Before I say what I want to say, let me give the same disclaimer I give every time I talk about intuition. I am not using the word in a colloquial sense. Colloquially, people use this word to refer to a feeling or hunch one might have about whether something is true. They just have an inexplicable suspicion that something is true without necessarily being able to put their finger on why. That is not what I'm talking about.
I'm using the word, intuition, in the philosophical sense. Philosophically, intuition is immediate knowledge upon reflection. It's similar to what people used to refer to as "self-evident." It's when you can apprehend the truth of something without inferring it from anything else, but merely by thinking about it, reflecting on it, or "seeing" it with you sense of reason. For example, you can just kind of "see" that if Jim is taller than Dan, and Dan is taller than Bob, that Jim will be taller than Bob. You can "see" that if you had three pumpkins, and you added two pumpkins, that you'd have five pumpkins. You don't need to experiment with pumpkins to know that this is true. That's knowledge by intuition.
What I want to talk about today is what you might do in a situation where you and your buddy have intuitions that tell you different things. Or you have an intuition about something that he lacks, or vice versa. What can you do?
This is a problem because by their very nature, intuitions are the sorts of things that are known a priori. They are not the conclusion of any argument, evidence, or line of reasoning. They are known immediately upon reflection. So if you have a disagreement with somebody about something, and you have no source of authority to adjudicate between you, and you have no argument or evidence you can invoke to settle the issue, it would seem that you're at an impasse.
There are two things I want to say about that. First of all, I would like you to resist the urge to think that because somebody doesn't intuit what you intuit that this is any reason for you to doubt what you intuit. If you see something clearly--if it's self-evident to you--the fact that somebody else doesn't see it just as clearly is no reason for you to have any doubts at all.
Consider some basic geometrical intuitions we have. It's easy for just about everybody to see that if two straight lines intersect, opposite angles will be equal. But it's not as easy to see that the interior angles of any triangle in flat Euclidean space will sum to 180º. One truth is every bit as necessary and certain as the other, yet one is easier to "see" than the other. So it's inevitable that some who intuit the first will not intuit the second. Likewise, it's easier to intuit that 2+2=4 than it is to intuit that 7+5=12. So not everything that can be known by intuition can be known by all people with equal clarity.
So if something seems obviously true to you in an intuitive way, the fact that somebody else doesn't see it with the same clarity should be no reason at all for you to have doubts about it.
The second thing I want to say is that if you find yourself in conversation with somebody who doesn't share your intuition, you need not necessarily throw up your hands as if there's nowhere to go from there and no way to resolve the difference. There are ways of getting people to "see" things without having to prove them, argue for them, show evidence for them, etc.
One way to do it is by pointing to examples and just having them look and think about it. Moral realists do this all the time. If you run into somebody who doesn't think there's any real right and wrong, you can just point to examples of obvious egregious moral evils and ask them what they make of it. I always encourage people to be honest with themselves because we all have a natural tendency to want to say "Nuh uh!" when somebody does this to us. We're all reluctant to concede a point. I'm sometimes amazed by the absurdities people will embrace rather than concede even the most innocent of points.
Another way is to use analogies, stories, scenarios, illustrations, and things like that. Sometimes a person's intuitions just need to be awakened by some stimulus. It's possible to know something without knowing you know it. The information is buried in there somewhere, and somebody just needs to force it to the surface. Illustrations and analogies can do that.
One example of that is when somebody denies the law of non-contradiction. You can just try to imagine scenarios in which the law of non-contradiction isn't true. Aristotle famously pointed out that significant speech and action would be impossible without the law of non-contradiction. Unless the statement, "My dog barks," excludes, as true, the statement, "My dog does not bark," the statement doesn't communicate anything. It's a meaningless statement. Meaning requires the law of non-contradiction, because only if a statement excludes it's negation can it be a meaningful statement. Notice this doesn't prove the law of non-contradiction. It just illustrates it. It shows how it applies to the real world. Illustrations like this can cause the light to come on in the other person's head. Suddenly, they "see" that it's true just as you do.
It may not always be possible to find the right illustration or example to cause a person's intuition to awaken. These are just some suggestions. And even with the techniques, you can't convince everybody. Sometimes, two people disagree on some fundamental notion about reality, and it's just not going to be resolved. You don't have to stay up all night just because there are people who are wrong on the internet. It's okay to go to bed.
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