled by the person them self, although they are the source of the thought.
ReplyDeleteI also agree with the definition Google gave me, which was that intuition is...
The ability to understand something immediately, without the need for conscious reasoning.
A thing that one knows or considers likely from instinctive feeling rather than conscious reasoning.
I think this in itself is not a way of knowing because it relies on the other ways of knowing. for example, the gut feeling you get is an emotional reaction, isn't it? You can also unknowingly develop different instincts in response to sense perception, reason, language, and the other ways of knowing.
To reach my conclusion I used language to help me define what my thoughts were. I found the words that ,when combined, made me remember what it felt like to have an intuition about something.