Argument

Insight

Overview

Insight is the understanding of a specific cause and effect within a particular context. The term insight can have several related meanings:

a piece of information

the act or result of understanding the inner nature of things or of seeing intuitively (called noesis in Greek)

an introspection

the power of acute observation and deduction, discernment, and perception, called intellection or noesis

an understanding of cause and effect based on the identification of relationships and behaviors within a model, system, context, or scenario (see artificial intelligence)

An insight that manifests itself suddenly, such as understanding how to solve a difficult problem, is sometimes called by the German word Aha-Erlebnis. The term was coined by the German psychologist and theoretical linguist Karl Bühler. It is also known as an epiphany, eureka moment, or (for crossword solvers) the penny dropping moment (PDM). Sudden sickening realisations often identify a problem rather than solving it, so Uh-oh rather than Aha moments are seen in negative insight. A further example of negative insight is chagrin which is annoyance at the obviousness of a solution that was missed up until the (perhaps too late) point of insight, an example of this being Homer Simpson's catchphrase exclamation, D'oh!.

Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).

In the original texts

Passages from public-domain books where Insight is discussed.

Bergson, under the name of "intuition," has raised instinct to the position of sole arbiter of metaphysical truth. But in fact the opposition of instinct and reason is mainly illusory. Instinct, intuition, or insight is what first leads to the beliefs which subsequent reason confirms or confutes; but the confirmation, where it is possible, consists, in the last analysis, of agreement with other beliefs no less…
Bertrand Russell, Mysticism and Logic and Other Essays
names the idea; states what it is
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6. Tzu-chang asked, What is insight? The Master said, Not to be moved by lap and wash of slander, or by plaints that pierce to the quick, may be called insight.
Confucius, The Sayings of Confucius
states what it is; names the idea
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All these discoveries are nothing more than a correct immediate passage from the effect to the cause, which is at once followed by the recognition of the ideality of the force of nature which expresses itself in all causes of the same kind; and this complete insight is just an example of that single function of the understanding, by which an animal perceives as an object in space the cause which affects its body…
Arthur Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Idea
states what it is; names the idea
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The logic of mysticism shows, as is natural, the defects which are inherent in anything malicious. While the mystic mood is dominant, the need of logic is not felt; as the mood fades, the impulse to logic reasserts itself, but with a desire to retain the vanishing insight, or at least to prove that it _was_ insight, and that what seems to contradict it is illusion. The logic which thus arises is not quite…
Bertrand Russell, Our Knowledge of the External World as a Field for Scientific Method in Philosophy
states what it is; names the idea
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For of the possibility of a cause which changes the condition of things, that is, which determines them to the contrary to a certain given state, the understanding gives us à priori no knowledge; not merely because it has no insight into the possibility of it (for such insight is absent in several à priori cognitions), but because the notion of change concerns only certain determinations of phenomena, which…
Immanuel Kant, The Critique of Pure Reason
states what it is; names the idea
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Insight

Overview

In the original texts

Philosophers who discussed Insight

Related ideas

Place in the tradition