“Intuition and concepts constitute… the elements of all our knowledge, so that neither concepts without an intuition in some way corresponding to them, nor intuition without concepts, can yield knowledge.” - Immanuel Kant ("Immanuel Kant." BrainyQuote.com) “Ways of knowing are a check on our instinctive judgments.” To what extent do you agree with this statement? Instinct is an innate, typically fixed pattern of behaviour in animals in response to certain stimuli. ("Instinct." Oxford Dictionary (British & World English)). Judgment is the ability to make considered decisions or come to sensible conclusions. ("Judgement." Oxford Dictionary (British & World English)). In the context of this prompt, check can be taken to mean to verify, establish …show more content…
The most common use is as it pertains to decision-making where we are required to make a rapid response where we do not have enough time to consider the situation through a rational perspective, which is the main alternative to using our instinctive judgment. Intuition works through your subconscious mind to find a link between the current new situation and past experiences. While you may not remember all the specific aspects of your past experiences or how you managed to overcome them, your subconscious mind remembers the patterns that you learnt. These patterns are matched to new situation and a way to deal with it is projected through your subconscious mind, usually as a feeling you experience telling you if a situation is right or wrong. Intuition is used in so many circumstances where a fast response is needed and is sometimes said to be unable to be justified as …show more content…
The ways of knowing that this prompt draws attention to are intuition, as it is presented in the question, as well as reason, emotion and sense perception as ways of knowing that work alongside and together with intuition. This is an arguable point and therefore presents the question: Do instinctive judgments help and enhance our other individual ways of knowing, work as a check on them or work towards both? Instinctive judgment can be argued to work towards enhancing two of our ways of knowing: emotion and intuition, and is then said to be a check on our ability to reason and