I've been interested recently in how intuition falls within human evolution - what possible mechanisms could exist that could be naturally selected for, and what the possible future may bring up as technology evolves alongside us (or is using us to evolve)

Clare from Metalife has also written about this area recently on the Metalife blog, which examines how to tune into pre-cognition to help in day to day life

Intuition's Present Situation

What is intuition?  It has had several attempts at definition, from Jung's "perception via the unconscious" to Henri's Bergson's definition of a "simple, indivisible experience of sympathy, through which one is moved into the inner being of an object to grasp what is unique and ineffable within it".  Perhaps the simplest explanation is that it is a set of common sense beliefs we all recognise but can't necessarily justify. 

What is clearer is that some people have more intuition than others, although most people have it to a degree.  Intuition is generally regarded as a feminine trait, and is generally useful for those who have it.

For me, intuition comes up often whilst looking at problems to solve - at some point everything just falls into place and you know you've found the solution without even needing to check.  This, I think, is linked to what is often spoken of in physics/maths - that certain equations are "beautiful": they hold so many truths in such an elegant way they are recognised as correct.  Whilst intuition seems easy when it arrives, it generally favours those who have been practising or working hard at a problem for a long time - they have complete mastery of the foundations.  I think this is an important part of the puzzle - giving your subconscious enough material to make leaps beyond your conscious thought, and hints at subconscious problem solving, such as when asleep.

The idea intuition is a feminine trait I believe comes from what most people see day to day as the most useful form of intuition, when dealing with people - women are generally more communicative and network more than men, and so that mastery can come to the fore more in recognising subtle signals and signs when reading people.

Where things get stickier is when signals that could lead to leaps of intuition seem further removed from the present situation - where a form of pre-cognition seems to be working to give insights.  Almost all religious belief could fall under this category, where no evidence is needed for those to hold deep faiths in various dogmas.

From a practical viewpoint, being intuitive is advantageous - I would class myself as an intuitive person and a large part of my current success. I would even say I do not listen to it as much as I should do - thinking back to those situations where hindsight showed I should have trusted my intuition, I'd say perhaps denial or fears stopped me from believing what was immediately obvious otherwise.  Keeping aware of these opportunities and trusting your instincts seems to always result in a better life - perhaps because a poorer life would be one with regrets about what you felt you should have done.

How did we get here?

A good point made by Clare in the Metalife post is that intuition would be evolutionary favoured - if any mechanism exists that can be selected for then that will be favoured.  A good example of this can be applied to the evolution of language (and therefore consciousness?)

As this Harvard PHD student puts it (Sharon Barry):

Suppose:

People can recognize vixens by seeing them or by hearing others say vixen

People can recognize foxes by seeing them or by hearing others say fox, and they have fox hunting/evasion procedures

There would be survival value to going to get your fox spear directly when someone says vixen rather than waiting for someone to say that is a fox too, or waiting for it to come into sight.

Since language changes so quickly it’s unlikely that there would be benefit in making a brain that ‘automatically’ believes that vixens are foxes.

But there would be a benefit to build a brain which is likely to connect these kinds of states (one that treats these states as inductive).

We would be evolved to have a sense of the ‘right’ kinds of inferential procedures to accept as universally true after relatively few confirmatory experiences, just as we are evolved to have a sense of the ‘right’ kind of generalizations about the empirical world (pots that look like this will crack when fired, treating bees like this will make them aggressive) to believe on the basis of very limited experience.

In this way our intuition that the pigeon-hole principle is true is like our intuition that you can’t cut a banana with a telephone wire (we are evolved to quickly, subconsciously, make certain kinds of generalizations on the basis of very limited observation)

Nature using quantum effects

The above looks at how we can make leaps of judgement, but could it go deeper than that?  What if bigger leaps can be made taking advantage of the quantum mind that is postulated may be the only way to explain consciousness fully?  Nature and evolution have already shown that it will use quantum effects if possible, examples including photosynthesis using quantum effects to get near 100% energy to chemical efficiency and birds using entangled atoms in their eyes as a way to navigate

Could properties such as the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle give our minds access to information further forward in time than the present moment?  Could the smearing out of cause and effect that is prevalent in the classical world not be adhered to by the electrical impulses running through a human mind?

Evidence is starting to gather that this may be the case - in Nov 2010 Daryl Bem, Professor of Psychology at Stanford, published a paper publishing details of experiments he had carried out on over 1000 students ( New Scientist story here )

From the NS story:

In one experiment, students were shown a list of words and then asked to recall words from it, after which they were told to type words that were randomly selected from the same list. Spookily, the students were better at recalling words that they would later type.

In another study, Bem adapted research on "priming" – the effect of a subliminally presented word on a person's response to an image. For instance, if someone is momentarily flashed the word "ugly", it will take them longer to decide that a picture of a kitten is pleasant than if "beautiful" had been flashed. Running the experiment back-to-front, Bem found that the priming effect seemed to work backwards in time as well as forwards.

How pre-cognition could work out

If this is found to be the case, it will blow the door on many rationalists and re-examine how human beings interact with the world around it.  If we could have some pre-cognition on what is going to happen, could we be to blame for events that happen to us?  If we can pre-cognate, can we change what we see happen?  Does this mean other concepts such as collective consciousness also exist?  If the future can be affected, could the past also?  How does this sit with the arrow of time?

If intuition is tied to our methods of communicating, a large factor in this evolution will be the World Wide Web - already the web is affecting how we work and think - could it also affect what we predict and intuit? 

With increased communication and shared pre-cognition, more shared intuitions could occur, more group mind beliefs - and perhaps more control over what will happen to us as a species.  Perhaps that is what has been happening throughout history already - we've just been too dimly aware to know of our real power, or that power has been in the hands of the most influential such as bankers and politicians.  If so, then the future may represent a world where the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, which sounds like a positive evolution for us as a species.