On Intuition

Science, in general, comprises two central processes, description and explanation. In today's post I am going to set aside the issue of explanation, although I am interested in it, to concentrate on the activities of description and definition. Definition, as readers of my blog may already know, interests me greatly. In today's post I hope to show the role intuition plays in both processes, in how we make sense of the world. I also intend also to talk a little about the way intuition can fail us.

The easiest way to illustrate how definition and description tend to operate is through a hypothetical example. Suppose you are a zoologist visiting Africa to study elephants. Your role is not so much to explain the characteristic features of these animals as simply to describe them - you take notes, for instance, on their physiology, their grazing patterns, their mating rituals, the social structures of herds. You do so for a reason. Before we can begin to explain a phenomenon, we must first describe it. However, a problem arises when we consider that before you can even begin to describe an elephant, you must first have some idea what an elephant is, must be able to distinguish it from a hippopotamus or a rhinoceros. You must, in short, already possess a definition of 'elephant' in mind before you can begin to describe it.

The Google definition of 'elephant' is "a very large plant-eating mammal with a prehensile trunk, long curved ivory tusks, and large ears, native to Africa and southern Asia. It is the largest living land animal." Now, what is important to note about this definition is that it is a kind of description. In order to define the word 'elephant' we must describe the common qualities of all those things called elephants. We need a description first, before we can propose a definition. But it seems definition must precede description – what then is the basis of this definition? It seems that in order to define something, we must already be able to describe it. But in order to describe something we first need to be able to define it, distinguish it from all other objects. The process is circular. It can only be that description and definition form a feedback circuit - description influences definition and vice versa. Better descriptions inform improved definitions and improved definitions enable better descriptions. We have a "What came first - the chicken or the egg?" type situation. On what foundation does knowledge rest if neither description nor definition come first, if neither have priority? The poultry problem can be dissolved by tracking the evolution of chickens back to a time when the chicken-egg distinction was non-existent, when chickens and eggs were undifferentiated, before in fact either 'chicken' or 'egg' as we know them now existed. Likewise, perhaps we can try to dissolve the definition-description paradox by tracing the evolution of concepts back to a time when there was no clear distinction between definitions and descriptions.

An alternative strategy than such a dissolution exists. We can appeal to an authority outside language, outside rationality and knowledge. We can appeal to intuition. Intuition, we can argue, is the fundamental origin of all knowledge. We intuit before we either define or describe. Consider - when the first European zoologist visited African, unacquainted with prior definitions or descriptions of the animals he would encounter, a kind of tabula rasa, he would, I believe, have intuited that elephants were of a kind that was different from hippos or rhinos. We are able to divide the world into different natural kinds because we intuit that different things are of different kinds.

This notion of intuition I am advancing is reminiscent of Immanuel Kant's theory of categories. In contrast to the hardline Empiricism of David Hume (and later, without attribution, Ayn Rand), Kant argued that people possessed innate ideas, that humans are born with mental faculties that enable them to structure and interpret their experience of the world. I would argue that the intuition that some things belong to one natural kind and other things to another is possibly an innate idea –although I am also open to the idea that intuition might be learned. It is not the purpose of this essay to discuss Kant or his theory of categories. I am not interested in this aspect of intuition. Rather, I am interested in situations in which intuition fails.

Consider another hypothetical example. Some people are Presbyterians and other are not – but when we encounter a stranger on the street it is impossible to know immediately if he or she is a Presbyterian. We cannot intuit this; in this situation intuition fails. What then makes a Presbyterian if it is not some perceptible essence? Is a Presbyterian someone who attends Church services every Sunday? Is it someone baptized into the Presbyterian faith? Or is it merely someone who tells people he or she is Presbyterian? Without intuition, without essences, we must fall back on definitions that are sometimes arbitrary. And sometimes definitions are defective or absent altogether.

We often think of definition as the act of revealing some kind of essence, of picking out the necessary and sufficient properties of a natural kind. In fact definitions are frequently made for ethical or pragmatic reasons rather than descriptive reasons. Lawmakers, and judges when they interpret the law, are continually defining and redefining the world in the interests of general and individual wellbeing. People need definitions and one role of the government and judiciary is to provide such definitions. For example, up until 2013 in New Zealand, marriage was legally defined as a union between a man and a woman; in 2013, this was changed to a union between two people, "regardless of their sex, sexual orientation, or gender identity". Had the essential nature of the marital institution changed thus requiring a new legal description? No. Rather the new legal definition changed the nature of marriage. Language does not just represent the world; it can reshape it. This legal amendment is an example of what John Searle calls 'a speech act', a verbal utterance that refashions social reality. (For more discussion of speech acts, I point the reader to the post "Literature as Speech-Act" and the tongue-in-cheek short story "Pastoral".)

