That "Gut-Feeling"

Philosophy Forums Philosophy
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Consider the category hierarchies: {furniture–chair—rocker} and {vehicle–car—sedan}. The middle categories–chair and car–have been discovered to be “basic”—they have a cognitive priority. “Basic-level categories are distinguished from subordinate categories by aspects of our bodies, brains, and minds: mental images, gestalt perception, motor programs, and knowledge structure.”

The basic level is characterized by at least four conditions: 1) It is the highest level at which a single mental image can represent the entire category (you can’t get a mental image of vehicle or furniture). 2) It is the highest level at which category members have a similarly perceived overall shape. 3) It is the highest level at which a person uses similar motor actions for interacting with category members. 4) It is the level at which most of our knowledge is organized.

The division between basic and non-basic level is body-based. It is based upon gestalt (overall part-whole structure) perception, motor programs, and mental images. The basic-level is that level at which people more optimally interact with their environment.

The basic-level does not merely apply to objects. “There are basic-level actions, actions for which we have conventional mental images and motor programs, like swimming, walking, and grasping. We also have basic-level concepts, like families, clubs, and baseball teams, as well as basic-level social actions, like arguing. And there are basic-level emotions, like happiness, anger, and sadness.”

“Our categories arise from the fact that we are neural beings, from the nature of our bodily capacities, from our experience interacting in the world, and from our evolved capacity for basic-level categorization—a level at which we optimally interact with the world. Evolution has not required us to be as accurate above and below the basic level as at the basic level, and so we are not.”

We have a gut feeling about some things because our sense of correctness comes from our bodies. When Newton provided us with his theory of physics we could “feel” the correctness of much of it because he was using such concepts as acceleration, momentum, distance and velocity all of which we knew because we could intuit them, we could “feel in our gut” these concepts. Such was not the case when the physicist attacked the problem of quantum physics. Who has a gut feeling for the inner workings of the atom?

Our “gut feeling” constantly informs us as to the ‘correctness’ of some phenomenon. This gut feeling is an attitude; it is one of many types of attitudes. What can we say about this gut feeling?

“Philosophy in The Flesh” says a great deal about this gut feeling. Metaphor theory, the underlying theory of cognitive science contained in this book explains how our knowledge is ‘grounded’ in a manner in which we optimally interact with the world. I will post another thread on this theory.

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No one has posted a reply and I thought it deserved one since it was rather interesting. However I can’t shed much insight or comment since I don’t exactly agree with what you are saying but don’t have the time. Interesting post though, I think I’ll try and steal Philosophy in The Flesh and give it a read.

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Don’t steal it, borrow it from your local library. Most city libraries will not probably carry the book but I suspect you can easily get a library card from your local community college library that will give you access to a world of knowledge at very little cost. This is a powerful theory–metaphor theory–that is explained in the book. It is not an easy read but I suspect you will not find a book for study that will open up a whole new world of possibilty like this one.

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Streamlined, and wind resistant. I get gut feeling of shapes that fit this category. My gut feeling is taken from nature, and dolphins…etc.

Jurassic Park… The first movie, the dinosaurs did not walk with the correct physics. I knew by watching, but have never seen real dinosaurs. My gut feelings were being taken from Elephants, and Rhinos. The second, and third movies had better physics.

I get lots of really accurate gut feelings.

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More problematic for me was the blatant continuity error in the scene where the T-Rex first attacks the cars (and eats Gennaro, injures Malcolm, forces Lex and Timmy and Grant to flee). The T-Rex attacks the cars from their right, after first smashing down the fence. But this is also the direction that Grant and Lex take when they have to clamber down the high wall usiing one of the broken cables from the fence. There’s simply no way that beyond that same fence there is both a 60 foot drop AND a flat continuous bit of ground. It can’t be both…

I first went to see the movie at the cinema when it came out in '93. I must have seen it a dozen times since but I’ve never come up with a satisfying explanation.