Intuition might have been misrepresented by Bruce Kasanoff when he wrote about it in his article for Forbes magazine in 2017 and used the title "Intuition is the Highest form of Intelligence", but what he might have been trying to say to his readers was that one thing we learned from the very intelligent Einstein--who by the way existed before IQ tests were developed in 1905, but has an estimated IQ somewhere between 160 and 190--is that Einstein tried to tell us that intuition is no insignificant part of most intelligent decisions and discoveries ever made in human history, and that actually some of the most intelligent decisions could not have been made without acknowledging intuition and its part in our human perception and decision making processes.
To bring intuition down off the pedestal Kasanoff put it on in his title, and carry it along with the rest of the human skills we possess, we might more accurately say that intuition is considered to be something all people use to help them make decisions, along with the reasoning mind, which can sometimes either miss things or go off in the wrong direction, especially if intuition is ignored. It would be as equally fair to say that intuition can sometimes go off in the wrong direction as well, but in reality, if we have wandered off into delusional thinking, then that is no longer intuition. So let's keep this real. Intuition is that "gut feeling", it's a knowing something without knowing how you know it. It can "also" be inaccurate, just as logic can miss the mark, but it is not the same thing as delusion or illusion, and it doesn't follow the typical scientific rational methods of reaching conclusions by use of reason. So we need a balance of reason and intuition. Intuition is something knowable that has been experienced by many, but is outside the reach of knowing "how" we know, and can't always be explained in any form of logic or reason.
Giger Gigerenzer, author of The Intelligence of Intuition, which will be released soon in September 2023, refers to intuition as a form of heuristics. By that he means that it's a way humans "fill in the gap" where knowledge isn't actually there, in order to come to a quick conclusion about something. In his earlier book from 2008 titled Gut Feeling: The Intelligence of the Unconscious, this same author writes about "neurologically based behavior that evolved to ensure that we humans respond quickly when faced with a dilemma." Unfortunately, because human thinking is also prone to flawed and delusional explanation or interpretation (mostly because we are using too much information and logic), we then frequently place artificial explanations to these events such as creating what seems like a clearer picture for ourselves by explaining them away with references to telepathy, magic, the hand of a god or goddess, spirit-guides, and so on. In reality, Gigerenzer is trying to say that it is still a knowing in which we have no idea how we know it, but that it's all happening quickly and without our conscious awareness of its happening. This is what psychologists call adaptive unconscious, which is thought to be in an old part of the brain, but which plays an ongoing present-day role still in our every day perceptions and decision making.
The reason realizing these differences is so important when facing the human emotions and feelings of anxiety and depression is that it's important for each individual to know when it's okay to override either logic or intuition. In Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, we use techniques which enable us to override various beliefs and ways of thinking that surface from the newest and oldest parts of our brain. In other words, when do we go against what seems logical and rational, and when do we go against a strong gut feeling that screams some unexplainable awareness to every fiber of our being? But just as equally important, when do we choose to follow these?
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy is about "challenging" beliefs of fear and doom (which can be both real or faulty in themselves). In fact, the field has developed a list of 15 Styles of Faulty Thinking which are used to help clients question the way they use logic to talk themselves into or out of things that can be based on fear and anxiety (or hopelessness and depression), and which surfaces due to present misperceptions, or old styles of faulty unexplainable gut feelings that come from the adaptive unconscious.
An individual that is very self aware can come to know the difference between hair standing on end because there is static electricity present, and hair standing on end because the fight or flight response has been triggered (either consciously or unconsciously) by we-know-not-what. Someone that is a good thinker includes intuition in their work (i.e., listening to that gut feeling regardless of logic), but does not put either logic or intuition above the other. In the spirit of yin and yang, we should work to to welcome both known and unexplainable "knowing" in a balanced perception of ourselves and the world, but do so without silencing one or the other.
"At times I feel certain I am right while not knowing the reason." ~Albert Einstein
Thanks to Chris Hayes for his artistic digital work https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/
