Intuition - Origin and Definition

The idea that we know before we know has been moving through pop culture for some time. I'm NOT suggesting this as a conspiracy but I wouldn't rule it out as a possibility. Still, I also wanted to add a little bit of fun to the thread. I suspect most of you will have seen the Matrix clip but it really does draw attention to the idea of precognition, plus it has a tie to the Oracle which is a by definition an icon of foreknowledge. Looking at the softer, yet hilarious Fleabag series out of the UK, we see "You already know what you're going to do," a few years later. If you haven't seen the Fleabag series, I highly recommend it because I laughed my ass off. In both cases, I found myself wondering what each of the shows was attempting to say with these statements and why it was included in the show. Regardless of the reason, it was thought provoking and did draw me in closer to the dialogue. As I was writing this I remembered the Tom Cruise movie, Minority Report, which literally had "precogs" as the core to preventing future, "thought crime," but I'm not in the mood to go hunt down a clip atm.


Anyways, the idea of us unconsciously knowing things through intuition and foresight that are now being scientifically linked to heart-brain coherence, can give us an additional base of ideas to continue the development of an awareness and understanding on the origin of the mind, consciousness, and intuition. Enjoy the clips.
 
Just pondering out loud …

I find that any discussion about whether we have free will is futile. That’s because if we have no free will then I have no choice in my conclusion, whether it’s to accept or reject it. Even what I write here is determined, regardless of whether it is valid or not. I find all discussion leading to a conclusion that we have no free will is philosophically unethical because it assumes in its audience the ability to choose to accept its case making - meaning it implicitly assumes the opposite of what it claims in its audience.

On the other hand Jung pointed out that much of our lives is managed by our unconscious. Our conscious mind likes to think it is in control but in many ways it’s a junior partner in a collective. Free will if we have it is not simply a function of the ego, but of the whole mind. It’s not surprising then that it emerges from below.

I suspect that we have a distorted idea of what constitutes ‘now’ as well, and that it’s smeared out over a second or two in respect of the way the mind works.
 
People get hung up on free as an absolute.

Yes, we have free will, as limited by our skills and talents, as constrained by our resources, as limited by the boundaries of the situation and context one is in, and as modulated by one’s biology, and infused by one’s consciousness, and awareness thereof, not to mention all the socialization and metaprogramming scripts one is running, both adaptive and maladaptive.

Got that? Good!

Go enjoy your life. Because I said so.

Blesséd Be,
Ian
 
John K said:
Just pondering out loud …

I find that any discussion about whether we have free will is futile. That’s because if we have no free will then I have no choice in my conclusion, whether it’s to accept or reject it. Even what I write here is determined, regardless of whether it is valid or not. I find all discussion leading to a conclusion that we have no free will is philosophically unethical because it assumes in its audience the ability to choose to accept its case making - meaning it implicitly assumes the opposite of what it claims in its audience.

On the other hand Jung pointed out that much of our lives is managed by our unconscious. Our conscious mind likes to think it is in control but in many ways it’s a junior partner in a collective. Free will if we have it is not simply a function of the ego, but of the whole mind. It’s not surprising then that it emerges from below.

I suspect that we have a distorted idea of what constitutes ‘now’ as well, and that it’s smeared out over a second or two in respect of the way the mind works.
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Personally, I don't like the term "free-will," but that's what I'm working with in this case. I'm really more interested in the origin of intuition and consciousness, yet, in this case, the science appears like it may overlap.

I don't think that these experiments are supporting, one way or the other, that we have no control over the outcome of our lives. I do, however; believe that they provide some insight into an origin of choice and that some of this cognition is coming prior to sensory discovery or acknowledgement. As such, it puts it on the table as a point of discussion.
 
One of the major points of the matrix is to illustrate mathematically that it's impossible to fully calculate free will.
There's an element of chaos that will always be indeterminable, which is essentially what free will boils down to.
622028df101b41a96bc000967cb9d316.jpg
 
Wyote said:
One of the major points of the matrix is to illustrate mathematically that it's impossible to fully calculate free will.
There's an element of chaos that will always be indeterminable, which is essentially what free will boils down to.
622028df101b41a96bc000967cb9d316.jpg
Click to expand...
I love this line of thought, both you and John. If it was true free will, wouldn't we all be gods? At the opposite end of that thought, if a tragedy falls upon us, that can change the course of our life (butterfly effect comes to mind).

This life is very strange, and that the mind appears to be playing tricks on us, certainly makes it interesting.
 
TomasM said:
Personally, I don't like the term "free-will," but that's what I'm working with in this case. I'm really more interested in the origin of intuition and consciousness, yet, in this case, the science appears like it may overlap.

