直觉的角色
直觉通常被定义为对于某事的直接印象或者理解-也就是，没有使用推理的感觉或理解。一些日常的经验似乎能支持这个观点。你可能会遇到一个人，突然“感觉”他就是你终身伴侣。当一个汽车销售员告诉你他给你的报价是最后的，最低的价格，你的直觉可能会告诉你他在撒谎。在一个特别课程的第一天，你可能会有个非常强的感觉，你可能学不好它。
有些重要的发现是突如其来的就出现了。比如，德国化学家凯库勒（Kekule）通过直觉发现了一个化学难题的答案。他因为非常疲劳，在白天不知不觉睡着了。在梦里出现了一条头尾相连蛇的图像-这提供了苯分子结构的暗示，苯的原子结构是一个环，而不是链条。德国作家歌德（ Goethe）得知一个亲密朋友自杀的悲剧时，面临如何组织他一个著作中一大堆的材料的巨大困难。就在那个时刻，组织那些材料的详细计划出现在他面前。英国作家萨缪尔.泰勒.柯勒律治（ Samuel Taylor Coleridge）（你可能在高中读过他的书《老水手之歌》）从梦中醒来，脑海里清晰的出现了200-300行的全新而又复杂的诗。
这些案例似乎在表明直觉和推理非常不同，而且不受其影响。但是在接受这个结论前，想想以下事实。
突破性的想法偏好训练有素，积极的头脑。完全没有受过训练的人做出重要的新发现是非常罕见的。因此，如果凯库勒是个水管工，歌德是个记账员，而柯勒律治是个理发师，他们几乎不可能获得这些让他们成名的直觉。
有些直觉最终被证明是错误的。充满魅力的陌生人可能不会成为你生命中的伴侣，而变成你非常讨厌的家伙。汽车销售员最后的报价可能就是真的。你的课程可能会很好而不是糟糕。
对我们直觉的品质进行一次全面的评估是困难的，因为我们倾向于忘记那些被证明是错误的直觉，和赌徒忘记了自己的失败是一样的。
基于这些事实，有些学者得出结论认为直觉是简单思考的结果。他们会说，那些吸引你的陌生人，与你伪善地说话或者推荐产品的推销员，让你害怕的教授。他们会为每个案例解释，其实你做了个快速的判断-非常快，事实上，你根本没有察觉到你正在思考（过去完成进行时）。对于那些突破性观念的案例，学者们说，当人们在问题或议题上全神贯注的时候，即使他们将注意力转移到其它地方很长时间后，他们的潜意识常常继续在工作。因此，当一个洞见好像“不知道从哪里”冒出来的时候，它实际上是思考的延迟结果。
关于直觉的哪个观点是正确的？直觉和思考不一样而且完全不相干？还是反之？或许，从现在来看，最慎重的答案是有时候他们不相干，有些时候相关；我们无法确认，因此，依靠这个结论是不明智的。
原文
Role of Intuition (p23)
Intuition is commonly defined as immediate perception or comprehension of something—that is, sensing or understanding something without the use of reasoning. Some everyday experiences seem to support this definition. You may have met a stranger and instantly “known” that you would be partners for life. When a car salesman told you that the price he was quoting you was his final, rock-bottom price, your intuition may have told you he was lying. On the first day of a particular course, you may have had a strong sense that you would not do well in it.
Some important discoveries seem to have occurred instantaneously. For example, the German chemist Kekule found the solution to a difficult chemical problem intuitively. He was very tired when he slipped into a daydream. The image of a snake swallowing its tail came to him—and that provided the clue to the structure of the benzene molecule, which is a ring, rather than a chain, of atoms.9 The German writer Goethe had been experiencing great difficulty organizing a large mass of material for one of his works when he learned of the tragic suicide of a close friend. At that very instant, the plan for organizing his material occurred to him in detail.10 The English writer Samuel Taylor Coleridge (you may have read his Rime of the Ancient Mariner in high school) awoke from a dream with 200–300 lines of a new and complex poem clearly in mind.
Such examples seem to suggest that intuition is very different from reasoning and is not influenced by it. But before accepting that conclusion, consider these facts:
Breakthrough ideas favor trained, active minds. It is unusual for someone totally untrained in a subject to make a significant new discovery about it. Thus, if Kekule had been a plumber, Goethe a bookkeeper, and Coleridge a hairdresser, they would almost certainly not have received the intuitions for which they are famous.
Some intuitions eventually prove to be mistaken. That attractive stranger may turn out to be not your lifelong partner but a person for whom you develop a strong dislike. The car salesman’s final price may have proved to be exactly that. And instead of doing poorly in that course, you may have done well.
It is difficult to make an overall assessment of the quality of our intuitions because we tend to forget the ones that prove mistaken in much the same way a gambler forgets his losses.
These facts have led some scholars to conclude that intuition is simply a consequence of thinking. They would say that something about the stranger appealed to you, something the salesman said or did suggested insincerity, something about the professor frightened you. In each case, they would explain, you made a quick decision—so quick, in fact, that you were unaware that you’d been thinking. In the case of the breakthrough ideas, the scholars would say that when people become engrossed in problems or issues, their unconscious minds often continue working on them long after they have turned their attention elsewhere. Thus, when an insight seems to come “out of nowhere,” it is actually a delayed result of thinking.
Which view of intuitions is the correct one? Are intuitions different from and independent of thinking or not? Perhaps, for now, the most prudent answer is that sometimes they are independent and sometimes they are not; we can’t be sure when they are, and therefore it is imprudent to rely on them.
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