474. Intuition And Logic

474.   Intuition And Logic

People usually contrast gut feelings or intuition as something very distinct from conscious logical reasoning.   This never really convinced me.   

Instead it seemed more plausible to me, that conscious and subconscious cognition were both using logic, but applying it to different informations as premises.   Conscious thinking seems limited, because it is restricted by what information is available to the consciousness.  The subconscious reasoning probably uses more information, even though it is not the consciously available.   
The quality of both, conscious reasoning and what appears to be intuition, depend equally upon the general ability to use logic.  Cognitive dissonance can be experienced as an intuitive feeling, even though the person does not consciously understand the reasons.   

There is some interesting scientific research: 

People Don't Just Think With Their Guts: Logic Plays a Role, Too
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/12/111229131356.htm

"For decades, science has suggested that when people make decisions, they tend to ignore logic and go with the gut. But Wim De Neys, a psychological scientist at the University of Toulouse in France, has a new suggestion: Maybe thinking about logic is also intuitive."

"De Neys thinks this sense, that something isn't quite right with the decision you're making, comes from an intuitive sense of logic."

370. Self-Monitoring Against Irrationality

Self-Monitoring Against Irrationality
I am putting very much emphasis on finding a mindmate, who is rational and void of any kind of belief.   Believing claims without doubt, no matter what the claims are, makes a man incompatible and a hazard.   
While I am looking for a man, whom I can accept as he is, when we meet, and not as raw material to change, adapting to each other implies reciprocally changing disturbing habits by giving and accepting support.
But beliefs are a different matter and worse than bad habits.   When someone temporarily and superficially appears to be an atheist and skeptic, but it is only skin deep, then sooner of later he will relapse to needing beliefs as a crutch, and then his behavior is determined by the power of his beliefs.    If the faculty to be rational is lacking in his brain, then someone cannot be influenced by rational discussions and no caring support can replace the crutch. 
In entry 364 I have already explained, that a man, whose behavior is determined by his beliefs and who cannot be influenced rationality is a big hazard to a rational woman, who would be the helpless target of his behavior.   Such a man is neither reliable nor predictable.    There are very good reasons to shun away from all believers, no matter in what.   Whatever advantage the believer has for himself, there is no advantage from his belief for a partner, only disadvantages and hazards.

Without the faculty for rationality in the brain, believers are doomed to continue being determined by their beliefs.   
Those, whose dormant rationality has only been overridden by either a need for a belief or childhood brainwashing are in an unfortunate situation.   Since the believing majority of the population has established the insanity of believing preposterous nonsense as the normative baseline (entry 369), beliefs get reinforced, but doubting is discouraged.    Not even the most  stupid of beliefs are ever generally scorned or ridiculed enough to make anybody feel ashamed of having and admitting them.   Doubts about any belief need to overcome a high threshold, before a person can discard it.     

Overcoming beliefs has to be triggered and initiated by the person's own inner mental process.    Nobody can cure a believer from his affliction, as long as he wants to continue believing, support can only help to enhance doubts, but the doubts need to come from inside.   

1. It can be a sudden awakening by a shock, someone being disappointed by a deity.
2. It can be the slow awakening along with the growing rationality as a guidance of life.   

Most sources on the web claim, that the subconscious mind is irrational and illogical.   Already in entry 368 I disagreed with this notion.   The subconscious mind produces many of the premises, that the conscious mind needs for making decisions, emotions, sensations, signals of dishomeostasis, memories including contingencies and pseudocontingencies, and it also sometimes produces conclusions reaching the conscious mind as intuition.    

As a result, the subconscious mind produces impulses to behave, but the conscious mind can act upon the impulses or decide not to allow them.   

There is only one force in the subconscious mind, that is detrimental and hazardous, but evolutionarily logical.  It is the imperative to react by animal instinct to the premises.    

The subconscious mind commands 'breed', the conscious mind is able to know, that being childfree is a better life.   The subconscious mind commands 'eat', the conscious mind knows, that restricting the intake of food is healthier.  

I am convinced that the reasoning in the subconscious depends as much on the rational faculties of the brain as the conscious reasoning.   If someone lacks the faculty for rationality and for consequencity, then the conscious behavior is as irrational as the subconscious impulses. 

The subconscious mind produces impulses to behave.   Sometimes people

• are not even aware, but act automatically by impulse.
• repress impulses before getting aware.
• follow impulses without knowing why.    
• rationally evaluate impulses before acting.

