Rationality and Intuition

In discussions of creativity, problem-solving and cognitive processes, intuition is often considered a central aspect, and intuition is generally set up in opposition to reason.Cappon, for example, in describing his $200,000 study on the use of intuition versus scientific approaches in research, characterizes intuition as follows:the mental faculty or 'gut feeling' that provides the answer to a problem or propels one to make a decision without going through the process of logical reasoning.1 Cappon, who recommends intuition as an important means to solve problems, contrasts those who use intuition with those who "think logically, rationally, and deductively to prove how things work or should be done,'' and also sets intuition in contrast to logic, intelligence, and scientific technologies.This type of view is extremely common in the literature.This is but one example, though a particularly striking one.If the outcomes attributed to intuition are deemed educationally valuable, then this opposition between rationality and intuition could have important educational implications.In this paper, I argue that this opposition is problematic, resting on a false dichotomy between reasoning and creative thinking, a misunderstanding of skills and rules, an excessively narrow concept of rationality, and a false opposition between reason and emotion.I suggest that intuition, in any sense which is educationally relevant, involves both rational processes which have been mastered and assimilated and the emotional cues which accompany these processes. The Concept of Intuition"Intuition" is a term which can have a variety of meanings and is often applied to a range of apparently disparate cases.A taxonomy provided by Agyakwa 2 may be of help in clarifying the various meanings.He delineates four different cases of intuitive knowledge.The first is a kind of intuitive insight which would fall within extrasensory perception and would include precognition, telepathy, and clairvoyance.The second type involves the apprehension of self-evident truths involving abstract logical and arithmetical or geometrical principles.The third involves the direct grasp of certain states of affairs, for example, intuitive insights in the aesthetic and moral domains .. The fourth case is that of the insight of the expert who goes straight to the heart of a problem without explicit rational deliberation.What all these cases have in common, according to Agyakwa, is that they involve immediate apprehension -that is, an awareness of reality or a state of affairs that is unmediated by inference, causes, ability to defme, or justification.This immediate apprehension is, for Agyakwa, the defming characteristic of intuition, and this is a notion that runs through many conceptions of intuition.Noddings, for example, views intuition as a kind of unreflective consciousness which involves direct contact with objects rather than conventional rational processes.3 Kautz sees it as the human ability of direct knowing or acquiring knowledge without rational thought.4 And Bruner defines intuition as "the act

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