Spiritual Forum

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  Eric Mongar May 3, 2013 at 9:55pm

  i agree with you Feather, here is my explanation: The Earth rotates on its axis, which produces the appearance of the sky and everything in it rising and setting, on a daily basis. The revolution of the Earth around the Sun defines a year.
  
  And everything moves, including the Sun, the entire solar system revolves around the center of our galaxy, for instance. Also, the galaxy with its contents, has its own motions.
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  Light Being May 3, 2013 at 3:07pm

  Intuition and Logic are two strategies for prediction and problem solving.

  We hear so much about the virtues of logic that we'd be excused to believe that logic was somehow the superior method. Logic is not better, just different. Both strategies have their advantages and apply in different situations. Sometimes we need to use both. Sometimes we can use either one, because the problem is so simple it doesn't much matter how we solve it. Sometimes it matters; if we happen to choose the wrong approach, it may prevent us from solving our problem.

  Logic is used a lot in the hard sciences, such as Mathematics, Physics, and Chemistry. We can think of most of mathematics, including things like the rules of Algebra, as part of a framework that is anchored in Logic. Physics and related sciences use logical and mathematical models to describe the world. Logical formulas can be manipulated "mechanically", by following syntax based rules that specify which operations are allowed. In performing these manipulations, Innovation is (in theory) unnecessary — that would be using Intuition.

  Logical methods have many advantages: The can be used to make long term predictions, such as predicting planetary orbits years into the future. They can also make high precision predictions, such as predicting masses of elementary particles to the fifth decimal before experiments to establish the masses have been conducted.

  Logical methods are productive. Valid Logical theories lead logically to new theories through mechanical manipulation of the formulas. Again, no innovation is (in theory) needed for this process of producing "new knowledge". Logic and science have an excellent track record. Logical methods have solved innumerable important problems over centuries.

  But Logical methods also have their limits.

  One of the limits is that they require Theory, i.e. a high level model of the problem domain. This is only because many cannot fathom that this is a limitation, since they believe doing anything without a solid Theory is impossible.

  Logical methods require idealized conditions. Anyone who has opened a textbook on Physics or Mechanics has time and again encountered the phrase "All else being constant...". This is how Physics avoids problems with Systems that require a Holistic Stance, for instance any system that is constantly adapting to an environment that it cannot be separated from.

  Logical and scientific models are relatively simple. It is true that some formulas can run to multiple pages, but this would still be simple compared to the complexity we discover in nature.

  But first and foremost, Logic cannot handle bizarre Situations, and therefore cannot solve many important problems in the life sciences, and cannot handle everyday problems.

  Intuition is fast. We make life-and-death decisions in split seconds, when we have to, and we are often correct. This is of course the reason Intuition evolved in the first place — it increases our chances of survival.

  Most languages distinguish the quickly gained and more logic-influenced "intelligence" of youth from the growing set of effective intuitions accumulated during a lifetime known as "wisdom". Wisdom gives reliable guidance in complex social situations, for instance those involving humans with conflicting goals.

  This also makes Intuition much more biologically plausible than Logic since a considerably larger amount of mechanism would be required before Logic could be used to improve predictions. Intuition-based mechanisms could conceivably evolve in small steps from simpler prediction based mechanisms, with incrementally available benefits every step along the way.

  Intuition is Theory-free. It does not require a high-level logical model. You cannot create high-level models until you already have Intelligence.

  Since there is no high-level Logic based model, then there is no model to get confused by the illogical bizarreness of the world.  Intuition is not immune to all the problems in bizarre domains, such as constantly changing conditions, paradoxes, ambiguity, and misinformation. It does not mean that sufficient misinformation won't lead such a system to make incorrect predictions, but it means that the system does not require all information to be correct in order to operate at all. Intuition is fallible, and occasional misinformation makes failure slightly more likely. The system can keep multiple sets of information active in parallel (some more correct than others) and in the end, more often than not, the information that is most likely to be correct wins.

  Intuition also has severe limitations; some of these mirror the advantages of Logic based systems.

  Intuition based systems cannot do long term predictions, cannot do high precision predictions, and are not productive. They cannot generate new knowledge by mechanical manipulation of the existing theory since there is no such thing as "theory".

  Intuition requires prior experience. Intuitions are acquired by learning, and the benefit of learning what happens in a given situation is only available if you encounter a sufficiently similar situation again. Lacking prior experience with an identical situation, you have to make a generalization of a previous "precedent" experience in order to guess what the "consequent" event will be. This is an error prone operation; the ability to generalize correctly is intimately tied to the ability to get to the "semantics" of the situation and is likely the reason we evolved semantic capabilities in the first place.

  People very rarely use just logic or intuitive methods in everyday life, mostly always a combination of both. Termed as, use your ‘Common Sense’

  Common sense equates to the knowledge and experience which most people already have, or which the person using the term believes that they do or should have, the basic level of practical knowledge and judgment that we all need to help us live in a reasonable and safe way.

  Though identifying particular items of knowledge as "common sense" is difficult as there are many concepts referring to it. Some related concepts include intuitions, pre-theoretic belief, ordinary language, the frame problem, foundational beliefs, good sense, endoxa, axioms, wisdom, folk wisdom, folklore, and public opinion.

  Common-sense ideas tend to relate to events within human experience, and thus appear commensurate with human scale. Humans lack any common-sense intuition of, for example, the behaviour of the universe at subatomic distances, or of speeds approaching that of light. Often ideas that may be considered to be true by common sense are in fact false. Conversely, certain ideas that are subject to elaborate academic analysis oftentimes yield superior outcomes via the application of common sense.

  The common sense (Sensus communis) is an actual power of inner sensation (as opposed to the external five senses, whereby the various objects of the external senses (colour for sight, sound for hearing, etc.) are united and judged, such that what one senses by "common sense" is the substance (or existing thing) in which the various attributes inhere (so, for example, a sheep is able to sense a wolf, not just the colour of its fur, the sound of its howl, its odour, and other sensible attributes.)

  It was not, unlike later developments, considered to be on the level of rationality, which properly did not exist in the lower animals, but only in man; this irrational character was because animals not possessing rationality nevertheless required the use of the common sense in order to sense, for example, the difference between this or that thing, and not merely the pleasure and pain of various disparate sensations. This also contributes to the understanding held by the Scholastics that when one senses, one senses something, and not just a diversity of sensible phenomena.

  Common sense, in this view, differs from later views in that it is concerned with the way one receives sensation, and not with belief, or wisdom held by many; accordingly, it is "common", not in the sense of being shared among individuals, or being a genus of the different external senses, but inasmuch as it is a principle which governs the activity of the external senses.