The Guru Speaks
Posted on 04/06/2005 11:36:46 AM PDT by Alamo-Girl
I understood you. And, IMHO, you made a lot of sense.
Yes, at a news conference.
Bump for Rummy!
You said it.
Scient-ism is that particular group that would keep the monopoly on certainty for its particular set of assumptions. But there are other dogmatists.
I'm glad you posted your response.
That's precious. You have a link?
"So while we are all slightly askew from reality, each perceiving it in an individual way, we have--besides our native intelligence--religion, tradition, education and the law to guide us in interpreting reality. "Knowledge" is the total of all this--our awareness of the world around us plus our intellectual skills that enable us to deal with it."
Francis Bacon, the most underated philosopher of all time, described exactly this 500 years ago. He referred to them as Idols of the Cave, Idols of the Marketplace, etc. in his Novum Organum.
A Rabbi I knew would say "I don't know, I don't need to know, and that's okay".
Rummy should change that to the media and tell them "You don't know, you don't need to know, and that's okay" (it's called National Security in some circles).
One thing I know above all else: you two guys are poop-heads!
NFP
True, but Google doesn't talk.
Fascinating.
I will give my own view of things, based on the categories that you have provided above, in order of certitude:
(1) Direct personal sensation.
I do not distinguish between that which I SEE (the dog at my feet) and that which I FEEL (the taste of a taco, the smell of coffee, the queasiness of fear, the happiness of love, the heat of lust), because I sense that eyesight, taste, smell, touch and other more subtle emotional states that we identify with the head or the heart are all either senses or emotions. In other words, eyesight is an emotion, and love is a sense. Different organs, different pathways, but not fundamentally different at their root.
(2) Indirect personal sensation.
The reproduction in my senses of the recorded impressions of others' senses. The only two normal vectors for absorbing the recorded sense impressions of others are the eyes and ears - we read or hear the others' impressions. I observe that what happens on hearing this is that my own body and mind create a simulacrum of that described experience, in my "mind's eye", so to speak, and I experience what the other has experienced by a refabrication of the emotion within my own experience.
(3) Judgment.
What I sense directly, in the heart and in the eyes, I know. Indeed, that IS knowledge, as I would define it.
What others tell me is also knowledge, but (when it's important) I hold that described knowledge up against my own experience of the world to determine whether I believe it to be true or not.
In other words, if I were standing in the same place that the person describing the event was standing when it actually happened, would I have experienced the same thing?
If not, then either (a) the other person has misinterpreted sense impressions (I do not much allow that my own senses are inaccurate), or is delusional, or is lying.
All second-hand knowledge, including all science, history and theology that I have not personally been involved in, fall into this third category.
An example: the account of the death of Jesus.
The Bible - someone else's recorded impressions, says that the sky went dark, there was an earthquake, the veil in the Temple was torn in twain and the graves opened and the dead walked around.
Now, suppose I had been standing there on Golgotha. Would I have seen the sky go dark? If yes, and I looked up, would I have seen the stars (and looked towards the sun to see an eclipse) or would I have seen nothing but dark clouds making an overcast? Or would I have seen that it was sunny and didn't go dark to my eyes? If the latter, I might conclude that either (a) the author was writing metaphorically, or (b) the author was lying to try and create a sense impression of something supernatural when, in fact, someone actually standing there would have seen nothing supernatural. Or (c): the author himself was writing from second hand, and repeated what he heard.
If I were standing on Golgotha, I would not have been able to see if the Temple veil was torn in two. But if I had been standing in the Temple at that moment, I would observe to see (a) if there WAS a veil at all, (b) if it tore in two out of thin air, (c) if some person or thing tore it in two, or (d) if nothing happened.
Obviously I would know if there was an earthquake or not. Everyone in the city would feel it.
Now, obviously I know that there is no way that I can go back in time to discover if the mental simulacra created in my own senses were accurate or not, so I have to decide whether I believe the supernatural stories or not based on my own experience with the natural and supernatural. I would call "judgment" the capacity to decide what one believes and what one does not believe.
From my perspective those are the three sorts of knowledge.
And the first is the gold standard for the other two. Note that the first includes instincts and inborn knowledge.
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