Intuitively Appealing Explanation

Intuition, hunch, instinct-these are the things that can lead to a perplexity in human minds whereby sometimes it works but sometimes it leads to a catastrophic implications. Robert Heller, a British magician, mentalist and musician said that “Never ignore a gut feeling, but never believe that it’s enough” . This quotation suggests that intuition is not something we should completely disregard but yet we should not completely have a full faith in it too. Intuition comes from the Latin word ‘intueri’ that always been defined as ‘to look at’. According to Webster’s New World Dictionary, intuition is defined as “A direct knowing or learning of something without the conscious use of reasoning”. Fully depending on intuition is not recommended but surprisingly sometimes the outcomes are approximately precise. So, the big question now is, when should we question our intuition whether to eliminate or accept it? Or most importantly when should we discard explanations that are intuitively appealing? Three out of four ways of knowing which are reason, sense perception and emotion will be the guideline in order to attempt this question and also to discover the reliability of intuition.

A very clear answer for the question is when the intuition is obviously contradicted with the facts or the evidence that have proven it to be wrong. Let us take a look with one personal example that can justify the above statement. I have a friend who used to feel very insecure with her body shape and she completely admire anorexic models. She always thought that to be cool and loved by all her friends she need to be thin and skinny. Pressures from her siblings that always call her fat encourage her more to be like the anorexic models. She is aware with all the negative consequences that she will face and she always encountered with all the news where anorexic models die due to starvation and lack of nutrients. However, the fact that she have in mind where the size zero models are beautiful and the fact that she could stop her siblings from calling her fat again make these explanation become intuitively appealing to her. She has suffered as an anorexic for 2 years until she comes to a realization that her intuition has doomed her life. It might be true that part of our society see anorexic individuals as very attractive figures as they can become models, they are on TV and magazines and get famous. But, the fact that anorexia nervosa may lead to death has proved that becoming an anorexic is wrong. This example suggesting that intuitively appealing explanation that has evidence which can prove it definitely wrong should be discarded. It may sound simple but we should consider other different situations before we make a conclusion.

The above example shows that the intuition with facts that has been proven it to be certainly wrong with no doubt should be discarded. However, how about the explanation with intuitive appealing feelings based on