Intuition over Deduction?

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"Intuition is that non-dubious apprehention of a pure and attentive mind which is born in the sole light of reason; and it is surer than deduction in virtue of its being simpler."
-Descartes

Can anyone shed some light on this statement? Descartes will also claim that 'deduction can never be wrongly performed by us', so the question must be, how does intuition dominate deduction in surety if deduction cannot be wrongly performed. It almost seems to me that intuition is a prosses based off of instinct, or paranoia.:perplexed:

Any thoughts?

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@all-inclusive,

all-inclusive, Smile

Intuition can sometimes be almost like intinct, a knowing without being conscious of the reasoning process going on within. At best it is good and can be an invaluable aid, but to say it can be more reliable than the conscious process of deduction, no I don't think so. I have never seen it in anyone where it was that vital a force.

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@boagie,

Quote:

Intuition can sometimes be almost like intinct, a knowing without being conscious of the reasoning process going on within. At best it is good and can be an invaluable aid, but to say it can be more reliable than the conscious process of deduction, no I don't think so. I have never seen it in anyone where it was that vital a force.

Thank you, Boagie:)

I thought the same thing. Do you know why someone with the amount prestige, and someone highly thought of in the grounds of philosophy, like Descartes would make such a claim? It is his third rule of guidence.:perplexed:

Any thoughts?

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@all-inclusive,

all-inclusive wrote:

Thank you, Boagie:)

I thought the same thing. Do you know why someone with the amount prestige, and someone highly thought of in the grounds of philosophy, like Descartes would make such a claim? It is his third rule of guidence.:perplexed:
Any thoughts?

all-inclusive:)

Actually, it might mean that he thinks intution is a more effective form of deduction, one is on a conscious level while the other is on a subconscious level, the latter being in his thinking the more affect process. All-inclusive is there no explanation of said statement or rule?

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@boagie,

Quote:

All-inclusive is there no explanation of said statement or rule?

"By intuition I understand, not the fluctuating testimony of the senses, nor the misleading judgement of a wrongly combining imagination, but the apprehension which the mind, pure and attentive, gives us so easily and so distinctly that we are therby freed from all doubt as to what it is that we are apprehending."

Quote:

Intuition is that non-dubious apprehention of a pure and attentive mind which is born in the sole light of reason; and it is surer than deduction in virtue of its being simpler.

-Descartes

i believe you've either done some searching or your intuition has bested my actual sight...I do see what you are saying. But in this statement, I still do not see an absolute closing, or proof. I could see it in one case or another, but I wouldn't rule out the power of a powerful deductive mind. Smile

I should have put this in when I posted it.

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@all-inclusive,

I don't know more than the basics for Descartes, apart from that he lived in the mill of my home village for a number of years.

I am surprised that even Descartes used the term 'intuition', but I am not sure he meant it like is was popular in the beginning of the 20th, instead of the 17th century. We know that he used systematic doubt to arrive at what he found 'clear and distinct', to have cognition of what he could not doubt and eliminate any further. To him, 'cogito' was so overwhelming a conclusion to arrive at, especially for a religious person, that it may well have been an even stronger aha-experience than deducing particular from general statements. And do not underestimate the power of a proposition that holds under any circumstance. BTW, Bergson, the champion of intuition, called it the fringe of instinct.

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@boagie,

boagie wrote:

... one is on a conscious level while the other is on a subconscious level, the latter being in his thinking the more affect process.

This is the conclusion I came to also quite a while back. Nothing mystical, nothing magic, just the mind's worked behind the scenes considering aspects the conscious mind isn't aware of.

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@all-inclusive,

I have argued in favor of intuition over reason before, but only because there is no reason to assume that our reason is more correct or sound than our intuition as they are both the product of the same forces of evolution.

I also doubt reason a lot more than most and tend to believe that reason is more of an epiphenomenal manifestation of our intuitions. I believe we can generally make ourselves believe that any of our intuitions are reasoned, and I believe we can track all of our reason to basic intuitions.

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@Mr Fight the Power,

Fight The Power, Smile

Interesting, reason as a by product of our intution? Can you expand on this? Anything in neurology that might give this greater crediability than it would commonly enjoy. Interesting perspective at anyrate.

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@boagie,

Fight the power, Smile

I'll do some thinking on what you have proposed. It is very interesting, and I would like you to go further, in that you "tend to believe that reason is more of an epiphenomenal manifestation of our intuitions." Smile

What is it that brought you to this conclusion?

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@all-inclusive,

Some of the studies by Libet and his peers on the consciousness's delay in recognizing our actions implies that the material processes in our brain controls our actions, and what we recognize as intention or reason is more of an ad-hoc organizing of our experiences. It is certainly possible for our minds to construct its own narrative; our dreams prove that.

