Abstract
There are three main questions one can ask about *intuition*. The analytical—phenomenological question is: what is the correct conceptual analysis and phenomenological account of intuition? The empirical-cognitive question is: what is the correct process-wise robust account of *intuition* phenomenon? In this paper we provide an answer to a third question, the cross-cultural question concerning sufficiently similar, yet distinct, uses of *intuition* in classical Indian philosophy. Our aim is to compare these uses of *intuition* to some conceptions of *intuition* in Western philosophy. We conceive of our project here as an attempt to fill a gap in current research on *intuition*, which focuses predominantly on Western conceptions of rational intuition.
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Notes
- 1.
- 2.
For example, I will be leaving out uses of ‘intuition’ on which the speaker means no more than what is conveyed by ‘having hunch’ or ‘making a guess’.
- 3.
See M. Hawley (2006) for this characterization of ‘integral’ in the work of Radhakrishnan.
- 4.
This conception of K. C. Bhattacharyya is influenced by Mohanty’s (1993b) reading of Bhattacharyya as a metaphysician especially with respect to his views on reflective experience and metaphysics. Mohanty glosses his thought as follows, “Reflection is an act of distinguishing, whose objective correlate is the distinct entity qua distinct. Space, time or self, which are objects of metaphysical knowledge, are all given in pre-reflective experience, but only as undistinguished from, and fused with the empirical world. It is the task of metaphysics to let them emerge in their distinctness and with their full autonomy (pg. 35)”.
- 5.
See Das (2002): 419.
- 6.
Gautama, Nyāyasūtra (NS) (2.1.34: 497–8).
- 7.
Bhāṣā-Pariccheda (BP) 65: yogajo dvividhaḥ prokto yukta-yuñjānabhedaḥ.
- 8.
NM: 95.
- 9.
SM: 63.
- 10.
āsattirāśrayānāṃ tu sāmānyajñānamiṣyate
tadindriyaja-taddharmabodhasāmgriyapekṣyate (BP 64)
Here it said that the awareness of the generic sameness structure is identified as the conjunct (āsatti, pratyāsatti) with the support-base (substratums) to which the particulars are associated. The complete commeasurement involved in the perception correlative to the indriya, sense instrument, is the unmitigated condition. (That is, the eye, the radiance, the mind, generic features, and contact, etc., must all be involved in this awareness-generation as well, to rule out any possibility of simple abstractions and conceptual elopements).
- 11.
BP 65 Viṣayi yasya tasyaiva vyāpārao jñānalakṣaṇaḥ. (also SM 64, p. 342) This verse underscores the facticity of the knowledge of the specific, unique and unusual universal as the transacting connection in the cognitive episode with its object cognized and via this connection mutatis mutandis knowledge of all object-substrata that possess this universal. A question is discussed in the commentaries: but how can you say such one knows all the smokes and fires, when these are not there; and is he therefore omniscient? The answer is smokes and fires do not have to be eternally present (somethings do), and what is known is not in any great detail, so no claims to omniscient in this condition is being emphasized. There are two further steps before this claim is possible, as described earlier.
- 12.
Phillips 1996: 175–8, Bilimoria (2011), but Matilal did not use this appellation as en endorsement but rather as a caricature of the position; he was a through-and-through realist and argued for the inclusion of universals within the operational features of ordinary perception (consistent with his direct realism thesis); in that regard Matial’s non-nominalist view is the same as Jayanta Bhaṭṭa’s on the direct perception of universals, but misses the further thesis of universals of universals, and unattached sāmānya (such as God’s supreme knowledge and his over-arching bliss-state, ānanda). See Matilal Perception, p. 424 on ultimate real universals and their assimilation; while for Kant universals are known a priori; for Aristotle they are grounded in the physical, in Nyāya it is mixed up by a relation of inherence (samavāya).
- 13.
- 14.
See Puligandla (1970: pp. 22–26).
- 15.
Chapter 11, The Bhagavadgītā.in the Mahābhārata.
- 16.
MhB. Clay Sanskrit Edition, Strīparvan: 281.
- 17.
See Das (2002: 422). Das is of course, summarizing a rather barbed polemical discussion that the doyen of Mīmāṃsā, Kumārila Bhaṭṭa presents in his eminent work, notably the Ślokavārtika (Pratyakṣasūtram I, 53, 63–111).
- 18.
See Bilimoria (2014).
- 19.
See Bilimoria 2008b, Part II Abhāva, and Anupalabdhi.
- 20.
CK can be expanded so that the question is about uses found outside the present essay.
- 21.
One should note however that there is literature within experimental philosophy and cognitive science that discusses the possible ways in which *intuitions* about moral cases depend not on rationality, but rather emotions or affective processes. See for example work by Joshua Greene and Jonathan Haidt.
- 22.
See Benacerraf (1973) for the original articulation of this problem for the case of mathematics. One should note that the problem is more general than the one articulated by Benacerraf. Because the problem is more general it is being discussed here under title ‘the contact problem.
- 23.
For an account of rational intuition that challenges the problem presented via the contact-problem see Chudnoff (2014).
- 24.
The claim we make here about the relation between training the mind in general versus training the mind in mathematics is a conjecture about what some philosophers of mathematics might say. We take it that some, perhaps influenced by Husserl, would say that training the mind in general is also an important step towards having reliable mathematical intuitions. And that those influenced by work in philosophy of mind on the role of attention in perception, would likewise claim that training the mind to be attentive in general is an important step toward having reliable mathematical intuitions.
- 25.
For an example of an excellent recent work on perception from a cross-cultural-constructive point of view see Coseru (2012). In this work Coseru develops a Buddhist account of perception while also engaging work from Western epistemology and philosophy of mind as well as neuroscience and cognitive science.
- 26.
Solomon 1995: 253.
- 27.
See Gibbons 2001: 11, 15, 52, and 91.
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Vaidya, A.J., Bilimoria, P. (2018). *Intuition* in Classical Indian Philosophy: Laying the Foundation for a Cross-Cultural Study . In: Wuppuluri, S., Doria, F. (eds) The Map and the Territory. The Frontiers Collection. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-72478-2_3
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