Reason and intuition

Abstract

In this paper I will approach the subject of intuition from a different angle from what has been usual in the philosophy of mathematics, by beginning with some descriptive remarks about Reason and observing that something that has been called intuition arises naturally in that context. These considerations are quite general, not specific to mathematics. The conception of intuition might be called that of rational intuition; indeed the conception is a much more modest version of conceptions of intuition held by rationalist philosophers. Moreover, it answers to a quite widespread use of the word intuition in philosophy and elsewhere. But it does not obviously satisfy conditions associated with other conceptions of intuition that have been applied to mathematics. Intuition in a sense like this has, in writing about mathematics, repeatedly been run together with intuition in other senses. In the last part of the paper a little will be said about the connections that give rise to this phenomenon.