Q&A: Intuition
Intuition
Question
Is intuition really a combination of cognition and thought?
Isn’t it entirely thought, only with part of it conscious and part unconscious? When I infer a synthetic a priori law, isn’t that really thinking that includes both a conscious and an unconscious process together—both the very act of generalization in an analogical form and the reliance on my subjective and outrageous experience?
Answer
I don’t understand the question. Have you read my arguments about intuition? Is this coming against some particular background? I explained in several places why, in my opinion, it is a combination. If it were only an intellectual faculty, of any kind whatsoever (conscious, unconscious, or anything else), there would be no reason to assume that it yields reliable results about the world. That is Kant’s synthetic-a-priori problem. Therefore, you may choose not to trust your intuitions, or to trust them. You can think that it is thinking, or that it is a combination. But there is a connection between the questions: if you think it is reliable (to some degree—not a shot in the dark), then you have to assume that it contains a cognitive dimension.
Discussion on Answer
I still don’t understand. Are you claiming that one can still remain skeptical? Obviously. Who said otherwise? I suggested an option for how not to be skeptical, not an argument that forces skeptics to concede.
I claim that one can say that the “mystical” source of intuition comes from the subconscious. For example, with the case of solving a math problem, you can say that the source of that student’s ability is mystical, and you can say that it is the subconscious (which is influenced by experience, society, and brain structure) together with the conscious mind.
And the generalization of laws of nature that stems from intuition really comes from the subconscious, where experience tells us that this is correct, and Hume’s attack is still valid.
And therefore synthetic a priori laws still are not really any more valid.