Intuition vs Logic

Discussion in 'General Philosophy' started by Quantum Quack, Sep 27, 2004.

  1. Quantum Quack Life's a tease... Valued Senior Member

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    In an attempt to describe the thrust of this thread I have written a little story with a deliberately radical point of view.

    Tarzan lived in the Jungles of Africa, he didn’t know anything else beyond his favourite trees and the river that ran through his neck of the woods. He had heard wondrous tails of lands far away with exotic persons and foods and devices that defied description. To him life was very simple, intuitive and instinctive in it’s activities.

    One day along came Professor Livingston, who startled Tarzan one day while he was basking in the warm sunlight on a rocky outcrop over looking his favourite water fall.
    After his first reactions of fear subsided he asked Dr Livingston “why are you white?” Why is your skin white?”
    To which Dr Livingston said, “ I am white because that is what light my skin reflects”
    “What is Light?” Tarzan queried, already on his way to his first physics degree.
    “Light is the stuff that falls to the ground and bounces back in to your eyes” Dr Livingston replied.
    Tarzan thought for a moment and said, ”Oh no, that can’t be right the light is were I see it, it can’t be in my eyes!” “You would not fit in my eyes, for my eyes are so small and what I see is so big.”
    “But Tarzan the light is not where you see it, your brain just deals only with the light that enters your eye”
    “you mean that when I look up at the stars at night they aren’t up there they are only in my eyes?” Tarzan was a quick learner.
    “And what’s more the stars aren’t even where you think they are” Dr Livingston continued.
    “So Doctor” Tarzan said with tears in his eyes, “you have come into my life and tell me that all I see before me is an illusion, that I think you are there but you are not, that the stars, the sun and the moon are tricks of the light, that there is no truth in what I see and have seen all my life”

    “Oh Tarzan,” the doctor went on, “they are surely there but only because your brain says so”
    “So my brain tells me where the sun is and where the moon is and not the sun or the moon but only my brain.” “SO do you see what I see?” he asked the Doctor.
    “Yes I do Tarzan”. “Oh then we must share the same brain” Tarzan ventured, “for how could two brains see the same thing.
    “How could a million brains see the same thing from so many different positions and angles, truly this brain is amazing”
    “No”, the Doctor said “we don’t share the same brain”
    It was then that Tarzan started to smile and he said dismissing the Doctor with “ Ah now I know that you are crazy, that you think that a million separate brains can some how see the same thing all that information and all that light stuff and that it is pure illusion of what our brains can interpret. You doctor are crazy, now go away and let me live free of your illusion for I know what I see and where I see it, and know that when I shut my eyes at night the universe exists free of my interpretation of it
    .

    So often our need to apply logic over rules what we sense intuitively, When I look around me and consider what I see my intuition tells me that things are where they appear to be, that the light is where it appears to be, intuitively it is what it is, but science has proven or so it seems that what we see is only a brain interpretation . That what we see is an illusion of Neuro-chemistry, that for some amazing reason and miracle of evolutionary design all our brains are hardwired to interpret our senses the same way, in there basic form.
    Logic has ruled over intuition

    Intuitively we know that our brains can not possibly decipher so much information in real time, so many zillion bits of visual information every second of the waken day, and that’s only visual not to mention all the other sensory information and be able to see virtually what every one else sees, all 6 billion of us.
    That when you turn your head your brain has to re-interpret as you move….no this defies logic and good sense.

    Why it would be more intuitive and certainly more clever to allow the brain only the need to sense what exists and were it exists, with out the burden of creating a 4 dimensional map of our field of view. Only needing to process anything when we think about what we are looking at.

    But alas our logic dictates,

    Care to discuss?

    BTW I know my story sucks....ok

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  3. ProCop Valued Senior Member

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    But if you submerge a stick into the water (eg. 50 cm deep) the point of the stick is actually at a different place than where you see it. Therefore the way of logic is more accurate, because if you use the exact(eg. mathematical) positioning to establish the position of the top you put it in the right place, even though you eyes see it at a different place.
     
