Ways of knowing are a check on our instinctive judgments. To what Essay

Ways of knowing are a check on our instinctive judgments. To what extent do you agree with this statement - Essay Example Next, a discussion of intuition as a way of knowing will discussed followed by a discussion of how the other ways of knowing reinforce and control our instinctive judgment; that it, their benefits as well as their flaws in shaping instinctive judgment. These will be discussed through their application in the various areas of knowledge. By the end of the essay, I hope to conclude that ways of knowing are a check on our instinctive judgments. The first word that needs explaining is â€Å"instinctive.† Going by the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), the word instinctive is derived from â€Å"instinct† and refers to â€Å"natural tendency for people and animals to behave in a particular way using the knowledge and abilities they were born with rather than thought or training.†2 One may have an instinct for fear, business or anything else. It is also a feeling that makes one do or believe that something is true, even though it is not based on facts or reason; in other words, intuition. In this case, instinctive judgment is equated to intuition. What we get from this definition is that one judges something without having to reason or give facts; it is a strong feeling that something is going to happen but we cannot be able to explain why. For example, women do have maternal instincts such that when something is going to happen to their child, they know it before hand or they can feel it but cannot explain what exactly is going to happen. Another case is when one is about to have an accident such as plane crash; one can feel it or there is a strong inner voice which tells you something bad is going to happen and you can act based on this instinct. As such, it is a way of knowing and justifying that knowledge even if it is not through conscious reasoning. If that something does happen, then we can prove our instincts right. In this sense, other ways of knowing such as reasoning act as verifiers to what we already know. This