A field in which intuition plays a key role is in psychiatry. Psychiatrists are concerned with distinguishing the 'mentally ill' from the 'well', the insane from the sane. What most people don't appreciate, however, is that psychiatry is a terribly inexact science and that psychiatric diagnoses are often made on the basis of intuition rather than evidence; in the absence of reported symptoms, a psychiatrist may assume that the patient is lying or hiding something and may make a diagnosis of psychosis based on body language and general demeanor. Sometimes, I sincerely believe, a psychiatrist will diagnose 'schizophrenia' simply because he or she dislikes the patient. They have that power. If a psychiatrist suspects that a patient is suffering a psychotic episode but has no hard evidence, and is asked to justify his or her professional opinion, he or she may extemporize one, such as 'weight loss'. (This happened to me.)  This is permitted to occur because 'Schizophrenic', for instance, is considered, by the psychiatric profession and by the general public, a natural kind rather than a social category. Definitions exist yet most are unhelpful. Arguably there is no way to define this term, yet the belief that it is a natural kind persists; psychiatry deems itself a science and the role of science is to delineate and describe nature. Basing a diagnosis on intuition might be all right if intuition is reliable, if psychiatrists possessed excellent social skills. But many psychiatrists are really only half-way competent, are lacking in human understanding, are, in fact, in this respect, little more intelligent than the laity. A medical training can give a person a good understanding of which antibiotic to prescribe for a boil but does little to encourage genuine empathy for actual people. The general public often attributes God-like powers of perception to psychiatrists, and some psychiatrists may come to believe this of themselves, but this attribution is not true.

An example illustrates this idea of psychiatric fallibility. One of the current theories about schizophrenia is that it often caused by cannabis use - the idea is that getting stoned once in one's life alters a person's neurology and sets them up for a psychotic episode sometime later. Many psychiatrists find this theory plausible, I think, because they have led such sheltered lives, have never spent time with stoners. What such psychiatrists fail to factor into the equation is the vast majority of people who have used drugs who never become 'unwell' – and, of course, when this is taken into account, the theory that pot smoking causes psychosis loses its explanatory power. Accurate intuition in this case it seems must depend on lived experience and can easily fail when a person's experience is limited.

To give a more concrete example... At a medical review last year it was asserted that I was psychotic in 2008 and well for most of 2009. In fact the reverse was true. I was almost well in 2008 and psychotic for most of 2009. This was either a complete failure of intuition or something else.

If intuition is at all reliable, it depends on the belief that people belong to 'natural kinds'. Another interesting example of supposed intuition, one well worth discussing a little,  is 'gaydar'. In the same way that psychiatrists are thought to have uncanny powers of perception, gay men are supposed to have an infallible ability to identify other gay men. It is some weird psychic gift these magical fairy people with ESP are accorded by the general public. In reality though, gay men are no better than straight men at identifying other gay men and look for the same clues when seeking to identify one – clues such as  a speech impediment or physical undernourishment. "Gaydar" does not exist. I am unsure if it possible to identify a gay man from a first impression but  I think it unlikely.

The debate about the efficacy of intuition is very evident today. On the one hand we have a book like Blink by Malcolm Gladwell which argues that many people can make extraordinarily accurate predictions based on momentary impressions; on the other we have extensive current research and literature, such as The Seven Laws of Magical Thinking by Matthew Hutson, arguing that irrational beliefs and biases are universal  (an example of an irrational cognitive habit, very common among psychiatrists, being confirmation bias). I admit that I am unsure about the power of intuition. I feel I am blessed, or cursed, with strong intuition, a capacity for empathy based not on psychiatric and psychological textbooks but on a lifetime of reading quality literature and watching sitcoms. I knew, from a glance, that my first psychiatrist was an asshole and knew almost immediately that I had been misdiagnosed. How could I be so right about my situation and he so wrong about me? I can only assume he misdiagnosed me deliberately.

But I digress.

To sum up… We cannot make sense of knowledge unless we suppose it is based on intuition. Intuition allows us to differentiate between different natural kinds. But intuition is fallible - it is especially fallible when it come to people, to human kinds. The terms "schizophrenic" or "homosexual", for example, do not denote natural kinds, rather they denote socially constructed categories. Rather than base our judgements on snap impressions (which are often inaccurate), we should try to reserve judgment – at least until the facts are in.

For other posts on this topic, I recommend the reader have a look at "The Therapeutic Relationship" and "Rationality vs. Mysticism".