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  5. robtex Registered Senior Member

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    Your story is cracking me up!! bravo great job. It is an interesting topic though. I was reading years and years ago Galvin De Becker's book, "the gift of fear". De Becker is a researcher on rapists and volience in the workplace and he has, through numerous interviews with said offenders, reconstructed models or forumulas that they use and published them mostly for woman to read. One of his pet theories, which he pushes really hard is that intuition is the unconcious mind working faster than the conscious mind and processing details that we write off as intuition.

    In one example that he had he wrote about a real life rape that happened but changed all the identifing details like location and names of people involved. He reconstructed the story via the woman who came to him after she was raped and from the known mo of that particuar rapist. The story went like this:

    She went to her apartment with two full sacks of groceries and the groceries fell down the stairs. Around the corner comes a man saying hey need some help (or something like that cant remember exactly). she declines and he picks up the cat food that fell out and says hey i gotta help we have a hungry cat to feed. To make a long story short he persuades her to let him in just to use the rest room and he rapes her. He than tells her when he is through he will not hurt her but she has to stay in the bedroom while he escapes. For some reason her concious tells her that is not right and she runs out of her apartment to later learn he was heading to the kitchen for a knife to kill her with.

    When she tells De Becker the story she is telling him the whole time that things were not right and she didnt feel comfortable with him from the moment he helped her with his groceries.

    De Becker threw out a theory that in her subconsious though that was moving too fast for rational thought processed the following info:

    1) no door closed before he came around the corner meaning he was lurking not leaving the building like he was pretending to
    2) Most to all of his sentences were persuasions to try to get in apt attached to helping her
    3) in bedroom there was no motive for her to follow him to door right away meaning escape was not his motive for her to stay in bedroom

    Because of her uneasness and fear she couldn't rationalize the thoughts but later, much later after the incident she did.

    I can remember as a boy being terrified to swim but not knowing why. Eventually became a very profiecient swimmer but when i was young maybe three, four i was afraid of the water but too young for rational thought as to why. Learned later in life that

    1) other kids were afraid and i fed off their fear
    2) mother saw a man drown 5 years before i was born and was always edgy about my swim lessons.

    does anyone know of any research on this with a link?
     
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  7. Quantum Quack Life's a tease... Valued Senior Member

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    Procop, I think you are quite correct in saying this.
    If I gave Tarzan a bucket of water and a stick and asked him to tell me what he sees when he puts the stick in the water, he would say that he sees something strange about the stick, in that it looks refracted. Intuitive logic could be described as the most commonsense form of logic maybe.
    In a way I guess all logic is intuitive. the speed of application probably being a criteria as Robtex has suggested.
    So Tarzan sits there with his bucket of water and his stick, how many times does he poke the stick into the water before he understands what he is seeing? And understands that poking his stick into the water doesn't break his stick.?

    But in this case Tarzan is dealing with an observation that is quite tangible and quantifiable also harmless in that no threat is occuring.
     
  8. Quantum Quack Life's a tease... Valued Senior Member

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    A bit like showing Tarzan a mirror.... how long would he take to intuitively discover that he is seeing only a reflection of himself?
     
  9. glaucon tending tangentially Registered Senior Member

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    Gonna take a bit of an odd tack here but....

    What if we argue that logic (sic) is contextually embedded in our ontological environment?
    So, Tarzan 'operates' quite well in his own familiar surroundings, according to what we've called 'intuition', but what could simply be the 'logic of the jungle' (for lack of a better description). Logic, as we know it, wouldn't work for Tarzan here in the jungle. Now, take him out of the jungle and thrust upon him our logic. Tarzan falters. His 'intuition' surely is still with him, so to speak, and yet he cannot cope, or, must be taught to. Furthermore, from his point of view, we seem to have an 'intuitionistic' skill to operate quite well in the civilized environment.
    I don't mean to reduce this down to semantics, but I really do think that our concept of 'logic', as normally used, is much to inflexible. For example, one of the base axioms of Western logic is the Law of non-contradiction which, interstingly enough, is absent from some eastern logics that work quite well at dealing with the same kinds of problems we Westerners do. Even more interesting is the eventual 'watering down' of the Law of non-contradiction in Western logic and the growth of multi-modal logics to deal with certain quantum applications for example.
    ...I'm rambling now...
     
