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This is going to be another of those obscure posts which will most likely not be of any interest to anyone. That said, onward and upward!
I have been troubled by something which Aristotle said regarding the nature of knowledge and reason. Aristotle placed a great deal of stock in man’s ability to reason, to progress logically from determined premises into new areas of knowledge. However, he made it clear that he did not consider this to be highest form of knowing, stating instead that there is a way in which we may know things that is even more sure and certain than logic. This form of knowing, Aristotle claims, is something called intuition.
This statement has troubled me profoundly. In what way can we say that intuition must be of a higher order of knowledge than logic? I have intuitions all of the time, hunches and feelings pushing me in one direction or the other. It is to my reason that I turn to keep me steady in the constant ebb and flow of my feelings of intuition. I have come to realize that Aristotle meant something very different when he used this word. When I use the word, I am thinking of a vague feeling which tells me that A is right a B is wrong.
To illustrate, imagine two cards from a deck are laying, face down, on a table and we are told that one of them is red and one is black. When asked which is which, I have a hunch (what I was calling intuition) that it is the card on the right. This is mere guesswork; I have a fifty percent chance of being correct. Aristotle meant something very different.
Aristotle tells us that our intuition is able to grasp truth and that it is absolutely certain. He is not entirely clear how this actually takes place, only that the truth is grasped by intuition upon seeing a situation or object a number of times. This is admittedly a little confusing. However, it is demonstrable that this (or something similar) must be true.
Logic is only able to function by building a structure upon premises which are obviously true, or which have been proven to be true by a prior exercise of logic (which must be built upon premises which are obviously true, or which have themselves been proven to be true by logic). Logic itself is unable to operate without certain premises on which to build. Where then do these premises originate? From intuition.
Very well, there must be some faculty (called intuition by Aristotle) which allows us to grasp fundamental premises. However, the question remains: On what grounds are we able to suggest that intuition is of a higher order than logical reasoning? This also is demonstrably correct, for we may only progress from that which is certainly true to that which is as certainly true or less certainly true. It is not possible to start with a premise which might be true and to end up with a conclusion which is certainly true. Thus the premises grasped by intuition are necessarily of a higher order of knowledge than the things which are possible to be derived from those premises.
It is through the combination of intuition and logical reasoning that mankind posses what was once called Reason, or rationality, or a rational soul. It is interesting to note that theologians have incorporated Aristotle’s conception of intuition into their understanding of angelic knowledge. It is said that angels know by pure intuition.
I merely mention this as an interesting fact, not as an argument for the existence of angels.
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There are some practical implications to what you say. A friend working in the computer industry tells me that there is an intuitive nature to human cognition that is frighteningly more accurate than the general logical reasoning of a computer.
The observation of the necessary basis of logic finds some echo also in the philosophy of science writings of Thomas Kuhn, and in Christian presuppositional apologetics (a la Cornelius Van Til)
Hey, I would to just say your blog is freaking awesome. Your essays are amazing and full of light. I would like to speak to you sometime. Thank You
The Philosopher King has a fan!
Hmmm, we definately have different mindsets. Perhaps you operate on 'intuition', and I operate on 'reason' (not saying one is higher than the other)! I can remember liking Aristotle, but would likely disagree on most things if I were to read his works today.
Can something actually be 'less true' than something else? Not that I can immediately conclude.
I can only agree with the notion of 'intuition' in the sense that we often use logic without even realizing it. We know the ball will fall to the ground once you release it. This is logic, since we have seen this reaction since the time we were born.
Is the question whether the deer runs from the wolf due to its 'intuition' OR its 'reason'?
Can you think of any possible example that would fall into your category of 'intuition'?
Is that a bad thing:)
Not that I can see, but it has its implications as to the nature of 'knowledge'.
Capitalist, I think the point is not that something is "less true" per se, but that something may be "conditionally true," that is, that knowledge which is based upon logic is true only if some precondition is true. Intuition, on the other hand, (according to the Philosopher King's representation of Aristotle) is something which is "unconditionally true."
