Intuition

Go With Your Gut -- Intuition Is More Than Just A Hunch, Says New Research- the title of an article from Science Daily addresses a topic that a commenter at Telic Thoughts brought up yesterday. An ID critic alleged that ID inferences were drawn from intuition. As the linked article points out there are some in the science community who have ridiculed intuition and likened it to pseudoscientific practices like parapsychology and phrenology. Of course that's all the incentive needed for an ID critic to utilize the term in lieu of point by point discussions.

Research results published in the British Journal of Psychology indicate that intuitions are real and hunches should be taken seriously. Why? Because intuition is said to result from the manner by which brains subconsciously process, store and retrieve information. More specifically, researchers believe that a feeling that something is right or wrong occurs very quickly as the brain combines cues from past experiences and external circumstances and uses this as a basis for a decision. Rather than being irrational or emotionally based there appears to be a very logical and sound basis for hunches whose compressed time frame and unconscious level of decision making are distinguishing characteristics. Time pressure and information overload are associated with intuition according to researcher and Professor Hodgkinson.

A specific example involving a race car driver was used to illustrate how the driver saved his life with an instantaneous decision later analyzed to have resulted from his awareness of out of sync crowd behavior.

Both conscious and non-conscious thought are needed by humans if good decision making is the desired result.