Is intuition a legitimate sense?

Discuss any topics related to metaphysics (the philosophical study of the principles of reality) or epistemology (the philosophical study of knowledge) in this forum.
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Sy Borg
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Re: Is intuition a legitimate sense?

Post by Sy Borg »

ThomasHobbes wrote: August 23rd, 2018, 5:41 am
Greta wrote: August 23rd, 2018, 5:16 am I agree, Lucky. As we all know, the nervous system absorbs and incredible amount of impressions, and the brain filters those impressions down to comprehensibility.

It's assumed that the brain simply discards all of the excess information but it's possible that a general impression of the "discarded information" is gleaned and this manifests as instinct. Unconscious knowledge that we don't know we possess until a suitable trigger unlocks it.
You seem to be saying that "instinct" is something we store up from our experience.

"Instinct" is more usually assigned to skills we possess without ANY experience at all. They are the inborn features that each of us has due to genetic alone; such as a baby's ability to seek a nipple, or how a dog knows to shake its head when it has pray in its mouth. These baselines sets of pre-knowledge can be modified, but we call that learning.
Instincts are innate behaviours shared throughout a species.
For example when a human has a baby the release of hormones triggers an innate genetically defined "maternal instinct". It also explains the sex drive and many other non-rational responses.
My mistake, I wrote "instinct" instead of "intuition".
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ThomasHobbes
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Re: Is intuition a legitimate sense?

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Greta wrote: August 23rd, 2018, 4:05 pm
ThomasHobbes wrote: August 23rd, 2018, 5:41 am

You seem to be saying that "instinct" is something we store up from our experience.

"Instinct" is more usually assigned to skills we possess without ANY experience at all. They are the inborn features that each of us has due to genetic alone; such as a baby's ability to seek a nipple, or how a dog knows to shake its head when it has pray in its mouth. These baselines sets of pre-knowledge can be modified, but we call that learning.
Instincts are innate behaviours shared throughout a species.
For example when a human has a baby the release of hormones triggers an innate genetically defined "maternal instinct". It also explains the sex drive and many other non-rational responses.
My mistake, I wrote "instinct" instead of "intuition".
In a limited by useful way it might be possible to talk about intuitions as the experiential development of what were originally instinctive responses?
Just a thought.
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LuckyR
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Re: Is intuition a legitimate sense?

Post by LuckyR »

Aragwen wrote: August 23rd, 2018, 4:02 pm 1.“Judgment that is not made on the basis of some kind of observable and explicit reasoning process”
2.“An intellectual happening whereby it seems that something is the case without arising from reasoning, or sensorial perceiving, or remembering.”

I believe these are the most widely used beliefs used by philosophers as to what intuition is.
I don't disagree with you, hence why I am not seeing a lot of daylight between that and the lay description of "gut feeling".
"As usual... it depends."
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Sy Borg
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Re: Is intuition a legitimate sense?

Post by Sy Borg »

ThomasHobbes wrote: August 23rd, 2018, 4:40 pm
Greta wrote: August 23rd, 2018, 4:05 pm
My mistake, I wrote "instinct" instead of "intuition".
In a limited by useful way it might be possible to talk about intuitions as the experiential development of what were originally instinctive responses?
Just a thought.
"Gut feeling", for instance, where the gut can squirm before full awareness of situations is achieved.

http://neurosciencestuff.tumblr.com/pos ... cond-brain
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Re: Is intuition a legitimate sense?

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When I was a teenager I had a cat that I loved but whom my mother didn't like - actually it wasn't that she didn't like him, as it was difficult not to do so, he was very smart and lovable. She just didn't want a cat messing up the house. This cat had been with us for a few years and as far as I know he had never been out of our neighborhood.

One day, unbeknownst to me, she as they say, "took him for a ride," i.e., put him in her car, drove him several miles away and dropped him off somewhere (my mother could be impulsively cruel at times). I asked my older sisters, "have you seen C., he's been gone all day?!" They hadn't, nor did any of us see him for two more days.

Late on the 4th day that he'd been missing, he showed up at our back door looking dirty, hungry and exhausted. How did he find his way back to our house, through busy streets and suburbs? Intuition is the only way I can figure it.
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Re: Is intuition a legitimate sense?

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P.S. - Afterwards, my mother felt badly about abandoning this cat and learned to love him, how can you reject a cat that walked 4 days to return to you?
"We do not see things as they are; we see things as we are." - Anaïs Nin
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Sy Borg
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Re: Is intuition a legitimate sense?

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Another possibility - feline super senses!
And that's why he wrote to me: while he was aware that cats have a far greater sound range and far greater sense of smell than humans, how on earth did the cat manage to successfully navigate his way back to the cat lover? When let out of the car, he could have travelled north, south, east or west. How did he manage to successfully choose the correct direction?

This is an intriguing question which science has not yet managed to completely solve. Studies have been done involving placing cats into boxes, taking them to a new location, then releasing them to see which way they go. These studies have not been entirely conclusive, but there is plenty of evidence that some cats, at least, have a remarkable sense of direction. In 2013, one cat in Florida travelled 300 miles from a family's holiday home to their normal home: this could not have happened by chance.