For example, you may say that a=c if a=b and b=c. a=c is a logical statement which is dependent on the conditions a=b and b=c to be true. Therefore, while it is not "less true," it is contingent upon other truths in order to be...true.
Intuition would then be a truth that is self-evident and requires no logic to be known to be true. I don't know much about that, but I'd guess this would be a statement such as "I exist," or, even better, I'm sure that there are preconditions to the entire field of logic (which I might know if I'd ever taken a logic course) which could probably be considered intuition.
Another way of looking at it might be that logic may be proven wrong (in my example, you could find out that b does not equal c, and therefore the original statement a=c is false), while intuition is necessarily true.
Anon: Very interesting. I was unaware of any such correlation (computer to human reasoning), but can see this as being a fundamental difficulty in the search for AI.
Leon: It's good to have you here! Chatting is a little tricky, but I am happy to discuss pretty much anything. Feel free to bring up anything you like!
Capitalist: I am not sure if you really disagree with Aristotle on this one. The important thing to remember is that he is not using intuition in the sense that we use the word today. This is what threw me off as well. He is using the word intuition to mean that faculty by which we are able to grasp fundamental concepts, like Man or Home or Love. Without these basic concepts (what unless I am misusing the term were once called "the forms") we cannot understand anything.
To use your example we can only say that "the ball will fall to the ground" if we know what "ball," "fall," "ground," and necessity (in the form of will) mean. Does that make sense or am I way off the deep end here?
You're not off the deep end. I was going by the notion that 'intuition' was not 'learned', which I guess is due to the common use of the word. In the sence that we are using 'intuition' here it is not actually a natural form of knowledge, but rather a form of knowledge which is taught to us in a different way than 'logic' is taught.
Ben: I'm just a little hung up on how we say a=b to begin with. Judging by Torq's follow-up, we can only say a=b because we recognize 'a' to exist, and just define it to be 'b'. ie: 'Love' exists whether we define it or not, but we have decided to describe the concept and call it 'love'.
Ben: Sorry, we posted at about the same time. I would say that you are correct in your assessment of intuition and agree that the word "contingent" more accurately represents what I meant.
Capitalist: You are onto something which I feel to be very important. You say that "'Love' exists whether we define it or not..." This is a pathway out of a lot of the confusion caused by modern philosophers who feel that we created the concept of love by the act of defining it. If that were the case than there would have been nothing there to define in the first place!
Also, Ben's example is a little simple (one thing being the same as another is only one simple form of logic) and so doesn't quite show the depth of the concept. Using the fundamental concept of Love, we can look around and see various forms of love (for the sake of tradition let's call them Eros and Agape). Both of these secondary concepts depend on the primal concept of Love to exist.
Please write more:)
*chuckles* Sure! It is still a little trickey for me to access the internet on a regular basis, which is why I haven't been posting as much as I usually would.
What in particular are you interested in talking about?
Is there anything interesting you have been reading about? Want to share a few good titles?
Right now I am reading the Qu'ran and a book explaining the Qu'ran to me. It is pretty interesting, but you kinda have to be interested in theology, ethics, or religion before this would be interesting. If you are, I highly recommend it!
Also, I am still working my way through a couple of books which try to explain the Summa Theologica, but again, this is pretty topical to my specific interests.
Other than that, just reading a couple of old favorites. You can always see what I am reading on the left hand side of my blog.
Duplicate post deleted by Management.
~ The Management
Well, hunch and intuition are two different words. Even intuition has more than one definition. Most words have perhaps six, on average. Then a word is nuanced by it's larger context and the words it's used with in the sentence.
The whole mind uses all logics. And there are differences in the types of analysis used in different fields.
I bring all that up as a partial model for all questions involving words and logic. Analytical methods in math are different then those in literature, for instance. If we only know what we know, it takes thousands of years to calculate mathematically what I can say to my wife tonight.
Sometimes ideas just come out of the blue, forced on us. It's a good idea to know how that works. Who could better tell you than your own mind? Where do ideas come from anyway?
