Higher Abstracts ….

Philo: You’re back and I’m ready now that I know you "get it" somewhat.

Estudia: Yes, but it's hard.

Philo: Sure it is. You really have to work to achieve integration. Just going with the flow will mean that your ideas remain unconnected and floating.

Estudia: “Out of context,” you said.

Philo: Right, and a good philosopher should teach how to grasp cognitive relationships. How to work with your mind and how important that is. But no, most philosophy has been concerned with non-integration, and in fact, philosophy is disintegrated itself.

Estudia: What has philosophy got to do with it?

Philo: Remember that philosophy is dealing with the widest abstractions, and as a science it should be the highest and best integrator of human knowledge. Philosophy should have a satellite view of an earth populated by areas of the special sciences and interests that can not see each other from the ground. The philosopher can relate these areas of special interest to one another and communicate their relationship. If one area is ready to clash with another, the view from on high will remind the areas of the proper metaphysics and epistemology and so forth. A good philosopher will remind others of what is proper and what is not in accordance with reality.

Estudia: Well, there is so much knowledge and it seems that the more I learn, the more confusing everything becomes, and the more I realize how little I know.

Philo: It shouldn’t and doesn’t have to be that way. Yes, today any new idea seems to raise the chance of a contradiction occurring in some other field. If you have a rational epistemology, you would not fear new knowledge or the results of some novel experiment. New ideas, when integrated into your existing knowledge will just be more facts supporting what you already know. You’ll be more certain of what you have concluded. The more you learn correctly, the clearer it will become and the more you will know.

Estudia: That would be really nice. I will strive to integrate everything I learn from now on, and this material will be where I start.

Philo: Good. But you are not finished learning about knowledge.

Estudia: What’s next?

Philo: You need to be aware of the hierarchical nature of knowledge.

Estudia: I thought we started with perceptual data and integrated it.

Philo: Yes, but remember that we perceived things, entities in reality. We formed first-level concepts directly from what your senses perceive. You identified “table”, “chair”, “stool”, “couch”, etc in this way and you didn’t need any prior concepts to do this.

Estudia: Sure. And then we processed these “first-level” concepts to form higher level ones like furniture, household items, and manmade objects.

Philo: That’s true, and you can see that there are levels of concepts. This becomes really clear when you begin to combine existential concepts with some concept of consciousness.

Estudia: Like what?

Philo: How ‘bout the concept of Science as in “The realm of Science”.

Estudia: Hmmm. I see that. Science includes all sorts of fields like Chemistry, Biology, Geology and many more. Each of those concepts includes things like Inorganic and Organic, Mineralogy, Astrogeology, Paleontology and more. Each of those concepts includes existential things like fossils, element, compound, cell and many, many more.

Philo: A concept like Science is an integration of concretes. The concept of Science can not be understood directly from the many concretes included. This very high level concept assumes that all the included lower-level concepts have been conceptualized earlier with levels of their own just like you explained. The concepts have a definite order of formation which runs from abstractions just above the perceptual stage to higher and higher abstractions.

Estudia: That makes sense. I can see how that idea applies to every field of knowledge. After all I had to learn to count before I could take up geometry and that helped with algebra and that was necessary for calculus which was required for differential equations and so on. You can’t go from kindergarten to college first and then do high school after all.

Philo: That’s why it really helps to understand a subject by following the historical development of the knowledge in any field. That is why human knowledge has accelerated as layers and layers of complex material are added to a tower of information. But any area rests on a foundation of ideas that began by someone perceiving with their senses something in reality. So you can see that knowledge is hierarchical in nature.

Estudia: Got it. What now?

Philo: We need to relate the issues of context and hierarchy?

Estudia: Oh, boy! Let’s do that later, okay?

Philo: Sure. See you around.

Binding in concrete …

Philo: So we discovered last time we talked that you must, in every case, keep things in context.

Estudia: Yes, but it's hard. I've got to do so much mental work to integrate every new idea I come across, or more likely to discard the idea as nonsense after careful consideration.

Philo: That's true, but if knowledge is your goal, then you have to do all that mental work. You can't do it just by reading about a new idea. You have to spend hours, days or even more time reorganizing your thoughts when you are presented with a new idea that makes sense and you want to integrate into your knowledge. Any new conclusion on any subject must be identified and integrated into your thinking with all the relevant context. You have to ask yourself just what the new fact or claim is and then why should you care. You want to ask yourself just what the fact or claim means for all the other beliefs that you hold.

Estudia: What happens if I don't do all this thinking? I mean, after all, there is so much knowledge and I can't integrate it all. What if I just learn about an idea and don't connect with any other ideas that I hold?

Philo: What you are describing is what Ayn Rand called the concrete-bound mentality ― someone who makes no real connection among their mental contents. Such a person would take each new issue as a separate concrete unrelated to anything else. They would not consider an issue related to any earlier issues they learned about, or to any abstract principles, or really any context.

Estudia: Hmmm. So such a person, a person with a concrete bound mentality, would learn that …. Wait, I guess that would include someone like a politician who promises to lower taxes, but then would advocate providing more welfare for the poor, or state that oil companies are making too much money so should have to pay a surcharge, at the same time as he deplores the high price of gasoline.

Philo: Exactly. Such a crony would never let it occur to him that more spending on welfare would require a reduction in spending or higher taxes, that a surcharge is a tax or that taking money from oil companies would diminish their ability to discover new oil or build refineries resulting in even higher gasoline prices.

Estudia: I’m beginning to understand how important it is to keep things in context. But surely, not everyone is this bad. Lots of people are very knowledgeable about different subjects are they not?

Philo: Oh, sure. Lots of us integrate some subject matter very well. Someone who is an expert on Islamic law say, or a physicist involved in high-energy particle research, and many others. They integrate their mental content within their delimited area of interest. They form a compartment of integrated ideas; however, they never consider the implications on other areas like politics, medicine, or ethics and more. They don’t want to be bothered with thinking about things they consider someone else’s concern or area of interest.

Estudia: But wouldn’t a specialist be such a person? My urologist won’t think about my digestive system or my eyes for example and maybe it’s not his concern.

Philo: That may very well be and this could be a problem for you. The cardiologist who treats you for heart disease may completely over look a thyroid condition or heavy metal poisoning and you will suffer for it. I think this may be happening as our knowledge grows beyond what one person can retain. But you don’t want to cut yourself off from everything else and just consider your area separate from the rest of reality. You would have to drop all the ideas and knowledge that makes your specialty possible and which connects it with reality.

Estudia: What would you call this then? I can see if you do drop too much context, you are going to develop ideas that are not integrated and wind up with floating abstractions and self-contradictions. You could completely be out of contact with reality.

Philo: This is a type of non-integration which Ayn Rand called :compartmentalization.

Estudia: Don’t people do this all the time? I mean, most scientists that I know see the evidence of evolution, natural geological processes shaping the earth, the forces of nature acting despite the conscious wishes of the masses, etc. but they are still theist and believe in ghosts or God or the supernatural.

Philo: Lots of economists believe in socialism in politics, the profitability of capitalism in business, and the self-sacrificial tenets of altruism in their private lives.

Estudia: Wow. I think I get it. I think I see what you are saying. See you next time.

Philo: Adieu!