The validity of intuition

Hello Rabbi,
First of all, I want to thank you for this thoughtful website. You really do an amazing job here – and in your books. You taught me a lot (let’s just say that when I first came across the website, I was semi-anxious), but I feel that more than just passing on information, you gave me a new methodology for matters of faith and philosophy – logic. I think my main gain from getting to know you is that I began to systematically use tools like logic, conceptual analysis, empiricism, and in general to clarify this entire field, which before was based mainly on vague concepts and things I took for granted. Thank you.
I would be happy if you could also thank the editors of the site for making it so convenient and pleasant to use, a feature that is quite rare among intellectual blogs, at least from what I know.
And for the question. I recently finished the book “Truth and Unstable,” and the truth is that at first I was very convinced by the thesis presented in it (i.e., the synthetic position), but slowly I became convinced that this thesis is incorrect and I will try to present both the considerations that led me to this and the alternative that I propose, and I would be happy if you could answer me.
The difficulties:
A. From the outset, the idea of ​​relying on intuitions in matters of morality seems to me to be very unreliable, even if we accept the thesis as a whole. You mention in the book that using intuitions is an imprecise tool and more prone to errors than other tools, but it seems to me that in this area its reliability is almost zero. When I came to your site, I had very strong intuitions on certain issues, and before long they simply evaporated, and I believe that it could have been the other way around. Moral intuitions, in my opinion, are mainly influenced by habits and culture, and as such they do not indicate true knowledge, apart from a number of basic and very general intuitions, for example that murder without cause is wrong and similar universal conventions. But this is a more side point, and I understand that you also tend in this direction more or less.
on. And in fact, the whole idea of ​​sensory perception of the world of ideas is very unlikely. It is very clear how we are able to see – through the absorption of light waves, and the same goes for sounds or smells. But how exactly do we see the world of ideas? How does it work? On the surface, this is completely speculative, no better than assuming that demons transmit our dreams. (I will of course refer later to the statistical proof you gave for intuition, for now I am only trying to show how unlikely this concept is a priori, so that without the statistical proof – that is, if it actually turns out to be incorrect – it should be abandoned immediately.)
C. The very existence of a detailed world of ideas as presented in the book is, in my opinion, very far-fetched. It is described there in the chapter on the dispute between Aristotle and Plato (if I remember correctly) that according to the synthetic approach, it is possible to “see” the idea of ​​every object, and thus sort them into groups. Is there really a “table” idea hidden behind every table? When they invented the microwave, did the idea of ​​microwaves suddenly arise? And when they invented a different model of microwave, did it also receive its own idea? I think the suggestion is much more plausible (as Jordan Peterson claims) that we ourselves sort the world into objects and types according to their use. And when people argue about what democracy is (this is the example given in the book), they do not intend a purely semantic debate, but neither do they intend to argue about the idea of ​​democracies: they simply argue about “what is the government that properly reflects the will of the people and improves the lives of all of us.”
In addition, the book provides an example of an intuitive “vision” of the credibility of a witness. Must we say that behind every person lies some kind of “credibility,” which can be perceived by the senses? Isn’t it much more reasonable to assume that our minds simply know how to weight credibility data based on past experiences? When someone solves an equation in an instant, or a more common example – when a rabbi grasps the essence of a subject with a quick glance, does this stem from metaphysical vision or from automatic brain processes that have been trained in all the subjects the rabbi has studied so far?
D. And now I come to the statistical proof. The proof says – if I understood correctly – that it is possible to prove (not with certainty, of course) the correctness of our intuitions by negation: if all our intuitions – for example, induction – were wrong, the generalizations we have made throughout history – for that matter, science – should not have succeeded so many times. What is important to me to emphasize about this proof is that it does not prove that our intuitions are correct because they are perceived from a metaphysical perspective, but only that they are correct, without any evidence as to why they are correct. And in my opinion – and here I am really getting to the crux of the matter – there is a much simpler and “Occamian” explanation for the correctness of our intuitions: evolution. Evolution has instilled in us, through natural selection, true facts about the world, such as the principle of induction or that two parallel lines will not meet, so that we can survive better through familiarity with the world, just as certain animals (monkeys, I think) are born with an innate fear of snakes. And evolution has also instilled in us many moral intuitions through the selection of blood relations and group selection, as Jonathan Haidt describes, for example, in the book “Why You’re Always Right,” which was recently published in Hebrew. It seems to me that the position of intuitions on evolution is infinitely more reasonable than the claim that we are able to “see” any truths, and certainly fits much better with Occam’s razor. (Which, to the best of my knowledge, is also intuitive, or at least based on induction.)
And if so, the alternative:
A. If we accept the claim that intuitions come from evolution (or from God, not critical), then we must divide between two types of intuitions: factual intuitions and normative intuitions. Factual intuitions – such as induction and causality, geometric axioms, physical axioms, etc. – are probably correct, based on the statistical proof you provided in the book, because if these intuitions do work and contribute to our survival, they probably correspond to the real world. That is, when evolution instills in us information that helps us survive about the world, it is probably objectively true; otherwise it would not be useful for survival. In contrast, normative intuitions – for example, that it is forbidden to steal – were instilled in us solely for their survival (again, through group selection, etc.), and therefore there is no reason to assume that they are normatively correct, meaning that stealing is truly bad, but only that it may indeed be harmful in many cases to the survival of the group/relatives.
on. So, why should I really accept the rules of morality as binding? I think the obvious answer is – according to the Torah. That is, with the help of factual intuitions (which have been proven correct) we can achieve the existence of God and the truth of Judaism, and on the basis of the Bible (i.e., God, who is always right) we can learn about the rules of morality that bind us, not only about “Torah morality” – i.e., Halacha, but also about the correctness of human morality, which is also (in my opinion) written in the Bible.

To be honest, I would really like you to refute my claims. They raise a number of problems, for example why there is a moral demand in the Bible for generations before Mount Sinai, but somehow it seems to me that difficulties from the Bible would bother you less specifically, especially since I think I have the answers to these kinds of problems. But my main problem is that this argument actually undermines any demand for morality from atheists, and so I personally would like it to be refuted, but unfortunately this seems to me to be the truth.

I apologize for the length, but this is a question that is really important to me to clarify and I have been thinking about it for quite some time. I have made a great effort to divide the question into focused sections to make it easier to read. If you could take the time to answer me, I would be very grateful. And thanks again for everything I have learned from you.
Have a good week.

PS – Full disclosure: In keeping with the book’s central metaphor, I am indeed in my teens.