TOK
2015-16
Name: ________________________
Notes on WOK #5: Intuition
Essential Questions:
 What do we mean when we talk about intuition?
 What are the strengths and weakness of intuition as a way of knowing?
 Is it possible to “manage” intuitions to maximize their utility?
 What is the connection between intuition, heuristics, and bias?
Quotations
 “The expert’s snap judgement is the result of a deliberative process made unconscious
through habituation.” (Richard Posner)
 “Statistics and analysis almost always beat instinct and guessing.” (Michael R. LeGault)
 “It is by logic that we prove, but by intuition that we discover.” (Henri Poincare)
 “I believe in intuitions and inspirations. . . I sometimes feel that I am right. I do not know that
I am.” (Albert Einstein)
 “Understanding was coming so fast, it seemed to bypass thought.” (J. K. Rowling)
 “Intuition and concepts constitute . . . the elements of all our knowledge, so that neither
concepts without an intuition in some way corresponding to them, not intuition without
concepts, can yield knowledge.” (Immanuel Kant)
1. Daniel Kahneman: intuition = our System 1 thinking. What does he mean?
2. “Intuitions are the judgments, solutions, and ideas that pop into consciousness without our
being aware of the mental processes that led to them.” (Haidt and Joseph).
Are these “judgements, solutions, and ideas” therefore knowledge without justification?
3. In what way might “intuition as rapid cognition” call into question our ability to be self-aware
and open-minded?
4. Does driving (or any other learned skill) involve intuition?
5. Intuition “just might be the fastest and first [way of knowing] to tap into our consciousness of
pattern.” Can you think of any examples?
6. Does it seem to you that we come to moral decisions through “flashes of feeling” or through
rational processing?
7. “When reason does not override and correct our shortcut heuristics, we commonly
demonstrate ‘cognitive biases,’ systematic errors in thinking.”
a. Confirmation bias
b. Inattentional blindness
c. Hindsight bias
d. Availability heuristic
e. Affect heuristic
f. Halo effect
g. Sunk cost fallacy
h. The just-world fallacy
i.
Attribution bias
j.
Bias blind spot
8. What do you think of the point that Michael Shermer makes in the quotation on pp. 203-204?