Is Intuition in Decline?

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Does the scientification and quantification of everything in the 20th/21st century come at the cost of intuition?

I was thinking that one factor could be the pricing of things. Rather than having an intuitive understanding of value, we have "$20.00."

Also, could the increasing demand for precision cause an intolerance to ambiguity?

Finally, what could this mean about art and creativity?

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@Faun147,

I agree. Nobody takes kindly to ambiguity anymore, such fun, especially in writing. Using the word gauge in a paragraph so that all nine of its meanings can be coherent in any of their contexts is a fun challenge, and when the reader realises the possibilities it can drive the person mad Laughing

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And in this sense, it is creativity, art is meant to be interpreted in a variety of ways, otherwise it isn't art in more than one's mind.

But I don't see science having any implications to cause this. Science is techinal and precise, there is no equivocation in how much potassium iodide you inject yourself with to stop radiation poisoning. Either the right amount or you die.:unsure: Science is meant to contrast from art. It's not engulfing society to an extreme yet:lol:. But the ingenuity in my opinion is going to need many gradients of many minds to start producing huge acheivements soon.

So no I do not believe intuition is in decline, people nowadays just don't have insight into it because their intellect is not trained in such a manner to produce such thinking at school.:mad::depressed:.

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@Faun147,

Is it necessarily a bad thing if intuition is in decline? Isnt intuition just schema driven thinking, that leads to belief?
Creativity seems to me to be much wider than intuition, more a sort of stretching of schema.
If we can see that there is a difference between creative thinking and beliefs; surely that is a good thing for logic and creativity.

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@Faun147,

Hi Faun147

I think you ask an interesting question. I ran a business for many years and spent much of it dealing with people who could not cope with ambiguity and intuition and who were not running businesses as a consequence. Creativity is vital to entrepreneurship, and it is suffocated when a person thinks ambiguity and intuition are less important than facts and figures.

Intuition is difficult to define but it might be argued that without it we could not even know we are conscious, since we have no way of knowing this in philosophy or physics.

I would say that our powers of intuition are declining for the reasons you give. Use it or lose it is the general rule.

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@Faun147,

Faun,

Intuition in my opinion is not in decline, although it is much less needed in our present world.

Intuition is just an accepted word used by those who do not like the term psychic.

Alan

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@Faun147,

I think we need to try to define what we mean by intuition.

Are we referring to a feeling that you cant really explain about what you think is a good idea or true?
If we are isnt this just the same as instinct; its not necessarily creative, it just reflects what our particular mix of past experiences make us feel is valid. In that respect its schema.

The trouble with intuition is it can be biased by culture etc I suppose we could say phobias and racism are intuitions, just as much as thinking that a particular item miht sell well in your shop. religion is also very dependaent on intuition.

Of course its not that all intuition is bad. I read an interesting book a while ago called 'Blink' that examined intuition based judgements, in which cases they work and in which they dont.

I think what I am saying is that intuition cannot be indecline, because it how the brain works; but total unquestioning acceptace of every intuition can be in decline- and that may or may not be a bad thing depending on the urgency of the situation.

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@Faun147,

When historian go back and re- examine great disasters, such as the Titanic, Hindenburg,train and plane crashes, they often find that just prior to coming on board etc there are many cancellation

The Titanic did not sail full as expected because of a sudden flood of cancellation,This is just one of many examples of intuitive or precognitive abilities working or do you think there is a natural explanation?.

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@Faun147,

We in the West not have the proper tools for thinking or talking about the ontological and epistemological status of our intuition. Therefore, it is never intellectualized or properly delineated in our reflection of thought processes. It is not, however, absent from the decision-making process of any person.

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@Alan McDougall,

Alan McDougall wrote:

When historian go back and re- examine great disasters, such as the Titanic, Hindenburg,train and plane crashes, they often find that just prior to coming on board etc there are many cancellation

The Titanic did not sail full as expected because of a sudden flood of cancellation,This is just one of many examples of intuitive or precognitive abilities working or do you think there is a natural explanation?.

I don't think these are examples of intuition or precognition, but rather coincidence. Any time decisions such as these are looked at in hindsight, it can appear that intuition or precognition may have played a role, but without interviews to verify the notion, it is little more than finding what one seeks.

