What Intuitions Are
With inputs well in place, we can talk about more complex intuitions that we have. Indeed, our intuitions about time, other minds, reality, morality, and meaning are just that—intuitions. And I have shown why we cannot accept them as truth and what plausible metaphysical scenarios would not include these features. Note that intuitions are inputs in their own right; we usually do not determine intuitions via complex thought processes. Usually, the idea that “time exists” just appears. It is every bit as apparent as a headache or a vision. We can confirm the accuracy (whatever that means) of these intuitions through thought, but they are not themselves a result of it. Let us now acknowledge some of these intuitions.
Perhaps the most apparent intuition that we have is that of reality, that apples, grass, and people are not just labels we apply to sets of inputs but are features of something larger and independent of our input. It also feels like there is an agent, or a “self” that has the capacity to interact with that input. It feels as though that “self” has a capacity to interact freely, as though there are many options and our actions implicitly select one of those options. It feels like there is a choice in how we can interact with the world.
During that choice process, we evaluate future possibilities, which implies something like time, that there are many realities. Some that are in the “past” and some that are in the “future.” Of course, we only have access to the “present” input. The “past” is just a present feeling of recall, and the “future” is a present feeling of prediction, expectation, and anticipation. During decision-making, we seem to consciously or implicitly evaluate the possible futures on the basis of how good “utility” they will be. It does seem that we at least often (and I’d even say always) select the action that will yield the best possible expected utility.
Among all reality-like inputs, there seem to be sets of inputs we call “humans” or “people”. These clusters are quite special because they look like us, behave somewhat similarly to us, and profess to have inputs just like us. Perhaps it is for these reasons that we develop intuitions that there are other minds similar to our own. One of the more important features of these and other intuitions is that they seem to be more than intuitions; we have a great deal of certainty about them. One could say that we have an intuition that these are not intuitions at all but are metaphysical truths. However, our intuitions are proven wrong often enough to lower that epistemic certainty.
