What is intuition? | INFJ Forum

What is intuition?

GracieRuth

GracieRuth

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Aug 19, 2011
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A lot of us have read so much MBTI stuff that we tend to see intuition as being the grounding of our reality in ideas rather than tangible things. For the purposes of this thread, I do not want to limit the discussion to that perameter. The word intuition is used for many, many things. Do all these different uses have anything in common? Is there something that is intuition, or is it a junk category that we throw all sorts of stuff into when we can't understand? Let me give some examples:

I like to play a game called Intelliguess. The objective is to determine what a number is by trial and error guessing what number might be in what digit place and making future guesses taking what is already known into consideration. I will usually guess the number by the fourth or fifth guess. Every once in a while I'll do it in like two guesses, which is obviously luck, or seven guesses which is obviously bad luck. The thing is, it seems to me that to guess a three or four digit number in four to five guesses is not reasonable. Sometimes I will be conscious of why I'm trying a particular number or avoiding another, but the whole reason that I like this game is that MORE often I make choices without any consious reason, and my irrational choices have a tendency to be right. A lot of the time I get this wierd sort of feeling that I just KNOW it's this number, but I have no REASON to give for it. I know that there is a part of my mind that is solving this game which I don't have conscious access to. Is this "intuition"???

A lot of times with animals and people, I'll get a "flash" that they want something, even though they have said nothing (especially true with my cats). It's not a verbal thought -- I'm not hearing them say in their minds that they are hungry or whatnot. Whatever it is, its done and gone before I can turn and observe it. Is this "intuition"?

The day my father died, I had a tight feeling in my chest, as if something were gripping and pulling on my heart. As I drove on the freeway to visit him in the hospital, I felt a kind of snap -- as if the rope or rubber band to my chest had broken. I just knew he had died. Is that "intuition"?

The hypothesis I have running in my mind is that there is something much older than our consious minds, certainlhy older than the verbal centers, which our evolution has added to but never really gotten rid of. A different way of communicating. Animals have it. Perhaps even plants.

I suspect that those of us that the MBTI identifies as "inuitive" have simply learned that for *us*, this older way of percieving is more accurate. If my conscious mind is thinking of 10 reasons Joe Shmoe is a really cool guy, but my "gut" is saying "stay away" but doesn't give a reason why, I have learned to trust my gut. I think that when we are young, we figure out what we are "good at" and work on those skills. Developing this "intuition" was as natural to me as being good at sports is for other people. But just like I can play softball badly, I think everyone probably has intuition but it doesn't function as well for some.

Thoughts?
 
I so often know or feel what will happen before it does. . to me it is also the reading of the emotions of others. .the knowing of things in your gut. . in the abscence of any real eveidence . .
the one that bugs me is the seeing an accident before it happens, but not in time to stop it. . that has happened several times. .
 
This is a good question. When I learned about personality type, and the concept of intuition, I was really curious about this concept of foreknowing associated with intuition. Sometimes, I think I have it but other times, I question whether it's just coincidence or wishful thinking. Not sure. Wish I had it though, sounds waaaay cool.
 
That's really interesting stuff. Something that has always really intrigued me are psychics. Is it really supernatural or are they tapping into their subconscious mind? I believe our minds are capable of understanding much more than we could imagine if we could work every part of our brain. I forget, how much % of our brain do we use again... isn't it only 50?
 
To me it is a starting point, a place to build from.
 
It's so hard to explain.To me,it's that gut feeling,just like you said...that feeling that you "know" something,but don't actually understand "how" you do.A part of me wants to think it's a supernatural/paranormal thing,but,in reality,i think some peoples brains just have the ability to pick up on subconcious things(things not just anyone would notice)and processes the incoming info so deeply and fast that even we don't understand how we come to know...and that tends to make it seem "mystical".I've come to rely on mine heavily,And i'd say,when i do,it's almost always dead on.It actually scares me sometimes how "right on" alot of my hunches have been.
 
I think it's an instinctive feeling, and gives an advantage as its often much faster than "sensing". Intuitive people tend to connect the dots faster, and put clues together, even if subconsciously. A while ago I was at a friends house with my wife, and we were preparing to leave. I had a weird "feeling" there was going to be an argument (we'd had a perfectly good time there was no reason to think that).

As we were saying goodbye, our friends daughter appeared and with no warning went into a rant against her parents about their internet set up. After we'd escaped the embarrassing scene (the daughter is an adult) I said to my wife I'd felt something was brewing and had tried to hurry our exit. She's used to my "radar" and just laughed.

I think because its partly or wholly a subconscious process its hard to describe to anyone who isn't intuitive themselves.
 
What you mentioned about there be something older than our conscious minds that evolution has added to sounds a little similar to Carl Jung's theory of the Collective Unconscious..In a nutshell he proposed that we have an unconscious section of our psyche which contains pre-existing universal and collective remnants of our minds that are simply inherited.

I can't really explain it that well but read into it a little more if you want, you may find it interesting.
 
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there are indeed different kinds of intuition and I wonder if they all have the same mechanisms.

