Q&A: Intuition
Intuition
Question
Hello,
In several places in your writings you seem to take for granted the idea that we have intuition and that we are more connected to it than to reason, etc. (in your arguments for God, and in your latest article on free will).
My questions are: 1. Do you believe that we all have the same intuitions, and that someone who denies this is deliberately deceiving? 2. Either way, what is the reason for the intuitions we have? There also has to be a reason for that, no? 3. Can we understand the reason behind it? If so, what does that say about its reliability?
I am convinced that most intuitions are formed psychologically (and evolutionarily), so in my view they do not have much value beyond what is practical. Even the fact that they represent the external world fairly accurately can probably also be reduced to their evolutionary role, no?
Therefore, when we are presented with one intuition (causality, etc.) against another intuition (free will / the implausibility of God), why do I need to choose between the two at all? (and as you suggest, we would have to go with lex specialis). Why can’t I simply take the one that makes fewer assumptions (Occam’s razor), without God and without free will?
Answer
- No. Intuitions can be mistaken. Even in mathematics there are people who make mistakes, and nobody claims that therefore there is no right and wrong in mathematics.
- I have explained more than once that intuition is a kind of cognition. There is no need for a reason, just as there is no need to explain our sight or our hearing.
- There is nothing to discuss regarding the reason, just as we do not discuss the reason we trust our sight. These are the tools of perception we have, and there are no others. If you are a skeptic, you do not accept them, but there is no answer to skepticism. And if you are not a skeptic, then you do accept them. There is no more fundamental principle that can explain the basis of our thinking and cognition. Explanations use these tools, and therefore there is no explanation for the tools themselves. Just as we would not look for an explanation of the basic laws of logic, because explanations make use of the laws of logic.
- What convinces you about intuitions? Your intuition? There is no way for you to escape placing trust in intuitions.
- You do not take one of them because you believe in both of them. This is not an arbitrary decision. There is a common mistake regarding the principle of the razor. It can decide between equivalent possibilities. But the principle of the razor cannot advance an option that is itself implausible. “There is no God” is an obviously implausible claim, so the fact that it is economical changes nothing. Believing in an electric field without a magnetic field is also more economical. But the fact is that there is also a magnetic field.
Discussion on Answer
And in fact, you are stating that I clearly and intuitively rely on my intuition, and therefore I cannot even cast doubt on it, just as I cannot justify my reason for believing my eyes, and just as I cannot come up with a logical argument to justify the laws of logic.
A few points:
1. I can provide evolutionary and practical reasons to trust my senses, even though I cannot really escape them. I can even understand their limitations and blind spots and try different ways to compensate for them.
2. Similarly with intuition, I can identify biases and points where it may mislead me, even though it is the only tool I have for identifying anything.
3. Justifying logic with logic is indeed paradoxical, but “understanding” (as opposed to justifying) intuition—and especially identifying its weak points through intuition itself—why not?
4. Intuition is indeed a priori and at the basis of all perceptions, but I can still understand that it was built through the evolutionary and environmental process, and therefore it is limited to what it can grasp. Intuition itself can help me reach the conclusion that it is itself limited (and perhaps even reliable only in specific domains).
5. The fact that it tells me that something (- God) exists out there does not necessarily imply that this is factually so. I can continue to take that idea and rub it against other intuitive perceptions (for example, that a concept like God is inconceivable) and conclude that one of them has to be given up. Which one? That is a new question, but both are still more or less equally “plausible.”
I don’t understand how we got to God. You asked about free will versus causality. As for your actual point, which I did not understand, the departure from infinite regress is not because there is an exceptional cause, but because there is an exceptional entity for which no cause is needed. The assumption is that a thing in our experience requires a cause, but another kind of entity perhaps does not.
In short, there cannot be an infinite chain of causes, so there must be a first cause. That’s all.
I never wrote anywhere that intuition cannot be doubted. On the contrary, I have written and said more than once that one can and should do that. But if there is no reason to reject it, I do not reject it.
I probably did not understand all the rest, but in any case I do not see anything new there.
I’m not sure I understand you well enough.
But regarding the point where you said that saying there is no God is implausible, let me phrase it this way: I have an intuition that everything has a cause (and therefore there is a first cause—God), but at the same time I have an intuition that everything has a cause (and therefore God cannot be without a cause), and these contradict each other. I can escape this regress only by assuming somewhere along the way that there must be one cause that departs from my intuitive understandings. But once we have reached the conclusion that my intuition is necessarily limited, why can’t I say that one moment before I imply a first cause? And thus remain with the uncertainty about what causes the universe (just as with the uncertainty about what causes God)? What exactly does the God hypothesis help us with if we necessarily end by limiting our intuition?
On what basis would you say that one is more implausible, once we have limited the tools for saying so in the first place?
In other words, I have two hypotheses (or intuitive paths) to choose from: one recognizes its built-in limits and pulls back before implying anything, the other implies God and then retreats. Why should the second be “more plausible”? And why shouldn’t Occam’s razor apply—that implying fewer things is more plausible?