Yes, ,much of everyday human reasoning is fraught with technical difficulties (viz. cognitive biases). So there is some faculty which counterbalances sensory reasoning. I personally have always enjoyed a highly-developed intuitive sense. It's no mystery to me that there is such a thing.

How does on go about substantiating such a claim? — Wheatley

It's no mystery to me that there is such a thing. — Pantagruel

We definitely have intuitions, I agree. However, the OP is concerned about intuition as a mental faculty.

From my understanding, intuitions are developed from experience and practice. Doctors, for example, gain intuitions about medicine by treating patients. My question is, is it necessary to postulate intuition as a mental faculty that allows us to obtain metaphysical knowledge? We all have intuitions in our everyday lives, that is certain. But to go ahead postulating an intuitive mental faculty is surely unwarranted.

Yes, ,much of everyday human reasoning is fraught with technical difficulties (viz. cognitive biases). So there is some faculty which counterbalances sensory reasoning. — Pantagruel

Is that a psychological fact, or speculation?

I personally have always enjoyed a highly-developed intuitive sense. — Pantagruel

And have you acquired any knowledge with your "highly-developed intuitive sense"? Perhaps you can give me an example.

Cognitive biases are a well-established fact. The vast majority of people reason fallaciously in a wide variety of circumstances.

Intuition has formed the basis of my professional career in troubleshooting computer systems. For a self-trained engineer, I have enjoyed considerable success. I feel it has guided my studies equally well. I've heard it described as "immerse yourself in your subject matter....and wait." I'd say that's accurate.

Cognitive biases are a well-established fact. The vast majority of people reason fallaciously in a wide variety of circumstances. — Pantagruel

I know about the cognitive biases.

Intuition has formed the basis of my professional career in troubleshooting computer systems. For a self-trained engineer, I have enjoyed considerable success. I feel it has guided my studies equally well. I've heard it described as "immerse yourself in your subject matter....and wait." I'd say that's accurate. — Pantagruel

That's similar to what I said.

From my understanding, intuitions are developed from experience and practice. Doctors, for example, gain intuitions about medicine by treating patients. My question is, is it necessary to postulate intuition as a mental faculty that allows us to obtain metaphysical knowledge? We all have intuitions in our everyday lives, that is certain. But to go ahead postulating an intuitive mental faculty is surely unwarranted. — Wheatley

In Philosophy Without Intuitions, Herman Cappelen focuses on the metaphilosophical thesis he calls Centrality: contemporary analytic philosophers rely on intuitions as evidence for philosophical theories. Using linguistic and textual analysis, he argues that Centrality is false. He also suggests that because most philosophers accept Centrality, they have mistaken beliefs about their own methods.To put my own views on the table: I do not have a large theoretical stake in the status of intuitions, but unreflectively I find it fairly obvious that many philosophers, including myself, appeal to intuitions. (link)

Intuitions in Philosophy: A Minimal Defense

Philosophy without Intuitions
Herman Cappelen
ABSTRACT
The claim that contemporary analytic philosophers rely extensively on intuitions as evidence is almost universally accepted in current meta-philosophical debates and it figures prominently in our self-understanding as analytic philosophers. No matter what area you happen to work in and what views you happen to hold in those areas, you are likely to think that philosophizing requires constructing cases and making intuitive judgments about those cases. This assumption also underlines the entire experimental philosophy movement: Only if philosophers rely on intuitions as evidence are data about non-philosophers’ intuitions of any interest to us. Our alleged reliance on the intuitive makes many philosophers who don’t work on meta-philosophy concerned about their own discipline: they are unsure what intuitions are and whether they can carry the evidential weight we allegedly assign to them. The goal of this book is to argue that this concern is unwarranted since the claim is false: it is not true that philosophers rely extensively (or even a little bit) on intuitions as evidence. At worst, analytic philosophers are guilty of engaging in somewhat irresponsible use of ‘intuition’-vocabulary. While this irresponsibility has had little effect on first order philosophy, it has fundamentally misled meta-philosophers: It has encouraged meta-philosophical pseudo-problems and misleading pictures of what philosophy is. (link)

We have evidence in OP that well respected philosophers have historically utilized intuition. And then you have David Chalmers (prominent philosopher) disagreeing with Herman Capellen (from Oxford) who denies how central intuition is to philosophy.