The subconscious is using any and all tools we have, plus a few of it's own, including the ability to compare millions of images for matches and mismatches, non verbals, plus some use of our math skills, if they are good.
In short it takes everything we know, feel or have ever known, smelled, seen, felt and heard and have forgotten, into account. That's awesome.
Always right. I don't think so, but it presents an issue and we can then analyze it. It is about something, that is for sure, and, I find, something that we need to look at, such as why are we trying to guess a card? Do we believe in magic and what makes us wonder if it's possible by some other means to even be usually right, than looking?
Intuition not just a word, perhaps few words are, but it's a vast subject. Hope that helps a little. Maybe Poincare, On Intuition or Einstein, but the research is pretty new and I don't have original sources.
Oh, I missed something. Cognitive Psychology indicates that there are thoughts behind feelings. We may not want to know them, but they are there ready to be analyzed, so if we want rational emotions, check the thoughts behind them and adjust as necessary. You can test it yourself, independently. You know, dependent, independent and interdependent. I suppose that helps train the subconscious also. Emotional Intelligence finding are that we are about six emotionally. Emotionally dependent on scientists, leaders and someone to think for us. Intuition isn't advertised, because it doesn't pay anyone but you, if you use it and me, if you cure whatever I'm bound to get, eventually.
Hey Harold! Thanks for the interesting comments. As I often tend to think when I return to a subject which I wrote on awhile ago, I feel that the way which I approached this subject could have been handled much better. Part of this refining of my thought comes from insightful comments such as your own!
The central point which I was considering was the question of where our basic concepts come from. It is a logical surety that they must come from somewhere, there must be some uncontrovertible truth at the back of reality if our thoughts are to have any truth value at all. The search for such basic or foundational truths makes up a great deal of the history of philosophy.
In the version of Aristotle which I was studying above, he explained that we are able to "pick up" our concepts by the use of a term which was translated as "intuition." I have since determined that this was not really the best translation of the term which Aristotle was using, as it has a rather over specific meaning in English which clutters up the concept.
Let me try to explain my above point again, with my better understanding of the subject. One of the central questions of knowledge is "where do our concepts come from?" This question is complicated because no one is able to remember the process by which he or she first started picking up concepts, we were all far too young to remember this process when it first began. Now when we approach a new concept we typically do so by relating the new concept to a concept which we already had. I don't know what an "aspen" is, but I can categorize the information because I know what a "tree" is.
But really, where does the concept of "tree" come from? Aristotle argues that it comes first from our experience with trees, I can see that the Birch and the Maple in my yard are both of the same "type" of thing because they look, smell, sound, and behave similarly. Through our experience with different types of trees (which is always specific and individual) we are able to form the concept of "treeness" which is abstract and non-material. When you try and think of the essential characteristics which make a tree a tree and not something else (a rock, flower or cloud) you are not really thinking of any specific tree, but rather that which is common to all trees.
It is this process of gathering information and forming it into separate concepts which I was calling "intuition" above. In this way my writing above is misleading, and it has caused much of the confusion which you can see in the comments section.
The mind, and it's understanding, categorizing and comparing are actually what thinking is built on and made of. The many, many processes going on automatically in the mind are more directly connected with reality and accessed by intuition, or connection with the whole brain and all the senses. Intuition calculates furiously. It is way ahead of us.
It gets kind of weird sounding to explain it, but your mind is what tells you what your dreams mean, if you ask yourself. It will also tell you how it thinks. Science is even saying that we don't think, in our verbal mind, but it is done, almost exclusively in the whole mind, preconscious, non verbal mind, if you will.
To me that means it sends you the questions in the first place, for you to 'approve'. If you ask it a question, it will answer or tell you where to get the information, again, if you ask.
It might say, "Should I say that?", and it is you, so it's logical, but you could even look at is as one part of the brain asking the verbal mind and fetching answer.
After all, if you go out, did you do it or your body, and your decision. How could you possibly coordinate all the required actions.
It's a very fast processor handling millions of instructions a second. You can't possibly handle all that 'consciously'.
