Peirce on Intuition

Posted on August 19, 2008
Filed Under Peirce, Philosophy |

I’d discussed on the weekend intuitions and whether they are trustworthy. I was using the term more as some underlying cognitive process. Over at Brandon’s post I misread him as using that usage as well. Brandon’s point was basically that an intuition is just an element in an argument and as such even talking about reliability is odd.

This immediately made me think of Peirce and his famous essay, “Questions Concerning Certain Faculties Claimed for Man.” It’s basically his thinking through the issue of intuitions. I should have caught on to Brandon’s use since it is nearly identical to Peirce’s. A few quotes.

Throughout this paper, the term intuition will be taken as signifying a cognition not determined by a previous cognition of the same object, and therefore so determined by something out of the consciousness. Let me request the reader to note this. Intuition here will be nearly the same as “premiss not itself a conclusion”; the only difference being that premisses and conclusions are judgments, whereas an intuition may, as far as its definition states, be any kind of cognition whatever. But just as a conclusion (good or bad) is determined in the mind of the reasoner by its premiss, so cognitions not judgments may be determined by previous cognitions; and a cognition not so determined, and therefore determined directly by the transcendental object, is to be termed an intuition.

Peirce’s argument is basically that any process structurally is akin to an argument. But an intuition is a premise and not a conclusion and thus can’t be a process of this sort. Peirce talks about mediated but that’s basically the same idea. Intuitions are unmediated cognitions.

Peirce talks about the origins of the term in a footnote to the above paragraph.

The word intuitus first occurs as a technical term in St. Anselm’s Monologium. [Monologium, LXVI; Cf. Prantl, III, S. 332, 746n.] He wished to distinguish between our knowledge of God and our knowledge of finite things (and in the next world, of God, also); and thinking of the saying of St. Paul, Videmus nunc per speculum in aenigmate: tunc autem facie ad faciem, [LXX], he called the former speculation and the latter intuition. This use of “speculation” did not take root, because that word already had another exact and widely different meaning. In the middle ages, the term “intuitive cognition” had two principal senses; 1st, as opposed to abstractive cognition, it meant the knowledge of the present as present, and this is its meaning in Anselm; but 2d, as no intuitive cognition was allowed to be determined by a previous cognition, it came to be used as the opposite of discursive cognition (see Scotus, In sentent., lib. 2, dist. 3, qu. 9), and this is nearly the sense in which I employ it. This is also nearly the sense in which Kant uses it, the former distinction being expressed by his sensuous and non-sensuous. (See Werke, herausg. Rosenkranz, Thl. 2, S. 713, 31, 41, 100, u.s.w.) An enumeration of six meanings of intuition may be found in Hamilton’s Reid, p. 759.

Now Peirce’s ultimate point is an anti-Cartesian one. He feels all cognitions are mediated in some sense. The argument ends up being ties to the endless regress argument. If every cognition is determined by an earlier one don’t we end up with a vicious regress? Must there not be some originary cognition?

The reply to the argument that there must be a first is as follows: In retracing our way from conclusions to premisses, or from determined cognitions to those which determine them, we finally reach, in all cases, a point beyond which the consciousness in the determined cognition is more lively than in the cognition which determines it. We have a less lively consciousness in the cognition which determines our cognition of the third dimension than in the latter cognition itself; a less lively consciousness in the cognition which determines our cognition of a continuous surface (without a blind spot) than in this latter cognition itself; and a less lively consciousness of the impressions which determine the sensation of tone than of that sensation itself. Indeed, when we get near enough to the external this is the universal rule. Now let any horizontal line represent a cognition, and let the length of the line serve to measure (so to speak) the liveliness of consciousness in that cognition. A point, having no length, will, on this principle, represent an object quite out of consciousness. Let one horizontal line below another represent a cognition which determines the cognition represented by that other and which has the same object as the latter. Let the finite distance between two such lines represent that they are two different cognitions. With this aid to thinking, let us see whether “there must be a first.” Suppose an inverted triangle to be gradually dipped into water. At any date or instant, the surface of the water makes a horizontal line across that triangle. This line represents a cognition. At a subsequent date, there is a sectional line so made, higher upon the triangle. This represents another cognition of the same object determined by the former, and having a livelier consciousness. The apex of the triangle represents the object external to the mind which determines both these cognitions. The state of the triangle before it reaches the water, represents a state of cognition which contains nothing which determines these subsequent cognitions. To say, then, that if there be a state of cognition by which all subsequent cognitions of a certain object are not determined, there must subsequently be some cognition of that object not determined by previous cognitions of the same object, is to say that when that triangle is dipped into the water there must be a sectional line made by the surface of the water lower than which no surface line had been made in that way. But draw the horizontal line where you will, as many horizontal lines as you please can be assigned at finite distances below it and below one another. For any such section is at some distance above the apex, otherwise it is not a line. Let this distance be a. Then there have been similar sections at the distances 1/2a, 1/4a, 1/8a, 1/16a, above the apex, and so on as far as you please. So that it is not true that there must be a first. Explicate the logical difficulties of this paradox (they are identical with those of the Achilles) in whatever way you may. I am content with the result, as long as your principles are fully applied to the particular case of cognitions determining one another. Deny motion, if it seems proper to do so; only then deny the process of determination of one cognition by another. Say that instants and lines are fictions; only say, also, that states of cognition and judgments are fictions. The point here insisted on is not this or that logical solution of the difficulty, but merely that cognition arises by a process of beginning, as any other change comes to pass.

One can quickly see that Peirce’s view of intuitions is wrapped up in his theory of continuity.

My view was basically given that there are no unmediated cognitions any intuition to be a cognition (which all are) must arise out of some cognitive process. Now it’s true we can refer to intuitions, so-called, independent of talk of such cognitive processes. But to make any ground we must eventually leave talk of intuitions independent of the process of intuition-formation and begin to talk about the underlying cognitive processes.

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