If you ask them to picture it in their mind, they can.
If you ask them to draw it, they can.
They can very quickly recognize that a diagram of Benzene is, in fact, a diagram of Benzene.
They can quickly answer questions like “does Benzene contain a cycle?”
The generator for these is something like “they have a mental representation of the structure as a picture, prototype, graph, etc, which is hooked up to other parts of the mind and is available for quick use in mental procedures”.
When I was older, and I began to read the Feynman Lectures on Physics, I ran across a gem called “the wave equation.” I could follow the equation’s derivation, but, looking back, I couldn’t see its truth at a glance. So I thought about the wave equation for three days, on and off, until I saw that it was embarrassingly obvious. And when I finally understood, I realized that the whole time I had accepted the honest assurance of physicists that light was waves, sound was waves, matter was waves, I had not had the vaguest idea of what the word “wave” meant to a physicist.
The “[seeing] that it was embarrassingly obvious” is only the case after having the intuition.
Alright, fair enough, this is certainly… something (that is, you have answered my question of “what do you mean by ‘intuition’”, though I am not sure what I’d call this thing you’re describing or even that it’s a single, monolithic phenomenon)… but it’s not at all what people usually mean when they talk about ‘intuition’.
This revelation makes your post very confusing and hard to parse! (What’s more, it seems like you actually use ‘intuition’ in your post in several different ways, making it even more confusing.) I will have to reread the post carefully, but I can say that I no longer have any clear idea what you are saying in it (whereas before I did—though, clearly, that impression was mistaken).
but it’s not at all what people usually mean when they talk about ‘intuition’.
For my own case I immediately and exactly match Jessica’s use of “intuition” and expect that is what most people usually mean when they talk about intuition, so I think this claim requires greater justification if that seems important to you given a sample size of 3 here.
the ability to understand something instinctively, without the need for conscious reasoning.
they have a mental representation of the structure as a picture, prototype, graph, etc, which is hooked up to other parts of the mind and is available for quick use in mental procedures”.
i.e. They have the knowledge stored and accessible. The conscious reasoning has already occurred for understanding. Recalling it without (much) effort isn’t intuition, even if it happens as a response to prior training/on a most subconscious level/instinctively.
To me, “intuition” is something that comes from somewhere—a gut feeling, an inspiration, that kind of thing. Intuitively sensing/feeling/knowing what to do in a situation. Quite an experience when “auto-pilot” takes over...
Something that ‘just comes to you’ - what I would call an ‘intuition’. Which seems to fit with the original post’s usage and the example of the “the structure of benzene came in a dream”.
Something done ‘automatically/without thinking’ but has been learned i.e. the example of a chemist being able to recognise and represent benzene is not an intuition. It is knowledge that originated from an intuition.
The issue comes with the usage of “intuitively” in the comments with the examples given. The difference between something learned and something spontaneous/organic that occurs.
e.g. The person that can pick up an instrument and play it without prior training is using intuition, an instinctive feel for how to make it work versus the person that’s practised for years, conscious of their actions until they are so well trained they can play automatically.
If you ask them to picture it in their mind, they can.
If you ask them to draw it, they can.
They can very quickly recognize that a diagram of Benzene is, in fact, a diagram of Benzene.
They can quickly answer questions like “does Benzene contain a cycle?”
The generator for these is something like “they have a mental representation of the structure as a picture, prototype, graph, etc, which is hooked up to other parts of the mind and is available for quick use in mental procedures”.
To elaborate, I will quote Guessing the Teacher’s Password:
The “[seeing] that it was embarrassingly obvious” is only the case after having the intuition.
Alright, fair enough, this is certainly… something (that is, you have answered my question of “what do you mean by ‘intuition’”, though I am not sure what I’d call this thing you’re describing or even that it’s a single, monolithic phenomenon)… but it’s not at all what people usually mean when they talk about ‘intuition’.
This revelation makes your post very confusing and hard to parse! (What’s more, it seems like you actually use ‘intuition’ in your post in several different ways, making it even more confusing.) I will have to reread the post carefully, but I can say that I no longer have any clear idea what you are saying in it (whereas before I did—though, clearly, that impression was mistaken).
For my own case I immediately and exactly match Jessica’s use of “intuition” and expect that is what most people usually mean when they talk about intuition, so I think this claim requires greater justification if that seems important to you given a sample size of 3 here.
intuition
the ability to understand something instinctively, without the need for conscious reasoning.
i.e. They have the knowledge stored and accessible. The conscious reasoning has already occurred for understanding. Recalling it without (much) effort isn’t intuition, even if it happens as a response to prior training/on a most subconscious level/instinctively.
To me, “intuition” is something that comes from somewhere—a gut feeling, an inspiration, that kind of thing. Intuitively sensing/feeling/knowing what to do in a situation. Quite an experience when “auto-pilot” takes over...
That all sounds like part of the same cluster of mental movements to me, i.e. all the stuff that isn’t deliberative.
Talking about “intuition” I distinguish between:
Something that ‘just comes to you’ - what I would call an ‘intuition’. Which seems to fit with the original post’s usage and the example of the “the structure of benzene came in a dream”.
Something done ‘automatically/without thinking’ but has been learned i.e. the example of a chemist being able to recognise and represent benzene is not an intuition. It is knowledge that originated from an intuition.
The issue comes with the usage of “intuitively” in the comments with the examples given. The difference between something learned and something spontaneous/organic that occurs.
e.g. The person that can pick up an instrument and play it without prior training is using intuition, an instinctive feel for how to make it work versus the person that’s practised for years, conscious of their actions until they are so well trained they can play automatically.