I don't think that these experiments are supporting, one way or the other, that we have no control over the outcome of our lives. I do, however; believe that they provide some insight into an origin of choice and that some of this cognition is coming prior to sensory discovery or acknowledgement. As such, it puts it on the table as a point of discussion.
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My personal feeling is that there's still a long way to go to bridge between the mechanisms of brain function and the experience of being conscious, being human. It seems to me that the bottom up approach is a bit like trying to understand how, say, a flight traffic control system works by looking at the physical components of the computers it runs on and seeing what they are doing. In between the hardware and the manifest effect of the system are all the electrical interactions, how they translate into low level processor actions, how these translate into low level processor language, how these then translate into a high level language such as C, and how that in its turn reflects the high level system models that relate to the system's functions. Reverse engineering all this from bottom up with no prior knowledge of software engineering would be very hard - we might face this sort of issue if ever we come across an alien artifact from a more advanced world than our own.

Reverse engineering the mind equivalent of our 'software' from our brain hardware processes seems like a problem orders of magnitude greater than reverse engineering a major software system. My gut tells me we are very much in the shadows until we have some kind of software language for engineering a mind. We probably need to start off with low level animals first rather than going straight for human minds. And that's assuming our minds could be described in something analogous to a software engineering design plan and a language to effect it.
 
TomasM said:
Would something like AI or AGI qualify in this regard?
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Maybe, but AI took off after I retired so I'm unfamiliar with how its engineered. It seems like a good analogy though.

An interesting possibility that's occurred to me before is that maybe conscious life emerges in a similar way to phase changes in physics. If that's the case then AI engineers may not be engineers at all but midwives if they push far enough to cross such a phase change boundary without realising it.
 
John K said:
Maybe, but AI took off after I retired so I'm unfamiliar with how its engineered. It seems like a good analogy though.

An interesting possibility that's occurred to me before is that maybe conscious life emerges in a similar way to phase changes in physics. If that's the case then AI engineers may not be engineers at all but midwives if they push far enough to cross such a phase change boundary without realising it.
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Or, could the mind be an actual out of phase construct that can't be viewed scientifically - similar to the quantum collapse of the wave. Since we are already seeing feedback from from Penrose and Hameroff on the brain being quantum, I think this question could be explored.
 
TomasM said:
Or, could the mind be an actual out of phase construct that can't be viewed scientifically - similar to the quantum collapse of the wave. Since we are already seeing feedback from from Penrose and Hameroff on the brain being quantum, I think this question could be explored.
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It wouldn’t surprise me. In the sense that it may be impossible to model the mind conceptually with something that is simpler than an actual mind. But such modelling is at the heart of science.
 
I always ask myself in discussions about human free will, why do people doubt free will?
Is it because people would like to be without responsibility for their actions, is it because the doubters
possibly have no free will themselves and want to deny free will to other people?
Personally, I find it rather absurd. I have free will because I also have a consciousness.
I am not just instinct-driven, as these NPC people seem to be. :wink:

I would like to use an example to explain how it is with will or non-will.
If I didn't have free will, I would probably just be an observer of my life.
It's like being asleep. Sometimes you don't dream, but you still realise that you are there.
The next stage is that I dream something but am only a spectator. I can't intervene,
and don't even want to. But then, suddenly, there is a break. Now I think in the dream
I can fly after all, and I try it out straight away. However, I don't realise
that I'm actually asleep. It's like another life. But it goes even further
to something that not so many people experience anymore.
It is called lucid dreaming. You are asleep, but you know exactly that you are dreaming
and you know that you could do anything without being held responsible.
For example consciously fly, or walk through walls.
Sometimes I walk on a road and then I just sit in a car in the dream and drive off.
Or I jump up and fly away. Everything consciously and knowing that in reality
I'm lying in my bed and sleeping. But that is not the end of the possibilities.
Next level: You wake up in your bed and realise that you are mentally awake
but your body is still asleep. Then I get up from my bed,
look back and see my body lying there, then I walk around the house.
I know for sure that my consciousness is wide awake, but my
body is still in bed. Sometimes I go outside by walking through closed doors.
Doors, or even walls are no obstacle. I have already flown to the moon
and felt the moon dust between my fingers, or I have let myself fall towards the centre of the earth.
All with full awareness and full intention.
And yet I know that I am actually lying in my bed. In this state
I have seen a parcel lying on the stairs. The next morning
I actually got out of bed with my body, I found the parcel lying on the stairs.
You can believe all this or not, it's irrelevant to me because
I know that I have experienced all of this. And not just once.
 
Sorn said:
I always ask myself in discussions about human free will, why do people doubt free will?
Is it because people would like to be without responsibility for their actions, is it because the doubters
possibly have no free will themselves and want to deny free will to other people?
Personally, I find it rather absurd. I have free will because I also have a consciousness.
I am not just instinct-driven, as these NPC people seem to be. :wink:

