intuition

intuition, in philosophy, the power of obtaining knowledge that cannot be acquired either by inference or observation, by reason or experience. As such, intuition is thought of as an original, independent source of knowledge, since it is designed to account for just those kinds of knowledge that other sources do not provide. Knowledge of necessary truths and of moral principles is sometimes explained in this way.

Some necessary truths—for example, statements of logic or mathematics—can be inferred, or logically derived, from others. But not all such statements can be so derived, and there must be some statements not inferred (i.e., axioms). Furthermore, the interconnected character of such a system, the derivability of statements from axioms, presupposes rules of inference. Because the truth of axioms and the validity of basic rules of inference cannot themselves be established by inference—since inference presupposes them—or by observation—which can never establish necessary truths—they may be held to be objects of intuition.

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atheism: Atheism and intuitive knowledge

Axioms are ordinarily truisms; consequently, self-evidence may be taken as a mark of intuition. To “see” that one statement follows from another, that a particular inference is valid, enables one to make an “intuitive induction” of the validity of all inferences of that kind. Other nonformal necessary truths (e.g., “nothing can be both red and green all over”) are also explained as intuitive inductions: one can see a universal and necessary connection through a particular instance of it.

Moral philosophers from Joseph Butler to G.E. Moore have held that moral assertions record knowledge of a special kind. The rightness of actions is discovered by a special moral faculty, seen as analogous to the power of observation or the power of intuiting logical principles. This theory, like that which holds logical principles to be the outcome of intuition, bases its case on the self-evident and unarguable character of the assertions with which it is concerned.

Much the same argument can be brought against both theories. The axioms of logic and morality do not require for their interpretation a special source of knowledge, since neither records discoveries; rather, they record resolutions or conventions, attitudes that are adopted toward discourse and conduct, not facts about the nature of the world or of man.

Two further technical senses of intuition may be briefly mentioned. One, deriving from Immanuel Kant, is that in which it is understood as referring to the source of all knowledge of matters of fact not based on, or capable of being supported by, observation. The other is the sense attached to the word by Benedict Spinoza and by Henri Bergson, in which it refers to supposedly concrete knowledge of the world as an interconnected whole, as contrasted with the piecemeal, “abstract” knowledge obtained by science and observation.