What a mess!

Two further technical senses of intuition may be briefly mentioned. One, deriving from Immanuel Kant, is that in which it is understood as referring to the source of all knowledge of matters of fact not based on, or capable of being supported by, observation. — Wheatley

“....Our knowledge springs from two main sources in the mind, first of which is the faculty or power of receiving representations (receptivity for impressions); the second is the power of cognizing by means of these representations (spontaneity in the production of conceptions). Through the first an object is given to us; through the second, it is, in relation to the representation (which is a mere determination of the mind), thought. Intuition and conceptions constitute, therefore, the elements of all our knowledge, so that neither conceptions without an intuition in some way corresponding to them, nor intuition without conceptions, can afford us a cognition. Both are either pure or empirical. They are empirical, when sensation (which presupposes the actual presence of the object) is contained in them; and pure, when no sensation is mixed with the representation. Sensations we may call the matter of sensuous cognition....”
(CPR, A50/B74)

I guess it is left to us whether the power for the “receptivity of impressions”, is theoretically distinguishable from observation. If it isn’t, then intuition as a source of knowledge “not based on, or capable of being supported by, observation”, is false.

Objection: The idea that we all possess intuitive faculties is a considerable assumption. How does on go about substantiating such a claim?

Rebuttal to the objection: That human sensory apparatus is affected by the impressions the world makes on them is provable scientifically and justified logically, hence not considerable as an mere assumption, and at the same time sustaining the claim for some sort of intuitive faculty or power by which such impressions are necessary constituents in a system.
———-

Objection: Science often makes discoveries that are counter-intuitive. In fact, history shows us that scientific breakthrough are made by challenging traditional assumptions and intuitions.

Rebuttal to the objection: That science makes breakthrough challenging extant intuitions, is sufficient presupposition for them, which supports the rebuttal to the first objection. That which is counter-intuitive doesn’t negate the power of intuition itself, but at most merely some content of it.
————

My question is, is it necessary to postulate intuition as a mental faculty that allows us to obtain metaphysical knowledge? — Wheatley

No. Intuition is for empirical knowledge alone, which concerns itself with the physical domain. Metaphysical knowledge, in its proper sense, is a priori, which concerns itself only with conceptions and their relations to each other. What we perceive requires intuition to understand; what we merely think, does not.

That an old system such as Kant’s has never been proven wrong doesn’t make it correct, just continuously useful, if only against which new systems are judged.

Thoughts? — Wheatley

This is something I've thought a lot about, but haven't really done my homework on, so I'm stepping out a bit on thin ice based on 1) What little I have read and 2) My own experience of intuition.

Most human learning is not learning facts. Babies don't learn facts, they build themselves a world, at the start without language. That world view includes all the important information they need to live in the world. It's based on their observations of and interactions with the outside, but also on innate, instinctual capacities that all humans have. We, as fully grown humans, still carry that world around inside us, although it has grown and evolved as we've grown. The baby's, and our, worlds are not made up of facts. Most of the things we know have never been proven to us. In my understanding, and experience, that factless world is the basis of intuition.

People look down on intuition, but it is much more powerful and effective than what we call knowledge. Our intuition is the fundamental basis of our intellect. To not recognize its importance is mind-bogglingly arrogant.

People look down on intuition, but it is much more powerful and effective than what we call knowledge. Our intuition is the fundamental basis of our intellect. To not recognize its importance is mind-bogglingly arrogant. — T Clark

Then I must be "mind-mindbogglingly arrogant". If I had to choose between a book that contains knowledge and a book that contains somebody's intuitions, I would choose the former. Simply put: it's better to know.