Rationality enables people to use a very powerful method to avoid detrimental behavior by impulses, and to ascertain consistency and congruence between the behavior and the cognition.

   

This method is self-monitoring:

1. Attempting to get aware of every impulse before acting.
2. Asking questions like these:
   Why do I want to do this?
   What do I sense or feel, that is triggering this impulse?
   Do I consciously have or do I need information, that the impulse has omitted?
   Does the impulse lead to behavior, that is consistent with my values and my long term goals?
   Are there options of more suitable behavior?
   Does the impulse consider the fair deal with a significant other?

Self-monitoring helps to become less a robot driven by instincts, but it also helps to avoid being driven by ludicrous beliefs.    

Self monitoring can become a habit and easier over time.   But of course it has its limits.  It is much easier to do it when there is an impulse for a proactive behavior and no pressure.    When there is pressure to react under stress or in emotionally extreme situations, then one is often compelled to follow the impulse.   But asking the questions afterwards helps to understand the dynamics of conflicts and to learn from it.  

368. Intuition, Logic And The Subconscious Mind

Intuition, Logic And The Subconscious Mind

In his concept of transliminality, Thalbourne considers it as having only a thin boundary between the conscious and the subconscious mind.   According to this concept, those misleading and weird perceptions (examples in entry 367) exist in all humans' subconscious mind.   High transliminality makes them available to consciousness, in low transliminality they remain hidden.  The assumption is widespread, that the ability to be logical is restricted to consciousness and that everything in the subconsciousness is automatically illogical.  Intuition is generally (not specially in connection with transliminality) considered as a method of arriving at a decision by a shortcut bypassing logical reasoning.

I very strongly disagree, even though I have no evidence to back up my own point of view.   

I consider the human brain as a complex information processing machine.   

The input are 

• external stimuli to the senses
• external information stimuli to cognition
• physical responses to external stimuli
• internal stimuli indicating dishomeostasis
• emotions elicited by the above

The process of how to react to the input uses information stored in the memory.   All of this together are the premises of a logical reasoning and deciding process.    A part of the process is under the focus of a spot light called consciousness, the rest is in the dark.  Conscious decisions are reasoning processes in the light, intuitions are processes in the dark, of which only the results appear in the light.    Both conscious and intuitive decisions are both as much or as little rational as is limited by the reasoning faculties.

The processes in the brain are fully logical, irrationality is in the choice of the premises.   Rationality is a faculty of a person and it is more or less there, but equally in the conscious and in the subconscious part of the brain.   

Every irrational belief is a logical conclusion processing an input.    If A utters a claim, then it is true, appears logical to B.   The mistake is the wrong premise, that A can know something as true.   When a person after a near-death-experience believes, that he has a soul having temporarily left the body, this is principally a logical conclusion, as long as no other information is available except the own perception.   But when someone is familiar with scientific thinking, when he has the possibility to acquire information about neuroscience, then the belief in the soul is irrational, because it is derived from an insufficient choice of premises.  

Therefore I consider the faculty of rational information processing and the sensitivity to conscious distorted perceptions are two different traits.   Telepathy as in item 14 of Thalbourne's 1998 questionnaire is an example.   "I am convinced that I have had at least one experience of telepathy between myself and another person".  

• A distorted-sensitive irrational person feels and believes it.    
• A less distorted-sensitive but irrational person believes other's claim of having felt it.
• A distorted-sensitive rational person is aware of experiencing weird things as happening in the brain without any connection with reality.    
• A less distorted-sensitive rational person does not believe in telepathy and has never experienced anything misleading.

I call it distorted-sensitive in contrast to the good sensitivity of being receptive to other people's emotional needs.   Rationality can discard weird sensations like telepathy in the subconscious brain, because they are not valid for bothering the conscious mind.    While I cannot know it, I am reluctant to think, that high general sensitivity makes people automatically prone to have distorted sensations.  

The transliminality scale mixes two different things, perceptions and their rational or irrational interpretations.    So far, I have not yet found any questionnaire or inventory separating both.   In the telepathy example, there should be two questions, one about having experienced a perception as if it were telepathy, and a second question about the interpretation as either a belief or a function of the own brain.  

But at this moment, I have not even a speculation, what about transliminality was visible in the EEG in this study.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2610283