Is intuition a legitimate sense?

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Thinking critical
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Is intuition a legitimate sense?

Post by Thinking critical »

Intuition is often referred to as kind of sixth sense, it is the ability to instinctively understand something without the use of conscious reasoning.

Some people refer to our intuitive nature as type of telepathic ability and consider it as a sign of a higher consciousness or a supernatural dimension.

I tend to agree that intuition could be seen as a sixth sense in that it is a sub consscious accumulation of information from our other five senses combined with the insight gained from previous experiences.

What are your thoughts, natural, supernatural or nonsense?
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Tamminen
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Re: Is intuition a legitimate sense?

Post by Tamminen »

Thinking critical wrote: August 10th, 2018, 6:23 am What are your thoughts, natural, supernatural or nonsense?
Natural.
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ThomasHobbes
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Re: Is intuition a legitimate sense?

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Thinking critical wrote: August 10th, 2018, 6:23 am Intuition is often referred to as kind of sixth sense, it is the ability to instinctively understand something without the use of conscious reasoning.

Some people refer to our intuitive nature as type of telepathic ability and consider it as a sign of a higher consciousness or a supernatural dimension.

I tend to agree that intuition could be seen as a sixth sense in that it is a sub consscious accumulation of information from our other five senses combined with the insight gained from previous experiences.

What are your thoughts, natural, supernatural or nonsense?
Calling intuition a sense is an abuse of language.
Senses are either the means to acquire empirical knowledge via the nervous system or they are nothing.
What you call intuition is the sub-conscious working of the brain. This is not spooky or spiritual, but a very useful part of the way we respond to our world. Most of the brain's activity continues without our consciousness. Simply ask yourself how a tennis player makes the calculations necessary to return a ball in a split second with only a basic intention as to where they want the ball to go. A pianist having a visceral understanding of the relationship between his fingers and the notes on the page. He does not individually command each of his fingers, but thinks more about the 'feeling' he wishes to convey to the piece of music.

We should not be surprised when answers to things seem to spring forth without a formal process of thinking.

Perfectly natural, not always to be trusted, but part of everyday life.
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Thinking critical
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Re: Is intuition a legitimate sense?

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ThomasHobbes wrote: August 10th, 2018, 9:00 am Calling intuition a sense is an abuse of language.
Senses are either the means to acquire empirical knowledge via the nervous system or they are nothing.
I referred to intuition as kind of sixth sense for the fact that just like our other senses intuition can instinctively guide us to make choices.

What you call intuition is the sub-conscious working of the brain. This is not spooky or spiritual, but a very useful part of the way we respond to our world. Most of the brain's activity continues without our consciousness. Simply ask yourself how a tennis player makes the calculations necessary to return a ball in a split second with only a basic intention as to where they want the ball to go. A pianist having a visceral understanding of the relationship between his fingers and the notes on the page. He does not individually command each of his fingers, but thinks more about the 'feeling' he wishes to convey to the piece of music.
I agree that intuition has a completely natural explanation, I do not however agree with the examples you provided. Intuition is commonly referred to as a "gut instinct". Throughout history philosophers have classically agreed that intuition can be described as the ability to gain knowledge without proof or without understanding how it was acquired. The examples you provided are more so automated motor movements which come from years of practise, much like most other everyday activities we participate in such as writing, typing, driving and walking e.c.t, not really accurate examples of what we would normally refer to as intuitive.

All animals display traits of instinctive behaviour, within mammals certain characteristics are similar across all of them, from Cows to Humans. If these natural instincts can be passed down genetically, such as babies head movement when trying to get milk from a breast or bottle (all mammals display the same behaviour), rubbing something that's sore, the universal emotional body language, children instinctively scared of the dark.....to name a few It may stand to reason that other facets of vivid information may also be able to be passed down genetically as well.
I suspect that our gut feeling to read situations and pick up that something doesn't feel right may be a result of our ability to subconsciously detect an analyse the environment, however there are instances when we are put into situations we have never experienced before yet some individuals instinctively know how to act.
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ThomasHobbes
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Re: Is intuition a legitimate sense?

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Thinking critical wrote: August 10th, 2018, 1:04 pm
ThomasHobbes wrote: August 10th, 2018, 9:00 am Calling intuition a sense is an abuse of language.
Senses are either the means to acquire empirical knowledge via the nervous system or they are nothing.
I referred to intuition as kind of sixth sense for the fact that just like our other senses intuition can instinctively guide us to make choices.
It is not a sense in any sense of meaning, is the point I was making.
Intuition is the outward expression of instinct, it is not a sense.
Senses gather information from the outside world, via nerves.
If you assert that intuition is a sense, a sixth sense, then you are immediately asserting an assumption that you are somehow "reading" external data when you have an intuition. When in fact it seems the be the case that an intuition is the sub-conscious workings of the brain - and therefor internal.

