Intuition Essay, Research Paper

I have taken a great interest in the category of “Intuition”. This topic became very fascinating to me about 3 years ago. Actually in some incidences I depend on my intuitive sense to guide me in the right direction.

This essay will deal with a in depth look into the meaning of “intuition”.Also a overview concerning two songs including lyrics. I truly feel these lyrics sum up what I feel intuition means to me.

Intuition is the knowledge of a concept, truth, or solution to a problem, which is arrived at apparently spontaneously, without conscious steps of reasoning or inquiry.{Grolier 1997}.

Intuitive insights suddenly appear as ideas or feelings. The solution to a problem leaps into your mind. You have a strong anxiety about taking some action but cannot understand why. Where do these things come from? You are continually, without conscious attention, recognizing patterns in the stream of sensations that impinge upon you. If one of these is important it is suddenly brought to your conscious attention. Perhaps you are playing a computer game and you suddenly recognize the voice of the company president coming down the hall. Even though you are strongly focused on the game, the recognition of that voice destroys your concentration as it is brought to conscious attention.

This same pattern of recognition process is happening in another way. “Your experiences as an unfolding sequence in time are continually being compared to previous sequences to see if there is some important relationship. If one of these is important enough it is brought to conscious attention as an idea or feeling.”{Wade, 1996}. With sensation what is brought to the conscious is a recognition of something in the environment. With intuition what is being recognized may be unclear. Sensations mostly recognizes things we have experienced before although it does respond to images that are more fundamental. “For example in a child entering adolescence a sexually attractive body stirs feelings that have deeper origins

than life experience.”{Alcock, 1998}. In this case the youth plays a role in the recognition of a pattern in such images to feelings and then experience. The recognition does not have an origin in experience. It is not personal.

Little in our lives is fundamentally original. I believe almost every situation we encounter is similar to an immense number of previous situations. These similarities are not limited to the human species. They go back through the history of evolution. “For example walking past a dog that feels you are violating its territory raises instincts and actions in the dog that are not so far removed from similar human instincts.”{Darwin, 1964 }. Evolution molds life to respond to recruiting situations. “The I Ching is a catalog of recurring life patterns. It describes them so they can be directly understood by consciousness. That is part of the value of the I Ching as an intuitive discipline. It strengthens our conscious understanding of the patterns that intuition recognizes.”{ Baynes ,1950}. With a better conscious understanding we know more about what to make of these patterns and we can better focus our intuition as a result.

There is no way to say why a neural net produces one response rather than another. You can do a detailed analysis of the state and explain exactly why this history and input produces this response but that is no explanation. Because intuition is a generalized pattern recognition process you cannot break up the result into a series of steps or analyze the process for mistakes. The way you discipline and develop intuition is completely different then the way you develop intellect. You train a neural net by exposing it to a variety of inputs and reinforce those responses that are correct.”{ Jung 1971}. This is fine when we have an objective criteria for correctness. We need to develop intuition in domains where do not yet have an objective criteria for correctness.

I feel if we can let intuitions enter awareness, we can become aware of the richness and wisdom we each have inside us all the time and we can begin to appreciate how intimately connected to the world we really are. The challenge is to avoid letting our habit of imposing structure(labels, beliefs, etc) on our perceptions from interfering with the emergence of the full -

subtlety of our intuitions.

By placing intuition into a scientific framework and explaining some of its characteristics and the mechanics underlying it, we can provide validation for an important but neglected type of mental processing. Unconscious processes and intuitions have typically been interpreted as merely suppressed or unavailable thoughts that are of the same type as conscious ones(e.g. Freud). Considering them to be unavailable conscious thoughts assumes they are qualitatively the same types of processes as conscious ones. This view denies the richness, subtlety, and inherent power of unconscious processes. {Alcock, 1998}

Recent results in cognitive psychology and neuroscience suggest that unconscious processes do indeed have qualitatively different properties from conscious processes. Some of these properties include the ability to pick up (”sense”) patterns in dynamic and interconnected domains(with mutually-constrained variables), the ability to integrate large numbers simultaneous factors to “settle” on a solution (faster and more accurately), situation-sensitivity (context dependence), the ability to cope with incomplete or degraded information (pattern completion), holistic processing (Gestalt), perceptual immediacy(less abstract or structured), analogical reasoning (makes use of similarity to previous situations), sensitive to “goodness of fit”

within a context, etc.{Chalmers, 1995} . Up to present date I have had a chance to study such studies of psychology. In order to understand such aspects of psychology there must be previous study of these topics or its as if you are looking at a blank page. These areas definitely have a strong correlation between intuition.

Writing poetry including music lyrics is a good example of using intuitions to guide action. The goal is to find the words or phrases that “feel right”. Some words flow forth easily, but others (for most of us) need to be chosen to be just right. Here are two pieces of music that in my opinion define the meaning of intuition for me:

“Intuition” {John Lennon}

My intentions are good, I use my intuition

It takes me for a ride

But I never understand other people’s superstitions

It seemed like suicide

As I play the game of life

I try to make it better each and every day

And when I struggle in the night

The magic of the music seems to light the way

Ah, Intuition takes me there

Intuition takes me everywhere

Well my instincts are fine

I had to learn to use them in order to survive

And time confirmed and old suspicion

Its good to be alive

And when I’m deep down and out lose communication

With nothing left to say

It’s then I realize its only a condition

Of seeing things that way

Ah, Intuition takes me there

Intuition takes me anywhere

(Takes me anywhere, alright)

“Intuition” {Stevie Nicks}

I can hold you in my arms

If I’m a thousand miles away

And I can know what’s on your mind

Without you having a word to say

Oh, don’t turn back now

Oh, don’t try and figure how

It’s stronger now than me or you

Clearer than we ever knew

Intuition, I trust that it’s right

Intuition, has me loving you tonight

Intuition, says that it’s true

Intuition, I know your feeling it too

(There) ain’t no need for suspicion (ain’t no act of contrition)

I trust this intuition

It might be hard to understand

Not an easy thing to say

I never felt like this before

Or loved in such a powerful way

Oh, there’s no turning aside

Oh no, no reason to hide

Everything will be all right

If we only hold on tight

I believe these lyrics justify my opinion on the meaning of intuition. The way I see intuition is in these song lyrics. These lyrics incorporate the constant battle of life {John Lennon}, and the aspect of being in a relationship of someone a person loves {Stevie Nicks}. I believe intuition relies greatly on such circumstances concerning life and love. Without the instinct of intuition I think the world would be an even more complex.