Kevin's Watch

Cambo wrote:Yeah that's something the philosophers get right, in principle anyway. I just find amusing how they try to escape from intuition as a basis of reasoning and usually fail. Just accept that intuition is a valid part of how we think and move on.

I don't think they try to escape from intuition, but intuition has to be justified. For example, if you're sitting under a tree and see an apple fall and have the intuition "Aha! That's caused by gravity!" That's all well and good, but it needs to be justified... in this case through the creation of calculus and repeated experimentation.

Orlion wrote:

Cambo wrote:Yeah that's something the philosophers get right, in principle anyway. I just find amusing how they try to escape from intuition as a basis of reasoning and usually fail. Just accept that intuition is a valid part of how we think and move on.

I don't think they try to escape from intuition, but intuition has to be justified. For example, if you're sitting under a tree and see an apple fall and have the intuition "Aha! That's caused by gravity!" That's all well and good, but it needs to be justified... in this case through the creation of calculus and repeated experimentation.

Good point. The vast majority of our advances/discoveries/insights work like that. Jump from rock to rock to cross the stream the first time...then build the bridge behind.

Cambo wrote:Just accept that intuition is a valid part of how we think and move on.

Intuition is a valid part of how we think, but it's not evidence. I tend to trust my intuition...my sense that something is "just wrong." But my feeling is not proof that it is wrong. And the simple fact is that my "feeling" that it's wrong does not actually make it wrong.

The problem arises when people make that assumption...just because I think it's wrong, (or because my church or political party does) nobody should be doing it. And we should stop them.

--A

I agree Av, and when I say that intuition should be accepted as a valid part of how we think, I don't mean to imply we should throw rationality or logic out the window.

It's definitely a problem when people seek to impose their intuitive understandings upon others. This is one of the most common accusations leveled against me when I debate my beliefs with atheists. While my beliefs in particular do not lead me to wish to impose harm or coercion upon other people, they say, the fact that I hold and defend my beliefs legitimises people who do. My mode of thought, they argue, differs from theirs only in content, while it is the entire model of faith-based reasoning which lies at the root of the problem.

Obviously I disagree, and it comes back around to our discussion on relative and absolute truths. I would describe myself as a relativist in secular matters. Coupled with the belief that all matters involving interactions with people are secular, there's simply no way I could justify the desire to make anyone think as I do. That's an entirely different midset, from, say, the fundamentalist.