There are various theories as to how cats can do this. Studies have shown that some animals - such as cattle and deer - are able to align themselves in a north-south direction, indicating that they must be able to sense the Earth's magnetic fields, lining themselves up in a way that "feels right" to them. Researchers have also identified the presence of iron in mammals' inner ears, as well in the skin in various parts of the body such as the wrists and ankles. The hypothesis, yet to be proven, is that animals are able to use their own bodies like a compass, working out which direction they have come from, and which direction they are heading.

As my cat loving reader pointed out, cats also have an exquisitely delicate sense of smell, acute hearing and excellent vision. So once his innate magnetic-based sense of direction had brought the tom cat into the general vicinity of the cat lover's home, he would have been able to fine-tune his navigation by recognising smells, sounds and sights remembered from his previous visits.
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ThomasHobbes
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Re: Is intuition a legitimate sense?

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Felix wrote: August 24th, 2018, 12:04 am When I was a teenager I had a cat that I loved but whom my mother didn't like - actually it wasn't that she didn't like him, as it was difficult not to do so, he was very smart and lovable. She just didn't want a cat messing up the house. This cat had been with us for a few years and as far as I know he had never been out of our neighborhood.

One day, unbeknownst to me, she as they say, "took him for a ride," i.e., put him in her car, drove him several miles away and dropped him off somewhere (my mother could be impulsively cruel at times). I asked my older sisters, "have you seen C., he's been gone all day?!" They hadn't, nor did any of us see him for two more days.

Late on the 4th day that he'd been missing, he showed up at our back door looking dirty, hungry and exhausted. How did he find his way back to our house, through busy streets and suburbs? Intuition is the only way I can figure it.
You are not saying anything, since the concept of "intuition" is the moot point.
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Felix
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Re: Is intuition a legitimate sense?

Post by Felix »

Feline super-senses, that makes sense (pun intended). Thank you, Greta.

I remember a cartoon that shows a girl looking at her pet cat staring off into space and saying, "there he goes again, what the heck is he staring at?!"

The cat's thought balloon is a mass of complex mathematical equations. :P
"We do not see things as they are; we see things as we are." - Anaïs Nin
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Sy Borg
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Re: Is intuition a legitimate sense?

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Athletes of all kinds constantly solve a plethora of complex physics equations. Thus, the cat's equation would probably be an unconscious assessment of the distance between said cat and a crawling insect, judging the speed and trajectory of the bug, the location of the nearest crevice, the cat's own potential initial acceleration and speed from a sitting start, maybe taking into account potential forces if it slides on the slippery floor and careers into the chest of drawers, and perhaps whether its tame apes are likely to get in the way.
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Re: Is intuition a legitimate sense?

Post by Wayne92587 »

"instinct" instead of "intuition".

Intuition also known to be Feminine Intuition, is instinctual, at least sense woman ate of the Tree of the knowledge of Good and Evil.

Intuition is born of Reason, is a Rationalization.
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Re: Is intuition a legitimate sense?

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All of it is intuition, every conscious iota impresses itself upon awareness outside of the delimited interpretative sphere we live in is intuitively had. Scratch an itch: from whence comes the sensation? Think a thought: from whence comes the thought?

We live in intuition, i.e., transcendence.
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LuckyR
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Re: Is intuition a legitimate sense?

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Hereandnow wrote: September 12th, 2018, 10:36 pm All of it is intuition, every conscious iota impresses itself upon awareness outside of the delimited interpretative sphere we live in is intuitively had. Scratch an itch: from whence comes the sensation? Think a thought: from whence comes the thought?

We live in intuition, i.e., transcendence.
This, to me is the crux of the issue. One situation is: a well known and accepted origin of the thought. I introduce a new idea to you and afterwards you think about the new topic. The source is our discussion.

Other times the source is obscure and irretrievable. However, it can logically be attributed to a currently unknown but plausible source.

Instinct, however can be (retroactively) proven when there cannot be a direct source. Say the reproducible behavior of newborns etc.
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Re: Is intuition a legitimate sense?

Post by Hereandnow »

You think the thought in a discussion, and you recall this as the source, but that discussion too rested with yet another source, some other prior discussion, and that discussion the same. Does any thought give foundational clarity to all thoughts?

It is really just thoughts verifying thoughts, but thinking itself simply comes from no identifiable source. The brain? Or is it just the thought of a brain?
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Burning ghost
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Re: Is intuition a legitimate sense?

Post by Burning ghost »

Thinking most certainly comes from the brain. That doesn't make the process understandable or simplistic though. We can remove parts of the brain and certain thought processes are no longer possible after the accident/operation/disease.

Intuition is, as faf as we know, deep unconscious activity that peeks through into consciousness fleetingly. Often this happens due to evolutionary reflexes that keep us alive - hand in a fire, we don't think about removing it because conscious processing is too slow; yet we canby force of will overide this. The "gut feeling" would seem to be some kind of low level sense of expection or unease brought on by sensory input (maybe accumulated) and manifested in a cognitively disassociated manner. The gut is a very comlplex part of the nervous system for sure!
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