The Intuition Is Real, Says Expert: This Expert Is Formed From Structured Awareness

Illustration of the word expert on intuition, definition, and intuition building factor (Freepic)

YOGYAKARTA Intuition is not something magical, according to Peter Gryptenfors Ph.D., professor of cognitive science at Lund University, Sweden. Based on his experience, G leastenfors knows very well what time his pet cat is home. Right, when he opens the door, the cat comes out in front of him. Although it doesn't require any prediction at all, wariness over intuition is possessed unconsciously. Because of this experience, intuition is investigated and referred to as implicit knowledge that is difficult to explicit.

Dictionary defines intuition as a direct perception of truth or fact, which does not rely on any reason. However, what is perceived directly by one individual cannot easily be felt by other individuals or is not felt at all. In particular, people with intuitive knowledge can experience more phenomena directly. For example, a wine expert, he can feel subtle differences beyond the abilities of an amateur. This perception builds on past experiences and implicit ways of learning to categorize the world.

Education, habits, and other cultural factors also play a role in our perception, reported by Psychology Today, Monday, January 29. The trained eyes will find something compared to untrained eyes. For example, a mother will know the meaning of the baby's crying. Even a person's knowledge of the field he is involved in. That means, what an expert experiences as a "direct" sensation depends on long training and practice.

Experts combine information into larger meaningful units, filter out irrelevant information, and rely on a larger set of mental models. The processing of sensory information by experts is implicit (unconscious). For experts, it appears as a "direct perception of truth or fact, does not rely on any reason", namely intuition. In addition to implicit knowledge built from experience, sensory sensitivity, knowledge, habits, and other cultural factors, intuition is also built from visual images and spatial thinking.

The roots of the Latin intuire word mean "seen". Some of our visual and spatial knowledge are difficult to express verbally and, therefore, become part of our implicit knowledge. The intuition, which is an implicit knowledge, actually has similarities with more verbal explicit knowledge. Namely, the presence of spatially structured consciousness and a further cognitive process to change the experience both implicit and explicit can be changed into verbal form.