Senses in themselves do not guide us. The brain processes the information senses give us.
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Re: Is intuition a legitimate sense?

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Thinking critical wrote: August 10th, 2018, 1:04 pm
ThomasHobbes wrote: August 10th, 2018, 9:00 am Calling intuition a sense is an abuse of language.
Senses are either the means to acquire empirical knowledge via the nervous system or they are nothing.
I referred to intuition as kind of sixth sense for the fact that just like our other senses intuition can instinctively guide us to make choices.

What you call intuition is the sub-conscious working of the brain. This is not spooky or spiritual, but a very useful part of the way we respond to our world. Most of the brain's activity continues without our consciousness. Simply ask yourself how a tennis player makes the calculations necessary to return a ball in a split second with only a basic intention as to where they want the ball to go. A pianist having a visceral understanding of the relationship between his fingers and the notes on the page. He does not individually command each of his fingers, but thinks more about the 'feeling' he wishes to convey to the piece of music.
I agree that intuition has a completely natural explanation, I do not however agree with the examples you provided. Intuition is commonly referred to as a "gut instinct".
That is a hopelessly narrow idea.
Pianists intuitively know where their fingers go.
It's about subconscious processing.
The most basic definition would agree with you usage "the ability to understand something instinctively, without the need for conscious reasoning."

In the same way you are typing keys without having to look at the keyboard. We know repetition helps, but we have no idea of what makes this happen inside our heads, there is no conscious mechanism that we understand, we just learn and apply the skill.
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ThomasHobbes
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Re: Is intuition a legitimate sense?

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Thinking critical wrote: August 10th, 2018, 1:04 pm I suspect that our gut feeling to read situations and pick up that something doesn't feel right may be a result of our ability to subconsciously detect an analyse the environment, however there are instances when we are put into situations we have never experienced before yet some individuals instinctively know how to act.
That's just the ******** side. I suggest you look up selective bias.
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Re: Is intuition a legitimate sense?

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ThomasHobbes wrote: August 10th, 2018, 1:09 pm It is not a sense in any sense of meaning, is the point I was making.
Intuition is the outward expression of instinct, it is not a sense.
Senses gather information from the outside world, via nerves.
I agree with you on this point, I definitely wasn't asserting that intuition is sense, the use of sense was implied figuratively not in litterally. The use of sixth sense was intended in order to show that the idea of what is commonly referred to as the sixth sense does in fact have a natural explanation.
Senses in themselves do not guide us. The brain processes the information senses give us.
You are simply splitting hairs for the sake of arguing, try closing your eyes next time you walk through a shopping mall and then tell me that your sense of sight doesn't guide you.
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Thinking critical
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Re: Is intuition a legitimate sense?

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ThomasHobbes wrote: August 10th, 2018, 1:15 pm That is a hopelessly narrow idea.
Really, well considering it is the generally excepted expression of what is meant by intuition by the majority of philosophers, scientists and educational institutes through out history I would suggest it is quite the opposite.
This obscured idea of intuition you are fixated on as per below:
Pianists intuitively know where their fingers go.
It's about subconscious processing.
The most basic definition would agree with you usage "the ability to understand something instinctively, without the need for conscious reasoning."

In the same way you are typing keys without having to look at the keyboard. We know repetition helps, but we have no idea of what makes this happen inside our heads, there is no conscious mechanism that we understand, we just learn and apply the skill.
Deomonstrates you simply do not understand the actual meaning of intuition. You are confusing motor reflex or muscle memory with intuition. What you are describing is memory stimulated neuromuscular action, this is no different than walking, driving or riding a bike.

A person for example who has some sort of intuitive based opinion may not immediately know why they hold that veiw, however retrospectively they may seek to rationalise their intuition by forming a logical chain of reasoning to develop a more structured understanding as to how the intuitive opinion came to be. In other words, intuition could be seen as an unconscious form of reasoning or the process of assembling subliminal information to form a rational thought, which is grounded from previous knowledge and experience.
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ThomasHobbes
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Re: Is intuition a legitimate sense?

