Instinctive judgments, or decisions derived without conscious thoughts, are made naturally by humans in every situation. Instinctive judgments are made quickly, and it is often influenced by one’s own experiences, beliefs, and culture. The problem with instinctive judgment is that is it not a way of knowing yet it is very similar to intuition. Intuition guides us towards knowledge without cognitive processes- gut feeling. Knowledge derives from ways of knowing, but if intuition, one of the ways of knowing, excludes cognitive processes, to what extent can we rely on our instinctive judgments? History is one of the areas of knowledge that concerns with sense of perception, intuition, reason, and language. These four ways of knowing are needed
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According to Johann Kaspar Lavater, “Intuition is the clear conception of the whole at once”. The language of this quote emphasizes how instinctive judgment is made “at once” or immediately without any logical thoughts. In some situations, it is necessary to disregard the other ways of knowing and trust our instinct. Take the fight-or-flight response for example. In an intense situation like an encounter with a rapist, we do not have the time to go through inductive or deductive reasoning, to review our emotion at that point, or to try to recall previous information because the situation calls for a fight-or-flight response. I know a person who has encountered a similar situation in real life. She was sitting in a taxi and realized that the air in the taxi seems stuffy and her gut feeling was telling her that she was not safe in the taxi. She soon felt a little dizzy and drowsy. She trusted her instinctive judgment that it was no longer safe to be in that taxi and made a quick decision to demand the driver to stop the car and threatens to call the police. This situation is a perfect proof for the quote “Trusting our intuition often saves us from disaster” from Anne Wilson Schaef. In this argument, instinctive judgment is an effective on its own and does not need the support from other ways of
According to Johann Kaspar Lavater, “Intuition is the clear conception of the whole at once”. The language of this quote emphasizes how instinctive judgment is made “at once” or immediately without any logical thoughts. In some situations, it is necessary to disregard the other ways of knowing and trust our instinct. Take the fight-or-flight response for example. In an intense situation like an encounter with a rapist, we do not have the time to go through inductive or deductive reasoning, to review our emotion at that point, or to try to recall previous information because the situation calls for a fight-or-flight response. I know a person who has encountered a similar situation in real life. She was sitting in a taxi and realized that the air in the taxi seems stuffy and her gut feeling was telling her that she was not safe in the taxi. She soon felt a little dizzy and drowsy. She trusted her instinctive judgment that it was no longer safe to be in that taxi and made a quick decision to demand the driver to stop the car and threatens to call the police. This situation is a perfect proof for the quote “Trusting our intuition often saves us from disaster” from Anne Wilson Schaef. In this argument, instinctive judgment is an effective on its own and does not need the support from other ways of