Reason and Intuition

The links in the table on the left take you to sub-headings on this page.

The correspondence theory  is also called realism and is the theory used by science : it assumes that an object is what it appears to be, that is, an object is made of matter. In this theory, objects are independent of the observer who is looking at them, so they are not mental creations. Since objects are self-evident they in fact prove their own existence. Systematic thinking, the kind of thinking that ranges over many disciplines and tries to find associations between them, is not a virtue of this theory. Scientists are usually specialists who have little awareness of other disciplines outside their work. Hence there is no pressure to be a system thinker. Even within the broad range of science, generalists are few.

The correspondence theory can contain contradictions : for example, the idea of a table either being solid or being primarily empty space. Also, causal processes are fundamental to science, yet statistical criteria, which are non-causal, are often substituted for causality. Since contradictions are allowed so thinking is largely piecemeal thinking.

The coherence theory  assumes that objects are not self-evident – their existence has to be explained. This theory is rather like a jigsaw puzzle ; every bit of explanation has to be mutually compatible with all other bits, so that everything fits together coherently. Any contradiction indicates a defect in the theory. The thinker searches for patterns in ideas over the whole range of his interests. For example, the patterns of power that he detects in forms of religion need to be compatible with patterns of power in other domains, such as social relationships. Hence the coherence theory is the hallmark of system thinking. System thinking is pattern thinking. It is the theory that I espouse.

The major difference between the two theories is really one of generalisation. The correspondence theory is the narrow view of reality, the coherence theory the big view of reality. For example, though Newton’s theory of gravitation is a big view within the subject of dynamics, it is only a narrow view when taking into consideration everything that affects a human life.

The coherence theory presents a major problem to analysis since contradictions are not allowed. In the early years of my psycho-analysis I had managed a few times to construct an apparently coherent psychology that embraced all my current ideas. Then a new psychological fact would present itself to me, one that just could not be fitted into my framework. So my intellectually-neat theory would collapse in ruins, leaving me lethargic, depressed and discouraged for some time afterwards.

Eventually I managed to construct a new theory, one that contained the insubordinate fact ; hence the new theory was better than the old one. But peace was fragile. After a while, another insubordinate fact would come along, causing a new collapse of theory. This collapse happened three times, enough times to make me apprehensive whenever my intellectual framework seemed to be almost complete – I would begin to dread further psychological exploration in case I again ended up rejecting my current theory. In those times it was so hard for me to suspend judgement and keep an open mind. A suspended judgement is not a vehicle for faith in oneself.

Insight and Intuition

Many scientists dislike any reference to intuition because it suggests irrationality. They like to think that scientific achievement and scientific truth depend on reason alone. They like to believe that science is a fortress against the vagaries of emotion. A nice stratagem, but it does not reflect the reality of the thinking process. Truth arises from reason only in part. In the pursuit of truth, intuition is as fundamental as reason is.

In both theories of truth, analytical thinking is a dialogue between intuition and reason. System thinking is more heavily dependent on intuition than piece-meal thinking is, since contradictions need to be eliminated rather than glossed over. However, even this separation between system and non-system thinking tends to be an ideal one. When a difficult problem has many factors to it, each factor will usually have to be dealt with in piece-meal fashion till finally the big picture emerges.

So long as a person is seeking to enlarge his experience of life then intuition functions. But when he attempts to put these experiences into a system of thought, or theory, then intuition often vacates the limelight and the thinker has to rely on reason alone (or, more usually, reason plus imagination plus existing prejudices ). Theory construction depends mainly on the use of reason. It is irrelevant whether the system of thought is religious, secular, or a code of ethics. A system of thought is always an interpretation of the experience of the thinker.

Analytical thinking requires both intuition and reason, or more correctly, both intuition and insight. These two terms represent different modes of analysis. The two tools needed for analytical thinking are logical ability and the ability to observe the associations between ideas ; for the latter ability psychological acumen is required. The first ability generates insight, and the second one intuition. Each operates in its own way on the base of knowledge that the thinker possesses.

During the early days of my self-analysis I was often puzzled by a feature of analysis. Sometimes after making an inference about a problem I felt the joy of understanding that problem ; but at other times this joy was absent and left me puzzled as to the validity of my inference. Only a long time afterwards did I understand that the joy arises from the emotional component of intuition. Whereas logical insight is devoid of emotion. Nevertheless, even after logical thinking there is the glow of triumph at the end of a piece of difficult analysis, when everything falls into place. Though here the glow of triumph represents aesthetic satisfaction rather than understanding.

Insight is more reliable than intuition, but the range of application of insight is far narrower than the range of application of intuition. Neither reason nor intuition is infallible. The deductions afforded by reason are likely to be inaccurate if the range of data is insufficient to adequately understand the issue at hand. And intuition is limited by the adequacy of the thinker’s belief systems.

