Can you point me to the specific part of the book that deals with this, or is it scattered throughout the whole book?

As for superstition, you wrote that it is an intuition without basis and logic. It seems to me that several times from your words it sounds like intuition does not need a basis or logic, because it itself is the most basic foundation.

For example, you once wrote to me: “When I bring reasoning X to justify claim Y, then the explanatory claim itself (reasoning X) has no explanation. So where is it taken from? From intuition (it is clear to me that this is correct). Every explanation is based on assumptions. What is the source of the assumptions? Intuition.”
(In a question on the site titled “What Is the Meaning of a Divine Command.” I asked there: how do you know that God has binding authority? And you answered: I know from my intuition.)

I don’t have it at hand right now. Look there at the headings. But in principle, it’s the whole book.

Intuition does not need something else to validate it. But if it is illogical, it should not be accepted. For example, if it is contradicted by experience or if it has illogical implications. Aristotle had an intuition that objects fall to the earth at a speed proportional to their weight. People have an “intuition” that in the dark there are demons.
Intuition does not have unlimited validity, and certainly requires de facto testing and verification.

1. What does it mean that it is “contradicted by experience”?

2. Can you give an example of illogical implications?
For example, killing Amalekite babies—is that an illogical implication?

3. Did your intuition that God has authority undergo de facto testing and verification? If so, how did you test it?

1. The intuition that there are demons is contradicted by experience. An explanation can be found for everything even without demons. When people report demon-related matters, experience says they are talking nonsense and holding superstitions. Killing Amalek has nothing to do with this in any way. It is indeed a blatantly immoral command. What is the question about it?
2. The intuition that God supervises has illogical implications. It means that certain events happen because of a non-physical cause.
3. My intuition that God has authority has not undergone verification, because I encounter no problem with it.

According to your approach, I’m trying to think what argument I could make to a terrorist who is about to murder dozens of people because his intuition tells him to do so and that he will receive a great reward for it in the World to Come.
This is not contradicted by experience,
and there are no illogical implications here.

And therefore? What argument can you make to someone who thinks it is moral to just murder a person, or that relativity is incorrect, or that neither you nor he really exists? The fact that you cannot convince someone does not mean there is no truth here. It only means there are idiots or wicked people. So what?

Therefore I want to argue that intuition by itself is not a tool for recognizing objective truth, because different people have different intuitions, which indicates that surely at least some intuitions are incorrect. So why assume that דווקא my intuition is the correct one?

Only when intuition is supported by experience or by logic, or when it is an intuition shared by all human beings, can it be used as a reliable tool.

To some extent, intuition can be compared to the senses. Our trust in the senses too is only when all human beings arrive at a similar result through the senses.

For example, you are walking down the street with a friend whom you regard as a sane and reliable person. Suddenly you see a bird and say to him, look what a beautiful bird, and he says, what bird are you talking about, there is no bird there. You ask another friend, and he too says to you, I don’t see any bird. Your trust in your sense of sight in this specific case would be undermined. You might come closer to check more carefully, maybe try to check by means of other senses. But what is certain is that you would ask yourself: who is right, my sense or his? So too regarding intuition: when different people have different intuitions, why should we assume that our intuition is the correct one?

And an opposite example is the example you brought: is it moral to just murder human beings?
Here the intuition of all human beings is the same. All human beings have an intuition that says it is not proper to murder for no reason. Therefore in such a case intuition really is a reliable tool.

Daniel, this is a very puzzling argument, and actually self-contradictory. After all, you yourself say there are disagreements about intuitions. And you also say that intuition is founded on experience. Well then, we see that there are disagreements also about what is learned from experience. See column 247 (and many others), where I explained why the fact that there are disagreements should not alter my opinion.
And in parentheses I will add that an intuition shared by many people can also be mistaken, and that happens quite a bit.