Post by ThomasHobbes »

Thinking critical wrote: August 10th, 2018, 4:08 pm
You are simply splitting hairs for the sake of arguing, try closing your eyes next time you walk through a shopping mall and then tell me that your sense of sight doesn't guide you.
I use my sight. I guide my feet.
This is absolutely NOT splitting hairs.
YOU called intuition a sense - it absolutely is not.

This is philosophy.
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ThomasHobbes
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Re: Is intuition a legitimate sense?

Post by ThomasHobbes »

Thinking critical wrote: August 10th, 2018, 4:54 pm
ThomasHobbes wrote: August 10th, 2018, 1:15 pm That is a hopelessly narrow idea.
Really, well considering it is the generally excepted expression of what is meant by intuition by the majority of philosophers, scientists and educational institutes through out history I would suggest it is quite the opposite.
Rubbish.
You view of intuition is that of old women.

Here's Kant for example

"An intuition is a kind of presentation, in which an object is presented to the human mind. More specifically, it is a cognition, a presentation with consciousness, which refers to objects (unlike sensation, which refers only to the mind, insofar as a sensation is a modification of the state of the mind).

Intuitions are characterized by contrast to concepts. There are two differences. First, intuitions are singular. An intuition refers only to a single object. Concepts of the understanding, on the other hand, have an extension or “sphere” of objects to which they refer. Second, an intuition refers to an object immediately, whereas a concept refers to an object through its characteristics. “An intuition refers directly to the object and is singular; a concept refers to the object indirectly by means of a characteristic that may be common to several things“ (A320/B377).

"
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Felix
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Re: Is intuition a legitimate sense?

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I think it is a capacity that one must have experienced to believe in.
I tend to agree that intuition could be seen as a sixth sense in that it is a subconscious accumulation of information from our other five senses combined with the insight gained from previous experiences.
That would not explain precognition.
"We do not see things as they are; we see things as we are." - Anaïs Nin
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Re: Is intuition a legitimate sense?

Post by Sy Borg »

Our consciousness requires the filtering of the vast majority of sensory inputs. However, it seems that we have evolved an extra way of utilising the information that's been put aside. Intuition would be the unconscious aggregation of all data to form a general impression.

Instinct is only part of it; expectations based on prior experience, including the brain's capacity to effectively fill in unobserved details* form a significant part of our intuitions.


* for instance, when we see a cat half behind a wall, we assume the missing half of the cat.
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Re: Is intuition a legitimate sense?

Post by Karpel Tunnel »

Thinking critical wrote: August 10th, 2018, 6:23 am Intuition is often referred to as kind of sixth sense, it is the ability to instinctively understand something without the use of conscious reasoning.

Some people refer to our intuitive nature as type of telepathic ability and consider it as a sign of a higher consciousness or a supernatural dimension.

I tend to agree that intuition could be seen as a sixth sense in that it is a sub consscious accumulation of information from our other five senses combined with the insight gained from previous experiences.

What are your thoughts, natural, supernatural or nonsense?
Intuition refers to a process where we draw conclusions and that process is black boxed. We are not sure how we drew that conclusion, it came as a lump, all at once, we did not reason way to it consciously in steps with words. This is natural, we use it all the time. Some people are generally good at it. Some are generally not good at it. One can have areas where one can generally trust one's intution and areas where you cannot. None of us could get by without it. We even use it within the process of logical reasoning. I call it natural, but in part that is because I think the natural/supernatural distinction is conceptually a poor one. If psyhic power exist, for example, then they are natural. Intuition is clearly not nonsense. Some poeple are good at it and if we focus on specific processes - like sensing a liar - this can and has been tested. some people are good at drawing intuitive conclusions.
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Re: Is intuition a legitimate sense?

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ThomasHobbes wrote: August 10th, 2018, 5:54 pm
Thinking critical wrote: August 10th, 2018, 4:08 pm
You are simply splitting hairs for the sake of arguing, try closing your eyes next time you walk through a shopping mall and then tell me that your sense of sight doesn't guide you.
I use my sight. I guide my feet.
This is absolutely NOT splitting hairs.
YOU called intuition a sense - it absolutely is not.

This is philosophy.
Sometimes ones own arrogance can result in the inflation of their ego, which consequently distorts ones ability to participate in a reasonable, rational and civil conversation.
You believe people don't rely on their senses to guide them, in other words your saying the sense of sight isn't required to guide someone around an obstacle, the sense of hearing doesn't guide someone to the ringing phone, the sense of smell to a bakery or sense of touch to guide us down a dark hallway at night.
TH insists that we are not guided by our senses?
This cocky little cognitive contortionist will straighten you right out
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