: That science makes breakthrough challenging extant intuitions, is sufficient presupposition for them, — Mww

How so? If anything, science has introduced doubts about our intuitive ability. Presupposing them then would be counter-productive.

That which is counter-intuitive doesn’t negate the power of intuition itself, but at most merely some content of it. — Mww

I agree.

There seems to be two prominent (not necessarily mutually exclusive) avenues of thought.

Biology, in short the more you do in life specifically the choices that result in a dopamine "net positive" aka reward are neural pathways that are "carved out" as an old instructor of mine would say.. the more you seem to "intrinsically" lean toward them. This could be essentially what that "gut feeling" is. Which makes sense as far as the whole evolutionary advantage process argument goes. Why would you not learn from your mistakes and successes and wish to either avoid or repeat them respectively from every fiber of your being? It would only be logical to assume that those who do would live longer, gain more rewards and avoid more hazards than someone who does not.

Or.. it could be something a bit more.. metaphysical. Spooky, even. Again we wouldn't know for certain if either is the case let alone mutually exclusive.

That an old system such as Kant’s has never been proven wrong doesn’t make it correct, just continuously useful, if only against which new systems are judged. — Mww

It doesn't seem right to use Kant's system as standard to judge other systems merely on the bases that Kant's system hasn't been disproved. The fact that Kant has never been refuted is just a testament to how hard it is to refute a philosophical position. That being said, I have no reason to accept Kant's philosophy, nor his ideas about intuition.

Insofar as morality is concerned, yes, it's got a lot to do with intuition - that's the only possible explanation why we don't have a logically rigorous theory on good & bad despite being deeply concerned and committed to the cause of the good for the better part of 2 millennia.

It seems like we have a grainy picture of a, well, Platonic morality, an ideal-case scenario of what right and wrong are but, like a bad scientific theory, time and again the model we have in our heads fails to match the reality on the ground - a square peg in a round hole situation. On more occasions than we can count we've demonstrated errors in our intution. Is morality a mistake, a logical boo-boo, an unrealistic concept that has no place in the actual world?

On the flip side, there have been cases where our intuitions were bang on target - some of our conjectures have been proven right/true.

To make the long story short, intuition/insight can't be dismissed outright but they can't be given the nod of approval its proponents are fighting for.

That an old system such as Kant’s has never been proven wrong doesn’t make it correct, just continuously useful, if only against which new systems are judged.
— Mww
It doesn't seem right to use Kant's system as standard to judge other systems merely on the bases that Kant's system hasn't been disproved. — Wheatley

Not a standard in juxtaposition to its falsification, but to its explanatory novelty.

: That science makes breakthrough challenging extant intuitions, is sufficient presupposition for them,
— Mww
How so? — Wheatley

Can’t challenge something that comes after the challenge, right? Seems like any challenge of anything implies a necessary temporal order.

The fact that Kant has never been refuted is just a testament to how hard it is to refute a philosophical position. — Wheatley

Generally speaking, yes. On the other hand, it could be a testament to how hard it is to refute a logical proof that grounds a philosophical position.

There are other senses of intuition than Kant’s. All I’m saying is that the link can be interpreted as conflicting with one of its referents.

There are other senses of intuition than Kant’s. All I’m saying is that the link can be interpreted as conflicting with one of its referents — Mww

:up:

This is the last time I'm using Britannica. :angry:

1. Humans have an innate "intuitive" faculty.
2. We can readily rely on this faculty to obtain knowledge.

Objection to 1: The idea that we all possess intuitive faculties is a considerable assumption. How does on go about substantiating such a claim?

Objection to 2: Science often makes discoveries that are counter-intuitive. In fact, history shows us that scientific breakthroughs are made by challenging traditional assumptions and intuitions.

Thoughts? — Wheatley

You are right to object against those two assumptions.
Their foundations are nothing more than a "Texas sharpshooter fallacy" or confirmation bias.

Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky's life-work was all about counting ALL the "bullets" on the sharpshooter's Target board!
They not only find statistical issues with all our Heuristics, they demolished intuition and any assumption that matched the above two!.
The work of those two Psychologists ended up winning a Nobel Prize...listen...in Economics!
Yes, Economists immediately understood the power of this knowledge and the real life implications in our economies!

Now, we know about the bad performance of intuition in epistemology for almost 20 years now(2002 Nobel of economics) but we still have pseudo philosophers, sophists and religious people recycling the same claims in favor of intuition and selectively pointing the hits and totally ignoring the huge volume of misses.
This practice, once again, highlights the problem with "Philosophy". Most people assume that they can do meaningful philosophy without the need to be scientifically informed on the subject.

For those who are interested in finding out how many years this research lasted and what were the result they can read Daniel's book "Thinking Slow and Fast", or listen him talk about his findings in panels and lectures all over the internet.

Thanks for addressing this topic.

Then I must be "mind-mindbogglingly arrogant". If I had to choose between a book that contains knowledge and a book that contains somebody's intuitions, I would choose the former. Simply put: it's better to know. — Wheatley

Your response has ignored the content of my post.

I have nothing to say about the content of your post because (like you said) it is based on anecdotal evidence.

I didn't agree with your conclusion. So I responded to that.

You also made the jump from talking about facts in your second paragraph to talking about knowledge in your third paragraph. I don't believe knowledge consists of facts. A physicist professor can be very knowledgeable about physics, but that knowledge is not merely a collection of facts. Their knowledge may include a deep understanding of the physical world, mathematics, and a background of related things.

Philosophers like to point out different ways of acquiring knowledge. There's deductive reasoning, empirical knowledge, and intuition. Mathematicians (as an example) acquire knowledge using deductive reasoning. Scientists gain empirical knowledge by gathering data. And philosophers gather wisdom from their intuition. — Wheatley

Intuition is a subjective personal source for suggesting possible beliefs which is far from being a source of any kind of knowledge. Intuitions are deeply psychological, exactly the sort of thing rational philosophy should be distancing itself from.

Intuitions are guesses but not raw guesses. For example, mathematical or artistic intuition starts with loading one's mind with everything already known on some narrow topic. Then subconsciously, which means without rational deliberation, testing many combinations of possibilities, even while sleeping, which pop into the conscious mind suddenly with a best fit guess to a problem. The result can remembered and further developed rationally.

The philosophical or mathematical method starts with one of these private guesses made into a public hypothesis. Public hypotheses are tested by other people to assess usefulness. This sort of public knowledge can remain as a best explanation until something better or more complete comes along.

Intuitions are deeply psychological, exactly the sort of thing rational philosophy should be distancing itself from. — magritte

:party:

Thanks for addressing this topic. — Nickolasgaspar

Np.

There is a bug in your reply.

I take it that you agree with me (and Plato) that the assessment of any sort of knowledge based on psychological intuition has to be dead wrong?

Edit: Since most people in the Western hemisphere are asleep at this hour, I'll dissolve another take from the OP

Objection to 2: Science often makes discoveries that are counter-intuitive. In fact, history shows us that scientific breakthroughs are made by challenging traditional assumptions and intuitions. — Wheatley

This is not wrong, it's just nonsense. As I already pointed out, intuitions are private psychological hunches based on what each of us has already learned. Public scientific discoveries are almost always counterintuitive, otherwise they would have been known to the ancients' intuitions.

Science is counterintuitive because the world that scientific instruments measure is different from our inborn naive intuitions of what the world we imagine ought to be. The fault is with our subjective psychological intuitions and not with objective scientific instruments. The scientific world is totally hidden from the naive conceptions of un-instrumented primitives like us.

I was looking through the thread for some clear explanation of just what intuition is, even if just for discussion. I did not see it - I apologize if I missed it. I find this online:

"So what exactly is intuition? It is the ability to know something without analytic reasoning, bridging the gap between the conscious and non-conscious parts of our mind."

