Intuition

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Agent Smyth
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Re: Intuition

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Going out on a limb here ... Intuition has been the focus of research, probably because people, übersmart people, have credited it for their discoveries/inventions, some of which have had profound impacts in a particular field and/or on humanity itself. As is evident, there's still a lot we don't understand about our minds. This rather mysterious faculty is either not getting the attention it deserves or it's a uncrackable code so to speak.
Never send a man to do a machine's job. 8)
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Re: Intuition

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thrasymachus wrote: March 30th, 2023, 7:31 pm
Consul wrote: March 30th, 2023, 1:56 pm The distinction between the intuiting and the intuited is analogous to the one between the perceiving and the perceived. Perceiving x, or that p is always factive in the sense that you cannot perceive x unless x exists, or perceive that p unless it is true that p. Likewise, you cannot intuit that p unless it is true that p. If p isn't true, you can only seem to intuit or perceive that p, with this intuitive or perceptive seeming being a false appearance. A merely apparent intuition or perception isn't factive.
But this depends on there being some standard of being factive. How does one determine what is factive apart from the justification? P being true is problematic in philosophy, for truth is built on assumptions. What we seek is something that cannot be second guessed.
Like "to perceive" and "to intuit", the verb "to know" is factive in the objective sense that I cannot know that p unless p is true: You can't know what ain't so! If Berlin weren't the capital of Germany, you couldn't know it is.
Of course, this doesn't answer the subjective question of how I can know whether p is true; and the only possible way of finding out whether p is true is to discover evidence for p's truth that justifies my belief that p.
To say that knowledge is a factive mental state (like perception, and unlike belief and imagination) is not to provide any evidential criteria for the truth of a (believed) proposition.
thrasymachus wrote: March 30th, 2023, 7:31 pm
Consul wrote: March 30th, 2023, 1:56 pmReason as "the capacity for logical, rational, and analytic thought; intelligence" (American Heritage Dictionary), as the higher mental faculty called intellectus or ratio does exist.
Yes, I know what it is. But I talk like this just as a reminder: language divides, categorizes, "totalizes" as some put it. What does it categorize? It takes a categorizing faculty to say. I am recalling Wittgenstein: logic cannot say what logic is, for one is IN logic in the saying. When we think about the world, we divide to make a totalalized world; this is our finitude, but this kind of dividing is done in propositions, and the truth of propositions is not "out there" in some impossible original unity. Out categories are contingencies, language constructs. Whatever is NOT a language construct cannot be spoken, hence the notion of impossibility. One cannot speak the world, so to speak. See Witt's Tractatus.
Pace Wittgenstein: Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one has just spoken! 8)

One can "speak the truth," but "one cannot speak the world." However, one can very well speak about the world (its nature and structure)—either falsely or truly.
The extralinguistic world isn't (in itself) an amorphous lump, an indistinct blob, a "formless, kindless, no differences, no similarities, noumenal 'blah'" (C. B. Martin); and it's the extralinguistic world (with its objective nature and structure) which makes our propositional/sentential representations of it objectively false or true.
thrasymachus wrote: March 30th, 2023, 7:31 pmBut then, Kant would agree with you: Rational intuitions are non sensory. They only make themselves known in judgment, and judgment is, in the world, synthetic.
A judgement is synthetic iff the proposition judged is synthetic. The epistemological question is whether so-called rational or intellectual intuitions (as propositional attitudes sui generis different from judgements) are reliable justifiers of synthetic judgements, such that we can acquire a priori (non-empirical) synthetic knowledge (beyond the realm of mathematics).
thrasymachus wrote: March 30th, 2023, 7:31 pmBut I tend to think of Kant as a grand "so what"? Reason is vacuous structure, an abstraction from something filled with life and existential meaning, you know, experience, the falling in love and being tormented or tortured. Kant, as Kierkegaard said of Hegel, simply forgot that we exist.
The evolution of reason as the mental capacity for rational and intelligent thought is existentially useful. It can save your life! Alas, reason can kill lives too, since it can be used for immoral destructive purposes—particularly in the form of "cold" instrumental rationality.
thrasymachus wrote: March 30th, 2023, 7:31 pm
Consul wrote: March 30th, 2023, 1:56 pmYour knowledge of "this flower's redness" is grounded in sense perception, and your knowledge of a pain in your arm is grounded in introspection. It is arguable that intuition-based knowledge of analytic propositions is possible, whose truth-values can be ascertained a priori (non-empirically) through logico-semantic analysis. The big epistemological question in metaphysics is whether intuition-based knowledge of synthetic propositions is possible.
My knowledge of a pain in my arm is certainly NOT introspection. If someone took your hand and immersed it in boiling water, you would not be introspecting the pain. Introspection is a cognitive act. Pain has nothing to do with cognition.
I think it has something to do with cognition (cognitive access), because I cannot discern any real difference between a non-cognized (cognitively non-accessed) experience and a non-experience. What's the real difference between having a pain experience of which you are not aware and not having any pain experience?!

