Intuition as a Way of Knowing

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“The traditional TOK diagram indicates four ways of knowing. Propose the inclusion of a fifth way of knowing selected from intuition, memory and imagination, and explore the knowledge issues it may raise in two areas of knowledge.” February 5, 2013 Name: Nithil Chigullapally Candidate Number: dqt 464 (003528-011) Those moments of sudden insight are unexplainable; however it’s quite a common occurrence to suddenly have a feeling of knowledge on a situation. The location this inexplicable knowledge comes from is unknown and sometimes the best way to describe it is through a vague intuitive hunch. But what exactly is this feeling? For many, the consensus is that this feeling is their intuition. Generally based in emotions, due to its nature as a sense of knowing within one’s self, intuition doesn’t really fit nicely into any of the four traditional ways of knowing. It isn’t an emotion, nor is it based within reasoning, language, or perception, regardless of how it is intertwined with all the ways of knowing. Intuition is simply its own device and, despite being used as a way to justify knowledge and being in close relation to self-awareness, intuition acts strongly on its own as a way of knowing and as such should be introduced as one. It is within intuition that one finds the basis of most fundamental knowledge, as well as basic knowledge and awareness. Intuition, as I see it, is the ability to understand something immediately apparently without any rational process, it is a process of thinking without actually thinking. When I asked my friends about their opinion on intuition, all they say is “I know something, but I don’t know how I know it.” Intuition is a special way of knowing which is vague and hence cannot be pin pointed, but it fills the gap which the other ways of knowing such as emotion, perception, language and reason cannot. As
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