Abeerah Tariq 22659 Critically explain the epistemological significance of intuitionist cognition. You can use Henri Bergson's intuitionist theory and his critique of traditional epistemology. You can also discuss a couple of movies to consolidate your perspective. Intuition is one of the explored cognitive faculties of human knowledge that accounts for insights of knowledge stemming from deeper subconscious activity. Intuition is premonition derived from available data, without the recourse of conscious reasoning. It is often referred to as a mysterious experience or feeling through which some future events are sensed or predicted before they become reality, informally known as a ‘hunch’ or ‘gut feeling’. La corazonada, meaning ‘the hunch’, is an excellent movie portraying reliance on intuition. The police detectives Fransisco Juanez and Manuela Pelari each follow their gut feeling to investigate murder cases which makes them successful. According to Freud’s psychoanalytical model, human personality is the trichotomous experience of consciousness, preconsciousness, and subconsciousness. Consciousness is awareness and to be aware is sensory qualia, preconsciousness is what we can recall after some stress on our brain however, subconsciousness contains knowledge we might not be aware of that we know and intuition is presented by the subconscious. The subconscious constitutes above 98%, while consciousness is less than 2% of total human knowledge. The subconscious mind can perform complex operations, make connections, and create understandings that the conscious mind can’t handle. Intuitionist knowledge is abrupt, direct, and self-evident. The core of intuitionist knowledge lies in immediacy which contrasts with mediate, inferential, deductive reasoning. Directness refers to the images of recollection, and creative imagination. E.g., composers like Mozart were able to "hear" some of their musical compositions internally before they wrote them and Beethoven created the best symphony after he turned deaf. Self-evidence claims that there is a kind of knowledge that is not labored, that is not derived, that cannot be proved because it constitutes the very premises of our reasoning contrarily. Intuition is also known as a hunch; it is how our mind makes something suddenly intelligible. An aspect of a hunch includes problemsolving, after a long period of pondering about a problem people suddenly "perceive" a solution. Sometimes this happens during sleep; the thinker awakes in the morning with the solution of which he had no idea about the previous day. The final "clicking" of our mind may not be fully intelligible even to ourselves. As Francis McConnell recalls, the subconscious mind can do creative work given adequate data to work with. Intuition is considered very much like an extra-sensory perception. There is statistical evidence for the occurrence of clairvoyance, telepathy, and precognition, which cannot be plausibly explained within the traditional scientific framework. Lastly, there is a concept of mystical or trans-empirical intuition. Here, the target or object of the intuition is claimed to be something that is absolutely beyond the reach of ordinary experience and reasoning, something which cannot be checked empirically, it is an independent way of getting at the truth; like a graphologist telling a person’s character after only viewing the handwriting or religious mysticism; people trying to attain knowledge of God or the Absolute by intuition. Herbert Feigl questions the interpretation of intuitive experiences especially that of “religious realists”. He argues that they do not account for plausible explanations of a naturalistic atheist but from a scientific perspective attitudes are explainable based on psychological premises. Most analytical thinkers are of opinion that what cannot be expressed is not knowledge. Intuitionists censure empirical and rational knowledge. For intuitionists knowledge from sense experience (5 senses) is always inferior because synthetic unity received from different observations is always different from partiality. If we consider sight, we only see one part of a thing at a time, for example, an artist will only capture one aspect of Notre-Dame it may be the tower. The tower is inseparably united to the building, which is inseparably united to the ground, to its surroundings, to the whole of Paris. Thus, the artist only sketches the silhouette of the tower which does not provide him the whole. In reason, inductive deductive and abductive arguments are used, here too we always vacillate between parts (premises or individual observations) and (conclusion) totality. We think of conclusion as the logical outcome. Mathematical problems are an example of reason, we break equations and problems into parts. Most mathematical problems would remain unsolved and most theories unchecked if left to intuition. Henri Bergson, an evolutionary philosopher, somewhat similarly to Immanuel Kant criticized pure reason, in doing so he has called attention to a new way of looking at “Reality”. Reality is durationa continual flow of change. For Bergson, knowledge begins with the perception of distinct objects which is shaped along with the needs of action. Intellect often has to choose between various courses of action (Bergson, Creative Evolution) as it views reality through a matrix of space that is not part of reality. Using this “infinitely divisible” medium as a form of perception allows us to consider a potential line of action in which there is hesitation to our response; consciousness. Bergson considers the movement of an object in space, which if stabilized, cannot be known meaningfully. We view the object in our rhythm, by compressing the many instants of its rhythm into our one perception, rather than in the rhythm of its duration. Thus, perception gives us a part of reality. Many observations can lead to synthetic unity, but Reality is not a synthetic unity; Bergson claims truth is never given in