I didn’t understand where you found a contradiction in my argument.
I’m not claiming that intuition is founded on experience, but that one of the ways to verify intuition is proof from experience.
For example, intuition tells me that just as the sun rises every morning, so too tomorrow morning the sun will rise. And then morning comes the next day, and indeed the sun rises. And this repeats itself every day. That is what I call an intuition proven by experience.
And in addition there is no dispute about this intuition.

What you wrote in column 247 is relevant only to a conclusion inferred by logic. You wrote as follows:
“If I can offer a specific explanation as to why he is mistaken in this matter despite his skills. If I have such an explanation, then one can reasonably continue to hold one’s position despite the disagreement.”
When we are talking about logic, you can argue that you have an explanation for why the other is mistaken. But when it comes to a basic intuition that is not based on anything beyond itself, you cannot have an explanation for why the other is mistaken.
And in fact, in the passage I quoted, you explain why the question I asked you earlier proves my argument. I asked, “What will you say to a suicide terrorist who says that his intuition instructs him to murder dozens of people?” and you agreed that you have nothing to argue against him. That is, you cannot offer a specific explanation as to why he is mistaken. If so, his intuition is equivalent to your intuition in terms of reliability.

There are now two parallel threads dealing with intuition, and I’m getting confused between them. I’ll summarize my position briefly:
1. One of the ways to corroborate intuition is experience. No one disputes that. My claim is that intuition precedes experience (there is no learning from experience that is not grounded in intuition). They are intertwined.
2. I also claim that intuition is not certain. It is definitely possible that I am mistaken in my intuition, but that is the tool I have.
3. I also claim that there is not always a way to convince someone that he is mistaken or that I am right. Inability to convince has nothing to do with the question of who is right. This exists in other areas as well, where I assume you would not disagree that inability to convince does not indicate the absence of a single truth. For example, I cannot convince a blind person that there is a wall in front of us, but I am right and he is mistaken. By the way, I claim that intuition is a kind of sense, like physical sight, and therefore the analogy to this example is complete.

Do you disagree with any of these three claims? What is the question?

I agree with everything. I’m saying something additional.

If I understood correctly, in column 247 you explain that in a peer disagreement the whole reason you continue to hold your position despite the disagreement is that you can offer an explanation for why the other is mistaken. That is not the case with intuition. If you have no ability to offer an explanation—not to convince others, but even to give yourself an explanation for why the other is mistaken—then your intuition is equivalent to the intuition of other people.

What would you say if a blind person came along claiming that he is not blind and that your sight is an illusion? You have no way to convince him. Would you stop trusting your sight? I claim that a person who does not grasp a simple intuition of mine is blind. That is an excellent explanation for why he is mistaken.

Let me begin by saying that it is strange to me that you do not notice the problems in what you are saying. And I assume this stems from the mental load you have.

I say again: I have no interest in convincing others, only in giving a satisfactory explanation to myself.
As for a blind person, I have an excellent explanation, namely that he simply does not have the required tool in order to see, and therefore he does not see.
In addition, no sane blind person would claim that he is not blind. And even if he did claim it, he would simply be mistaken. I assume I do not need to explain why he is mistaken.

The sense of sight is proven both by experience and because there is no dispute about it.
When a certain intuition is not proven by experience and there is dispute about it, it makes no sense to compare it to sight.

In addition, your wording seems mistaken to me. You wrote: “A person who does not grasp a simple intuition of mine.”
Grasp? What does understanding have to do with this? Understanding pertains to claims of a logical character. Intuition is either something you have or something you don’t.

How do you know that he does not have the required tool? Because he does not see something that you see. Exactly as with intuition.
That’s it. I’ve exhausted it.

I’m unable to understand what is being missed in the understanding between us.
I keep writing over and over that sight is different from intuition because it is proven by experience and there is no dispute about it. And you ignore that.

You asked, how do I know that he does not have the required tool?
Because if I see and he does not see, and my sight is reliable because it is proven by experience, that means I have a tool that he does not. What other explanation could there be for the fact that he does not see?
To claim that my sight is not reliable is not an option, because it is proven by experience.

That is not so with intuition that is not proven by experience.

Your sight is not proven by any experience. And intuition too can be corroborated by experience. But really, that’s it. No point continuing.

