Intuition

 

There are many theories of truth on the market, and I am an epistemological moderate or pluralist that claims that the correspondence theory of truth teaches us about objects in the external world, with a high degree of probable certainty, though other theories of truth like coherence and pragmatism can be added.

 

It seems to me that if we love the truth for its own sake, and seek it always with a penchant for clarity, we will be more likely to find out what is true. If we live morally, spiritually, and authentically in a mode of liberty, then the truth will be more available to us this way.

 

With these advantages in place, we seek a car exterior to us, and the sense data it emits is perceived by us. In our mind it becomes a mental image, which we then label as an abstraction using intelligible language. Though precedes language so the concept in our minds corresponds to the noun, car, that we apply to it.

 

This may be rational intuition, when we form concepts in our mind and then label them semantically with an appropriately matching word.

 

When we are thinking logically, we are laying out an argument, a chain of reasoning that should take us to a sound conclusion, and that is a critical survival skill.

 

Can there be such a thing as emotional or irrational intuition, by which a person gets a felt aura of the person’s soul, or the nature of what is going on in a social setting. It might just be a subconscious reasoning process internal to us by which experience, and previous associations lead us to immediately size up the person or situation that we are encountering.

 

Ever the epistemological moderate, with a tinge of skepticism in my thinking, I would admit that one’s intuitive feeling or thinking could be mistaken, and lead one astray, but, if one is honest over all in the ways mentioned above, then there is a much higher probability that one’s hunches or rational intuitions are accurate and reflect reality.

 

Still, it does not hurt to ask others for feedback or to seek evidence to confirm or deny one’s conclusion.