User:Bronte JD.Whelan/Sandbox

Intuition; the minds subconscious intellect.

Albert Einstein the world renowned theoretical physicist is known for the theories he created, theories that have contributed to the advancement of scientific knowledge. What is less well known is that Einstein told of how scientific theories are created. How do I know this? To answer that question I will begin by telling you I suffer from the common complaint of not being able to remember people's names. As a result of the frequency with which this occurred, over time I gradually became aware of the fact that on occasions the name I could not remember earlier would suddenly enter my mind some time later. Having become aware of this name recalling phenomenon, it was only a short step to noticing that after I had left a problem in abeyance in my mind, on occasions the solution to that particular problem would similarly suddenly enter my mind some time later. I discussed these phenomena with family and friends, and when they replied they too had had similar experiences, I put it down to being just one of those things that happens to everybody and thought no more about it. Then two things happened in quick succession.

The first happened immediately after I had received a solution to a problem I had left in abeyance in my mind, when I suddenly realised that whereas the recalling of a name was limited to a single fact, the recalling of a solution to a problem was clearly a reasoned response to a previously unsolved problem. How could this be so when I had not mentally participated in arriving at the solution?

The second happened when I was reading the book "The Cosmic Code: Quantum Physics as the Language of Nature" by Heinz R Pagel, in which the physicist Albert Einstein is quoted as having said, "For the creation of a theory, the mere collection of recorded phenomena never suffices - there must always be added a free invention of the human mind that attacks the heart of the matter." The moment I read "…a free invention of the mind…", I instantly knew that what Einstein was referring to was in some way connected to my experiences of names and solutions to problems suddenly entering my mind some time later.

Now I consider myself to be a reasonably well informed person, yet I have never heard or read anything that even remotely suggests the possibility of the existence of a process in the human mind capable of solving problems without the need for mental participation. And yet from personal experience I know such phenomena exist, my family and friends know they exist, and Einstein obviously knew of their existence for him to risk being ridiculed by mentioning it in public. Add to this the fact I was becoming aware of people around me referring to it indirectly in general conversation with comments such as, "I have just had a good/bright/brilliant idea", and "I had a hunch/gut feeling..."; "Something inside me was telling me…", and "The moment you said that, I suddenly remembered…". Poets, composers and songwriters participating in interviews in the media tell of how they would sit pencil and paper ready, awaiting the words or music to suddenly enter their mind. Scientists were using the term "eureka moment" to describe the sudden entering into their mind of a solution to a problem they had been considering. To me the evidence was so overwhelming I decided to carry out my own investigation to find out for myself what these phenomena actually are.

After much pondering (the conversation I have with myself) and fruitless searching for information to describe what was happening, I found it inconceivable that a phenomenon with the ability to solve problems in this manner had never previously been recorded in writing by someone, somewhere, at sometime in the past. As a result of having learned from the Australian Broadcasting Corporation's (ABC) radio program "My Word" the quantity and depth of information that can be drawn from a single word, I decided to use my Collins English Dictionary *1 (CED) to see if I could find any of the words that would be required to make such a record, and use them as the basis upon which an explanation of this phenomenon could be reconstructed. The words would be chosen on their ability to describe my personal experiences of the recalling phenomena in action.

I began my search with the word "psych" because of its' obvious association with the topic under consideration. There were many headwords with multiple meanings beginning with psych, but only one of those meanings contained a word that fitted the criterion being applied, that word was mental. From mental came conscious which lead to subconscious, and so on until I had compiled a list of the words reasoning, reason, perception, perceive, insight, knowledge, intuition, and instinct. None provided the breakthrough required to start a train of thought in my mind that I felt was traveling in the correct direction.

The breakthrough came in a documentary on the ABC TV program "Open Learning" on the role that cognition plays in the mental development of children. What I was hearing lead me to believe the word cognition was worthy of defining. During my reading of the definition of cognition, I had a feeling something did not add up between this word and one in my earlier list. Reviewing the list, the word turned out to be intuition, the definitions of both words being: Cognition CED "n. the mental act or process by which knowledge is acquired, including perception, intuition and reasoning." Intuition CED "n. knowledge or perception not gained by intelligence and reasoning: instinctive knowledge or insight." Whilst pondering over the two definitions, my earlier feeling something did not add up was justified when the definition of cognition failed to mention that intuition included as one of the three contributors to the acquiring of knowledge, is according to the definition of intuition, the name of knowledge followed by the proviso "…not gained by intelligence and reasoning:" As both intelligence and reasoning are an accepted part of the mental process of cognition, where does the non-cognitive knowledge come from?