All I can do at the moment is react to this. It seems reasonable, even right. Intuition is an ability. Apparently a way of coming into knowledge. This would seem to presuppose a capacity to know. But it also seems to call into question what it means to know. Does it mean we can reason analytically "non-consciously"? Or that there exists knowledge neither produced nor verified by analytical reasoning? If so, how do we know we know? Or is intuition, contra this definition, just a wager, an assessment of probabilities?

It seems the sort of thing we all know and understand, but I find when I look more closely, I don't. I know something about odds and "gut feelings" and experience. These all fuzzy. But does it resolve into something definite under the right focus, or is it fuzzy all the way down?

Intuition is a heuristic that is used to make sense of a situation and inform our decisions or opinions. They are based on generalisations biases and previous experiences.
Intuition is more of guessing than "knowing" and a Nobel awarded scientific study showed that statistically our intuition performs really bad.

So even if intuition is an ability of our brains to make guesses without all the facts, our modern environment renders it a disability due to its high rates of failure.
It's not a credible path to knowledge and in any case we can never accept any Intuitive guess on face value without objective evaluation.

Knowledge refers to instrumentally valuable statements that are in agreement with current facts of reality.

There is a bug in your reply. — magritte

I'll reply again. :smile:

Intuition is a subjective personal source for suggesting possible beliefs which is far from being a source of any kind of knowledge. Intuitions are deeply psychological, exactly the sort of thing rational philosophy should be distancing itself from. — magritte

I wouldn't say "any kind of knowledge". I believe that we all have personal knowledge that is not shared with the public.

Intuitions are guesses but not raw guesses. For example, mathematical or artistic intuition starts with loading one's mind with everything already known on some narrow topic. Then subconsciously, which means without rational deliberation, testing many combinations of possibilities, even while sleeping, which pop into the conscious mind suddenly with a best fit guess to a problem. The result can remembered and further developed rationally. — magritte

Intuitions are not guesses, guesses are guesses. Saying intuitions are guesses would make intuitions interchangeable with guesses. Thus we could stop talking about intuitions and start talking about guessing. I personally do now know exactly what intuition is. It's one of those fuzzy words/concepts.

I take it that you agree with me (and Plato) that the assessment of any sort of knowledge based on psychological intuition has to be dead wrong? — magritte

I wouldn't say "dead wrong". I would agree that intuitions are not a contribution to public knowledge.

2. We can readily rely on this faculty to obtain knowledge. — Wheatley

Objection to 2: Science often makes discoveries that are counter-intuitive. In fact, history shows us that scientific breakthroughs are made by challenging traditional assumptions and intuitions. — Wheatley

This is not wrong, it's just nonsense. As I already pointed out, intuitions are private psychological hunches based on what each of us has already learned. — magritte

It is nonsense if we assume your definition of intuition.

Public scientific discoveries are almost always counterintuitive, otherwise they would have been known to the ancients' intuitions.

Public scientific discoveries always go against our best guesses and hunches, otherwise, the ancients would have known our science.

Science is counterintuitive because the world that scientific instruments measure is different from our inborn naive intuitions of what the world we imagine ought to be. The fault is with our subjective psychological intuitions and not with objective scientific instruments. The scientific world is totally hidden from the naive conceptions of un-instrumented primitives like us.

I wouldn't say that the scientific world is totally hidden from our view, The scientific world is right there in front of us. Science only offers us a better and more accurate understanding of the natural world. It is true that science gathers data that were previously inaccessible to ordinary people, but that doesn't imply that science replaces what humans ordinarily believe. Science only adds to public knowledge, it doesn't take anything away from us ordinary people.

So what exactly is intuition? It is the ability to know something without analytic reasoning, bridging the gap between the conscious and non-conscious parts of our mind." — tim wood

I don't believe there is an exact definition of "intuition". Dictionaries provide definitions, however, we don't use dictionaries in philosophy.

It seems the sort of thing we all know and understand, but I find when I look more closely, I don't. I know something about odds and "gut feelings" and experience. These all fuzzy. But does it resolve into something definite under the right focus, or is it fuzzy all the way down? — tim wood

Exactly. It all seems uncertain to me.