06/11/2025

How to Invite Intuition

Intuition has never been more devalued than in our age

At a wine bar in Corsica, I ordered a glass of Vermentino and shared some low-key wine talk with the sommelier who brought it to me. After a time, I ordered another glass, and we spoke again. I like testing my intuitions, so I said, at point blank, “You write poetry, don’t you?” The chap, taken aback by my sorcery, confirmed that he did indeed write poetry, and even that some of his poems had been published.

An intuition is a disposition to believe something without hard evidence or conscious deliberation. I say “disposition to believe” rather than “belief” because an intuition is usually held with less certainty or firmness than a belief; and “believe” rather than “know” because an intuition is not justified in the normal sense, and not necessarily true or accurate.

It is not just that intuition is arrived at without hard evidence or conscious deliberation, but that these can impede it. “I am not absentminded” wrote the polymath GK Chesterton, “it is presence of mind that makes me unaware of everything else.”

Please select this link to read the complete article from Psychology Today.