The Real World:

1
Chapter 3

• The Real World
• Knowing Unknowing

2
Buckminster Fuller writes

• All the biologicals are converting chaos to
  beautiful order. All biology is antientropic. Of
  all the disorder-to-order converters, the human
  mind is by far the most impressive. The humans
  most powerful metaphysical drive is to
  understand, to order, to sort out, and rearrange
  in ever more orderly and understandably
  constructive ways. You find then that mans true
  function is metaphysical.

3
Knowledge

• The study of how the mind gathers knowledge is
  called epistemology, and epistemologists have
  found that the mind is endowed with four channels
  for gathering information senses, reason,
  intuition and authority

4
Epistemic Awareness

• We face two epistemological problems 1) How can
  we determine which facts are true? 2) How can we
  determine which facts are important?

5
The Senses Empirical Knowledge

• Primary source of all knowledge is our own senses
• Objective senses
• Subjective senses
• Naïve realism

6
Knowledge from Others Authority

• Other people are major sources of information for
  each of us, but all such secondhand fact-claims
  are by nature distanced from our own immediate
  experience where we can better judge the validity
  of such claims

7
Reason Using Known Facts

• Deduction
• Induction
• Necessarily
• Probable

8
Intuition Knowledge from the Depths

• Intuition refers to insights or bits of knowledge
  that emerge into the light of consciousness as a
  result of deeper subconscious activity
• The principle weakness of intuition and feeling
  as sources of knowledge is that the insights they
  produce are as likely to be wrong as right

9
John LockeReality Appearance

• Appearance versus reality
• He defines probability as likeliness to be
  true. Or again probability is nothing but the
  appearance of such an agreement or disagreement
  by the intervention of proofs whose connections
  are loose but still appear to provide a modicum
  of coherence

10
Reflections

• Note the two basic epistemological problems. Is
  it clear to you at this point why these are so
  important? Can you summarize briefly your
  understanding of each?

11
Senses

• How much can we trust the senses?
• How much do the senses lie to us?
• Is there any way we can get around them and
  find out what is really going on in the world
  beyond our sense?

12
We Never See the Real World

• Our senses constitute our interface the
  boundary of contact between two adjacent realms
  with reality
• Transducer any substance or device that
  converts one form of energy into another
  different form of energy

13
Vision

• Consider vision as a paradigm for the
  transduction process of all our senses
• What are light waves?

14
The Mind Manufactures Experience

• Color
• Sound
• Taste
• Smell
• Touch

15
Epistemic Loneliness

• We live in an epistemological shell with no doors
• 1) The fallacy of objectification is a constant
  temptation
• 2) We have all lived in a condition of confusion
  regarding the location of object/events
• 3) Critical intellects are restless with these
  evolutionary arrangements with their limitations
  and deceptions

16
The Pragmatic Nature of Knowing

• If we experience only our experiences (and not
  reality), how can we be sure we know anything
  about the real world?
• Hume implies 1) the real world exists 2) life
  is difficult if it is assumed that one cannot
  know the real world
• The map is NOT the territory

17
George BerkeleyThe Irish Immaterialist

• Esse est percipi to be is to be perceived
• There was a young man who said,
• God
• Must think it exceedingly odd
• If he finds that this tree
• Continues to be
• When theres no one about in the
• Quad.

18
Reflections

• This chapter speaks of epistemic loneliness.
  Are these words meaningful to you? Can you feel
  this condition personally or does it not apply to
  you?

19
Mind

• Moving through abstractions to rediscover
  concrete events is a major problem for all who
  seek to know the truth about the world

20
The Pragmatic Thinker

• Tabula rasa blank tablet
• Human knowledge is a collection of constructs
  created by the mind from the raw materials of
  sensation it is a series of scaled-down maps
  that we use to find our way in the full-scale
  territory of the real world

21
Why We Think in Abstractions

• Abstraction an idea created by the mind to
  refer to all objects which, possessing certain
  characteristics in common, are thought of in the
  same class
• At high levels of abstraction we tend to group
  together objects. What is the result?

22
Classifying Labeling

• Gogo, gigi, dabas, dobos, busa, busana?
• Systems of clarification are reflexive
• Systems of clarification are pragmatic

23
Our Mental Grids

• Our minds, says Bergson, can indeed move
  through all the pragmatic grids and intuit the
  nature of reality itself. By a sort of
  intellectual empathy we can come to know the
  very-changing, endlessly moving continuum that is
  reality.
• Reality is, and that is all.

24
Henri Bergsonto be a Hummingbird

• Bergson made it intellectually respectable to
  believe that human beings could be free,
  responsible, fully human, and immortal
• Life as an adventure of the mind
• The primary function of human intelligence is to
  go to the heart of things, to understand
  objects/events in the real world exactly as they
  are

25
Reflections

• Summarize in our words the point Bergson is
  making when he tells us that our minds have a
  habit of chopping reality into fragments. Is
  this meaningful to you personally? Could
  Bergsons insights lead you to change your way of
  seeing and thinking about reality?

26
Truth

• How can we be sure of our facts?

27
Truth-Tests

• Correspondence Test
• Coherence Test
• Pragmatic Test
• Pragmatic Paradox

28
William JamesTruth Happens to an Idea

• What does it mean for an idea to be true?
• What, in short, is the truths cash value in
  experiential terms?The truth of an idea is not
  a stagnant property inherent in it. Truth happens
  to an idea. It becomes true, is made true by
  events. Its verity is in fact an event, a
  process.

29
Reflections

• Can you see a way out of the pragmatic paradox?
  Is it indeed a paradox in the sense that one must
  actually deceive himself that is, that he must
  believe that an idea is true on the wrong
  criterion to make an idea work?