Q&A: The Distinction Between Thinking and Cognition
The Distinction Between Thinking and Cognition
Question
Hello Rabbi,
In his book Truth and Not Stable, the Rabbi distinguishes between human thinking—which the rationalists held up as an ideal—and proof, as a mistaken source for cognition of reality, and intuition, which is required for all empirical inquiry. The Rabbi defined intuition as a domain close to cognition, like sensory cognition, except that it is immediate cognition that does not pass through the senses. Therefore, unlike rationalist thinking, which does not teach us about reality, intuition does.
But how can we define what counts as cognitive intuition and what counts as thinking? Would Aristotle’s view that the speed of falling objects depends on their weight not have seemed intuitive to him? Is belief in God, which the Rabbi defines as a possible intuition in the first book of the trilogy, not similar to the Aristotelian reasoning?
Thank you very much
Answer
I didn’t make such a distinction. What I argued is that thinking that has no source in reality is not reliable. Therefore I argued that the rationalist insights (a priori ones) that we trust are based on intuition. There aren’t two categories here that need to be distinguished. If you trust something, that means you have such an intuition.
Of course, intuition can be mistaken, and therefore it has to be tested, cross-checked, and revised when necessary.