  10. firdroirich A friend of The Friends Registered Senior Member

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    Rambling with a clear point though. Here is another illustration of intuition-turned-knowledge. If you have never felt water but are immersed in it blind-folded, the first point of contact is not the visual sense. But after you have been taken out of it & see it you now "know" the feel of water even just by the sight of it. (Observe a baby the instant before it is immersed in water - it seems to know it's bath time yet no-one told it so.)
    So easily over looked, but this basic concept is the building blocks of " I can't see it, - I feel it . It feels like water. I see it - It looks like water. It tastes like water - it IS water."
    This builds a knowledge surpassing the collection of individual sense data because in any order the water is presented to you thereafter you will be able to ascertain what it is. It is approaching something by many ways leading to one & the same thing - a technique known in all eastern philosophies which is why sometimes there seems to be contradiction to someone who has not had the chance to arrive at a point in a similiar manner. This method aids in approaching something you have not encountered by it's "feel". Even though it's not a "feel" at all - it's actually a database of experience , the only way it can be described is a "feel", etc to someone not familiar with it. This may be the key difference in East\West modes of thought.

    It is noted that all Eastern philosophies refrain as much as possible from giving a "formula" for enlightenment, for example;there is no such thing the devotees learn. Only by using all the experiences is this achieved, resulting sometimes in enlightenment being reached by seemingly random ways like observing the flight of a moth etc which to the "logical" mind do not make any "sense" at all.
     
    Last edited: Sep 28, 2004
  11. Quantum Quack Life's a tease... Valued Senior Member

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    Glaucon,
    Some times rambling is a really good way of allowing other alternative thougths to be expressed an I thought your rambling was really appropriate given the rambling nature of my thread starter.

    And also firdroirich you pose interesting points.

    Is it worth saying that all logic in some from is intuitive yet some times the intuitive logic looses sight of the original intuition leading to a contradiction between what is originally intuitive and what has eventually been intuited.

    I have used the nature of light as an extreme example of how intuitive contradiction can arise. Yet neither Tarzans or Dr Livingstons view point is necessarilly correct.

    An example also to do with light can be drawn from the early realisation by Romer [1676] who studied Jupitiors moons and intuitively deduced the velocity of light by comparing the movements of Jupitors Moons against Earth orbit around the sun.

    Up until he published his resultant work people all over the world had no notion that light travelled and that as Tarzan felt everything was where it appeared to be. Suddenly peoples view of the universe changed and quite dramatically, what people accepted intuitively was now in conflict with another intuitive position.

    Of course since 1676 science has developed and confirmed the Romer predictions and logic.

    NOw just as an example of what I mean, imagine that later when Einstien came along with his famous relativity postulates that lights velocity was invariant and since then being fully accepted as sound intuitive logic. We have failed to draw the conclusion that Romer's work of 1676 is now rendered invalid becasue the invariants of light forbids Romers results. So we have a circular contradiction that means that relativity can not exist because Romer's experiments are invalid as per relativity which cancels out relativity in the mean time.

    So the premise that light has velocity lead to relativity which invalidates teh premise that light has velocity. so we have a big bum steer so to speak and 330 years of belief down the drain.

    So Tarzan sits in his Jungle having a little giggle because he knows that our belief that the brain interprets our environment only is dependent entirely on the velocity of light, and yet at the same time the velocity of light limits our ability to turn our heads and process all that we see simply becasue our neurological speed is way to slow to do the job. So logically we have a circular logic loop that stymmies any growth until uncovered.

    I am not sure I am explaining this at all well, how intuition can lead us astray becasue we loose sight of our intuition.....( circular again)
     
  12. duendy Registered Senior Member

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    ahhhhhhh, a NON white tarzan.....and i bet the doc was a louser swinger, mover, dancer. too much in his heead. more later......gotta swing
     
  13. ProCop Valued Senior Member

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    Amazing! But wouldn't you say that such attitude (experiencing feelings) is more or less a passive one? (If you compare them, Asia and the West, then the West, building on logic, has succeded in eg. splitting the atom...I do not think that you could gather scientific knowledge by such way..how do then Intuition and logic (co)operate eg. is Intuition echriched by discoveries made by logic?)
     
