Blaise Pascal, Pensées | The Intuitive Mind and the Mathematical Mind Philosophy Core Concepts

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This is a video in my new Core Concepts series -- designed to provide students and lifelong learners a brief discussion focused on one main concept from a classic philosophical text and thinker.
This Core Concept video focuses on Blaise Pascal's unfinished work, the Pensées, specifically on his distinction between two different mindsets or perspectives, the "intuitive mind" (l'esprit de finesse) and the mathematical mind (l'esprit de géométrie). Both of these have to do with how persons perceive and understand "axioms" or basic principles relevant to a subject matter.
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You can find the copy of the text I am using for this sequence on Pascal's Pensées here - amzn.to/2NnuEAx

[@patricks4368]

Great work on Pascal! Your videos on Pascal are by far the best on Pascal I've found.

[@GregoryBSadler]

I'm glad they've been useful for you!

[@noname3609]

I've read Pascals Pensées this year,it seemed so hard but you make it look easy.Thank YOU !

[@GregoryBSadler]

You're welcome!

[@JohnDoe-ob5jj]

Thanks Dr. Sadler, I've been hoping for some Pascal videos.

[@GregoryBSadler]

I'll have more coming out over the next few weeks

[@MrFlinchenstein]

Great energy in this video! Very enjoyable to follow

[@GregoryBSadler]

Glad you enjoyed it. I've got about another 400 or so of these core concept videos

[@rogerevans9666]

Boy, I surely can relate to this! It seemed I was the only person in the art history department (and, sadly, the studio art department) with an intuitive mind. My first published article was about how Titian's painting called "Il Bravo" (at Vienna's Kunsthistorisches Museum) represents the arrest of Bacchus by Pentheus or a soldier acting under the orders of Pentheus. The story is in Ovid's "Metamorphoses" to which Titian had access. (There is also a play by Euripides called "The Bacchae".) So many people said to me: "How did you figure this out?" It was obvious to me at first glance. These Phd's are like the non-intuitive people, painfully groping from detail to detail and never connecting the whole together. In the painting, the grape leaf garland and effeminate appearance of the guy on the left should make my interpretation obvious, but it was just obvious to me. I had to write argument after argument to support my thesis, and there were still disbelievers. The only other interpretation is that the guy on the left is Trebonius and the guy on the right is Lucius from Plutarch's "Life of Marius", but who would say these two men in the painting represent Roman soldiers, especially the guy on the left? Even Freud did not make the connection I have made, and the painting had been in Vienna throughout his lifetime. He was a person who went to art museums, wrote about Leonardo and Michelangelo, and liked to study myths. There is still a professor at Cambridge who is aware of my alternative view and still insists on the Trebonius/Lucius interpretation. He says that it is uncharacteristic that Bacchus would be drawing a sword (barely visible at the bottom middle of the canvas). I agree, but I say that this sword foreshadows the violent ending of the story. Like it or not, introducing an element of foreshadowing in a history painting can be a valid part of a composition. Ernst Rutherford said that what is called research outside the physics department is really just a form of stamp collecting. I agree with that too. I do something world-class and original, and the professors did not care or understand what I had done. I did not frame a question. Oh what a great crime I committed. Their way of doing things is completely foreign to me; although I do respect their work, it should not be seen as the only way to work in the so-called "life of the mind".

[@GregoryBSadler]

Notice that for Pascal, the best person has both at their disposal.

[@salvatore.M77]

Thanks doctor❤

[@GregoryBSadler]

You're welcome

[@jakopic]

Most people are inbetween but with a small preference for one or the other. It is interesting to to see how some people use one or the other mind when solving IQ tests.

[@GregoryBSadler]

Pascal would say many people are not in between, but lacking in both

[@anorderedhole2197]

Is this related the "quantitative vs qualitative" debates often brought up? I'm used to philosophy putting the quantitative as this precise-misunderstanding and the qualitative as the-big-idea-while-neglecting-the-finer-details. Pascal seems to put both on equal footing and everyone edifying rather than getting the 'begriff'.

[@GregoryBSadler]

Well the esprit de finesse does often work within the qualitative, but it's not "big-idea-while-neglecting-the-finer-details."

[@Second247]

I find word "intuitive" to be pretty problematic. I think the main problem lies in word "feeling" and how badly we grasp it. It's odd that we have so many things piled under it. There are emotions, sensation by touch, imagination/notion and value judgements all piled under same word. While word 'thinking' is pretty simple and coherently understood, telling something perhaps of our overemphasis on thinking? I really like Jungian way to split human personality/experience into four different areas: Sensation, intuition, thinking and feeling. With emotions and affects separated from all these into ther own category. So feeling is more about what is good or bad and such value judgements, instead of tears and laugh. While often people try to fit all else but thinking under feeling. Which seems bit too much. Same seems to go with Pascal atleast to some degree: mixing sensation and thinking into mathematical mind, creating engineer scientist . While mixing intuition and feeling into intuitive mind, resulting philosophical poet. Or something like that. I really like how he encourages to use both sides.

[@GregoryBSadler]

Well, as you know, Pascal doesn't use the term "intuitive". The translation does

[@vincentandrew4544]

Hi! Thanks for the lecture. Do you think pascal have any other major philosophical work that expand his thought other than pensees? If so, what would you recommend?

[@GregoryBSadler]

You could start with the Provincial Letters. A short bit of research on your part will find you others

[@vincentandrew4544]

@@GregoryBSadler thanks!

[@Retrogamer71]

The intuitive has 'gestalt' with its rational moments contained. But is it equivocal to instinct. Intuitive - Instinct?

[@GregoryBSadler]

No. Like I mention in the video, don't read too much into the term "intuitive"

[@mindhack2878]

I found him very existential

[@GregoryBSadler]

some people view him as a proto-existentialist

[@mindhack2878]

I can why . Similar themes

[@jakopic]

Wondering if "intuition" could be replaced by "perception" and "mathematical" with "conceptual".

[@GregoryBSadler]

That would be equally misleading. Best to stick with the text as we have it

[@estebandelacruzg1281]

What about music?

[@GregoryBSadler]

What about it?

[@OneLine122]

Finesse, is like sharp, but at the same time delicate. Delicate sharpness is about right, but there is the idea of grasping behind as well. Geometry is like square, rude and imposing. Not to say the translations aren't good, but there is a subtlety here, because he could have used reason and intuition if he had wanted to, yet he chose a kind of pedestrian word and an aristocratic one. Just some thoughts, I haven't read the text.

[@GregoryBSadler]

I'll be more interested to read what you say after you've read the text over a few times

[@ansarallahi]

looks like jungs psychological types

[@GregoryBSadler]

And it's not

[@thebigcapitalism9826]

So this is essentially the concept of left brain right brain

[@danielcox6193]

no. he explicitly says this at the 4:00 mark

[@GregoryBSadler]

Definitely not