I think Aristotle meant exactly what he said. And to make it real clear, Einstein said, "The only real valuable thing is intuition." He wanted to leave no doubt, I mean, how plain can you get that some idiot won't wont come along and misunderstand it. Try this one and I'm out of here. I sure appreciated your response. I wouldn't have seen it, but I happened to return to look at what you said again. Did I appreciate it?
"Isn't truth inherent in man?" I interjected. "You once told me that progress is made only by intuition, and not by the accumulation of knowledge." "It's not as simple as that," replied Einstein. "Knowledge is necessary, too. An intuitive child couldn't accomplish anything without some knowledge. There will come a point in everyone's life, however where only intuition can make the leap ahead, without ever knowing precisely how. One can never know why, but one must accept intuition as a fact." http://intuition-indepth.blogspot.com/2007/11/einsteins-intuition.html
Only we do know why now.
"Gerd Gigerenzer argues that most decision theorists who have discussed bounded rationality have not really followed Simon's ideas about it. Rather, they have either considered how people's decisions might be made sub-optimal by the limitations of human rationality, or have constructed elaborate optimising models of how people might cope with their inability to optimize. Gigerenzer instead proposes to examine simple alternatives to a full rationality analysis as a mechanism for decision making, and he and his colleagues have shown that such simple heuristics frequently lead to better decisions than the theoretically optimal procedure." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bounded_rationality
"It is inevitable that in the near future, neuroscience will unleash a veritable revolution in consciousness and its study, that will result in a paradigm shift orders of magnitude larger than any in science preceding it." http://brainmeta.com/
* Intuition (philosophy), the act by which the mind perceives the agreement or disagreement of two ideas
* Intuition (knowledge), understanding without apparent effort
Wikipedia
“Intuition will tell the thinking mind where to look next.” Jonas Salk, medical researcher, virologist
"Intuition becomes increasingly valuable in the new information society precisely because there is so much data.” John Naisbitt
"When the logician has resolved each demonstration into a host of elementary operations, all of them correct, he will not yet be in possession of the whole reality, that indefinable something that constitutes the unity ... Now pure logic cannot give us this view of the whole; it is to intuition that we must look for it." ― Henri Poincaré, mathematician
"It is often held that scientific hypotheses are constructed, and are to be constructed, only after a detailed weighing of all possible evidence bearing on the matter, and that then and only then may one consider, and still only tentatively, any hypotheses. This traditional view however, is largely incorrect, for not only is it absurdly impossible of application, but it is contradicted by the history of the development of any scientific theory. What happens in practice is that by intuitive insight, or other inexplicable inspiration, the theorist decides that certain features seem to him more important than others and capable of explanation by certain hypotheses. Then basing his study on these hypotheses the attempt is made to deduce their consequences. The successful pioneer of theoretical science is he whose intuitions yield hypotheses on which satisfactory theories can be built, and conversely for the unsuccessful (as judged from a purely scientific standpoint)." Sir Fred Hoyle (1911-1995), Astronomer, Co-author with British astronomer, Raymond Arthur Lyttleton.
"My view of the matter, for what it is worth, is that there is no such thing as a logical method of having new ideas, or a logical reconstruction of this process. My view may be expressed by saying that every discovery contains an 'irrational element,' or 'a creative intuition,' in Bergson's sense. In a similar way Einstein speaks of the 'search for those highly universal laws ... from which a picture of the world can be obtained by pure deduction. There is no logical path.' he says, 'leading to these ... laws. They can only be reached by intuition, based upon something like an intellectual love (Einfühlung) of the objects of experience.' (1959)" ― Karl Raimund Popper, philosoper, The Logic of Scientific Discovery: Logik Der Forschung (2002)
"Thus, in a sense, mathematics has been most advanced by those who distinguished themselves by intuition rather than by rigorous proofs." Felix Klein, Mathematician http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Felix_Klein
"For whereas the mind works in possibilities, the intuitions work in actualities, and what you intuitively desire, is possible to you. Whereas what you mentally or "consciously" desire is nine times out of ten impossible; hitch your wagon to star, or you will just stay where you are." D. H. Lawrence (1885 - 1930)
“The object of mathematical rigor is to sanction and legitimize the conquests of intuition, and there was never any other object for it.” J. Hadamard, Mathematician
Aren't you glad the universe is not all cut and dried, but is infinitely complex for our unending wonderment?
