Evaluate the role of intuition in different areas of knowledge

TOK Essay: Evaluate the role of intuition in different areas of knowledge.

The role of intuition differs in different areas of knowledge: Natural Sciences and Ethics. The word role defines the significance and importance of intuition in these areas of knowledge. Intuition is the ability to understand something immediately, without the need for conscious reasoning - this can clearly be seen in the listed areas of knowledge. For example in natural science the role of intuition is to serve as a basis for innovations, whilst for Ethics it is used to make moral judgements. It is important to note that through intuition certain knowledge is gained; however because no conscious reasoning takes place this knowledge is not completely understood resulting in fallacies. Therefore, the two knowledge issues I’ll be looking at are: ‘To what extent are our intuitions accurate?’ and ‘How far should we depend on our intuitions?’ and they will be covering Science and Ethics respectively. The varying role of intuition in different areas of knowledge shows that our perception of what is accurate or inaccurate or moral or immoral is skewed.

In many scientific discoveries there is always a ‘tipping point’, a ‘trigger’ which sets in motion your experiment and eventually leads to the conclusion which validates your hypothesis. Because of the nature of this area of knowledge, many people consider this to be a result of continuous and persistent experimentation. Ironically, the source and basis of many discoveries are ‘hunches’; this is a form of intuition in which the conductor of the experiment has a ‘right’ feeling about something a nd this new direction taken by the scientist leads to the discovery. Because we don’t know how we attained this accurate information or line of enquiry, many of us are troubled by such findings and regard these ‘hunches’ as mere coincidences. In the published book Endophysics, Time, Quantum and the Subjective Paul Bernstein argues this and offers a proposal in which through the analysis of these ‘hunches’, a more accurate evaluation of intuition can be reached. In his book he divides intuition into three different categories: telepathy, clairvoyance and precognition & presentiment. ‘Hunches’ found in science fall under the category of precognition & presentiment as they deal with foreseeing the future. In an experiment a computer screen randomly displayed pictures of either a calm and pleasant picture or an emotional and disturbing picture, whilst the subject’s emotions were monitored using physiological indicators (heart rate, blood pressure, etc.); the findings showed evidence of the two elements of intuition: precognition and presentiment. The subject’s bodies reacted differently not only after the image was presented, but also before seeing it. This show how the mind intuitively predicts the future - this is explains why ‘hunches’ turn out to be accurate. However, on the other hand, some argue that these ‘hunches’ aren’t due to precognition and presentiment, but because of experience. For example, when I do a mathematics problem I am able to solve it intuitively because I have done the same rational thought process before - hence a result of experience.  Therefore, by linking back to the knowledge issue - ‘To what extent are our intuitions accurate ’- we can see that ‘hunches’ are not mere coincidences (as the accuracy rate of the experiments are well above the probability of chance) and that the accuracy of the results are dependent on both experience and our brain’s precognition and presentment.