After pondering on this question and accepting that cognition acquires knowledge in the conscious mind, I was left considering the possibility the non-cognitive knowledge must be gained somewhere other than in the conscious mind. Referring to my list of words, subconscious offered a plausible answer when it defined in CED as, "that part of the mind considered to be outside or only partly within one's conscious awareness." Whilst this description provides the necessary conditions for non-cognitive knowledge to be acquired "…outside…" of "…one's conscious awareness", it does raise the question, "If the non-cognitive knowledge is gained in the subconscious mind, how could it be included into the mental process of cognition in the conscious mind?"

The word insight from the list provided the answer when it defined in CED as "a penetrating and often sudden understanding as of a complex situation or problem", an answer that describes my experience of a solution to a problem suddenly entering my mind. Having established how non-cognitive knowledge is included into the mental process of cognition, there is still one question that needs to be answered. "If intuition is the name of non-cognitive knowledge included by insight into the cognitive process in the conscious mind, then what is the name of the act or process where non-cognitive knowledge is gained in the subconscious mind?" Having scrutinised the definitions of cognition and intuition to see if an answer would present itself, it was the ABC Radio program "My word" that came to my assistance again by drawing my attention to the fact the two words cognition and intuition end with "ion", which when I checked CED read as –ion, "suffix forming nouns, indicating an action, process or state." From this definition I was able to draw the following conclusion. As cognition with the suffix -ion is an acknowledged process in the conscious mind able to acquire cognitive knowledge, then intuition with the same suffix -ion is a process in the subconscious mind able to gain non-cognitive knowledge.

In summing up what I have discovered, I consider I have offered sufficient evidence based on observations of what is occurring in my mind, together with what you will now be aware of as occurring in yours, to prove beyond reasonable doubt that the knowledge gained by the process of intuition in the subconscious mind, is included by insight into the cognitive process in the conscious mind for the purpose of contributing to the acquiring of cognitive knowledge.

Having discovered the process of intuition, my mind turned to considering how it would actually create knowledge? Faced again with not knowing where to begin, I decided to review what I had written earlier about discovering my intuition in the hope it may provide a possible lead. When I came to where I had compared the definitions of cognition and intuition, I suddenly realised I had inadvertently overlooked the fact that in the definition of intuition, the headword was not only the name of knowledge, it was also the name of perception, both of which had been subject to the same proviso of "…not gained by intelligence and reasoning".

As I had at the time gone on to reach the conclusion the non-cognitive knowledge had been gained in the subconscious mind, it followed the perception being mentioned in the same definition would also be of the subconscious mind. Having reached that conclusion, I defined perception in CED as "the process by which an organism detects and interprets information from the external world by means of sensory receptors." I instantly knew this definition would not apply to a process of perception in the subconscious mind because it refers to the detecting of information from the external world by sensory receptors, an act not possible for a process located in the subconscious mind. This left me with no alternative other than to accept the existence of two processes of perception*2 in the human mind, one in the conscious mind and the other in the subconscious mind.

It was at this point that I again found myself struggling to know in which direction to move forward. Whilst waiting for a direction to present itself, I decided to use the definition of cognitive perception taken earlier from CED to explain how it functions in the conscious mind in the hope it may be of use at some time in the future. Using the sense of sight as an example, the first act of cognitive perception is for the sensory receptors to observe an object in the external world. The image of the object is converted into impulses, transmitted along nerve fibres to the memory where the image is stored. The second act of cognitive perception is to scan the impulses as they enter the memory from which it detects (meaning "to determine the presence of" ) and extracts (meaning "to remove") information.

Shortly after completing this explanation of cognitive perception, I was presented with the direction I was awaiting during an interview on the radio of a policeman who said that he knew a detective with a sixth sense for solving crimes. The moment the policeman mentioned the sixth sense, I instantly knew it was the detective's intuition assisting him to solve crimes. When I looked up sixth sense in Encyclopaedia Britannica CD 99 Standard Edition (EB), it read as, "a power of perception like but not one of the five senses: a keen intuitive power." In analysing the first part of the definition, use of the term "…like but not one of the five senses;" clearly indicated to me there must be a marked difference between the perception of the sixth sense and the other five senses.

After pondering without success what the marked difference might be, I turned to the second part of the definition "a keen intuitive power."Having selected a meaning for each of the words keen, intuitive and power*3, I shuffled the meanings around until I was able to form a description of the sixth sense as, "an ability to perform an act of extremely sensitive perception as part of the process of intuition". Eureka! There was the marked difference. Because this act of perception belongs to the sixth sense of intuition, it would only be capable of functioning in the subconscious mind. For this finding to be accepted as correct, there are two questions that must be answered. Question No. 1. What would the receptor of intuitive perception be able to observe within the subconscious mind that could provide a solution to a problem? Answer. The contents of the memory. Question No. 2. How would the intuitive perception know what the problem was that required a solution? Answer. Recalling my earlier explanation of cognitive perception, the answer is that as a problem enters the memory it is observed by the receptor of intuitive perception, detected as a problem which triggers the receptor to begin observing the contents of the memory in a search for a solution to that problem.