  14. Quantum Quack Life's a tease... Valued Senior Member

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    tarzan has a suntan....
     
  15. Quantum Quack Life's a tease... Valued Senior Member

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    I am not actually wanting to separate the two, logic is intuitive by nature but sometimes intuition seems not to be logical.

    for example 1+1 =2 is quite an intuitive formula and also a very logical one.
    one apple plus one apple equals two apples, even our hero Tarzan could work that one out.....intuitive an logical.....
     
  16. ProCop Valued Senior Member

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    If I look at intuition backwards I can see the logic of it.

    eg. There was this riddle: A woman has 7 children, half of them are boys. How come?


    I was reasoning appr.: that there are two groups of children in her family (3 boys and 3 girls) and one of those kids or doesn't belong to one of these two groups or it belongs to both of them...so I was resonning: the odd child was a hermaphrodite, (no), or it was not born yet, (no), I wanted to give it up but suddenly in a flash I saw it: All these kids were boys!

    So reasoning backwards qua logic is easy: The woman has 7 children (boys) thus the half of them is boys. But why coudn't I see this correct and simple logic forwards?
     
  17. Quantum Quack Life's a tease... Valued Senior Member

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    Good example..Procop

    Because the word "half" is a suggestive word that in 'common' use would imply differentiation of the genders. So your intuition is conditioned on that basis.

    But it is a very valid observation and question.

    So often a seemingly logical solution is in fact totally wrong. I suppose if you drew a matrix of algorhythms you could show the logic path and where the wrong assumptions or premises were being made. And I think you'd be surprised just how common this problem is, that is to say mistaken premise.
    As I posed earlier as a thought experiment, our entire understanding of the function of the human brain is based on the fact that light enters the eyes. Science can only draw conclusions from this premise, but if light does not enter the eyes the entire approach to this question is changed enormously.

    The other thing to consider that when there are many many logical steps it is very easy to go down a path that seems to justify itslef all the way until a point of time you realise that the path would be self justifiable no matter what the steps you took.

    This I think is what happens when ever you are working on a problem that is symetrical in it's make up and solution.

    The symetry creating teh self justifications and circular logic. But once you stop and ask your self the intuitive question, "Am I wasting my time or not"?" the answer invariably jumps right out at you....
     
    Last edited: Sep 28, 2004
  18. duendy Registered Senior Member

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    technicians ar probably the heroes for men in modern culture--not by me mind...i am crap at math. i blame it on the stupid abstracy way it was taught me, but i am, so thereeeee...dont care

    i see the vaule of ratio-nality. apparently 'rationality" and "reason" are words that came from Greece....their original meanings are "in the right proporation" hence 'ratio" "ration", thus rationality means 'right ratio"

    what has happened, is that that way of understanding reality--via ratio...and analysis has become ridiculously predominant, all the way from Plato. so now science is struggling to understand intuitive or subjective consciousness, its 'hard problem'

    goin back yo your tarzan story. that doc's view is only PART of the story.....its not the whole. the whole is un 'KNOW' able, because it IS whole. i am not getting all supernatrual here. The MEANING is not in the explantion of twhat the eyes are doing with the brain etc etc, but in that wondrous look at the stars and so on. THAt is the wonder. but knowing that doesn't discount analytical understanding, as long as we see it isn't 'only' or 'really' that
     
  19. Quantum Quack Life's a tease... Valued Senior Member

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    like...

    You have two parallel mirrors with a candle in between them. Which mirror has the most reflections of the candle?
     
  20. duendy Registered Senior Member

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    and who asking the question?
     
  21. Quantum Quack Life's a tease... Valued Senior Member

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    actually I am not asking a question, I am only showing an example.....
     
  22. duendy Registered Senior Member

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    i knew....
     
  23. duendy Registered Senior Member

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    ......yes, the 'Logos' becomes deified in ancient Greece, by well-to-do male thinker-philosophers, assuming that therer ways of 'working things out' MUST be "him" "up stairs", "God"

    then we get life all split up--not that it was JUST ancient Greek philosophers that did this cutting up of bad from good etc, but they formulated it into 'logic-al' theories

    yet, what could me more irrational than dividing 'matter' from 'spirit'. 'mind' from 'body' etc?
     

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