Donovan, Implications, Practice essay

Many of the problems associated with ‘feeling certain’ go also with the idea of having intuitive knowledge. The sense of ‘having an intuition that such-and-such is the case’ may possess a quality of clarity or conviction or a peculiar directness in some circumstances. I may feel very strongly, for instance, that I am being watched, or that something disastrous or momentous is about to happen. Perhaps these feelings turn out to be justified at times. What we felt certain about, intuitively, was actually so. Such cases, taken along with the everyday cases of intuitive knowing mentioned above, may tempt us to conclude that having an intuition has a recognisable feel about it, that can be taken as a reliable sign of being right, whatever the circumstances. 

But then the following question arises. If you have only the intuitive feeling certainty to go on, how do you know in a given case that you are having that feeling (ie the one that counts as a sign of intuitions)? Perhaps your memory of ‘the intuitive feel’ is letting you down this time. It is not enough to say you feel certain that your memory is right; for that is just repeating the process- using an intuition to check intuition itself. And if whatever seems right can be right, what does ‘getting it right (or wrong)’ mean?

1. Examine the argument and/or interpretations in the passage

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In his article ‘Can we know God by experience’, Donovan explores the relative ways in which we can truly know God through ‘direct immediacy.’ His article includes 20th century theologians (H. P. Owen), who discuss the arguments for being able to know God through religious experiences and basing these assumptions on the course of intuition. The article is to be interpreted not as a single objective piece, but one that comments on the sufficiency of using just religious experiences to support if they are able to provide knowledge about God. The extract included thus demonstrates that there are many problems linked with the psychological feelings of certainty and how they contribute to intuitive knowledge, it bases its ideas on the notion that conviction may not be sufficient in providing relative knowledge about a transcendent being and Donovan therefore rejects religious experience as the sole provider for religious knowledge, although he acknowledges its importance in the study of Philosophy of Religion. 

Within this particular extract, Donovan is introducing us to the notion that we may ‘possess a quality of clarity’ and dependent on how strong this feeling is, if our intuition were correct then we would feel as though our intuition is always correct. Donovan also mentions that these feelings of intuition may appears in ‘everyday cases’, and this resounds with the arguments for initiation proposed by H. P. Owen in the previous extract. Owen concluded that we are able to encounter God through: his created order, revelations or religious experiences, the material world and metaphysical and finally through nature. Owen claims that all knowledge known by ‘mediated immediacy’ are known by intuition and so religious experiences are forms of knowledge. The extract appears to demonstrate this as our intuition in ‘everyday cases’, allows us to interact in all forms of God’s nature such as through Donovan’s example of ‘being watched.’ Surely, if Owen is correct then under the influence of Christian interpretations the individual can only conclude that their intuition indicates that it is God who has told them that there is someone watching them. Alternatively, Donovan could be attempting to express how Owen’s argument is weak because of his trust in suggesting that intuition always leads to God. 

Similarly, another key idea relevant to the extract is the idea that intuition should be trusted. The extract states that ‘intuition may have a recognisable feel’ and therefore we feel inclined to always trust this intuition. Now, Owen would suggest that we can trust out intuition as intuition is a major aspect of human life that assists us in understanding the world, he therefore dismisses reason or rationality to make way for sense-perception or religious experiences. However, Donovan stresses within the article that we must distinguish between feelings of certainty and being right. For instance, Bertrand Russell comments on the notion that we may often intuitively feel that we are in love with someone, but we are only betrayed later on due to the mistaken intuition. This feeling of certainty may be incredibly strong and in reference to love, we may use our past experiences to compare the feelings of intuition that we had before to our current feelings of intuition towards our partners, yet this cannot be ‘taken as a reliable sign of being right.’ 

This leads us onto the last idea addressed in the extract, Donovan considers that because in cases where our intuition is correct, the build up of such experiences leads the individual to believe that their intuition is also correct and thus we continue relating this feeling to future circumstances. Donovan makes it clear that not this account is it incorrect. And that our memory can let us down, therefore there will be cases where when we think our intuition is correct that it is not as the response may be wrong. This can be addressed most importantly towards another key theologian within the article, Buber recreates the notion that we know God by intuition because of our encounters with other people or I-You relationships. Buber’s comparisons indicate that religious experiences may lead to certain feelings of intuition that are similar to our encounters with people, and just as these I-You encounters cannot be put into words, intuition cannot. On the other hand, Donovan still indicates that it is ‘only intuition’ that is utilised and to check intuition with intuition appears weak. Especially as intuition itself has not been verified as a intelligible concept or statement.

Furthermore, other criticisms of these three points arise from the notion that God is able to be intuitively known through religious experiences, one scholar such as Kant comments on the absurdity of such a statement. For instance, in the previous extract where Owen comments that we can use our sense perceptions to intuitively know God, Kant rejects this, just as Donovan rejects the notion that ‘only intuition’ can justify a situation, as because humans only occupy the material world to make the assumption that God is able to be intuitively known through the material world is odd as God occupies the metaphysical world. Similarly, if this is indeed the case, then perhaps ‘intuition does [not] have a recognisable feel’ as intuition would not be able to experience God, and thus our intuition is just intuition a mere feeling or emotion stimulated by the nerves of brain tissue. 

Moreover, if we are to take this interpretation that intuition does not lead to knowledge of God because of religious experiences, then perhaps Freud who undertakes the notion of feeling and emotion, or the psychological perspective of religious experiences. Freud considered religion and religious experiences to be a ‘universal obsessive neurosis’, the extract demonstrates that ‘having an intuition has a recognisable feel about it, that can be taken as a reliable sign of being right.’ This phrase supports Freud’s argument against religion, perhaps the obsession or conviction that a religious person has about their intuition is a part of their wishful thinking and the notion that they want a father figure, thus cumulating in the explanation that God is the reason for any religious experiences that they may have. 

The extract from Donovan, also could refer to the concept of bliks, an idea from Hare. Hare concluded that every individual had a certain type of blik, this means that regardless of the circumstance, the individual would feel inclined to believe according to their belief system. For instance, a religious individual would feel that it is God communicating with them through a religious experience because of their blik. Thus they consider their intuition to be correct when they state that God is the source. As of consequence, when in relation to the extract itself, when Donovan talks of the individual ‘repeating the process’ and trusting our memory of intuitive feeling it is in fact the blik that is the driving force for the individual’s belief. 

To conclude, Donovan’s article is attempting to unravel whether or not we can truly trust our intuition as a reliable source of validation, he suggests that although we may claim to have a recognisable intuitive feeling, it is also at risk of being mistaken. So if intuitive feeling is not reliable, perhaps intuitive knowledge can not be founded upon religious belief if it is based ‘only’ on intuition.