QUOTE>
"[H]ow do you distinguish an unaccessed state of phenomenal consciousness of which you are not aware from a nonconscious state of which you are not aware? Awareness in each case depends on access. So what is unaccessed phenomenal consciousness?"

(LeDoux, Joseph. Anxious: Using the Brain to Understand and Treat Fear and Anxiety. New York: Viking, 2015. p. 164)
<QUOTE

As for introspection:

QUOTE>
"Introspection can be something we deliberately do; it can be an act of ours: turning our gaze into our breasts as Hume puts it. It is then like, say, looking deliberately around a room. But deliberately introspecting is rather a sophisticated thing to do. We may contrast it with mere introspective awareness, where we simply become aware of some current mental content, in the same sort of way that, in vision, we become aware that something or other is before us. Introspective awareness can be of a very 'reflex' sort. The introspecting mechanism, whatever it is, does no more than keep a watching brief on our own current mental contents, but without making much of a deal about it."

(Armstrong, D. M. The Mind-Body Problem: An Opinionated Introduction. Boulder, CO: Westview, 1999. pp. 114-5)
<QUOTE

I'm not saying that knowing that you are in pain requires deliberate introspection with full attention. Franz Brentano has drawn a distinction between inner perception and inner observation. Deliberate introspection in Armstrong's sense is fully attentive mental self-observation, and pain cognition depends only on a weaker form or lower degree of mental self-perception, which Armstrong calls "mere introspective awareness"—but which is still a cognitive state.
thrasymachus wrote: March 30th, 2023, 7:31 pmOf course. But dictionaries are dogmatic in that they give meanings of terms in a determinate way. Philosophy is anything but determinate.
By definition of "definition", it's the job of definitions to "give meanings of terms in a determinate way." However…

QUOTE>
"We can never expect to make our words perfectly precise. For in order to make one word more precise, we must use other words that are themselves to some extent vague, and that vagueness will infect our clarifications. Vagueness can sometimes be reduced, but it can never be eliminated, from either language or thought. Efforts at clarification should be concentrated where there is a special need for it. The need may be either theoretical or practical."

(Williamson, Timothy. Doing Philosophy: From Common Curiosity to Logical Reasoning. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018. p. 42)
<QUOTE

By the way, I believe in semantic vagueness or indeterminacy, but I doubt there is also ontic vagueness or indeterminacy in the extralinguistic world.
thrasymachus wrote: March 30th, 2023, 7:31 pmPhilosophy is anything but determinate.
QUOTE>
"Philosophy is as shaky as can be."

(Lewis, David. "Mathematics is Megethology." In Papers in Philosophical Logic, Vol. 1, 203-230. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998. p. 218)
<QUOTE

…says one of the greatest philosophers of the 20th century. :wink:
"We may philosophize well or ill, but we must philosophize." – Wilfrid Sellars
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Re: Intuition

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thrasymachus wrote: March 30th, 2023, 8:41 pmThe talk here about intuitions is vague. The matter is not about things that are vague, like a "woman's intuition" or a premonition. An intuition is inherently non reductive, that is, resists analysis; it is a pure given. A sharp pain, for example.
There is an ongoing hot debate between reductionists and antireductionists over the nature of intuitions. Antireductionists argue that intuitions are a distinctive kind of nonsensory experiences often called "intellectual seemings" (as opposed to sense-perceptual seemings); but I myself have a hard time finding such things in my field or stream of experience.

