An nuanced article about intuition

[Loisenman]

I am making my 1997 paper on intuition readily available on the web. It has been difficult to get. It is relavant to all realms of knowledge, not only science--including politics.

"TOWARDS AN UNDERSTANDING OF INTUITION AND ITS IMPORTANCE IN SCIENTIFIC ENDEAVOR"
(Lois Isenman, Perpsectives in Biology and Medicine, 3, (1997), 395-403.)

Download pdf: http://people.brandeis.edu/~lisenman/Perspectives.pdf

SUMMARY: Intuition is defined as a bridging function that brings to awareness information that is beyond voluntary recall yet has the potential to impact thought and action significantly. It brings the power of the unconscious mind with its associative processing, its speed, and its ability to process multiple items in parallel into conscious thought. The unconscious often expresses itself in images or metaphors that present a multilayered, richly textured, and very often surprising understanding of the object under consideration. For example, early in my investigation of intuition, in response to the question, "What is intuition?" after a moment of searching, the phrase "a blink of the eye" came to mind. Several other images followed as well.

In scientific work, intuition perhaps more often brings the power of the unconscious mind to bear on conscious thought by suggesting analogies to other systems which share illuminating similarities and differences with the system under consideration. The unconscious mind appears to have access to logic-like as well as more clearly associative processing modes. Indeed, sometimes the only apparent difference between intuitive processing and conscious rational processing of information is that intuitive processing is much faster. The potential role in intuition of feeling, a non-rational capacity for fine discrimination, which is much faster than thought, is also explored using another personal vignette. The last sections of the paper examine the limits of intuition in scientific inquiry.

weblog: Intuition In-depth: Bridging Science and Spirituality
http://intuition-indepth.blogspot.com


Lois Isenman
Resident Scholar
WSRC
Brandeis University

[Bunny]

1. I'm bookmarking this to read later. Thanks for posting!

[Ilsa]

2. Thank you for the links! I took a couple of classes in cognitive scince

ages ago in Dallas and wish I could have kept up my studies. I love reading about this subject.

[AZBlue]

3. Fascinating!!

Thank you for making this available!

[lildreamer316]

4. WOW!! Thank you, and Welcome to DU!!

This teaser is interesting and I am reading on...

[crispini]

5. K&R

Just downloaded it -- looks like a good read, thanks!

[DemExpat]

6. Thanks for sharing this, Lois.

Bookmarking to read your paper as well as some interesting links.

:hi:

DemEx

[Uncle Joe]

7. I believe our intuition is our connection to the universe, the greater whole.

Our conscious minds serve for individual survival. I'm not sure we can do both at the same time, I believe this is why meditation works, you have to quiet the conscious mind first. I'm not familiar with Spinoza, did he believe in meditation?

Welcome to D.U. Loisenman:hi: and thanks for the thread

Kicked and recommended

[Loisenman]

15. I agree heartily

Yes it is so important to quiet the unconscious mind---and so hard to do so. It is really at the core of deep intuition. I am sure that Spinoza mediated in his own way--perhaps as he was grinding lenses, which is the way he made his living. In any case, his ideas resonate strongly with with Buddhist views.

[rumpel]

8. welcome to DU

definitely will read it.

thank you

[hvn_nbr_2]

9. Thanks for this.

I haven't finished it yet but it looks quite interesting so far.

The ideas in your paper may be somewhat related to an idea I've been tinkering with recently, that emotion is sometimes a manifestation of quite a bit of unconscious processing of information that comes out as an emotion rather than as a well-formed logical thought and happens much more quickly than logical reasoning could achieve a valid conclusion.

You have me now thinking that, in such cases, intuition (viewed approximately in the sense that you mention Linus Pauling's intuitive grasp of a whole in a single instant) may sometimes manifest consciously as a logical, explicable thought as in the Pauling case but may also sometimes manifest as an emotional reaction to an underlying perception that either isn't yet clearly logical and explicable, or that has an associated "personal value judgment" such as threat, harm, or beneficial possibility to the intuiter, or even possibly is "unacceptable" for some reason and is unconsciously censored so that it can only come out as an emotional reaction without conscious awareness of the unacceptable cognitive thought.

I got onto this train of thought because of a couple recent experiences when I had an emotional reaction that seemed inexplicable at the time but eventually turned out to seem to be a very perceptive response to a much clearer unconscious understanding of the situation than I was consciously able to perceive at the time. A common similar situation might be the "first impression" reaction that someone can have when meeting someone new and immediately (and accurately) trusting, distrusting, liking, or not liking the person, without any consciously clear reason for doing so.

Gee, I hope this made sense to somebody.

[Loisenman]

14. It makes good sense to me

You have a good feel for intuition. You might enjoy the work of Antonio Damasio. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antonio_Damasio.

His book <i>Descartes' Error</i> deals with the emotional aspect of intuition, and is a pretty good read.

You might also enjoy my blog article "Reason vs. Intuition" http://intuition-indepth.blogspot.com/2006/11/reason-vs-intuition_12.html for a funny story about when reason and intuition conflict.

[blueworld]

10. Thanks very much, Lois

I also am bookmarking for more thorough review later.  I have
a hunch I'll learn a great deal!  (I get such a kick out of
myself).

[bliss_eternal]

11. kicking...

:kick:

[WiseButAngrySara]

12. This is a topic that I have been curious about for a long time.

I'm trained scientifically, but believe that it does not in anyway contradict spirituality. I can't wait to read the article/paper in depth. Thank you for posting, and Welcome to DU!

:hi: and :kick: and R!

[ms liberty]

13. Cool! Thanks and Welcome to DU loisenman! KR&B n/t