units. Intellect recognizes perception as instances of general ideas. Conceptual knowledge or intellect is symbolic, it consists of a series of ideas. Each idea is expressed through a word and every word stands for some simple or complex idea or thought. He criticizes intellect, which functions analytically, saying it stabilizes truth by breaking it into parts and tries to explain each unit with the aid of symbols and concepts and there-by misses the inherent pulsation of movement, creating fallacious ideas of metaphysical objects. Time is not a sum or total of spatialized moments or units; it endures and flows without ceasing and without any pauses (Matter and Memory), he emphasizes that the whole is never stationary or immobile that can be comprehended in one unit of thought. As established above ideas are partial pictures of stabilized Reality, they cannot capture or preserve Reality that is living and enduring. Bergson argues Reality is a whole, it is never complete; it is always in flux growing, enduring, or changing. Of the many critical comments, it is argued as to what words can be used to describe a whole that changes before it is grasped? Intuition is a cognitive tendency fit to grasp Reality as life and duration. Bergson looks at intuition as a superior kind of experience, it is higher than sensation and perception. It does not apprehend bits of truth, it perceives truth as a whole, absolute, and gives knowledge of totality. Intuitionist knowledge is similar to Divine Knowledge as it is Absolute. The intellect works on matter and grasps the immobile contrastingly, intuition works on the life and grasps the mobile he, therefore, criticizes empirical and rational cognition. For Bergson intuitive experience is a living experience of a living Reality which he calls "intellectual sympathy". The knower becomes one with the known through empathy, this means there is no mediation between knower (cognitive human subject) and known (object). Tarey Zameen Par is an excellent example of empathy. The teacher understands the situation of the kid once he becomes one with him. Empathy is putting yourself in place of others (Bergson, Time and Free Will) and coincidence with the person himself would alone give the absolute. Absolute knowledge is attributed to states of mind, in sympathy, one inserts himself in with those states by an effort of imagination experiences from within. In effect, Bergson was not satisfied with the time-honored methods of realizing knowledge. He claimed description, history, and analysis leave us here in the relative, being internal constitutes the essence of Reality so perception and reason are adequate for scientific pursuits but they are not appropriate to grasp Reality. To be more precise, in Bergson’s theory, there is no dichotomy of subject and object. However, there was huge criticism of Henri Bergson’s philosophic method and intuition. The principal weakness of intuition as knowledge is that the insights produced have an equal probability of being wrong as right. Leszek Kolakowski charges Bergson with a lack of applicable ‘method’ apart from his own results. He reasoned that the intuitional method, beyond interpersonal or aesthetic empathy, is impossible. Common-sense knowledge, and to a much vaster extent scientific knowledge, goes beyond intuition. Bergson was criticized that each individual is limited by his mental horizon (experience). This means he has limited access as each individual has his own specific point of entry into the whole, he can get only a partial view of Reality. Further, if each individual grasps a unique experience it would imply that we all have different views of Reality in our own ways doesn’t accomplish as Reality. Many may conclude that Bergson’s method is incapable of yielding results. Some argue intuition is irrational and a dead end. Bergson denies any validity to intellect and science however, science from Bergson’s epoch has evolved and advanced with the aid of technology. Now science has the most answers to questions, from biology to space, and more. In his work Introduction to Metaphysics Bergson rightfully says “Metaphysics... is the science which claims to dispense with symbols”. There is one reality, which we all seize from within, by intuition, and not by simple analysis. It is our personality in its flowing through time. Herbert Feigl and Kolakowski counter that inconsistently with the first pronouncement, this description is given with the help of words and sentences which are purely symbolic. Secondly, the prime illustration for intuition by identification is self-awareness. If "identity" is understood in the strict sense of logical, numerical identity, then identification with one's direct experience can amount to no more than just living through one's experience; and, if the analysis is accepted, this does not by itself constitute knowledge at all. Even such introspective or phenomenological descriptions as Bergson provides utilize analysis, classification, and symbolization. They are claims of knowledge by acquaintance, but not merely acquaintance in the sense of pure, direct experience. In conclusion, Bergson’s understanding of reality, a living, the enduring whole is grasped in a unique way, intuition. It truly captures Reality with its life and vigor. His criticism of perceptual and conceptual knowledge that such knowledge is partial and artificial is true. It can’t be denied that the efficacy of anything in totality is diametrically opposed to the efficacy of the same thing in parts. For example, a flower with dissected parts would never be aesthetically pleasing as compared to when presented as a whole. It is important to note that the whole is different from the combination of parts. We should aim to learn the limitations of each epistemological paradigm and combine knowledge from each paradigm to anticipate the error and advantages to make informed decisions, better arguments and to perceive the people around us and our reality in our best interests.