In my view there are only two specific criteria of truth : insight and intuition. The ideas brought forth by either insight or intuition have to be compatible with other insights and intuitions, otherwise errors exist somewhere. Descartes seems to have recognised these two criteria, when he affirmed that the perception of truth has to be both clear and distinct. Clearness is perhaps the intuitive view, whilst distinctness arises from logic. However, his limited empirical awareness of himself constrained his use of reason.

Now we can understand why there are only perspectives of truth (as propounded by Nietzsche). Each person’s truth will be constrained by his empirical experience and hence his belief systems. And it is his empirical experience and belief systems that will determine his use of reason. It is his empirical experience and belief systems that will determine whether his reason is exercised safely within an acceptable ideology, or whether he has the courage to think the impossible.

Intellectual Functioning

The ideas discussed above can be generalised to cover the different ways of thinking. In my theory of the mind, the intellect has two parts : reason and intuition.

These two parts work together in conceptual analysis, that is, when we try to analyse something, when we think about concepts and their meanings. When we think in a logical way, then this is usually what we mean by reason.

When considering a psychological issue we may need to recognise the dialectical effects of our experiences. Dialectical effects generate conflicting responses to any situation. Dialectics means that first we have the thesis as the initial idea or issue, then the opposing idea or issue presents itself ; finally we produce a composite resolution, the synthesis. In psychological issues, each good idea generates bad effects ; each bad idea generates good effects (for example, correctives to avoid further bad effects). So the resolution of difficult issues is always a tortuous procedure : now two steps forward, then one step back, and finally harmony of a kind. We have to take this process into account in order to arrive at a realistic understanding of the issue.

Another relationship to heed is that some issues are related through relativity. So we have to take this relationship into account as well.

Therefore the way that the intellect functions during a conceptual analysis can be split into three modes :

• Logical thinking – uses reason alone.

• Dialectical thinking – uses both reason and intuition.

• Relativistic thinking – uses both reason and intuition.

There is another aspect of mental functioning to be take into account. Concentrated thinking can induce physiological and psychological effects. It takes a lot of nervous energy to do logical thinking, whereas intuition takes very little (since intuition usually requires the mind to be free-wheeling or idling). 

When the nervous energy of the brain runs down then the mind switches off logical thinking and functions just in modes of emotion or desire.

When I use the morning for study and rational thought I often have to fight against the emotion of self-pity (usually as a mode of guilt). [¹]. Self-pity prevents concentrated thought. My determination to engage in analytical thinking generates enough anxiety to result in intense eye ache. After some time I have to rest my eyes or do some physical work.

By contrast, when I use the evening for study and rational thought my fight against anxiety and self-pity (usually as a mode of jealousy) generates a different pattern. Once I have concentrated my mind I can work well for two or three hours. However, the self-pity has been merely dammed back. When I stop work the self-pity flows intensely and tires my mind, exhausting the ability for further rational analysis. The best procedure then is to go to sleep or listen to music. Only when the flood tide has passed can I do more concentrated thinking. The self-pity is an aspect of the sequences of abreaction ; I usually go through one or two sequences per day.

Herbert Spencer, the nineteenth-century philosopher, also suffered from the same debilitating head and eye symptoms. He described his predicament as a feeling in the head which gave warning that something was going wrong (what baffled him was that he had no physical or organic symptoms – the head and eye symptoms are functional symptoms). Towards the end of his life he could hardly do more than an hour or two of work in the whole day, and needed prolonged sleep and rest. In my view, Nietzsche too was such a sufferer. Since the eye ache is usually worse in the morning, perhaps this is why he considered it to be the height of folly for anyone to spend the first few hours of each new day in study !

The regular and persistent exercise of concentrated rational thinking and study magnifies the effects of anxiety and abreaction. This inflation is particularly noticeable when the thinker does his work in solitude, as I do and as both Spencer and Nietzsche did. What is the moral of these woes ?

Rationalists suffer from their rationalism !

Feeling of Truth

Now I need to bring in the difference between 'feeling' and 'emotion'. In my understanding of reality, feeling is the basis of all the various emotions. There are just three feelings : the positive one, the negative one, and the neutral one. These three feelings combine with the mind to produce emotions, as I describe in the article Emotion and Abreaction. The importance of feeling is that it helps to generate the emotional component of intuition.

Truth has two modes to it, those of feeling and of cognition. The latter mode is that of intellectual understanding. In more familiar terms, the two modes are those of intuition (feeling) and insight (cognition).

