As expected, my post “Reliability of Intuition” drew some challenge from readers.

To address this challenge we need to properly define what is meant by intuition. And, as you will see in the dictionary definitions below, this is not easy to define. In fact, the Oxford dictionary defines “intuition” with reference to “instinct”! And it is not uncommon for people to associate “intuition” with “insight”.

So, the purpose of this post is to try to separate these three terms: instinct, intuition and insight, and to hopefully make a more convincing argument for what intuition is and when it can be reliable.

Instinct:

· Oxford dictionary: An innate, typically fixed pattern of behaviour in animals in response to certain stimuli.

· Merriam Webster: A way of behaving, thinking, or feeling that is not learned.

· Wikipedia: The inherent inclination of living organism towards a particular complex behaviour.

Intuition:

· Oxford dictionary: The ability to understand something instinctively, without the need for conscious reasoning.

· Merriam Webster: A natural ability or power that makes it possible to know something without any proof or evidence.

· Wikipedia: Is the ability to acquire knowledge without proof, evidence, or conscious reasoning, or without understanding how the knowledge was acquired.

Insight:

· Oxford dictionary: The capacity to gain an accurate and deep understanding of someone or something.

· Merriam Webster: The ability to understand people and situations in a very clear way.

· Wikipedia: Is the understanding of a specific cause and effect in a specific context.

At the risk of oversimplifying, I’d like to suggest that these words “instinct”, “intuition” and “insight” be labels for when our “knowing” presents itself as “reacting”, “feeling” and “understanding”, respectively.

An interesting question is how do instinct, intuition and insight arise?

I think that instinct can be explained with evolutionary theory, i.e. traits that differentially support reproduction will propagate and others will not, hence the kid that doesn’t have the instinct to not eat the poison berries will not produce offspring.

Ok, so what about intuition and insight?

Gary Klein [1] neatly differentiates between insight and intuition as:

· Intuitions draw from existing patterns.

· Insights generate new patterns.

If we accept Klein’s description, then it raises the question of where do these patterns come from? I believe that there are only three sources of these patterns:

1. We inherit patterns in our DNA. (yes, these are our instincts)

2. Our experience of the world, whether conscious or not, results in us developing and modifying these patterns.

3. We form new patterns.

I would thus argue that instinct is reactive behaviour based on our inherited patterns. Intuition is a feeling of knowing that is a combination of our ancestors’ experiences and our own experiences. And, insight draws on patterns arising from both inheritance and experience, but goes one step further in creating new patterns that offer an understanding of how things are related.

Now, if someone has a view that intuition is something more than an interpretation of patterns that have arisen from our experience (and that of our ancestors), then I’d be eager to hear what it is.

If you accept that this is what intuition is then I think it logically follows that the reliability of our intuition is related to the quality of the patterns we have formed, i.e. their strength and relevance to the current situation.

Q.E.D. … or not quite?

References:

[1] “Seeing what others don’t”, Dr Gary Klein