Howdy Harold. Welcome back! I cannot say with surety weather or not you appreciated my response, but I can be certain that I appreciate yours!
I am indeed quite glad that our universe is complex and beautiful and I do not think that I really disagree with you. I think we would say the same thing in slightly different ways.
For instance I would interpret you post to be largely an expression of the ideals of Mysticism, a tradition which I am unable to disparage. I do agree that there are times when we (human beings) are somehow able to make an intuitive leap and to grasp onto a truth (or even a part of the Truth) in a way which leaves the plodding of methodical reason in the dust. However, I would maintain that the leaps of our intuition must be analyzed in the light of reason and if they cannot be reconciled, we must conclude that our intuitive leap failed to stick the landing.
There is no question that this view is in keeping with your quoted mathematicians and scientists, for they were supremely rigorous in subjecting their intuitive leaps to the processes of reason and logic. To do otherwise is to deny that there is any truth beyond the self, and that view I cannot accept.
Now, to defend your point of view, according to Aristotle, intuition is incapable of error but I suspect that he would mean something somewhat different than you when he says this. He said this because he argued that it was from intuition that his basic concepts were derived. If the basic concepts were anything less than certainly true, all the conclusions of reason would be questionable and there would be no way to perceive or know truth at all.
To shift things a little bit, in your discussion of mind you mentioned several things which I agreed with but which made me stop and question them. I agree that the mind does many things of which we are unconscious: walking and breathing, talking and typing, all involve complexities which I cannot control consciously. However, if we accept that much of what we do and think is happening on a level which we cannot access, to what extent are WE actually doing them. It just seems that this might throw us back on the horns of the "free-will" dilemma (which of course I am still very interested in). Is it really US doing those things if we are not conscious of them. Might it not be more accurate to say that our brains or our bodies do these things?
For instance, someone suffering from a brain injury who must re-learn how to walk has not had an injury to the self, but to the body. Yet it is the physical processes which are interrupted, not the process of the will (which remains the same).
I'm not sure... It's something to muse about for sure!
John Dewey said that all truths are half truths. No sentence can very easily say everything without context. For one thing we have to make some assumptions to understand anything. One is that we have to assume someone is saying something that is correct and we just don't understand and have to think harder to see what is meant. When we make sense of it, then that is what the person we are interviewing meant.
We like to maintain the illusion that we can easily know the truth about something, but without using our intuition, it's just not so. Even then we may be able to misunderstand. When we consider others as better than ourselves and use all our senses, we can better understand the other person. Any exceptions are probably paradoxes, apparent contradictions. The world is full of them.
It's nice to easily blow something off someone, but much harder to understand them, without intuition, that is.There is so much to cover and so little time we have to filter things. The whole brain doesn't have such a handicap there either. It's much faster. In sports it's called 'getting into the zone'.
It is assumed that we would test intuitions, it's the scientific method. How else could we be even relatively sure. And if intuition is accessing our vast data base of experiences, decisions and everything else we have, of course we wouldn't have any intuition, if we had brain damage.
And of course Aristotle checked his information, that's how he knew it was true. So do they all and I do too.
Anyone can rationalize around anything, but it's not impossible to detect our intuitions, distinguish them from notions, test them and see for ourselves. We don't really need an authority to test everything for us.
I find the universe to be very mathematical, logical. Everything seems to have has a valid explanation.
Absolutes are relative in that they are relative to each other, some applying in one situation and others in another.
And on truth, most all philosophers know they have to pass everything by Wittgenstein. He wrote some impossible stuff, but the easy part was really easy, at least for me.