However, the feeling mode is more complicated than it first appears. It is the feeling mode that confuses seekers on their spiritual quests, since intuition may or may not incorporate self-deception. Intuition relates feeling to beliefs and desires. When such beliefs are free of self-deception then intuition can be of a pure form ; in this case I prefer to use the term ‘feeling of truth’ rather than ‘intuition’  ( I borrow the term from the writings of Paul Brunton).

The cognition of truth presents fewer difficulties. It occurs only through sufficient intellectual study. It is the result of sustained mental effort to understand particular ideas or theories. Once cognition occurs, once understanding happens, then the thinker can intellectually explain what he now knows. He can present reasoned arguments for his ideas. However, there is a catch – whether his arguments are good ones or poor ones depends upon whether the existing intellectual vocabulary is adequate to his needs and also upon his ability to be able to explain those ideas. (As the intellectual vocabulary grows with time, so old ideas become capable of better explanation) - see Note below.

Both intuition and insight can be coloured by existing prejudices. However, there is a standard problem that is met with on the spiritual quest when depending upon intuition. This problem is that advanced spiritual teachers are prone to claim that their truths are without error, that their truths are divine truths or absolute truths. This is a misconception. All that is possible for the teacher to access without error is the feeling of truth, not the cognition of truth.

At the level of the teacher’s state of mind his intuition may well be infallible, but then the teacher has to try to encapsulate the intuition within a conceptual boundary : he has to put into words what he feels. The feeling of truth is associated with the undifferentiated aspect of the primal mind, or objective mind, of god. Whereas an idea is a piece of thinking that has boundaries, that is, it has been differentiated from the primal mind.

Therefore the attempt to conceptualise truth always produces just an interpretation. The concept is never an absolute truth. The claim by spiritual teachers that they have access to divine truth applies only to the feeling of truth and not to the cognition of it ; this is why any teacher can be mistaken in the doctrine that he advocates, no matter how highly developed he is. In other words, all doctrines are relative and never absolute.

The feeling of truth has both advantages and disadvantages. If an advanced teacher examined my ideas he could use the feeling of truth to point out where I am right and where I am wrong. This is the advantage. But if I ask him why I am right or why I am wrong he will not be able to state why. To be able to state why requires the cognition of truth, and advanced teachers are almost invariably lacking in analytical ability – this is the disadvantage of relying on feeling.

To put these ideas another way : the cognition of truth results from the prolonged efforts in studying some aspects of theory, whether it is maths, science, religious thought, or anything else. The results of such study usually mean that the person can explain the ideas that he has absorbed. Whereas, when he tries to use intuition in any aspect of theory that he has not previously studied, then he will lack the ability to explain his decisions ; in such situations, all that intuition can do is to provide a 'yes' or 'no' answer. Alternatively, he may provide an answer in symbolic imagery instead (but even this is non-cognitive).

Two Stages

The feeling of truth can be called pure intuition, or it can be called by the Buddhist term ‘non-conceptual mind ’.  The Japanese Buddhist teacher D.T. Suzuki called it  ‘ no mind ’  in one of his books on Zen. The conceptual mind is the world of desire, of subject and object (dualism), of ideas or concepts. So the non-conceptual mind is devoid of desire, of subject and object, of concepts (or, perhaps alternatively, there is no importance attached to desire, subject and object, and ideas).

Perhaps, at the higher stages of enlightenment or satori there is no necessary conceptual perception at the source of consciousness. Then perhaps dualism ceases. This line of thought implies that the feeling of truth is that aspect of reality which has not yet been conceptualised, which has not yet been captured by creative thought, which has not yet emerged into worldly manifestation.

Therefore there are two stages to the feeling of truth.
The feeling of truth is either

a). That which has not yet come into manifestation.
 or
b). That which manifests itself but which the person cannot conceptualise.

The person cannot conceptualise it because of lack of training or ability, or because of the inadequate state of the current intellectual vocabulary.

We cannot conceptualise something when our state of awareness is not adequate enough to put a boundary around that something. We cannot adequately separate that something from the other things that mix with it or accompany it. As an analogy we might consider the fuzziness of our dream world when we sleep. Again, the impact that some abstract art can produce is because the boundaries of the objects on the canvas do not always correspond with the boundaries of objects that we see in everyday life. The artist has moved the boundaries of perception.

We can apply these thoughts to the understanding of history. I view history as the chronicle of ideas. In this view, history is only the transposition of knowledge from the realm of feeling to that of cognition, from the unconscious to the conscious. For example, at the time of the French Revolution the idea of equality was little more than a slogan, little more than a good feeling. Now this feeling has gradually been transposed into definite ideas about equality ; it has been conceptualised.

