To me, “intuition” means using the parts of my brain that are not open to introspection. Emotion is how the conclusion made by some other part of my brain is communicated to my awareness.
Instead of comparing whether reason or intuition “is better”, let’s frame it as a question about their specific strengths and weaknesses. The greatest strength of intuition is noticing things I otherwise would not have noticed. (Noticing that I am confused. Noticing that I feel afraid, despite having no obvious reason for that.)
The argument in favor of intuition would be like this: “Thinking is limited to processing evidence I can express verbally. But compared to all evidence that is available to my brain, that’s merely the tip of the iceberg. Under most circumstances, this is okay, because generally either both point in a similar direction, or the intuition points in a certain direction and the reason does not care either way. Two major exceptions are: (a) new situations that requires immediate response, such as ‘you almost stepped on a snake’; and (b) adversarial situations when someone provides you lots of verbal arguments, filtered to make you act in a certain way, persuading you to do something irreversible. In both cases, the idea is that by the time your thinking would make the right conclusion, it would already be too late.”
(And then of course, reason also has its strengths, but we all already know that.)
Most importantly, reason vs intuition is not a zero-sum game. For example, you can improve your intuition in certain area by getting more experience in it; that does not diminish your reason in any way.
To me, “intuition” means using the parts of my brain that are not open to introspection. Emotion is how the conclusion made by some other part of my brain is communicated to my awareness.
Instead of comparing whether reason or intuition “is better”, let’s frame it as a question about their specific strengths and weaknesses. The greatest strength of intuition is noticing things I otherwise would not have noticed. (Noticing that I am confused. Noticing that I feel afraid, despite having no obvious reason for that.)
The argument in favor of intuition would be like this: “Thinking is limited to processing evidence I can express verbally. But compared to all evidence that is available to my brain, that’s merely the tip of the iceberg. Under most circumstances, this is okay, because generally either both point in a similar direction, or the intuition points in a certain direction and the reason does not care either way. Two major exceptions are: (a) new situations that requires immediate response, such as ‘you almost stepped on a snake’; and (b) adversarial situations when someone provides you lots of verbal arguments, filtered to make you act in a certain way, persuading you to do something irreversible. In both cases, the idea is that by the time your thinking would make the right conclusion, it would already be too late.”
(And then of course, reason also has its strengths, but we all already know that.)
Most importantly, reason vs intuition is not a zero-sum game. For example, you can improve your intuition in certain area by getting more experience in it; that does not diminish your reason in any way.