Bertrand Russel's math was way beyond me too, but, like Ayn Rand, his applications to other things were more personal preferences, emotional than logical and more to do with lack of knowledge in all subjects. Who could know everything?
Those are cursory comments. It's a leap to make sense of them.
Hrld
Oh, I always forget something. We can partly recognize intuition from the hint Einstein gives us. "If an idea doesn't seem wrong at first, there is no hope for it." Intuitions tend to be 'counter intuitive'. Obviously that phrase is misused. Paradox is so misused that I even read someone who said apparent paradox, to distinguish it from contradictions, as paradox is usually used wrongly too. In affect what they had said is, apparent, apparent contradictions in order to say paradox. It's really getting pitiful out here.
Anyway, when we get an intuition, it often doesn't seem right, but we can just ask it. It will tell us. It's really very friendly. After all it's us. I have to wonder if it doesn't connect with the spirit of truth. After all, what is "the helper", if it doesn't help?
Can I scold you? I'm old enough. Your mind does use reason. It just doesn't have to be verbally conscious. Why assume that it is. It's non verbal reasoning. Doesn't your reason tell you that?
Yeash. Get your thinking caps on, children. Blah, blah, blah. Do some research. You know that knowledge is doubling every few months. I wish I had more reference on hand. Some good articles on emotional intelligence in sports, cognitive therapy.
What? You thought it was easy? Nag, nag. Youtube's google tech talks on "neuroscience of emotions" is interesting, if not helpful. Like there isn't a book out there on intuition?
Name changed to protect the innocent. Ok, it's me.
Hmmm... I'm going to have to start asking people to at least use a pseudonym because this is starting to get confusing! Out on a limb here, all these Anon posts are by Harold? Maybe? I'm going to assume they are and respond to them all together.
First off, of course you can scold me. Scolding has nothing to do with age or permission. It's something which you do to someone else and I'm certainly not going to try and stop you. I may, as in this case, disagree with you, however. Please note, that the use of the term "intuition" below is not being used in the very specific sense which I have defined above.
You are very clearly articulating the very thing which I happen to disagree with when arguments using things such as "intuition" (in the sense you are using it) come up. Let's just slow down for one moment and really look at what you are saying once it is isolated from the various quotes that you are using.
You have a feeling of a certain sort that one thing is right and and another thing is wrong. You can't explain why this is, it simply is a fact present to you in your conscious mind. This is the thing that you are calling intuition. From a purely experiential standpoint you must concede that your "intuition" in this sense is obviously not infallible. I know this because I myself have often had "intuitions" in this sense which later turned out to be simply wrong.
These "intuitive" feelings may lead brilliant people (and even normal people such as myself) to make cognitive leaps which later turn out to be true. However, we are only able to know this (really know it) by a meticulous process of reason. It is dangerous, and foolhardy, to assume that our feeling is going to be correct. How could it be? You have an "intuition" of one thing while I have an "intuition" that the opposite is true. Clearly one of us is wrong and "intuition" in this sense cannot be the barometer of truth.
Now, for the sake of clarity, I want to state that I am not suggesting that "intuition" in this sense is always wrong. If I stand on a frozen lake watching the snow fall, my conscious mind might not notice that there is a subtle cracking sound. Perhaps all that I would know is that I have a sudden "intuition" that I ought to get off of the ice. This might save my life. However, even in this case, how can we KNOW that my life was saved? We would have to subject this hypothesis to critical evaluation.
A couple of quick points to finish up:
If you check out my various posts, you will see that I do not maintain that the Truth is ever easy to understand. Indeed, I maintain that it is impossible to truly understand more than a small fragment.
I'd encourage you to be more meticulous in your efforts here. You are saying something important, but I feel like your message is getting lost in your contradictory exclamations and expositions. If you are right, argue cleanly and clearly and I will acknowledge my errors. We are fellow searchers for the truth. We are on the same team.
Lastly, and this is just because I've heard this argument before, knowledge is not doubling every few months. I am highly skeptical if our knowledge of the universe has truly doubled in the last century, yes even considering all the leaps of the "scientific" and "information" ages. Who truly would have the perspective to make such a claim anyways? You would have to know everything there is to know, and then know that it has doubled.
