The Contextual Relationship...

Philo: Ok, Stew, let’s see if we can make any more progress with out studies. Remember how concepts are formed and think about the process.

Estudia: We formed a concept by isolating out significant attributes of something and using a definition to group similar things under a term we use to represent all objects of that kind less any particular measurement. Somethin’ like that.

Philo: That’s okay; you have the essence of the idea down. The key is that we saw some relationship between or among the items we isolated as a concept. We group the objects on what?

Estudia: Their similarities. Shirt stands for anything worn on a body to cover the shoulders, chest and back generally down to the waist… et cetera.

Philo: Okay, but notice that we can only notice the similarities of shirts as compared to pants and chairs and rugs and a whole host of not similar objects. To see that two shirts are similar in shape and function we must grasp that idea in relation to pants which are also body coverings.

Estudia: So what you are telling me is that concepts are not just formed out of the blue among themselves but concepts are formed in some sort of context.

Philo: Right. We relate the concrete objects or ideas to a field of contrasting objects or ideas. These collective bodies of contrasting relationships make up the context of a concept and they are what determine the concepts meaning.

Estudia: Humm! Well, I think I see that. It’s sort of like when you talk about anything, what you are saying depends on not just what you said in some particular remark but on all the related material you talked about both before and after a particular statement. People can be quoted out of context and the meaning of what is quoted can be very different from what was implied when seen in the full context of their statement.

Philo: Exactly. You can’t interpret what anyone said from a single isolated remark. You need to know in what context the remark was made

Estudia: So what does this tell us?

Philo: Well, quotations must be in context and concepts are formed in a context and even in the widest sense we can state that all human knowledge, on every level, is relational. Things can’t be understood out of context and knowledge is not a bag of unrelated facts each of which can be considered independent of the others. Knowledge is a sum total, a single whole.

Estudia: That makes sense, I think. What is it about knowledge that makes it so relational?

Philo: Two things. One fact that we have discovered about the nature of existence is that there is only one universe. Remember, the universe encompasses everything by definition; so everything is in this same universe and hence in reality everything is interconnected. Each and every entity is in someway related to all the others, and each somehow affects and is affected by all the others.

Estudia: You mean like the-butterfly-flapping-its-wings-in-Brazil-results-in-the-typhoon-in-Indonesia sort of interconnection?

Philo: Nothing is completely isolated. Everything has causes or effects. You can not take some portion of everything and get it to exist completely apart. Maybe every flap of that butterfly does not cause a typhoon but if you could trace the motion of some of the molecules of air moved by one special flap you could conceivably find that those molecules could be part of the beginning of a storm.

Estudia: So knowledge, which we said is a collection of ideas that helps us grasp and understand reality, must itself be something composed of entities, like facts and ideas, theories and laws. Also, knowledge must be a total of its entities; the entities of knowledge must be connected to form a unified whole.

Philo: And that unified whole reflects the whole known universe. That’s the first reason knowledge is relational. The second depends on how our consciousness by its nature seeks to discover relationships among entities.

Estudia: So we have to relate each thing we learn to all the other things we learned, is that what you are saying?

Philo: You have no option up to a point. On the perceptual level you don’t have to work at the relationships. Things like colors, sounds and so forth differentiate themselves based on the nature and operation of our senses. On the conceptual level things get a little trickier. You must always hold in mind the context of any knowledge. If we are to reach some new conclusion and prove it and interpret it and to actually apply it, we must hold the sum of cognitive entities surrounding an item of knowledge.

Estudia: The context plus the item of knowledge is a sum total. This sum determines the item’s relationship to reality, right?

Philo: Right, the sum, the item with context, sets the item’s meaning and proper use. That’s why you must never drop the context. Any out-of-context claim or proposal is invalid.

Estudia: Wait… wait. What is context exactly?

Philo: All our knowledge depends on relationships so it depends on a framework of other previous information. This earlier framework consists of a collection of mental entities which surround or condition any item of knowledge. The context is this framework.

Estudia: Okay, context is a sum of ideas which surround any item of knowledge. But why does dropping this framework matter that much when we are considering some conclusion… Ahh…
Don’t answer that! Of course it matters, just like taking a quote out of context. If you took some conclusion out of context you could apply it to something entirely different and inappropriate.

Philo: Exactly. If you drop the context, you can’t tell if the idea applies or not and you couldn’t distinguish truth from falsehood.

Estudia: Can you give me an example?

Philo: Let’s wait. Look over those notes you’ve been taking and maybe you can figure out an example to tell me about to see if you understand what we discussed after you perform the work to integrate this new knowledge into your total of all you have learned so far.

Estudia: Hmmmm… Well, okay. I’ll try and see what I come up with for you.

Philo: ¡Buena suerte!

Estudia: Good luck to you too.

The Reunion...

Estudia: Phi! I’m back!

Philo: Stew! I’m still here! Wow, it’s been a while. How ‘ya been?

Estudia: Really busy, but I’ve gotten interested in pursuing our study of philosophy again. The little bit we’ve already talked about has been of some help in my life already. I reviewed my notes from our previous sessions and I’m ready to get started.

Philo: Okay, that’s great. I missed you and I missed trying to express this material in my own words. If I remember we had begun a discussion of epistemology. We learned that because man does not simply know everything about reality just by observing it, he must have a method of validating his knowledge.

Estudia: You told me that we needed logic. The rules of logic are required to validate our growth from perceptual data to conceptual truth. We are conceptual beings and we learned how we form concepts. We first sense things in reality directly and automatically because of the nature of our sense organs and the way the perceptual sections of our brain functions. Then we learn to conceptualize and take it to higher and higher levels of organization by building integrations on top of integrations. We form concepts of increasingly broader or narrower scope in order to hold a range of physical or mental ideas in our minds.

Philo: Very good. Logic provides a method of moving from one integration to the next higher one. Our method of cognition, our consciousness and how it operates requires the method of logic as well as reflecting the facts of reality.

Estudia: You mean the facts of external reality.

Philo: Right. The fundamental law of reality is that the principles of logic guide man’s mind at every step if he is to understand the facts of external reality. And, I think that is where we left off. In order to make clear the idea of non-contradictory knowledge we need to understand that knowledge is contextual. We can’t take things out of context and hope to relate what we observe back to reality. There is another topic which must be understood in order to grasp the concept of “proof”, and that is the topic of hierarchy. We need to learn that knowledge is hierarchical as well as contextual.

Estudia: Humm; so where do we begin?

Philo: Let’s start with the contextual discussion, but since we have been away from this demanding task of staying focused and thinking seriously on these matters, why don’t we keep this visit short. Why don’t we celebrate?

Estudia: Okay, I like the idea of taking this elephant of philosophical material and eating it bite by tiny bite. So your suggestion sounds good to me, but what are we celebrating?

Philo: Life ― us ― Friendship ― Productive work. Come on, I’ll buy you a drink. I want to hear more about what’s happened to you over the last …what has it been … almost two years. Wow!