Editing Jaime Balmes (section)

=== Intellectual instinct ===
The intellectual instinct gives us the correspondence between the idea and reality, it is not an animal instinct, but a rational instinct. Through this instinct we know that what we see exists, or at least that there is a representation of what we see. These kinds of truths are by definition broader than the intellectual truths of the evidence. The same truth can also be had by means of an intellectual rather than an instinct: to give an example, it can be known whether a business works or not through an economic study or through an intuition of common sense. Thus, in the common sense, there is the unconscious -like the moral truths, or the sensations- or that which through the intellectual instinct we see as evident, for example, the scientific truths. It is also through this instinct that we know demonstrable truths without having to prove them, or we consider truth as probability, that is, the awareness of contingency: to give an example, to be aware of the possibilities we have to win the lottery, or to achieve write something coherent by moving the pen randomly on the paper.

For Balmes, these are the three pillars of metaphysics. To better define this, there is an analysis of the '' [[cogito ergo sum]] '' Cartesian, according to which the affirmation of the "I think, therefore I exist" Cartesian is in principle a truth of conscience, later transformed into an intellectual truth of evidence, a logical [[syllogism]] whose reality is understood through intuition. Having founded the '' cogito '' on something intellectual, [[Descartes]] falls into the risk of reducing the '' cogito '' to something logical and intellectual. For this reason, for Balmes, consciousness is the fundamental pillar of metaphysics, but for him transcends the "cogito" the clear and distinct Cartesian idea: consciousness is the pillar because it is where experience is lived and given sense.