Q&A: Thoughts and a Question בעקבות the Lectures
Thoughts and a Question Following the Lectures
Question
Good evening,
Thank you again for the learning that you lead and inspire.
I think as you do that the radical analytic position is barren, and that a synthetic position is a preferable and constructive alternative.
[ In my view, the branding “the emptiness of the analytic” goes too far. Because once you have accepted foundational assumptions by means that are not analytic, you cannot, without analytic methodology, uncover the depths and complexities latent within them. I know from your examples that you accept this, so I wonder why so powerful a tool deserves the label “empty.” Only because it is empty when standing alone? But that is true of every tool. If there is nothing to cut, even scissors are empty. Perhaps you intended a provocative formulation in order to awaken those who worship the analytic from their slumber? ]
My question concerns the solution you propose for escaping the analytic trap—namely intuition as a synthetic sense. The mystical appearance troubles me less (presumably for Newton, the possibility that a person could move through the sky inside a block of metal would have seemed like a mystical idea). In the previous lecture you “warned” that whoever does not accept this solution will be forced to remain in the skeptics’ detention facility, but I know that in your view pragmatism is not a proper criterion for acceptability. Intuitively, I accept the concept of intuition, and I am even impressed that its use is more common than it seems. I am still undecided, however, whether the conceptualization of intuition as a sense is acceptable in an essential sense (as opposed to a metaphorical one).
One of the basic characteristics of living creatures is the existence of a boundary between them and the external world and the things in it. Aside from exceptions (which are usually basic needs of life such as breathing, eating/drinking), living beings do not have direct contact with the things themselves (these being Kant’s noumena). In their accepted sense, senses are the sampling channels a living creature uses to gather information about the things around it. The properties of the sensory organs (for example, the frequency range of electromagnetic waves absorbed by receptors in the retina) are in fact a first filter, because of which the picture of sensory perception is only an aspect or projection of the noumena. On the basis of sensory information, creatures with a central nervous system construct perceptions of things (these being Kant’s phenomena). In the sense of sight, for example, the sensory information is a two-dimensional representation of the visual field of each eye (between which there is not complete overlap), and on the basis of this information the visual interpretation regions in the brain construct a three-dimensional perception. The construction of perception is a rational operation; its source is not observational. The perceptions we experience are actually a mixture of the raw information sampled by the senses with interpretive assumptions whose source is in the observer’s brain. Therefore perceptions are a synthetic product. In the chain of construction, there are regions called transmodal, in which synthesis is carried out of information arriving from different sensory channels (vision and touch, for example). Combined with learning from the past, such a synthesis will allow us to avoid quickly bringing the hand close to a sharp object already on the basis of seeing it, before the skin comes into contact with it. Although the information in the different senses differs greatly in quality, and on the face of it is not comparable, we develop an ability for transformation (intuitive) between the perceptions in the different senses. To the universal constructions (such as three-dimensional vision and cross-sensory integration) are added individual assumptions derived from the observer’s personal past (for example, the degree of threat attributed to the perceived object).
I looked and found an article (attached) containing a survey of different definitions and different dimensions of the concept of intuition in the scientific literature (not everything there is acceptable to me either, but it helped create conceptual order). Intuition is conceptualized as an operation that combines learned (observational) information with rational operations. A distinction is made between the non-intuitive mode of thought—which is experienced as conscious, voluntary, emotionally neutral, mediated by abstract symbols (words, numbers), slow, and demanding of resources—and the intuitive mode of thought, which is experienced as spontaneous, sometimes unconscious, non-verbal, fast, and emotionally charged. Either way, this is thought that is synthetic, and that clearly includes more than raw sensory information.
One of the fascinating examples given in the article of innate intuition is that mice that were just born and have never seen a cat in their lives react in panic when a cat’s hair is brought near them. It looks like intuition that is useful to the mouse, but it apparently includes a synthesis of sensory information on the basis of which the perception of the cat’s hair is constructed, together with ancestral mouse wisdom passed on genetically, according to which a cat is a dangerous thing. Most of our intuitions are based on learning over the course of life.
There is no doubt that causality and induction are not contained in sensory information. Even so, we show by our behavior that they are acceptable—that is, that we construct them intuitively as foundational assumptions within the perceptions we construct on the basis of sensory information. Developmental studies of infants and children show that the assumption of intuitive causality is not innate, but develops gradually—that is, it is learned (not in the curriculum of the Ministry of Education, but in the school of life. The creature is rewarded when it assumes it and punished when it does not). The same goes for induction.
Bottom line, it seems that I understand and accept that intuition is the source of the synthetic. Even so, I have difficulty giving up the simple conceptual distinction (and intuitive, for me) between raw sensory information and its synthesis with assumptions (regardless of their source and validity). Therefore I am left with difficulty understanding the justification for the concept “the eyes of the intellect” as a sense, when it includes sensory information and rational operations. This is assuming that the conceptual-verbal linkage is not metaphorical but essential.
It may be that the difficulty stems from a different use of terms, so I spelled it out.
I hope I managed to explain the question clearly.
Answer
Hello,
The analytic is empty. This is a well-known claim in philosophy (it is not mine). That does not mean that analytic tools are worthless. I explicitly said the opposite. I am very inclined to use them and see them as a very important tool. Therefore I defined an analytic position as a position that sees these tools as the be-all and end-all. That is a philosophical position that I am attacking, not the use of tools and analytic thinking.
