Notice: The original doc. at http://freeassemblage.blogspot.

com/2009/07/intuition-
vs-acquisition-of-knowledge.html contains live links to references.

Intuition Vs. "Acquisition" of Knowledge

The question was recently posed: Does Metaphysical Naturalism accept the
epistemological premises of Plato's intuition of knowledge, or those of
Aristotle's acquisition of knowledge?

The fact is that man acquires his knowledge from the time of birth, filling his
tabula rasa from sensory experiences. This is an Aristotilean concept. Plato, on
the other hand, believed there were "permanent objects of knowledge [Forms or
Ideas] directly apprehended by intuition (Gk. nohsiV [nóêsis]), the fundamental
capacity of human reason to comprehend the true nature of reality."
http://www.philosophypages.com/hy/2h.htm

Plato held intuition to be the highest form of "knowing" because it demonstrated

reason's ability to comprehend these Forms, which he defined as universals. The
question then becomes, where does one acquire the concepts by which intuition is
revealed?

They are acquired initially as simple sensory experiences, placed upon the tabula
rasa where the faculty of reason then applies the hard-wired faculty of
epistemological identification. Just as the faculty of sight and the other senses
are hard wired and begin working immediately, so is the mind's faculty of
epistemological operations.
Nothing is in the mind which was not first in the senses--"'Nihil est in
intellectu quod non prius fuerit in sensu.' All the materials, or content, of
higher, intellectual cognition are derived from the activity of lower, sense
cognition." http://www.ditext.com/runes/n.html

But intuition is not moot to the subject of epistemology. It merely does not work
until there is sufficient material in the mind from which the subconscious can
extract such "intuitions."
Plato believed intuitions to be direct, non-inferential awareness of abstractions
or of concrete truths. Metaphysical Naturalism defines them as direct inferences,
"that a subconscious entity of knowledge or of speculation integrates with
conscious material to present to the consciousness both a comprehensive and
immediate metaphysical analysis of the integration." Metaphysical Naturalist
Glossary

In plain English, the subconscious is always on, always working, always analyzing.
When a "light bulb comes on over your head" it is an intuition presented to your
consciousness through its connection to the subconsious, which was working on the
problem all the time.

If "something is on the end of your tongue" but you can't find the word that on
the tip, it is because the word has not been culled from the subconscious. The
conscious mind cannot be conscious at all times of all the things of which it was
at one time previously conscious. We would be overwhelmed with images and words
and music playing in our minds. What is not necessary to have in the "forward"
consciousness is stored in the subconsciousness.
Aristotle is thus correct about the acquisition of knowledge. Plato is incorrect
both about the nature of "intuition" and about the metaphysical nature of that
which can be known.

But Aristotle thought knowledge of the essences and natural laws were objects of
cognition which no intuition can reveal, but which science can prove to exist.
When defined as in the Metaphysical Naturalist Glossary, intuition does not
contradict the acquisition of knowledge through the senses, nor does it contradict
abstract knowledge which necessarily is abstracted from sensory knowledge and only
sensory knowledge; or from concepts, which are formulations made from previous
abstractions.

Recommended reading about Knowledge ; Aristotle and Knowledge