Also, Nietzsche's treatment of the will has led me in this direction, as he tears apart the I and considers it merely the association with the most powerful of many competing wills.

What initially set me in this direction was that it seemed reason is more often assumed as self-apparent and then used to justify something else. I don't trust arguments like this and reason appears to me to be just as metaphysical as some of the concepts that many wish to prove with it.

This is not to say that what we consider to be reason doesn't exist, or that it is actually epiphenomenal. This ordering of events certainly represents reason and appears to occur, and I don' believe that it could contribute to further actions by altering those values that guide our actions.

The proper term would be automatism, I guess. As we act before conscious recognition but the consciousness is not entirely ineffectual.

One amazing thing to realize is that, if this idea is taken to the extreme, we could sever a part of the brain and people would could continue to act in "rational" ways but not be able to offer reasonable explanations (I believe there are studies that have actually shown this), or machines could be created that have no consciousness but a person could never actually tell.

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@Mr Fight the Power,

Mr. Fight the Power, Smile

Thank you for that bit of insight.

Quote:

Also, Nietzsche's treatment of the will has led me in this direction, as he tears apart the I and considers it merely the association with the most powerful of many competing wills.

:)Then would you say that all thought are impulsive?(of course different levels of impulse apply acording to the situation, which determines the size of the 'reaction')

The reactions would be based on what apply to your sense of pleasure, would they not. The 'reaction' would have to be somewhat appealing to you as the 'reactor'. So in this sense, you wouldn't call it logic, because different 'reactions' obtain to the different 'reactors', assuming that the X numbers of 'reactors' were on opposing ends of a sitution.

Any thoughts?

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@all-inclusive,

all-inclusive wrote:

Mr. Fight the Power,

Thank you for that bit of insight.

:)Then would you say that all thought are impulsive?

Yes, exactly.

Quote:

The reactions would be based on what apply to your sense of pleasure, would they not. The 'reaction' would have to be somewhat appealing to you as the 'reactor'. So in this sense, you wouldn't call it logic, because different 'reactions' obtain to the different 'reactors', assuming that the X numbers of 'reactors' were on opposing ends of a sitution.

Any thoughts?

I am not entirely sure what you are saying.

It seems that you are getting it a little wrong, as there is no "you as the 'reactor'". There are reactions, I suppose, but the "I" that we assume to be reacting does not actually exist.

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@Mr Fight the Power,

Quote:

It seems that you are getting it a little wrong, as there is no "you as the 'reactor'". There are reactions, I suppose, but the "I" that we assume to be reacting does not actually exist.

What do you mean, "the I that we are assume to be reacting does not actually exist"? Are you saying that we do not have control over our reactions, or are you saying that the preditermined outcome that we are percieving while reacting is non-existent(a facade), and that there is no actual reaction, but only will to power, if I am using the term correctly as nietszche would have it.

Please enlighten me, I'm getting good stuff. Smile

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@all-inclusive,

all-inclusive wrote:

What do you mean, "the I that we are assume to be reacting does not actually exist"? Are you saying that we do not have control over our reactions, or are you saying that the preditermined outcome that we are percieving while reacting is non-existent(a facade), and that there is no actual reaction, but only will to power, if I am using the term correctly as nietszche would have it.

Please enlighten me, I'm getting good stuff.

There is no ghost in the machine pulling switches and pushing buttons.

I, as a human being, am a collection of competing wills, some subservient, some dominant, but none of them in constant control. What "I" am as a person is the constant recognition of this competition of will and the recognition of the after effects.

When we make a decision, we do not actually make a decision, rather these competing wills generate action, with us recognizing the action and rationalizing it later.

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@all-inclusive,

all-inclusive wrote:

"Intuition is that non-dubious apprehention of a pure and attentive mind which is born in the sole light of reason; and it is surer than deduction in virtue of its being simpler."
-Descartes

Can anyone shed some light on this statement? Descartes will also claim that 'deduction can never be wrongly performed by us', so the question must be, how does intuition dominate deduction in surety if deduction cannot be wrongly performed. It almost seems to me that intuition is a prosses based off of instinct, or paranoia.:perplexed:

Any thoughts?

Deduction requires taking steps from one statement to the next, as for example the argument, 1. All men are mortal
2. Socrates is a man
Therfore: 3. Socrates is mortal.
3 has be deduced from 1 and 2.

But intuition requires no steps. It is immediate. Descartes thought that the proposition that all triangles have three sides was an intuition, and could be "seen" to be immediately true.

Are you sure that Descartes wrote that deduction can never be performed wrongly? I think you might be wrong about that. In any case, people obviously do make mistakes in deduction. If you try to add up a long column of figures you can easily make mistakes. At least I do.

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Intuition over Deduction?

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