The article discusses peirce's attack on descartes' concept of intuition and gives an analysis of his conclusions that: there are no objective criteria enabling us to discern between intuition and indirect knowledge; there is no satisfactory logical or experimental explanation of intuitive knowledge; there can be no cognition without signs. peirce's arguments against intuition possess elements which later proponents of intuitive knowledge (husserl, bergson, scheler, heidegger) would find difficult to deal with. if logical positivists in the 1930's had been acquainted (...) with peirce's views, the discussion on "protocol sentences" and the verification principle would have developed differently or ended sooner. (shrink)