TOK ESSAY - IB
When should we discard explanations that are intuitively appealing?
Intuition is a moment of insight when one makes decisions without going through any conscious or deliberate process of reasoning. The process of intuition isn’t fully understood, sometimes referred to as a ‘gut feeling’ and it is a phenomenon which can only be explained by the sub-conscious, or by accepting that sometimes knowledge is not procured by an active systematic process. There are several types of intuition – core intuitions, subject specific intuitions and social intuitions. While it might seem that intuition is only the spur of a moment phenomena, it is affected by our emotional, the conditioning we have receied, and prior experiences with the issue. We use intuition everyday, but at time it is possible that intuition cannot be sufficient to justify our knowledge (you have to reference this, a lot of it doesn’t sound like your own ideas). I feel that to examine this issue, we must determine the role of intuition in the process of gaining knowledge, and for this reason I have chosen to explore the knowledge issue: To what extent can intuition be regarded as a way of knowing in subject specific areas?
I firmly believe that in certain cases relying on intuition would be unwise and should be ignored, such as while dealing with financial problems like the stock market. Famous people who have won a lot of money in the stock market make claims suggesting their decisions are based solely on intuition. But what role do their previous experiences play in determining their perception? If, for example, they had to choose between investing in either of one of two companies, their decision would not be based only on intuition, but based on past records and future forecasts of the respective companies, and they would not be making random guesses, but informed decisions, hence using a deductive process, even if only passively, to arrive at the most favorable outcome. Sometimes one may claim
Intuition is a moment of insight when one makes decisions without going through any conscious or deliberate process of reasoning. The process of intuition isn’t fully understood, sometimes referred to as a ‘gut feeling’ and it is a phenomenon which can only be explained by the sub-conscious, or by accepting that sometimes knowledge is not procured by an active systematic process. There are several types of intuition – core intuitions, subject specific intuitions and social intuitions. While it might seem that intuition is only the spur of a moment phenomena, it is affected by our emotional, the conditioning we have receied, and prior experiences with the issue. We use intuition everyday, but at time it is possible that intuition cannot be sufficient to justify our knowledge (you have to reference this, a lot of it doesn’t sound like your own ideas). I feel that to examine this issue, we must determine the role of intuition in the process of gaining knowledge, and for this reason I have chosen to explore the knowledge issue: To what extent can intuition be regarded as a way of knowing in subject specific areas?
I firmly believe that in certain cases relying on intuition would be unwise and should be ignored, such as while dealing with financial problems like the stock market. Famous people who have won a lot of money in the stock market make claims suggesting their decisions are based solely on intuition. But what role do their previous experiences play in determining their perception? If, for example, they had to choose between investing in either of one of two companies, their decision would not be based only on intuition, but based on past records and future forecasts of the respective companies, and they would not be making random guesses, but informed decisions, hence using a deductive process, even if only passively, to arrive at the most favorable outcome. Sometimes one may claim