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!
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!
posted by Rp | 1:14 PM
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