At my work I'm a scientist and have to evaluate test results. And a lot of time I intuitively "feel in my gut that the results are not to be trusted, that they are not solid enough to move on or to good to be true :)". Even when my boss think they are great and tells me to move on I'm still uneasy about them and most of the times I'm right.
But I only have this after running this kind of test for a while. When I have to do a new test, with an other kind of data, I can only depend on my mind to evaluate the results

This makes me wonder if intuition is nothing more than a large database in our minds built from past experiences, learned behavior and such. when an event occurs we immediately run through the database find an experience that resemble the current one and get a warning/save signal even before our mind comes to it. Or is this what they call instinct?

the same goes for events where there seems to be something in the air that is not right, or people you know who seem off even though they act normal. Or new people you come across who for no reason you dislike. Can it not be that we have a framework in our mind that informs us with what is to be trusted and what not. That new person may unconsciously resemble some other person you knew and was not to be trusted. You pick up certain aspects from the new event/person, you consult your framework that will search for similarities with past experiences and when the past experiences where good it gives the sign "all clear" and when they where bad it gives a warning.

If this is the case then we should be careful with trusting these hunches because it can lead to prejudice and it can hold you back. It is not because your past experience was bad that the new resembling experience will be bad as well, sometimes you just have to step in the dark.

Also what you say about the cats. I have that too with my cats and I think that intuitively knowing what they want comes from a thorough observation of their behavior. At first you have to find out that when you're cat is sitting in front of the door that it means she is hungry but after a while you don't even have to make the connection between sitting in front of the door and hunger anymore. You're mind goes so quickly through that process that it feels like intuition. And the fact that we have this with cats easier than with humans is because we have no other way of communicating with our cats than observing their behavior and finding the meaning of it. The cat does the same with you and after a while the communication between you two will go automatically.


But on the other hand there are other incidents where I have a feeling of right/wrong for which I know I have no past experiences. For instance when I read something philosophical I feel that what I read is true, even though my mind says it is complete nonsense. So where does that intuition comes from? Maybe our framework is not only feed by our experiences but some ancient/universal experience/knowledge, a Collective Unconscious as well?


what you say about feeling that your father was dying even though you where not present is something I have never experienced. Maybe that is the only thing I would concider real out of the blue intuition :)
 
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i believe jung's definition is useful: intuition is unconscious perception (so it's indeed linked to the senses). when extraverted, it's happening in real time, when introverted, it's been taken in before intuition is working on it. i've never understood, why premonition should go with intuition. sounds more cool than true. if there is something like that, then it's unconscious associations with and from unconscious perceptions (Ne) or unconscious "extrapolation" from unconscious perceptions (Ni), which is quite attractive too ;-).

sorry for the loss of poetry :m054:
 
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skippy64 said:
That's really interesting stuff. Something that has always really intrigued me are psychics. Is it really supernatural or are they tapping into their subconscious mind? I believe our minds are capable of understanding much more than we could imagine if we could work every part of our brain. I forget, how much % of our brain do we use again... isn't it only 50?
Click to expand...


I believe thats just a false rumor, we really do use most of our brain, just not all at one time.
 
It has long and often been said that humans only use 10% of their brain, but there is no basis for that. We really use pretty much the entire brain at some point.

We cannot use all of the brain at once because there is no way to get enough oxygen and nutrients to sustain that level of activity. It takes half of the body's blood to supply just enough to keep the brain alive under normal conditions. It would not take long for a 100% active brain to starve to death.

I recently read somewhere that more intelligent people actually tend to have less active brains as they think more efficiently and don't have so many extraneous areas activate.

A long time ago I read that the processing power that our somatosensory cortex requires just too keep track of the relative positions of our body parts theoretically exceeds the capacity of the entire brain by an order of magnitude, at least if neurons operate according to the traditional model. I recall more recently reading a study that implied that the glial cells of the myelin sheath may actually pass on a significant amoung of information rather than just insulating and supporting nearby neurons.
 
Morgain said:
[...] intuition is nothing more than a large database in our minds built from past experiences, learned behavior and such. when an event occurs we immediately run through the database find an experience that resemble the current one and get a warning/save signal even before our mind comes to it. [...] Can it not be that we have a framework in our mind that informs us with what is to be trusted and what not. [...] You pick up certain aspects from the new event/person, you consult your framework that will search for similarities with past experiences and when the past experiences where good it gives the sign "all clear" and when they where bad it gives a warning.

But on the other hand there are other incidents where I have a feeling of right/wrong for which I know I have no past experiences. For instance when I read something philosophical I feel that what I read is true, even though my mind says it is complete nonsense. So where does that intuition comes from? Maybe our framework is not only feed by our experiences but some ancient/universal experience/knowledge, a Collective Unconscious as well?
Click to expand...

i love how you define intuition here, as the product of the unconscious producing an internal definition of external stimuli based on experience and... something else. it lines up with what I've read of intuition, as it often is known as a sudden visual response to the world. I know I've experienced it this way a lot with a Ni dominant function.

I want to push this idea of the collective unconscious however. I don't believe there is some repository from which humans pull from beyond some repository that all conscious pulls from as manifestations of the universe. I believe that the four functions of personality types are by products of a fundamentality of existence from which consciousness organizes its repository of experience. Inness and outness are universal states from which myriad patterns can be recognized and/or designed. same with inhibitness/openness, simplicity and complexity... these are things that permeate all levels of organization of the universe and are unifying supercategories that I believe intuition plays off of to create the framework of experience. the framework does not form similar patterns among different individuals with different experiences without something more inherent at its base

I hope I make some sense. I have my own pet theory that is an offshoot of jung's work that addresses this. it's hard to put to words something so intuitively designed and so outside of what messy words can convey..
 
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