AN EXAMINATION OF MEANING OF INTUITION AS RECOLLECTION IN PLATO’S EPISTEMOLOGY

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AN EXAMINATION OF MEANING OF INTUITION AS RECOLLECTION IN PLATO’S EPISTEMOLOGY

ABSTRACT

This research work aim to examine the meaning of intuition as recollection in Plato’s epistemology. Plato’s epistemology. The main problem concerns the rationality of intuitive knowledge. Plato is the heir of the Parmenidean doctrinal tradition of being and cognition. According to him, intuition is the immediate perceiving of ideas. This may be supernatural intuition or rational intuition. The first is perceiving ideas seen before birth, the second is recollection of knowledge or cognition of ideas in the mind. The aim of intuitive knowledge is the definition of the essence. Plotinus is the successor to Plato’s theory of supernatural intuition. Plato used intuition to formulate the first principles of science or to define the goals of activity. Each type is characterized by common features, such as directness, comprehensiveness of cognition and obviousness. There are differences between the types of intuition. First of all, they concern whether the object is natural or supernatural, its inter-subjectivity, and the sources of intuitive cognition. In the case of inter-subjectivity,

CHAPTER ONE

1.0 INTRODUCTION

1.1 BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY

Science, or more generally knowledge, is an organized set of propositions. Their arrangement, broadly speaking, is that particular propositions from the set are justified by propositions formerly accepted which are substantiated by those accepted before them. In every process of justification it is proved that at the end of the set, there is a proposition which does not have its reason in another proposition. Thus some primary propositions, accepted as a consequence of direct cognition, form the basis of every kind of knowledge. Intuition is one of its types. In antiquity, it was perceived as the most valuable way of cognition, for the pre–eminence of intellectual cognition over empirical experience and the pre–eminence of direct over indirect cognition were recognized. Therefore, a purely rational and direct method would be ideal. In Greek philosophical texts, the terms nous or noesis were used to refer to what we today define as intuition. However, this does not mean that nous and intuition are the same; for nous is used to indicate mind, reason, thinking, wisdom, the soul, and even the heart – it has thus a broader range of meaning. Although it was primarily used to denote only direct sensory cognition, with time its semantic content was broader (Fritz von K., 1952)); Frame D.(1978); Nagy G(1983). In philosophy, it is used with cognitive, ontic, and moral meanings. Intuition is one of the functions of nous, one could say a primary function, in which I am interested in this paper.

A fundamental question related to the issue of intuition concerns its rationality. From today’s point of view, when we accept weak rationality conditions of cognition – that is an inter-subjective communicability and verifiability – we face the problem of the value of intuitive cognition. How can intuitive cognition be intelligibly expounded and supported? These issues were discussed in theories proposed by the ancient philosophers and in the beginnings of the development of intuitive cognition theory. The aim of this paper is to present the concept of direct intellectual cognition during the initial stages of the development of cognition theory and to analyze the function that it performed in the contemporary theory of knowledge. The objects of my analysis and description are, primarily, Plato’s and Aristotle’s theories of cognition because, first, they focused on previous philosophers’ opinions and, second, they exerted a considerable impact on the whole of philosophy and future science. It is impossible not to refer to those philosophers whose theories influenced in a significant way both Plato and the Stagirite, or were continuations of their thoughts leaving their mark on philosophy and even theology of future centuries.

1.2 STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM

It is widely held amongst philosophers that their practice makes use of appeals to intuition. Numerous examples abound: Gettier, Edmund L.(1963), in epistemology, trolley problems in ethics, the Chinese room argument in the philosophy of mind, and the list goes on. Clearly, intuitions have a significant role in contemporary philosophy. But what exact role do they play? And what role ought they play? In part, these questions depend on what intuitions are, and what philosophical inquiry aims to achieve. Though there is no consensus concerning the role and nature of intuitions, nor an agreement concerning the aims of philosophical inquiry, there is a worry that shadows these uncertainties. In the field of experimental philosophy, philosophers conducted a series of experiments about our intuitions and what they tell us (in the hope of learning more about their role and nature). The results were surprising. The first set of findings present our intuitions as diverse. In a study conducted by Jonathan Weinberg, Stephen Stitch, and Shaun Nichols (2001), the authors advance the claim that our intuitions are sensitive to our cultural background. Intuitions vary across cultures. The second set of findings present our intuitions as sensitive.