Even if it were, that is no ultimate balm for the human condition. Even traveling at infinity minus one we will never reach infinity ourselves. Nor will our children or our children's children. We must look elsewhere for hope.
Intuition is an accumulation of unconsciously processed knowledge from our senses. Great scientists made use of intuition before embarking on the discovery of the new. It is unwise for a scholar to make inquiry into something without 'knowing' the result or outcome of his experiment or research. Researchers tend not to embark in proving what science has already ‘proven’ to be false UNLESS they are following their intuition. While no researcher might be interested in the mating patterns of green cows because we 'know' there aren’t any, another researcher might have an interest in genetically engineering a green cow without yet knowing how to do so based on his intuitive instinct. He discerns the possibility of genetically engineering a green cow while others deem it impossible. At one time Tesla’s, Edison, and other successful scientists’ ideas were deemed impossible due to lack of empirical proof, and the foundation upon where we could base our judgment on what is or is not logical. Yet these scientists set out to materialize what they had known intuitively.
There is a school of thought surrounding the idea of better-developed and underdeveloped intuitive faculty. It is difficult, if not impossible, to prove what was based on intuition verses a mere hunch or idea not based on information collected, processed, analyzed, and synthesized with rapid speed, and without conscious awareness in our brain. We can only ascertain what was based on intuition, if we can ascertain it at all, in time and if that the person knew intuitively has been proven empirically.
Therefore, intuition is a higher form of knowledge and/or awareness we have that takes us beyond the 'logical,' and beyond what we know PRIOR to having empirical evidence that what we KNOW without proof, is what IS once proven empirically. For this reason, intuition reigns supreme to logic because while man at times is unable to consciously phantom HOW something can be done due to the absence of knowledge in a specific area or field, he can KNOW intuitively what really IS.
Angé IF
You said: "Aristotle tells us that our intuition is able to grasp truth and that it is absolutely certain.
Makes sense to me.
You said: Logic is only able to function by building a structure upon premises which are obviously true, or which have been proven to be true by a prior exercise of logic
A logical argument can be based on true premises, be valid, but not sound.
You said: Logic itself is unable to operate without certain premises on which to build. Where then do these premises originate? From intuition.
Man is at times unable to determine what is logical or not logical due to absence of knowledge. Intuition, as a faculty, is based on knowledge we have accumulated and processed at such great speed that we are unable to bring the information to consciousness. Intuition is indeed based on sound logic, but man might often come short of the symbols needed to describe how he obtained the information-intuitively.
You said: However, the question remains: On what grounds are we able to suggest that intuition is of a higher order than logical reasoning?
It is a higher form of reasoning for that reason. Intuition is based on sound reasoning unknown to us because we do not have all the premises in place yet--we do not possess all the information for us to postulate what the premises are.
You said: It is not possible to start with a premise which might be true and to end up with a conclusion which is certainly true. Thus the premises grasped by intuition are necessarily of a higher order of knowledge than the things which are possible to be derived from those premises.
It is not the premises that are of higher order but HOW we come to know what we know that is of higher order. Premises used to arrive at a conclusion based on information we know, and the premises used to arrive at a conclusion based on information gathered as the result of intuition faculty AFTER 'proving' what we knew intuitively must be the same, valid and sound.
You said: It is interesting to note that theologians have incorporated Aristotle’s conception of intuition into their understanding of angelic knowledge. It is said that angels know by pure intuition. I merely mention this as an interesting fact, not as an argument for the existence of angels.
If angels are creatures of 'God,' then why would they need to know intuitively versus knowing because of direct communication with 'God?' What is interesting is Aristotle's acceptance of God --he referred to 'God' as the 'unmoved mover.' Perhaps his understanding of intuitive knowledge stems from what Aristotle himself knew intuitively--that there are things that man is unable to prove empirically, yet do not cease to exist because of our inability to 'explain' them empirically.
Angé IF
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