Rational operations are the focus of Hume’s and Kant’s attack. How do you know that those operations are valid? Suppose that what you directly observed through the senses is acceptable truth. Any logical manipulation you perform on that, and any conclusion you draw from that manipulation, is vulnerable to Hume’s skeptical attack: how do you know that your intellect operates reliably? What justifies the assumption that what happens in your head also happens in the world? To that question I see no way to answer, except the claim that intuition is a sense (it is based on cognition, not on thinking). Therefore what people call rational operations, I claim, are intuitive operations (which are acts of cognition, not of thought). In my view, treating them as rational operations is a misidentification of those operations. That mistake does not provide an answer to the skeptical difficulty, and therefore I claim that it is a mistake.
I have no problem with parents’ wisdom being passed to children through genetics. But it is still the parents’ observation and not the children’s, yet it is observation and not thought. The transfer from parents to children also does not solve the basic difficulty unless you assume that this is cognition and not thought.
Discussion on Answer
You’ve gone into too high a resolution. For our discussion, two concepts are enough: cognition—my interaction with the world (drawing information from it). Thinking—processing that takes place inside me. Combinations of cognition and thinking together contain nothing beyond the combination of cognition + thinking, and therefore relating to them does not solve any problem.
The problem with rationalism is that there is no reason to assume that thinking that takes place inside me and is determined by how I am built is reliable (correctly describing what happens in the world itself). The problem with empiricism is that if it includes only sensory observations (the five senses), it contains very little information. All the laws of science do not arise from observation alone.
The solution I propose is that cognition includes something more than the five senses. This explains why the laws of science do in fact come out of observation (interaction with the world), and therefore there is a basis for our trust in them. On the other hand, there is no empiricist problem, because if you bring intuition into cognition as well, beyond the five senses, then cognition really can provide the laws of science.
Good evening,
Thank you for your answer.
First, I want to make sure I’m not bothering/burdening you with my questions.
If you prefer to address questions during the upcoming lectures, that is of course just as good.
At the opening of your answer, you directed at me Hume’s question to Kant: “How do you know that X is valid?” On your approach, this is a question from the standpoint of the adolescent, by means of which one can strike at everything, including the sense of intuition. So what have we gained? In the spirit of the maturation model you taught, I would formulate the question differently: is/how is the concept of intuition-as-sense more useful as a basis for cognition than the alternatives (the empiricist and rationalist ones) that preceded it?
I am trying in good faith to examine the concept of intuition-as-sense and form a position about it, and I still run into difficulty. As long as I cannot identify agreement or disagreement, I assume that something has not yet been fully understood. This may be related to the different professional background, from which follows a somewhat different conceptual world, and… a different intuition.
I do nevertheless identify something shared in both our intuitions—the phenomenological distinction according to which valuable concepts (that are not merely pragmatic convention) are born in a kind of reflective contemplation or intuitive thinking (not for nothing did I avoid the word “observation” that you use). The quality of these concepts is correlated with the genius/creativity of the one conceptualizing them. Once the concept is accessible to the conceptualizer, he defines it, that is, characterizes it verbally (or mathematically) by describing its essential properties, and attaches a name to it. At that point he can use it to formulate theoretical questions and examine its value.
Even so, I cannot shake my objection to classifying intuition as a sense. As is customary in your study hall, I will try to deal with the difficulty through conceptual analysis.
The accepted definitions –
Cognition is a concept from philosophy (perhaps also medicine; I’m not sure it’s the same concept, though I’m not sure it isn’t)—the domain dealing with and analyzing the representations of the world/reality accessible to us.
A sense is a concept from biology. Its accepted meaning is: a channel for receiving a certain kind of information about reality and converting it into the language of neural signals.
Perception is a concept from psychology; it refers to the synthesis of sensory information with assumptions found in the brain/intellect of the perceiver (sometimes they are valid and sometimes not, as happens in perceptual illusions).
Thinking—the action we perform when we use the intellect/brain. I identify two divisions into kinds of thinking: 1) synthetic thinking when it concerns perceptions, and pure rational thinking when it does not. 2) declarative thinking, which occurs when we initiate it and lead it, is based on abstract concepts, and is relatively slow. Intuitive thinking—spontaneous, sometimes unconscious, based on non-verbal representations, fast. The broader description is in the article I attached in the previous email. One can develop a skill of using it intentionally (it seems to me that this is the operation you call “the eyes of the intellect,” but it is not a sense).
In terms of classification (to the extent that it is possible to include in classification concepts from different domains of content)—cognition is the highest concept, beneath it is thinking. Intuition is one of the kinds of thinking. Perception is one of the components of synthetic thinking.
My first difficulty is that the concept intuition-as-sense combines two concepts from different levels in the hierarchy. Like joining “mammal” and a certain type of cat into one concept.
And if there is a way to overcome the first difficulty, the second difficulty is the question why the combined concept solves the problem of cognition, when each of the two concepts composing it did not solve it (the limitation of sensory information—that it is only a projection of reality; the limitation of rational thinking is the question of what guarantees the connection between it and reality). I remember that in one of your lectures you dealt with the combination of concepts; I couldn’t locate it, so I’ll do it according to my intuition. When a concept is a combination of two concepts, each of which has its own limitation, the combined concept may have a greater limitation, an identical limitation, or—if the limitations cancel one another out—a lesser limitation or even no limitation. If the very combination of sense and intuition solves the problem of the validity of cognition, it follows that after the combination, one concept answers the other’s limitation to a commensurate degree. Can this be shown?
So through conceptual analysis I managed to expose and communicate my difficulty, but not to answer it. Again, it may be that your definitions of the concepts are different.