Whenever I ask a question and it develops into a discussion in the comments, it always ends up with “that’s it, I’ve exhausted it.”
I’m trying to understand whether I’m saying something wrong or idiotic, or whether this is simply your practice not to prolong discussion in the comments?

And it’s not as though there was no development in the discussion.
We began with the question of how to distinguish between a correct intuition and a mistaken intuition, and continued to clarify the situation when there is peer disagreement regarding intuition; now we are discussing the analogy of a blind person and a sighted person.
In the end you stop and say things that require explanation without explaining. Do you really think that our sight is not proven by experience? (And intuition is, so it seems from the last comment.) And if that is what you think, it requires explanation. After all, every time I saw a wall and kept walking toward it, I bumped into it. Is that not proof from experience?

There is no policy here. When I feel that we are repeating ourselves and the discussion is not advancing, I write that we’ve exhausted it. That’s all.
You may feel like an “only child,” but I’m conducting quite a few parallel discussions here and have been engaged with the site for quite a long time, and I have no interest in wasting time. So it is indeed true that at the end of discussions that drag on, we eventually get to “I’ve exhausted it.” There is nothing surprising here. When I’ve exhausted it, I write that I’ve exhausted it.
The analogy between a blind person and a sighted person is complete in my opinion, and as far as I understand it, that was explained here well. You think it is not similar—that is of course your right. But there is no point repeating the same thing again and again.
Because of your feeling that the matter was not clarified, I will summarize my claim. If there is nothing new here, I will not respond anymore.
Reliance on sight cannot be based on experience. How can you know that what you see really exists? Even if you collide with the wall, that sensation too is sensory perception and therefore it too can be an illusion. You assume that the senses correctly reflect reality, and that is an assumption for which there is not and cannot be any corroboration. Sometimes there is corroboration for it in an internal sense, meaning that the senses back each other up and you find consistency.
All of this exists in intuition too. For example, causal intuition receives reinforcement from experience because you see that the same causes produce the same effects. But belief in causal connection as such is a priori, and it has no empirical reinforcement and cannot have any.
I explained that I am speaking about a blind person who claims that what you see is an illusion. So what do you claim against him? That you do in fact see well, and therefore it is obvious that he is blind? Don’t you yourself understand that this is exactly like intuition?!
That’s it.

It’s not only that my senses back up my sight, but also the senses of the blind person and the senses of all human beings in the world corroborate/support/prove my sense of sight.
If I see a wall and the blind person tells me it is an illusion, I will say to him: run straight into the wall and then tell me whether it is an illusion.
That is what I mean when I say “proof from experience.”
(Maybe that’s not the correct use of the term, but go with me. I mean support from my other senses and from those of the whole world. And by “the whole world” I don’t mean literally everyone, but 99% of the population.)

Regarding intuition, I distinguish between intuition that is proven by experience, such as induction and causal connection, and intuition that is not proven by experience, such as the authority of God.
And that is what I said from the beginning. When it is an intuition that is proven by experience, I accept it like sight.
But when it is an intuition that is not proven by experience, it is not similar to sight and does not have the same reliability.

So what is new here?
1. I defined what I mean when I say “proven by experience”: support from my senses and from all human beings.

2. The distinction between types of intuition. You cannot say that because there are intuitions that are proven by experience and they have high reliability, therefore intuitions that are not proven by experience have the same reliability status.

3. Intuitions that deal with normative facts, such as the authority of God or when it is proper to kill, are intuitions of the type that is not proven by experience.

4. It follows from this that one cannot compare sight to intuition that deals with normative facts

1. The fact that you define something does not say anything. I claim that corroboration from one sense to another says nothing. One can raise doubt about the entire sensory system.
2. That is a claim that only came up now, and I do not agree with it. It is like saying that if the sense of sight proves itself regarding a ball, I also accept it regarding a table.
3. Indeed correct. So what?
4. Incorrect. I explained and will not repeat it.

Now I understood very well. Thank you very much.