Intuitions vary not only across cultures but within cultures. People who share the same cultural background have intuitions that are at odds with one another. In addition, our intuitions also vary at the individual level – i.e. within the subject. Our intuitions may change over time given our. In one example, they ask participants from Western and Eastern backgrounds what their intuitions are surrounding a case of whether an agent, Bob, knows or merely believes that his friend, Jill, drives an American car. They foundthat 26% of Western subjects judge that Bob knows while 56% of Eastern subjects judge that Bob knows.exposure to certain content, the way in which the content is presented,3 and our relation to said content (Adleberg, Toni, Morgan Thompson, and Eddy Nahmias, 2014; Alexander, Joshua, Ronald Mallon, and Jonathan M. Weinberg, 2010; Alexander, Joshua and Jonathan M. Weinberg, 2007). Of course our intuitions are diverse and sensitive to various factors. In fact, we want them to be. However, what the experimental philosophers show is something more serious than simple diversity and sensitivity. Their experiments demonstrate that our intuitions appear to be influenced by factors irrelevant to the situation that matters. We want our intuitions to track the salient features of a case. But if philosophical inquiry employs intuitions and our intuitions appear to be sensitive to irrelevant factors, we need a way of understanding intuition’s proper place in philosophy. Call this the restrictionist challenge. Joshua Alexander states:

The real challenge lies not just in the fact that intuitions are not wholly reliable, but also in the fact that we know so little about them. We lack the resources needed to explain problematic intuitional sensitivity and, in return, struggle to understand its dimensions, to identify strategies for how to compensate for it, and to predict where it will appear. What is really needed, then, is a general, systematic understanding of philosophical intuitions. By coming to better understand what intuitions are, where they come from, and what factors influence them, we can better understand what role they play in philosophical practice (2012, 71-72). So far, so good. We have been able to establish that there is another form of intuition that figures prominently in and outside of philosophy. This form of intuition is one that is constitutive of a judgment. Also, it appears to serve a practical role. But from this, one may raise two objections or worries concerning its role. The first worry is metaphysical. In the moral case, we are told that intuition can disclose to us what the morally right course of action is. But what kind of thing is moral rightness? In the case of a natural property, such as mass or shape, we know exactly what is involved in determining whether something has that property, but the case of moral rightness is very different. We cannot point to the properties of rightness in an agent’s action and say “there it is!”. Does the notion of intuition really help illuminate this problem? Or is it rather that, operating with a metaphysically strange view of rightness as a peculiar property of “ought-to-bedoneness”, we find ourselves positing “intuition” as the means by which we grasp the presence of this strange property. But this just explains the strange by the even stranger.

The second worry is epistemological. It arises from the fact that moral agents often disagree on what the right course of action is. If we cannot determine the rightness or goodness of an act except by appeal to intuition, then how are we able to verify our disputes concerning the issue? In a case where morally adept agents disagree about what to do can all that be said is simply that they have different intuitions? Objections of this kind have long been made against intuitionism (Warnock 1967). If intuition is supposed to enable us to discern moral properties and their significance for action, are we not positing a realm of mysterious non-natural normative properties and an equally mysterious technique for determining their presence and relevance? (Frankena 1963, 86-87). Why should we posit these non-natural normative properties if we can make sense of this phenomena in simpler and more natural terms? McDowell, John (1979), would strongly resist this interpretation, arguing that there is nothing mysterious in the idea that moral knowledge is non-codifiable and involves sensitivity to the salient features of particular cases. After all, those features are not mysterious: that she is in pain, that it would be stealing, that it would embarrass him, that it was disloyal… are all morally relevant properties that can constitute reasons for action. We do not need special powers to discern such properties and why they matter, or so they argue (and this is why McDowell and Dancy deliberately avoid using the term “intuition”, with its connotations of mystery).

McDowell and Dancy (1979), insist that their views do not saddle us with dubious metaphysics and epistemology. For all that, however, neither of them does much to help us make sense of the distinctive kind of judgment involved in moral decision-making. We are still left appealing to the concept of intuition or something like it. In the next chapter, I attempt to provide a fuller account of the nature and role of intuition by drawing on the notion of “tacit knowledge”.

1.3 OBJECTIVE OF THE STUDY

1. To examine the concept of intuition.

2. To identify characteristics of intuitive judgment.

3. To examine preliminaries to the theory of intuition, or Parmenides’s path of enlightenment.

4. To examine the epistemological role of intuitions in moral Philography.

5. To examine the relationship between supernatural and rational intuitions in Plato epistemology.

1.4 RESEARCH QUESTION

1. What is intuition?

2. What are the characteristics of intuitive judgment?

3. What are preliminaries to the theory of intuition, or Parmenides’s path of enlightenment?

4. epistemological role of intuitions in Moral Philography?

5. To examine the relationship between supernatural and rational intuitions in Plato epistemology.

1.9 DEFINITION OF THE STUDY

Intuition: Intuition is the ability to acquire knowledge without proof, evidence, or conscious reasoning, or without understanding how the knowledge was acquired. Different writers give the word “intuition” a great variety of different meanings, ranging from direct access to unconscious knowledge, unconscious cognition, inner sensing, inner insight to unconscious pattern-recognition and the ability to understand something instinctively, without the need for conscious reasoning.

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