[MD] Intuitive Reasoning?

[Case]

Case said:
> However, intuition and insight are frequently wrong and
> in the absence of any conceivable test are best kept private.

[Ham]
You made this statement before, but it bothers me now.  Intuition and
insight are what we use to conceptualize ideas for which there are no
objective tests: ontology, epistemology, and morality, for example.  Do you
suppose we would be discussing causation, duality, awareness, and ultimate
reality if such concepts were objectively verifiable?   To me insight,
intuition and logic are the tools of philosophy; they afford an approach to
understanding the "what", "how" and "why" of reality, as opposed to
factually ascertainable knowledge.

[Case]
Intuition and insight are not used to conceptualize. They are not processes
with starts, middles and ends. They spring to life full blown. They often
occur when ideas connect spontaneously almost without effort. They may
proceed from months of futile effort where nothing it happening then the
ideas coalesce. As with Pirsig's example of the conception of Quality
forming like a seed crystal. This 'felt right' to Pirsig if he had not
explained it, written it down, gone through the work of justifying his
insight, it would have been just another wet dream.

Logic is a tool philosophers use to justify their intuitions. 

Case:
> Truth has neither capacity nor necessity to be believed.

[Ham]
Do I translate this correctly as meaning that truth is incapable of being
believed?  How do you justify this assertion?  What do you believe, then?
Is one of your beliefs that there is no necessity to search for truth?

[Case]
No, I am saying the Truth does not have a capacity. Capacity or volume are
not properties of Truth. Some of us have the capacity to perceive Truth. But
this is a property of us not of Truth. Truth does no have a need to be
believed either. It does not have needs or ends.

[Ham]
Belief systems arrived at through the application of intuition and reasoning
usually have logical consistency or cogency, in that the principles support
the thesis, and vice-versa.  They are typically predicated in the form: 'If
X, then....'; in other words, they assume a fundamental truth from which the
axioms are deduced.  

[Case]
Belief systems that rely on intuition alone do not exist or at least I can
not think of one. Beliefs become systematic through the application of
reason and logic to intuition. Intuition is transmitted and spread to others
via reason and logic. Intuition can also be spread through art or personal
charisma as well. The point here is not that intuition is not valuable but
rather that it is not tied to reason. It is more primitive than reason.


[Ham]
Using Essence as the fundamental reality, Essentialism posits a primary
division of awareness and beingness whose mutual affinity differentiates the
experienced world.  One could also say that Darwinism and the Theory of
Relativity are intuitively reasoned concepts that include empirical
observations.  Within their respective  frameworks, all of these theories
are held together by the consistency of the deductions with the fundamental
thesis.

[Case]
One could say the Darwin and Einstein had intuitions which stood up to the
tests of reason and experimentation and gained power as a result. Your
theory of Essence seems to be a private fantasy of your own that is likely
to remain that way. 

[Ham]
I don't remember whether the Pharisees were lawyers or accountants, but they
were  certainly traditionalists.  A prophet, such as Jesus or Mohammed,
gains a reputation by going against tradition, and new or revealed insights
are not usually welcomed in a devoutly religious culture.

[Case]
The Pharisees were students of the Torah (The Law). The first century
Pharisees were the founders of modern Rabbinic Judaism. E.P. Sanders
suggests that Jesus actually was a Pharisee. Sanders provides many examples
of how Jesus used the logical and storytelling techniques of the Pharisees.
The famous Golden Rule for example is actually an inversion of Rabbi
Hillel's injunction to "Do not unto others as you would have them do not
unto you." Jesus is called Rabbi several times in the New Testament.

[Ham]
Subjectivity is irrelevant to the positivists because it doesn't fall within
their objective framework, and because they can't explain it.  However, if
everything that exists is objective, how do you account for its experience?
Subjective experience is what brings the objective world into being.
Without awareness -- proprietary sensibility to Value or Quality -- there
would be no existence.  That's why I say existence is a self/other,
awareness/object dichotomy.

[Case]
Subjectivity is irrelevant to everyone but the subject. I take solipsism
seriously. Ultimately subjectivity is ALL that matters to me. But if I wish
to join the rest of the world I have to play by the rules and those include
providing reasons why my subjective states should matter to anyone else. 

[Ham]
I think you're stating what I said above about the need for logical
consistency in a philosophical thesis.  However, I'm not sure what you mean
by "objectified" in this context.  Could you elaborate on this?

[Case]
Objectivity consists of intersubjective agreement. It is the intersection of
the sets of my experience and your experience.

[Ham]
Are we "mad" because we toss around ideas that have no "collective"
acceptance?

[Case]
Maybe. Anyone who holds beliefs that they can not empirically or rationally
defend is at least defective. For example a young man had a fever which
damaged a portion of his cortex. He appeared to be normal and acted fine
however at home until he began to speak to his parents about those "other"
people and his "other" house. He was convinced that the people he was
speaking to were exact replicas of his parents who lived in a house
identical to his own. He would ask them to take him to his real house, that
he was tired of the replica. Eventually the parents arrived at the solution
of walking him out the back door around the yard in back in through the
front door where upon he was satisfied. Neurologists working with the young
man concluded that the damage caused by the fever had resulted in an
emotional disconnect between what the young man saw and what he felt. Since
he saw his parent and his house but did not feel the emotional connection to
them he concluded they were different.

If you are seriously concerned with the relationship between modes of
thinking you would do well to look into neurobiological research. Our
thoughts, perceptions and logical constructions are the product of brain
activity. They do not exist in its absence. As a brief example consider the
senses. For most people vision is the primary sense. It is essentially two
dimensional. Our brains take two dimensional information and convert it to
three. Hearing is one dimensional it originates at a point distant from us
and we can orient ourselves toward the source forming a line. Smell and
taste are zero dimensional and vary mostly in intensity. Touch and kinesetic
sense are three dimensional as a network of nerves in space. Our brains are
able to organize simulation from multiple dimensions into multidimensional
representations of the world around us. The brain does this in multiple
modalities. Logic and reason are such modalities as are emotion and
intuition. Many times the act integrating these modalities results in
confusion as reason tends to drift toward the feeling rather than the facts.
Logic when properly applied is a tool for overcoming this drift.

[Ham]
Is the mystic who has a revelation mad?  

[Case]
Pirsig sees a them as similar.

[Ham]
Are the hypotheses of a Bob Pirsig or a Ham Priday nonsensical because they
can't be objectively validated?  If our experience of reality is constructed
from Value, then I submit that Value is closer to Truth than the objects of
our experience.

[Case]
Your propensity for self aggrandizement never ceases to amaze. In this post
you have compared yourself to Darwin, Einstein and now Pirsig for the second
time. As I stated earlier Darwin and Einstein have withstood lots of logical
scrutiny. Pirsig is being scrutinized. You and I are just a couple of guys
who can type. Get over yourself.