Note.
What do I mean by the phrase ‘the inadequate state of the current intellectual vocabulary ’?  When I began my exploration of spirituality, and later the exploration of the subconscious mind, I found that there were a lot of vague and nebulous ideas on these subjects. The basic problem was that those explorers who could access high spiritual states of consciousness (and those who accessed the lowest states, such as deep despair) almost always lacked the analytical and philosophical ability to understand them. Whereas those who had the needed ability almost never had access to these high states (and did not want to analyse low states).

An unusual state of mind is difficult to analyse because an explorer does not know what to compare it to, and so finds it very difficult to isolate the basic facts of the experience. If a clear description of unusual states of mind cannot be given by an explorer, then that explorer has not discovered the essential facts that relate to those states of mind. Whence the current intellectual vocabulary does not expand, and analytical thinkers have no fresh ideas on which to base their thinking. This makes it easy for analytical thinkers to dismiss the achievements of the explorers of consciousness.

It is only in the last two hundred years that this situation has begun to change, through the work of many people. The ones that have influenced me especially have been Nietzsche, Freud, Laing, and Brunton. The ideas that they have produced have expanded the range of ideas that can be used to understand life. So modern times has seen the expansion of the intellectual vocabulary.

More Issues

At the more mundane level of less-exalted thinkers, intuition can be plagued by errors, since prejudices have a more luxuriant growth. The problem of these errors is a real one, particularly when the intuition produces its emotional response. It is this emotional aspect which incorporates the errors. However, it is unskilful to abandon intuition and rely solely on reason. Reason is mainly instrumental ; it needs to be guided. I think of my method as depending on intuition to provide a fresh view, and then the use of reason to examine this view so as to distil out any errors (based on emotion) that are in it.

The confusion that feeling produces in attempts to understand anything intellectually can be illustrated in my method of producing definitions. I use concepts a lot before I can begin to be able to define them. I first use them in an emotional way, and only when the emotional response is no longer confused does the intellectual understanding and definition of the concepts become accessible. Once I know what the emotional need is, then I can take that into account in producing the resultant definition.

Other thinkers often prefer to create a definition first and then use it logically. However, this approach usually indicates that the thinker has little or no understanding of the emotional dynamics behind his major ideas.

Another way of comparing feeling and intellect is to consider that when a person acts from feeling he is actually acting from an unconscious idea. For Freud, any ideas in the unconscious mind alone (and not in our ordinary state of consciousness) have by definition to be unconscious ideas. For example, one way that I look at instincts is that they can be understood as being generated from unconscious ideas that direct impulses (the impulse may come from a cell, an organ, the brain, or from the mind). So instincts can be viewed either from a physiological perspective or from a psychological one (if we can accept this view, then we can understand the basis of psycho-somatic disorders).

An essential difference between a conscious idea and an unconscious idea is that the conscious idea can be expressed in words whereas the unconscious one cannot yet be so and only the feelings associated with it can be described.

Humanity functions mainly on emotive reasoning, that is, reasoning in a way that justifies its emotional requirements. Belief is confused with truth : feeling is associated with belief, not with truth. When a person becomes spiritually enlightened he drops out of this game. In what way does a spiritual person differ from the crowd ? - In the content of his consciousness. It is the content of consciousness that defines a person. As a person develops, so his definition of himself becomes more extensive.

A person can be seen simply as an agent who uses ideas, whence it is primarily the content of consciousness that evolves. So one way of understanding evolution is that :

Evolution means the evolution of ideas and concepts.

This viewpoint explains the confusion experienced by someone like myself who underwent rapid development. In order to surmount my problems, which came to a head during my self-analysis, I had to move from a lifestyle based on feeling to one based on cognition. In the early years of creating my psychology, I produced a great amount of intellectual junk and flotsam as I attempted to understand myself. What I was doing was painfully and slowly bringing into consciousness all my unconscious, emotional ideas.

The birth of an idea is just as painful as the birth of a baby !

The manner in which intuition functions within the mind is described in the next article, The Loop of  Intuition.

The number in brackets at the end of each reference takes you back to the paragraph that featured it. The addresses of my other websites are on the Links page.

[¹]. For an overview of my ideas on Emotion see article Emotion and Abreaction.
A detailed analysis of some emotions like guilt is featured in the articles on Emotion that are on my psychology websites. [1]

Books

Brunton, Paul.
The Hidden Teaching Beyond Yoga. Rider 1941. - at present (2001) it is out of print.

The best account of philosophical Idealism that I have read. His account is the basis from which I developed my own version of philosophical Idealism - my version incorporates my understanding of the way that the subconscious mind functions.
A website dedicated to him is
www.paulbrunton.org/

Spencer, Herbert.
Autobiography. 1904. - in two volumes.

Suzuki, D.T.
A prolific author of readable books on zen Buddhism.

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Copyright @2003  Ian Heath
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