Intuition

Intuition is the ability to acquire knowledge

without proof, evidence, or conscious reasoning, or
without understanding how the knowledge was
acquired
Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) thinks intuition is
sensory information provided by
the cognitive faculty of sensibility (equivalent to
what might loosely be called perception). Kant held
that our mind casts all of our external intuitions in
the form of space, and all of our internal intuitions
(memory, thought) in the form of time.
 A priori
and A posteriori
• A priori knowledge is independent
of experience, as with mathematics (3 +
2 = 5), tautologies ("All bachelors are
unmarried"), and deduction from pure
reason
• A posteriori knowledge depends
on experience or empirical evidence, as
with most aspects of science .
 The intuitive distinction between a
priori and a posteriori knowledge
• A priori
• Consider the proposition, "If George V reigned at least four
days, then he reigned more than three days." This is
something that one knows a priori, because it expresses a
statement that one can derive by reason alone.
• A posteriori
• Compare this with the proposition expressed by the
sentence, "George V reigned from 1910 to 1936." This is
something that (if true) one must come to know a
posteriori, because it expresses an empirical fact
unknowable by reason alone.