As for the concept of seeming, here's a good blog entry by Colin McGinn: https://www.colinmcginn.net/seeming/

I deny that pains or any other sorts of subjective experiences are "pure givens", because I think that what isn't cognitively/perceptually "taken" isn't experientially/phenomenally "given" either. Experiential/phenomenal consciousness is a matter of "give&take", so to speak.
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Re: Intuition

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Consul wrote
Like "to perceive" and "to intuit", the verb "to know" is factive in the objective sense that I cannot know that p unless p is true: You can't know what ain't so! If Berlin weren't the capital of Germany, you couldn't know it is.
Of course, this doesn't answer the subjective question of how I can know whether p is true; and the only possible way of finding out whether p is true is to discover evidence for p's truth that justifies my belief that p.
To say that knowledge is a factive mental state (like perception, and unlike belief and imagination) is not to provide any evidential criteria for the truth of a (believed) proposition.
Yes but do you mean to say that the analysis of the simple epistemology of ordinary facts, states of affairs, exhausts philosophical curiosity vis a vis the nature of of knowledge? Does such an account even say anything penetrating at all about what it means to know? Justified true belief may be fine or a court of law, say, or for an empirical science; but philosophy is a radically different matter: here we want to know about the presuppositions of knowing. What lies in the analysis of the relation between S and P such that the latter known entity can in any way intimate what it is to S.

If this kind of analysis is impossible, and it is, frankly, then this tells us something pretty dramatic about our existence in the world.
Pace Wittgenstein: Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one has just spoken! 8)

One can "speak the truth," but "one cannot speak the world." However, one can very well speak about the world (its nature and structure)—either falsely or truly.
The extralinguistic world isn't (in itself) an amorphous lump, an indistinct blob, a "formless, kindless, no differences, no similarities, noumenal 'blah'" (C. B. Martin); and it's the extralinguistic world (with its objective nature and structure) which makes our propositional/sentential representations of it objectively false or true.
Well, that is a lovely contradiction: a world that is at once extralinguistic yet structured. Structured how? C.B. Martin's derisive tone is rather typical, and it is regrettable that philosophy can be so misunderstood. Is the thinking here simply that the face value of ordinary knowledge claims is what philosophy is about?? I mean, it is staggeringly obtuse. I wonder what he would say about Heidegger, or Derrida? Or Michel Henry. Or....

Keep in mind also that for Wittgenstein, the Tractatus' purpose was mostly about underscoring the presence of what could not be said. He called this divinity, in discussing ethics. His reluctance to speak of this kind of thing was grounded exactly in the way Martin misses the gravitas of our existence--speech trivializes the world. He adored Kierkegaard, who argued that the world's structure was an imposition of reason, and, contra Hegel, reason and actuality were of entirely different natures. Of course, Russell called him a mystic; hence Witt's call to sever their relation altogether.

You would have to show how this "objective nature and structure" can be of an extralinguistic world. I am no rationalist like Kant (his ethics is brilliant nonsense), but his analysis of the rational structure of judgment just cannot be dismissed. There is a reason why he dominated philosophy (in one way or another)for over a hundred years. He was never truly refuted; only ignored by Anglo American emphasis on clarity over content.
A judgement is synthetic iff the proposition judged is synthetic. The epistemological question is whether so-called rational or intellectual intuitions (as propositional attitudes sui generis different from judgements) are reliable justifiers of synthetic judgements, such that we can acquire a priori (non-empirical) synthetic knowledge (beyond the realm of mathematics).
Hence Kant's whole point. Such an intuition is transcendental. It is shown, but its ground cannot be. But this talk of things being transcendental really fails to see the critical part of this: The radical "other" of the world does not lie in the distant metaphysics of unthinkable things. It lies in the world of revealed givenness. That is, it is not as if metaphysics is "out there" like God's angels dancing on the heads of pins. This lamp, this cat on the couch IS metaphysics.
The evolution of reason as the mental capacity for rational and intelligent thought is existentially useful. It can save your life! Alas, reason can kill lives too, since it can be used for immoral destructive purposes—particularly in the form of "cold" instrumental rationality.
Evolution is a fine theory. But it is not philosophy. What Kierkegaard meant was existence was qualitatively different from reason's categories. An important point: this intuition of a blue sky is an intuition OF something altogether not of reason; notwithstanding that to witness a blue sky is always already a language and logic affair. This is what Kant missed, that to observe the world is a rational act, but this doesn't mean alinguistic intuitions are not possible.
I think it has something to do with cognition (cognitive access), because I cannot discern any real difference between a non-cognized (cognitively non-accessed) experience and a non-experience. What's the real difference between having a pain experience of which you are not aware and not having any pain experience?!
And so one has to be aware of pain in for pain to be pain. It changes nothing. Pain is not a thought about pain. It is not an issue about cognition, but one about agency and affectivity (in the broad sense of the term).
[H]ow do you distinguish an unaccessed state of phenomenal consciousness of which you are not aware from a nonconscious state of which you are not aware? Awareness in each case depends on access. So what is unaccessed phenomenal consciousness?"
An unaccessed state is not a state at all; ergo, a contrived question.
"Introspection can be something we deliberately do; it can be an act of ours: turning our gaze into our breasts as Hume puts it. It is then like, say, looking deliberately around a room. But deliberately introspecting is rather a sophisticated thing to do. We may contrast it with mere introspective awareness, where we simply become aware of some current mental content, in the same sort of way that, in vision, we become aware that something or other is before us. Introspective awareness can be of a very 'reflex' sort. The introspecting mechanism, whatever it is, does no more than keep a watching brief on our own current mental contents, but without making much of a deal about it."
An extrospective event, like a baseball flying toward my head, becomes introspective when the baseball collides and breaks my nose and this causes pain. This whole affair is, however, a fluid event. It has nothing of this overzealous analytical division between the introspective and the extrospective.
I'm not saying that knowing that you are in pain requires deliberate introspection with full attention. Franz Brentano has drawn a distinction between inner perception and inner observation. Deliberate introspection in Armstrong's sense is fully attentive mental self-observation, and pain cognition depends only on a weaker form or lower degree of mental self-perception, which Armstrong calls "mere introspective awareness"—but which is still a cognitive state.