Then it happened! I had no sooner finished writing the answer when I had an intuitive insight that for the intuitive perception in the subconscious mind to detect a problem and extract a solution to that problem from the contents of the memory, it would take an act of reasoning as part of the process of intuitive perception in the subconscious mind. After much pondering on this finding, I was able to understand the need for an act of intuitive reasoning as part of the process of intuitive perception, however what I could not understand was why it was necessary to have an act of cognitive reasoning as part of the process of cognitive perception.

As I vainly searched EB for an explanation, my intuition as only intuition can, drew my attention to one word constantly being used in describing thinking, argument, and decision-making, that word was rational, defined in CED as "using reason or logic in thinking out a problem". Use of the word "…or…" in the definition suggested to me that to reason and think logically may involve two separate acts of reasoning in my mind, so I began to investigate this possibility by defining the word reason in CED to mean "the faculty of rational argument, deduction, judgment, etc.". As this meaning describes precisely my experiences of what occurs when I am having a conversation with myself during the cognitive reasoning process, I accepted reason as a process in its' own right.

Defining logic was more difficult because I could not find a definition that referred to it being a faculty as was the case with reason. The breakthrough came when I read of logic being described in EB as "the study of propositions and their use in argumentation." In an effort to gain a better understanding of this description, I defined the three words study, propositions and argumentation, to which I added the words proposal and offered taken from the definition of proposition*4.

From these definitions I was able to form a description of logic as,"the methodical application of careful and critical reasoning applied to something offered for consideration for the purpose of being accepted or rejected." The last part of this description "…for the purpose of being accepted or rejected" strongly suggested to me that the solution gained by the intuitive reasoning was not being included as the definitive solution to a problem, it was being offered for reviewal by the process of cognition. This immediately raised the question in my mind of how such a review would occur.

Responding to this question, I began by defining review in CED as "a second examination; reconsideration." With this meaning firmly embedded in my mind, I began to examine my personal experiences of solving problems to see if one might provide an answer based on that definition. One particular point I have noticed over time is that the first solution to enter my mind is on balance the correct one. It is only when I challenge a solution based on the knowledge I have acquired from experience, instruction or study, or when I am applying a cultural, moral or ethical value I have acquired to a solution, that I begin using my faculty of reason as a reviewal process to test if the solution is acceptable to me. As moral and ethical values are included in this process, this clearly indicates that I had inadvertently discovered the human conscience.

Also from experience, I have learned if either the whole or any part of the solution under review is unacceptable to me, it will be returned to the memory where the intuitive reasoning will detect it as a problem, gain a solution and include it back into the reviewal process of cognition for further rational consideration. I also know from experience this process of reviewing a solution will continue until I have acquired a solution acceptable to me, which will then be stored in my memory as rational knowledge.

Up until now the solving of a problem has been conditional upon the rational knowledge being available in my memory at the time a solution is required. This leaves one final question that must be addressed. "How would the intuitive reasoning respond to there being insufficient rational knowledge available in the memory to provide a solution to a problem?" The intuitive reasoning has two options available to it. The first option occurs when the missing piece of rational knowledge acquired by the cognitive reviewal process enters the memory. When that happens, it will be detected by the intuitive reasoning thus allowing it to complete the solution which can then be included by intuitive insight into the cognitive reviewal for processing. The second option occurs simultaneously with the first option, only the search will include any information which was disregarded by the intuitive reasoning as it entered the memory via the senses of sight, hearing, touch, taste and smell, or information discarded by the cognitive reviewal process during the acquiring of rational knowledge. By doing this the intuitive reasoning is endeavouring to complete an unresolved problem by making a connection between any of the following. •	Unrelated rational knowledge', •	Information disregarded or discarded by the intuitive reasoning, or, •	Any combination of the above. If the intuitive reasoning is successful in making a connection that provides a solution to the problem, the solution will be included into the cognitive reviewal process as a theory, the reason being it was gained from beyond the limits of rational thinking. I have no doubt in my mind whatsoever the second option is what Einstein was referring to when he said,"For the creation of a theory the mere collection of recorded phenomena never suffices - there must always be added a free invention of the human mind that attacks the heart of the matter." The free invention Einstein was referring to is commonly known in scientific circles as an intuitive leap; an inspired leap beyond the limits of rational thinking that enables a theory to be created from which both scientific knowledge rational knowledge is then acquired.


 * 1. The Collins English Dictionary, published by William Collins and Company, Standard Edition, ISBN 00 0430778 - 1
 * 2. As there is now more than one knowledge and perception, the appropriate adjective will be included for all names, processes, and outcomes for the purpose of distinguishing between them.
 * 3. Keen defined in EB as "extremely sensitive in perception"; intuitive in CED as "obtained by intuition"; power in CED as "the ability to perform work".
 * 4. Study defined in CED as "to give careful and critical thought to"; argumentation in CED as "the process