Q&A: Intuition
Intuition
Question
The Rabbi always said in his faith lectures that you can never rely on emotion and believe in the Holy One, blessed be He, because of it. But on the other hand, the Rabbi said that a person can rely on his intuition.
I would be glad to know what the essential difference between them is.
Answer
I’ve explained this more than once. Some people call intuition an emotion, but that is a mistake. True, neither of them is based on a logical argument, but emotion expresses a subjective mental state, an inner attitude toward something, whereas intuition is a direct and immediate apprehension of the truth. The basic premises of logical arguments arise from it.
When I love so-and-so and you do not, we have no argument. That love is part of my psychological makeup, which is different from yours. It is not a factual claim, and therefore there is no dispute between us. But when I say that I “feel” the solution to the equation is 8, I mean that without doing the calculation I think the solution is 8. That is a factual claim that can be checked and verified. Someone who says the solution is different is mistaken, and I have an argument with him. That is not emotion but intuition. What people usually call “reason” is a logical or mathematical calculation that leads to a result/conclusion. But people do not notice that every calculation and logical inference has premises, and those are not the result of calculation/inference. They come from intuition.
Discussion on Answer
I’ve written books about this. It’s hard to elaborate here. Obviously my intuition does not obligate you. But neither does my logic or my observation obligate you. As far as I’m concerned, this is the truth (and it is not an emotion). The question of whether I think this is true and the question of how to convince someone else of it are two different questions.
If someone wants to study the Rabbi’s approach to intuition from the ground up, which books would you recommend reading, and in what order?
I suggest Truth and Unstable
The Rabbi wrote that my logic or my observation does not obligate you.
Does the Rabbi not think that logic does obligate someone else?
If not, then how does it obligate the Holy One, blessed be He.
It obligates you if you also agree that this is what logic says. But the fact that I think this is what logic says does not obligate you.
So why do you assume that God agrees with you?
Because if He does not agree, then He is mistaken, and my assumption is that God does not make mistakes.
Is intuition without verification also a direct apprehension of the truth? That is, who says the solution really is 8?
I understand that this is what you feel, but how can that obligate someone else who does not feel that way? After all, I think everyone has their own path to believing in God.