Latin introspectus, past participle of introspicere to look inside, from intro- + specere to look — more at SPY.


Besides, it holds regardless: the cognition that beholds the pain is not the pain. It may attend the pain, especially if the time to do so allows. But to have a thought about pain is not to have a thought about a thought. Pain remains distinctly what it is.
"We can never expect to make our words perfectly precise. For in order to make one word more precise, we must use other words that are themselves to some extent vague, and that vagueness will infect our clarifications. Vagueness can sometimes be reduced, but it can never be eliminated, from either language or thought. Efforts at clarification should be concentrated where there is a special need for it. The need may be either theoretical or practical."
And yet, to look into a dictionary is to receive precisely "words perfectly precise." Pretty much my point.
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Re: Intuition

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Agent Smyth wrote: March 30th, 2023, 9:24 pm Going out on a limb here ... Intuition has been the focus of research, probably because people, übersmart people, have credited it for their discoveries/inventions, some of which have had profound impacts in a particular field and/or on humanity itself. As is evident, there's still a lot we don't understand about our minds. This rather mysterious faculty is either not getting the attention it deserves or it's a uncrackable code so to speak.
I suggest that part of what you say is because intuition is partly or wholly unconscious, in the sense of the 'unconscious mind'. When we try to investigate such things consciously, there is an unavoidable element of 'the unknown', which helps to bestow an air of mystery onto intuition. Dictionary definitions seem to hint at an unconscious aspect, and that suspicion seems justified.

"This rather mysterious faculty" makes for an interesting topic, I think.
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Re: Intuition

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thrasymachus wrote: March 31st, 2023, 1:30 amAnd so one has to be aware of pain in for pain to be pain. It changes nothing. Pain is not a thought about pain. It is not an issue about cognition, but one about agency and affectivity (in the broad sense of the term).
In my understanding, introspective awareness (cognition) is basically perception-like, not cogitation-like (thought-like). Introspection can but needn't be accompanied by introspective thoughts.
thrasymachus wrote: March 31st, 2023, 1:30 amAn unaccessed state is not a state at all; ergo, a contrived question.
We are not omniscient, so there are many cognitively unaccessed, i.e. unknown, states (of affairs) or facts. (It goes without saying that I cannot give you any examples.) However, states of experiential/phenomenal consciousness depend on some form of cognitive access, which can be weaker than totally concentrated observation of or cogitation about (the contents of) one's mind/consciousness.
thrasymachus wrote: March 31st, 2023, 1:30 amBesides, it holds regardless: the cognition that beholds the pain is not the pain. It may attend the pain, especially if the time to do so allows. But to have a thought about pain is not to have a thought about a thought. Pain remains distinctly what it is.
Yes, and I'm not saying that you cannot feel any pain unless you think about it. Introspective awareness isn't the same as introspective thought.

Anyway, introspection is different from (rational) intuition, the two being different sources of knowledge with different targets.
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Re: Intuition

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thrasymachus wrote: March 31st, 2023, 1:30 amAn extrospective event, like a baseball flying toward my head, becomes introspective when the baseball collides and breaks my nose and this causes pain. This whole affair is, however, a fluid event. It has nothing of this overzealous analytical division between the introspective and the extrospective.
This distinction is relevant and not "overzealously analytical":

Introspection is the nonsensory perception of (psychological states of or events in) one's mind/consciousness.
Interoception is the sensory perception of (physiological states of or events in) one's body by means of inner senses.
Exteroception or extrospection is the sensory perception of one's body or things/events in one's environment by means of outer senses (seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, touching).

