When should we discard explanations that are intuitively appealing?

Intuition is like a coin. It has two sides and about a fifty-fifty chance of being right or being wrong. To fully understand intuition though, we must define it, trace its history, and grasp the purpose of its design. Intuition is defined by dictionary.com as “an immediate cognition of an object not inferred or determined by a previous cognition of the same object.” What does this mean though? To fully understand what it means, let us relate this to personal experience. Have one ever had a moment where you thought something was wrong, a gut feeling, without really having solid evidence? This feeling is called intuition. It is a moment in which a person “sees” more into a situation, without prior knowledge to the situation. However, intuition is not something that can be biologically made, like hormones can. Intuition is innate, almost like a sixth sense, and is random at times when it appears. Intuition has been passed down several generations through evolution. Your ancestors developed this trait as a means to survive, and those who did survive passed this trait down to their offspring. By now, one might be wondering why is intuition important in our lives? This question can be answered by looking into Albert Einstein’s quote on knowledge. He said “We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.” What Einstein talks about is the way in which we learn. He believes that logic, reasoning, science, and language is not enough to learn what is already known and to explore what there is to be known. One’s mind is not placed in reality, which means that your intellect is blind. You ask questions and come up with answers based on what one knows. And that is the main problem: the mind is that it ma...

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... discarded. But we should acknowledge the fact that intuition is not always correct. So, in conclusion, to answer the question, “when should we discard explanations that are intuitively appealing, we must take in consideration the four ways of knowing according to TOK: reasoning/logic, emotion, language, and sense perception.

Works Cited

"Intuition." Dictionary.com. Web. 09 Jan. 2012. .

Schmidt, I.W.; I.J. Berg, B.G. Deelman (1999). "Illusory superiority in self-reported memory of older adults". Aging, Neuropsychology, and Cognition (Neuropsychology, Development and Cognition) 6 (4): 288–301. doi:10.1076/1382-5585(199912)06:04;1-B;FT288.

"Truth as Emotions, Intuition, & Instinct." About.com Agnosticism / Atheism. Web. 09

Jan. 2012. .