INTUITIVE KNOWLEDGE By PAULSON JOSEPH (9013)

INTUITIVE KNOWLEDGE

The term intuition is used to describe thoughts and preferences that come to mind quickly and without much reflection. The word intuition comes from the Latin word intueri, which is often translated as meaning to look inside or to contemplate. Intuition provides us with beliefs that we cannot necessarily justify. Intuitive knowledge is the irresistible and indubitable perception of the agreement of any two ideas without the mediation of any other. This is the clearest and most perfectly certain of all degrees of human knowledge. It accounts for our assent to self-evident truths and serves as the foundation up-on which all other genuine knowledge must be established. Intuition is most common in our knowledge; each thinking being has an intuitive knowledge of its own existence.

Even when the agreement of ideas is not intuitively obvious, it may be possible to discover a series of intermediate ideas by means reason establishes a connection between them. The resulting demonstrative knowledge of the agreement of the original ideas shares in the certainty of the intuitive steps by means of which it has been proven, yet there is some loss of assurance resulting from the length of the chain itself. The success of the entire process depends upon our having clear ideas at each step of the process of demonstration and upon our ability to perceive the agreements between them, and both of these conditions are specific to the nature of human intellectual abilities.

The most common area of demonstrative human knowledge is mathematics, where our possession of distinct ideas of particular quantities yields the requisite clarity, disciplined reasoning helps to uncover the intermediate links that establish knowledge of identity and relation, and a perspicuous system of symbolic representation helps us to preserve the results we have obtained.  We may be capable of demonstrative knowledge of moral relations as well, provided that we take care in the formation of abstract ideas of the mixed modes of human action. Our only demonstrative knowledge of real existence, he supposed, is that we can have with respect to God.

Although only intuition and demonstration offer certain knowledge of general truths, but it is supposed that sensitive knowledge provides some evidence of the existence of particular objects outside us. Although it is not always true that there must exist an external object corresponding to each of our ideas of sensation, it is argued that veracious cases are different enough from illusory cases to warrant an inference to the real existence of their objects, especially when the accompanying perception of pleasure or pain serves as a reliable guide to the practical conduct of human life. Intuitive knowledge occurs in a spontaneous non sequential, instantaneous flash, not preceded by a logically related or associated thought or not followed by one but a moment's flash may contain a vast universe condensed in a single point of light.

Source of reference: www.philosophypages.com/locke/g04.htm