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@Theaetetus,

Faun147 wrote:

Does the scientification and quantification of everything in the 20th/21st century come at the cost of intuition?

I was thinking that one factor could be the pricing of things. Rather than having an intuitive understanding of value, we have "$20.00."

Also, could the increasing demand for precision cause an intolerance to ambiguity?

Finally, what could this mean about art and creativity?

Does the scientification[sic] and quantification of everything in the 20/21st century at the cost of intuition? I don't think so. Superficially it may seem like intuition is being displaced by "hardcore science," but put the advances of the 20/21st centuries and juxtapose with what could possibly be advances in the 22/23rd centuries and people in the future will say what scientific cavemen we were. So to me, this seems a little relative. But look at the word "intuition." If intuition is defined as "a looking at, consideration" (OED) from the Greek noumenonthing. The Solonic-era Greeks for example gauged wealth based on how your wealth translated into bushels of wheat (i.e. "500 bushel men," Hippies, Zeugetai, Thetes, etc.). Are we any different? Is the value of an Athenian's wealth any different than yours or my wealth today? Look at the current financial crisis. There are billions of dollars being pumped into the system that are worth something yet were "conjured" from nothing. Is a dollar still worth a dollar even though it does not exist in some corporeal form? On that note, given the nature of the dollar and "out-of-the-air" currency, does cash really hold empirical value now as the underline value is essentially perceived? Don't we need intuition now to grasp the true value of the dollar above and beyond the original concept of a currency note?

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@VideCorSpoon,

Yes.
The greater the decline of intuition the greater the decline of man.

Once intuition is lost, ALL is lost.

Many factors/variable (particulary western education) are the cause.

---------- Post added at 10:07 PM ---------- Previous post was at 09:44 PM ----------

Intuition is an integral aspect of man's essence. However, his personality (a result of education and conditioning) often dampens all intuition.

Once intuition is totally dampened one is a robot dependent upon pure logic and past conditioning (education, training etc)

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@bioharmony,

bioharmony wrote:

Yes.
The greater the decline of intuition the greater the decline of man.

Once intuition is lost, ALL is lost.

Many factors/variable (particulary western education) are the cause.

---------- Post added at 10:07 PM ---------- Previous post was at 09:44 PM ----------

Intuition is an integral aspect of man's essence. However, his personality (a result of education and conditioning) often dampens all intuition.

Once intuition is totally dampened one is a robot dependent upon pure logic and past conditioning (education, training etc)

Welcome from me :bigsmile:

Really, what about logic and reason , I agree, however, that we should not ignore that gut feeling all the time?.

Intuition is much more pronounced in primitive folk than those that live in first world countries, we seem to get be on without is "MOST OF THE TIME"

Last night I suddenly had a non specific feeling something terrible was going to happen. Lets wait and see it I was feeling a future reality or a disaster soon to happen, maybe to me or the world in general

Peace

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@VideCorSpoon,

Although I supported intuition in my last posts there are certain times when intuition should not be used. For example, when flying a plane in dense cloud or pitch dark.

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@bioharmony,

A rather old quote from "Blink" a modern book about intuition.

"When making a decision of minor importance, I have always found it advantaggeous to consider all the pros and cons. In vital matters, however, such as the choice of a mate or a profession, the decision should come from the unconscious, from somewhere within ourselves. In the important decisions of personal life, we should be goverend, i think, by the deep inner needs of our nature'" Sigmund Freud

If we replaced the word 'unconscious' with consciousness we could could also say that by developing our consciousness we can enhance our intuition.

---------- Post added at 10:01 AM ---------- Previous post was at 09:54 AM ----------

An interesting book that will answer all your questions in detail is 'BLINK'. It will do so far better than I can.

I would say, in general, we do not get by well because we do not following our intuition enough. Blink gives many, many examples of this fact.

Alan McDougall wrote:

Welcome from me :bigsmile:

Really, what about logic and reason , I agree, however, that we should not ignore that gut feeling all the time?.

Intuition is much more pronounced in primitive folk than those that live in first world countries, we seem to get be well without is MOST OF THE TIME

Peace

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Is Intuition in Decline?

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