Footnote:
Regarding the distinction between introspection and interoception, there is a potential confusion, because theories of introspection according to which it is perception-like are called inner sense theories. Locke calls introspection reflection, saying that it's grounded in an "internal sense" (which Kant alternatively calls "inner sense"):

"This Source of Ideas, every Man has wholly in himself: And though it be not Sense, as having nothing to do with external Objects; yet it is very like it, and might properly enough be call’d internal Sense."

(Locke, John. An Essay Concerning Human Understanding. 1690. Bk. II: Ch. I; §4.)

Moreover, the distinction between introspection of one's mind and interoception of one's body raises questions concerning the relationship between mind and body. If reductive materialism is true, then the mind is the brain—which would mean that introspection is a form of interoception.

"If we make the materialist identification of mental states with material states of the brain, we can say that introspection is a self-scanning process in the brain."

(Armstrong, D. M. A Materialist Theory of the Mind. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1968. pp. 323-4)

"Bodily perception, indeed, serves as an excellent model with which to grasp the nature of introspection, for it has a further important resemblance to 'inner sense'. In introspection we are aware only of states of our own mind, not of other people's minds. In bodily perception we are aware only of states of our own body, and not of other people's bodies. The biological usefulness to the organism of a special knowledge of its own bodily and mental state is obvious in both cases."

(Armstrong, D. M. A Materialist Theory of the Mind. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1968. p. 96)
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Re: Intuition

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Here's what Locke writes about intuition:

QUOTE>
"All our Knowledge consisting, as I have said, in the view the Mind has of its own Ideas, which is the utmost Light and greatest Certainty, we with our Faculties, and in our way of Knowledge are capable of, it may not be amiss, to consider a little the degrees of its Evidence. The different clearness of our Knowledge seems to me to lie in the different way of Perception, the Mind has of the Agreement, or Disagreement of any of its Ideas. For if we will reflect on our own ways of Thinking, we shall find, that sometimes the Mind perceives the Agreement or Disagreement of two Ideas immediately by themselves, without the intervention of any other: And this, I think, we may call intuitive Knowledge. For in this, the Mind is at no pains of proving or examining, but perceives the Truth, as the Eye doth light, only by being directed toward it. Thus the Mind perceives, that White is not Black, That a Circle is not a Triangle, That Three are more than Two, and equal to One and Two. Such kind of Truths, the Mind perceives at the first sight of the Ideas together, by bare Intuition, without the intervention of any other Idea; and this kind of Knowledge is the clearest, and most certain, that humane Frailty is capable of. This part of Knowledge is irresistible, and like the bright Sun shine, forces it self immediately to be perceived, as soon as ever the Mind turns its view that way; and leaves no room for Hesitation, Doubt, or Examination, but the Mind is presently filled with the clear Light of it. 'Tis on this Intuition, that depends all the Certainty and Evidence of all our Knowledge, which Certainty every one finds to be so great, that he cannot imagine, and therefore not require a greater: For a Man cannot conceive himself capable of a greater Certainty, than to know that any Idea in his Mind is such, as he perceives it to be; and that two Ideas, wherein he perceives a difference, are different, and not precisely the same. He that demands a greater Certainty than this, demands he knows not what, and shews only that he has a Mind to be a Sceptick, without being able to be so. Certainty depends so wholly on this Intuition, that in the next degree of Knowledge, which I call Demonstrative, this intuition is necessary in all the Connexions of the intermediate Ideas, without which we cannot attain Knowledge and Certainty."

(Locke, John. An Essay Concerning Human Understanding. 1690. Bk. IV: Ch. II; §1.)
<QUOTE

So, according to Locke (and others), intuition is the immediate intellectual perception of (self-evident) truths/facts. He distinguishes intuitive knowledge from "demonstrative knowledge" ("knowledge by intervening proofs", i.e. inferential knowledge requiring logical reasoning) and from "sensitive knowledge" based on sensory perception.

QUOTE>
"[W]e may add to the two former sorts of Knowledge, this also, of the existence of particular external Objects, by that perception and Consciousness we have of the actual entrance of Ideas from them, and allow these three degrees of Knowledge, viz. Intuitive, Demonstrative, and Sensitive: in each of which, there are different degrees and ways of Evidence and Certainty."

