On Intuition, feelings and emotions

Please do refer to ‘On Education, logic and Our Lives - Part 3 for an introduction of Metaphysical Intuition and Feelings.

Indeed, we have covered quite a lot on the topic of logic and education over the past few excerpts. We ended our last discussion on the limitations of logic and an introduction of a new ‘concept’ otherwise known as intuition and feelings. Yes, this topic I am about to address in the following few posts is very hard to explain, owing to the fundamental fact that this topic in essence is supposedly independent of any concept, analysis and definition. Today, after seven days of mulling around attempting to come up with a satisfactory address to the topic, I have decided that well-done or not, the Project still has to go on.

The ‘concepts’ of intuition, feelings and emotions that we are addressing here may be slightly different in terms of definition than the layman’s definition of these words. I presume that the pure essence of the subject I am addressing lies somewhere between these three words. And in the following posts I’ll attempt to explain how such an abstract concept is supposedly to come hand-in-hand with logical analysis (as seen through the eyes of education) to bring meaning and understanding to our world and our lives.

True Intuition is the power or faculty of knowing things without conscious reasoning or empirical knowledge. Pure intuition is the act by which the mind perceives the agreement or disagreement of two ideas. When using only intuition, the truth of the proposition is immediately known right then, the moment it is presented. This is without the intervention of other ideas or deductive reasoning. In common usage, intuitions lead us to believe things without being able to articulate evidence or reasons for those beliefs. Today, we can say that true intuition, as opposed to a logic-based-robotic mind, is only a hypothetical state of mind for us humans. Humans are rational creatures, and rationality requires both logic and intuitive experiences to exist simultaneously.

The human’s best attempt to ‘re-conceptualize’ true intuition lies in feelings. As I have stated before, the pure essence of Intuition, if loosely said, and integrated with little amounts of logic, becomes a more familiar concept of ‘feelings’. Even so, there is still a spectrum of feelings within this faculty of ‘feeling’; those that tend more to true intuition can be classified as what we called ‘gut feelings’, whereas other feelings such as ‘desires’ have slightly more logic to it. In definition, feelings can be defined as sensations, emotions, impressions, desires and intuitions.

An emotion is a term for a mental and physiological state associated with a wide variety of feelings, thoughts, and behavior. Emotions are subjective experiences, or experienced from an individual point of view. Just as how I have utilized education as a ‘means’ of applying the concept of ‘logic is important’ to our lives, I will attempt to use ‘emotions’ to bring forth the importance of Intuition and Feelings into our lives today.

Now that we have made an attempt to define and ‘conceptualize’ the above, we shall start now on the general introduction of the importance and hindrances of sentiments (a word I have coined to describe feelings, emotions, and in varying degrees, intuition) to our lives as to understanding ourselves and the world.

One of the most controversial aspects of sentiments is the fact that sentiments bring about as much destruction and hindrance to our quest of perfecting knowledge as much as it allows us to understand the world.

So, how do intuition, feelings and emotions come to play on the Moderation Doctrine in allowing us to finding the full truth in our lives?

We require sentiments in nearly every aspect of our lives- whether we are making a choice or decision, whether we like or dislike something or someone, when we desire something, when we socialize (realistically), acquaint, or are in a relationship with other people; sentiments are also present when we are alone, falling into the subcategory of ‘mood’. Even at the most neutral state of mind ‘sentiments’ are present: the very essence of metaphysical intuition (of being); and as according to such doctrines feelings, emotions, sentiments and intuition are all one.

On the previous post, I have given an analogy of Literature and Metaphysical Intuitive Being. I had compared Intuition as being that character himself and logical analysis as all the traits the author had written about the character. The conclusion that we had arrived was the fact that no matter how much the author may wish to expound on the characterization of his character, all of that can never be equivalent to the simple and indivisible feeling we can experience should we be the character himself for an instant.

That is where Sentiments play as an important role to our lives. Logic and analysis may be able to describe the truth, knowledge and structure of our lives, but sentiments is required nevertheless to flesh out by feeling, and being, of our lives and the world around us.

As Arnold Benett has succinctly put it: There can be no knowledge without emotion. We may be aware of a truth, yet until we have felt its force, it is not ours. To the cognition of the brain must be added the experience of the soul.

Yet and again, Sentiments have always been seen as a ‘stumbling block’ on our quest for knowledge in Technical Education and Philosophy. Philosophy has often been described as first and foremost a discipline of reason, and technical education (as I have iterated over the previous posts) has aimed to make us understand the world via logical knowledge. Hence, emotions have often been neglected or attacked as primitive, dangerous and fundamentally irrational.

After-all, it is predominantly emotions that had led much of the world to war and unrest- that led rise to fanaticism, religious conflicts, and the creation of ‘lunatics’. Fanaticism to what we term as Jihadism in the Muslim world today, Conflicts as to the historical Crusade wars, the major schisms within the church during the 1500-1900s (Catholics and Protestants), and ‘lunatics’ as to people we deem to be irrational or ‘over-religious’.

Addressed in Huxley’s Brave New World, Bertrand Russell’s The Scientific Outlook and the movie Equilibrium, sentiments (and the training of sentiments) are the root cause of human ‘complexes’ in the world. ‘Complexes’ are the fundamental reason why utopia can never be achieved in a certain community, or why there can never be total order in a society.

And henceforth the dream of many philosophers to abolish religion, and henceforth Hitler’s Holocaust, Eugenics and Ten Reich Campaign (unsuccessful, but it aimed to a certain utopia for his community), henceforth the advocating of a life of reason and apathy.

Putting this issue on a much more congenial context, sentiments are pre-requisite for us to socialize, be ‘better’ people through ethics and morals, and ultimately be ourselves throughout. But indulging on sentiments is also the cause of academic failure, being in a neurosis, and being impractical or illogical.

Indeed as an introductory conclusion, we get to define Sentiments, as well as get a glimpse of the strengths and hindrances that Sentiments play in our lives. In the following post I’ll discuss in greater detail the role of Sentiments and Intuition to the lives of our young people today, the dangers of misuse of sentiments when we apply it too practically (or impulsively), as well as its dependence for logic too to complete our realization of our world.