I would like to use an example to explain how it is with will or non-will.
If I didn't have free will, I would probably just be an observer of my life.
It's like being asleep. Sometimes you don't dream, but you still realise that you are there.
The next stage is that I dream something but am only a spectator. I can't intervene,
and don't even want to. But then, suddenly, there is a break. Now I think in the dream
I can fly after all, and I try it out straight away. However, I don't realise
that I'm actually asleep. It's like another life. But it goes even further
to something that not so many people experience anymore.
It is called lucid dreaming. You are asleep, but you know exactly that you are dreaming
and you know that you could do anything without being held responsible.
For example consciously fly, or walk through walls.
Sometimes I walk on a road and then I just sit in a car in the dream and drive off.
Or I jump up and fly away. Everything consciously and knowing that in reality
I'm lying in my bed and sleeping. But that is not the end of the possibilities.
Next level: You wake up in your bed and realise that you are mentally awake
but your body is still asleep. Then I get up from my bed,
look back and see my body lying there, then I walk around the house.
I know for sure that my consciousness is wide awake, but my
body is still in bed. Sometimes I go outside by walking through closed doors.
Doors, or even walls are no obstacle. I have already flown to the moon
and felt the moon dust between my fingers, or I have let myself fall towards the centre of the earth.
All with full awareness and full intention.
And yet I know that I am actually lying in my bed. In this state
I have seen a parcel lying on the stairs. The next morning
I actually got out of bed with my body, I found the parcel lying on the stairs.
You can believe all this or not, it's irrelevant to me because
I know that I have experienced all of this. And not just once.
Click to expand...
You bring up some good points and these are things I contemplate regularly. Lucid, NDE's, OOBE, dreams, intuition, and consciousness, all seem to be in that hidden, behind the veil, space.

I'm putting together the physiology and the mind experiments to get a feel for how all of these pieces interconnect and I do believe that we are starting to get some clarity around the timing, and movement of thoughts, feelings, and awareness.

I do believe you, and I've heard other people describe similar experiences with OOBE's.
 
I did a quick dive into NDE's and wanted to provide a base level of knowledge. I'm doing this to try and determine its proximity to intuition and consciousness.

Definition(s) according to Near-Death Experimental Research Foundation (NDERF): A lucid experience associated with perceived consciousness apart from the body occurring at the time of actual or threatened imminent death.

Within NDERF's definition they mention patterns that emerge somewhat consistently across experiences. Some of those patterns are:
---
A separation of consciousness from the body. Sensation of viewing surroundings from a place other than the physical body. Some may see their bodies from a distance. Feeling the "self " is hovering overhead.

The ability to see and hear details of events (which may be close or distant from the body) while unconscious. These details (which may include a pronouncement of death) are often later confirmed by others who are generally astonished and mystified that the experiencer was aware of these events while unconscious.

A difficulty in explaining the NDE. Ordinary language often seems inadequate to describe these extraordinary experiences.

An awareness of future life events. Although rare, some experiencers have "flash-forwards" in time to witness themselves and events at a later time in their life.

Special gifts. Some experiencers report psychic or other paranormal abilities after an NDE.
---
What I'm reading in this is that NDE's appear to include access to both the unconscious and conscious mind simultaneously. There also appears to be difficulty in explaining the experience. These patterns appear to be evident in both the NDE and Intuition.

The NDE almost appears to be intuition on steroids (metaphor). Being able to know things that happen while unconscious, or that will happen in the future, while also being unable to fully explain this ability seems consistent across both NDE and intuition.

The NDE also appears to contain an element of being conscious while being disconnected or external from the body. This is related to OBEs that sometimes occur during an NDE. When this occurs in a operating room, where information can be confirmed, the experience takes on the appearance of a supernatural state.

If NDEs can increase perception within a persons consciousness then is it possible to increase this perception in other more natural (without death) pathways. We know that everyone has an element of intuition and that it appears to be more developed in some people than others, so, where do the upper and lower boundaries reside? If there is a spectrum then is it merely our (human species) need to differentiate between things we don't understand or are these actually different innate perceptions.
 
How Hidden Emotions Help Us Make Better and Faster Decisions (Experiments)
April 2016

These experiments support the existence of intuition as a means of making more accurate decisions when there is an nonconscious emotional stimulus applied.

Experiment 1: Participants decided the direction of moving dots while emotional images were shown unconsciously, and their accuracy improved when the emotional images were intact compared to scrambled ones.

Experiment 2: Participants decided the direction of moving dots, and results showed that unconscious emotional images not only improved accuracy but also made decisions faster and boosted confidence.

Experiment 3: The experiment tested whether the boost in accuracy was due to a specific link between emotional images and motion direction, showing that reversing this link eliminated the improvement.

Experiment 4: Researchers measured participants' skin conductance responses (SCR) and found that emotional images triggered stronger physiological responses, which correlated with improved decision accuracy, especially in harder trials.

Conclusion:

These experiments demonstrate that nonconscious emotional information can significantly enhance decision accuracy, confidence, and speed in a task involving ambiguous sensory evidence. The results suggest that intuition, as a process of integrating unconscious emotional cues with conscious information, is both measurable and mechanistically explainable. The findings highlight the brain’s ability to combine distinct sources of information—even when one is suppressed—under conditions of uncertainty, particularly when conscious evidence is insufficient. This research provides robust support for the existence of intuition and underscores its role as a rapid, adaptive decision-making mechanism.

Source
 
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