(Locke, John. An Essay Concerning Human Understanding. 1690. Bk. IV: Ch. II; §14.)
<QUOTE
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Re: Intuition

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Pattern-chaser wrote: March 31st, 2023, 9:36 am
I suggest that part of what you say is because intuition is partly or wholly unconscious, in the sense of the 'unconscious mind'. When we try to investigate such things consciously, there is an unavoidable element of 'the unknown', which helps to bestow an air of mystery onto intuition. Dictionary definitions seem to hint at an unconscious aspect, and that suspicion seems justified.

"This rather mysterious faculty" makes for an interesting topic, I think.
As far as I know, you're spot on. It's a pity that not much research has been conducted on the subject. Most likely due to, inter alia, the reason you cite. Speaking for myself, it doesn't look like an unsolvable puzzle. However, who has the time? Funding?
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Re: Intuition

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Intuition allows for language hyperbole, and it is not incongruous with cognizing if there is a path or method. However, cognizing might eliminate intuition as unreliable. Therefore, it comes down to the cognizing individual. It is how the brain works. Some individuals do a lot of patching since we only know the half of it…or less.
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Re: Intuition

Post by thrasymachus »

Consul wrote
We are not omniscient, so there are many cognitively unaccessed, i.e. unknown, states (of affairs) or facts. (It goes without saying that I cannot give you any examples.) However, states of experiential/phenomenal consciousness depend on some form of cognitive access, which can be weaker than totally concentrated observation of or cogitation about (the contents of) one's mind/consciousness.
I said that "an unaccessed state is not a state at all. I hold that if a state's cognitive underpinnings are occurrently unaccessed, but implicitly structurally attendant only, that is, there as a constitutive part of the agency itself, then the problem goes to how a state is defined. Broadly conceived, a state includes implicit knowledge claims, meaning. But more narrowly, the state is only what explicitly present. While I AM essentially a language/logic being, I am not at all in a state of cognitive awareness while mindlessly engaging in something inherently noncognitive, like tuna fish sandwich or thumbscrews.
Yes, and I'm not saying that you cannot feel any pain unless you think about it. Introspective awareness isn't the same as introspective thought.

Anyway, introspection is different from (rational) intuition, the two being different sources of knowledge with different targets.
Actually, I would argue that when we are introspectively aware, there is necessarily attendant thought implicit throughout the event; that is, "regional" thought (depending on where I am, what I am doing) is "there" because I am there. And yes, I am an agency of thought. The question that haunts (post?) modern philosophy is about one's understanding, which is of course cognitive, and one's existence, here defined as the palpable presence of the world. This latter is very hard to disentangle from the former, and so, anything "intuitive" is going to meet with the objection the understanding that apprehends this is not intuitive at all: every experience is understood contextually. But what, then, is to be done about our existence, which Kierkegaard famously said had been forgotten in (Hegel's) rationalism? How does one understand what is of an entirely different nature from the understanding--this "collision" of existence and reason's contextuality which denies "access" as you put it. Such is the divide in play here.

There is a fascinating issue here, but it assumes some reading. The objection comes from Michel Henry who takes issues with Heidegger that when language and logic meet the indeterminacy that arises at the threshold of their application, and one thereby faces existence qua existence, "the pure milieu of otherness," as Michel Henry puts it, the affectivity, if you will, "speaks"! Henry is implying something akin to what you might call moral realism, and I think this is right: affectivity, broadly construed, is THE existential foundation of ethics. No affectivity, no ethics, for nobody gives a damn about anything.

So here, in this discussion about intuition, and my reference to sticking a hand in boiling water's pain event being non cognitive, I am referring to the possibility that pain, and the entire dimension of human (and animal, of course) affectivity is the Real palpable existential "context" of this: When one experiences pain or pleasure, misery or delight, and so on, these are intuitively received, that is, irreducibly what they are. What do they "say"? They speak the "language" of the ethical/aesthetic good and bad, of which Wittgenstein insisted that we cannot speak, and he was right: intuition cannot be spoken, or, one cannot speak what is irreducibly "there". So in the exploration of the introspective possibilities of affectivity (like the scalding of a hand), there is this unspeakable, intuitive apprehension that, This is bad!

Wittgenstein would agree. He would also say I am speaking nonsense. Such is the self confessed paradox of the Tractatus and the mystical nature of "the world" and ethics.

I
ntrospection is the nonsensory perception of (psychological states of or events in) one's mind/consciousness.
Interoception is the sensory perception of (physiological states of or events in) one's body by means of inner senses.
Exteroception or extrospection is the sensory perception of one's body or things/events in one's environment by means of outer senses (seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, touching).
But all are conscious events. Is unconscious perception at all meaningful? I believe this was what I found an issue with. Even though we are not omniscient, and there are other events cognitively tangential, say, to one's awareness of something "unaccessed" in the conscious event, those remain unperceived, especially when the cognition is radically sidelined by something intense.
Moreover, the distinction between introspection of one's mind and interoception of one's body raises questions concerning the relationship between mind and body. If reductive materialism is true, then the mind is the brain—which would mean that introspection is a form of interoception.
This matter, as a philosophical issue, is obviated in the rejection reductive materialism. This is not to say that these distinction are descriptively wrong, as I can see that they are not. It is simply to say that such a reduction inevitably leads to the radical denial of, well, everything. An all encompassing nihilism. What is, after all, the essential epistemic connectivity about? And if it is impossible to even conceive of such a thing, as reductive materialism tells us, then this defies with a sweep of an analytic hand that the events before me cannot be absolutely grounded.

Big issue. I lean towards Husserl, however, with Michel Henry et al: simply put, value IN "perception" is the only true intuition. I speak of the palpable value we label good and bad. The qualia of affectivity, if you like, is the only true absolute, pure intuition; it is the "meta-affectivity" that is at the foundation of our existence. This is the essence of religion.
All our Knowledge consisting......
What Locke calls "bare intuition" is going to be Kant's apriority. Important to see this: apodicticity, the inability to imagine otherwise, as with Wittgenstein's examples of two different colors occupying the same spot, or an object moving at once at two different velocities, is FIRST a language construct, that is, we "call" an event necessary, but any and all descriptive terms are themselves historical. It is not as if the world imparts its independent properties to us in some magical form of epistemic intimation. Rather, language does not "stand for" things; it "stands in" for the things, as Derrida put it. Heidegger argues that we take up the world "as" when we speak.

To speak about what is beyond language's totality of taking the world "as" is metaphysics, and this approach to defining metaphysics at once radically divides the world and brings our existence closer to the understanding than ever before. The world that is divided is upon us, is us, and ontological priorities are turned on their head: what is real lies in the pure givenness of what lies before one. What else could exceed this in establishing an ontology?
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thrasymachus
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Re: Intuition

Post by thrasymachus »

The Beast wrote
Intuition allows for language hyperbole, and it is not incongruous with cognizing if there is a path or method. However, cognizing might eliminate intuition as unreliable. Therefore, it comes down to the cognizing individual. It is how the brain works. Some individuals do a lot of patching since we only know the half of it…or less.
You mean that is how a mind works, I would say. Leave the brain out of it. I mean, a brain cannot be the basis for such a discussion.
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Consul
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Re: Intuition

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Nicolaus Cusanus calls intuition visio intellectualis (intellectual vision):

To intuit that p is to "look at" p with "the mind's eye" ("the eye of reason/the intellect") and to "see" (directly) that p is (necessarily) true.

So intuitions are "intellectual seeings" of (necessary) truths/facts. Of course, this kind of seeing is different from sensory vision, which involves sensory impressions of colors and shapes. Instead, intellectual seeing involves a nonsensory "kind of impression of truth" (R. Audi—see below!).

The verb "to see" is used here in the sense of "to perceive mentally; to apprehend by thought (a truth, the answer to a question)….often with reference to metaphorical light or eyes." (Oxford Dictionary of English).

Others call intuitions (qua intuitive experiences) "intellectual seemings" rather than "intellectual seeings"; but an intuitive experience might be a unitary "intellectual seeing-cum-seeming". Robert Audi writes (see below!) that "intuitions are cognitive" and "they may be phenomenal seemings." So given that intuitions qua intuitive experiences are nonsensory experiences, they lack a sensory phenomenology like the one characterizing sensory vision.

It follows that if there is a phenomenology of intuition, it is a nonsensory, purely cognitive phenomenology. However, it is a highly contentious issue whether there really is such a distinctive kind of phenomenology that is irreducible to any kind of sensory or quasi-sensory phenomenology as involved in sensory perception and imagination.

QUOTE>
"There are propositions that are necessarily true and such that, once one understands them, one sees that they are true. Such propositions have traditionally been called a priori. Leibniz remarks, "You will find a hundred places in which the scholastic philosophers have said that these propositions are evident, from their terms, as soon as they are understood."

If we say of an a priori proposition, that, "once you understand it then you see that it is true," then we must take the term "understand" in a somewhat rigid sense. You could not be said to "understand" a proposition, in the sense intended, unless you can grasp what it is for that proposition to be true. The properties or attributes that the proposition implies—those that would be instantiated if the proposition were true—must be properties or attributes that you can conceive or grasp. To "understand'' a proposition, in the sense intended, it is not enough merely to be able to say what sentence in your language happens to express that proposition. The proposition must be one that you have contemplated and reflected upon."

(Chisholm, Roderick M. Theory of Knowledge. 3rd ed. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1989. pp. 26-7)
——————
"There is something phenomenological going on: but it isn't that sort of phenomenology; it isn't or isn't just a matter of sensuous imagery. You see that if every first-order theory with an infinite model has models of every cardinality, then any theory of the real numbers is bound to have nonstandard models; you see that first-order logic is complete; you see something much simpler and more evident, as that no dog is both an animal and a nonanimal: what does this 'seeing' consist in? It consists, first (I suggest), in your finding yourself utterly convinced that the proposition in question is true. It consists second, however, in finding yourself utterly convinced that this proposition is not only true, but could not have been false. When you see that 2 + 1 = 3, you don't merely form the belief that this is indeed so; you also believe that it must be so, could not be otherwise. To see that a proposition p is true—in the way in which we see that a priori truths are true—is to apprehend not only that things are a certain way but that they must be that way. Reason is the faculty whereby we learn of what is possible and necessary.

But even this is not enough; clearly I might be convinced that a proposition is necessarily true without seeing that it is true. (Maybe I can't follow the argument, but believe you when you tell me that there can't be a set of all sets.) So what is it, then, to see that a proposition p is true? All I can say is this: it is (1) to form the belief that p is true and indeed necessarily true (when it is necessarily true, of course), (2) to form this belief immediately, rather than as a conclusion from other beliefs, (3) to form it not merely on the basis of memory or testimony (although what someone tells you can certainly get you to see the truth of the belief in question), and (4) to form this belief with that peculiar sort of phenomenology with which we are well acquainted, but which I can't describe in any way other than as the phenomenology that goes with seeing that such a proposition is true. We must add one further qualification. Suppose I suffer from a certain sort of malfunction, so that with respect to each of the first 25 natural numbers greater than 15, I form the belief that it is prime, also form the belief that it is necessary that it is prime, and in forming these beliefs am subject to the right kind of phenomenology. Then clearly I wouldn't really be seeing that, say, 23 is prime, despite the fact that it is true and meets the other conditions mentioned. One sees that p is true only if the relevant cognitive module is functioning properly.

I am sorry to say this is the best I can do by way of describing what it is to see that a proposition is true."

(Plantinga, Alvin. Warrant and Proper Function. New York: Oxford University Press, 1993. pp. 105-6)
——————
"An intuition, as I understand it (following many others), is an intellectual seeming. An intellectual seeming is similar to a sensory seeming in being a presentation of a proposition’s being true; yet dissimilar to it in not having a sensory phenomenology.
It is also to be sharply distinguished from any species of judgment; it must be understood as pre-judgmental and pre-doxastic, if it is to be capable of serving as an epistemic basis for a judgment."

(Boghossian, Paul. "Intuition, Understanding, and the A Priori." In: Paul Boghossian & Timothy Williamson, Debating the A Priori, 186-207. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020. pp. 200-1)
——————
"Intuitions are cognitive, but they may or may not be doxastic: they may be phenomenal seemings, a kind of impression of truth, rather than a kind of belief, though phenomenal seemings often yield belief and are not always clearly distinguishable from 'occurrent' beliefs."

(Audi, Robert. Moral Perception. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2013. p. 171)
<QUOTE
"We may philosophize well or ill, but we must philosophize." – Wilfrid Sellars
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The Beast
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Re: Intuition

Post by The Beast »

I could speculate in intuition being part of the mind, the brain, or a brain/mind object (that is existing in itself), a brain/mind property. It could also be that I need my brain processes to speculate. Therefore, I don't rule out the brain.
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The Beast
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Re: Intuition

Post by The Beast »

The Beast wrote: April 1st, 2023, 1:59 pm I could speculate in intuition being part of the mind, the brain, or a brain/mind object (that is existing in itself), a brain/mind property. It could also be that I need my brain processes to speculate. Therefore, I don't rule out the brain.

The mind.
Mind and psyche are synonymous. Jung divided the mind/psyche in a quaternion: Ego, Unconscious. Anima, Animus. The Ego gets mind content from the archetypes Spirit, trickster, the mother, rebirth. It is the Self, and it is made (arguably) of four objects. The fifth element/object could be intuition. However, all speculations are valid, more valid or preposterous.
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