What is human knowledge?

international | miscellaneous | opinion/analysis

Tuesday January 25, 2011 18:59

by Paddy Hackett

maxanger at live dot ie

Given that without modern symbolic logic, a product of analytical philosophy, there would have been no computer technology in existence today we see the significance of analytical philosophy. The same cannot be said for the non-analytical continental philosophy.

Human Knowledge

Human knowledge is founded on instinctive belief. It is this common sense belief that leads us to believe in an independent external world. This belief creates no difficulty for us. Neither have we any good reason to reject it since it simplifies and systematizes our experiences. Every principle of simplicity indicates that there are objects other than ourselves and our sense-data. They don’t depend on our continued perception of them. We start with what we can be certain of --our immediate experiences. We may doubt the table’s physical experience but not the sense-data that lead us to think there is one. There are grounds for thinking that these do indicate the existence of physical objects.

We have no reason for accepting the view that life is a dream. This is because life as dream is more complicated than the common-sense one of external objects as source of our sensations. Intuitive knowledge is the basis of our knowledge of truths. Intuitive knowledge are beliefs for which we cannot give reasons. They are blindingly evident general principles such as the inductive principle and general logical principles. We know them instinctively or intuitively. These primitive intuitions are a product of the evolution through natural selection of the Stone Age human brain. The genetic make-up of the human brain hardwires this bundle of intuitions in us

There are two forms of knowledge. Knowledge by acquaintance and knowledge by description. Knowledge by acquaintance involves our direct awareness of things while knowledge by description is a derivative form of knowledge based in instinct. It concerns truths about things. We are acquainted with sense-data and memory. Sense-data is that which is given by the senses such as colours and sounds.

There is also acquaintance through introspection. For example we are not directly acquainted with the table as a physical object. However our knowledge of it as a physical object is connected to our acquaintance with the sense-data that makes up its appearance. On the basis of our acquaintance with these we can formulate a description of the table or other objects which applies to only one object. Description makes it possible to go beyond private experience giving us knowledge of things we have not experienced. It also creates and develops a community of knowledge. Our acquaintance with sense-data enables us to infer the existence of physical objects and the external world. This is how we transcend our own private experience while establishing communal relations.
To draw the relevant inferences there must exist general laws and principles. We rely on the principle of induction for predicting future events. The inductive principle enables us to extend our knowledge beyond the extremely limited sphere of our private experiences. General scientific principles depend on the inductive principle. Logical principles such as the Laws of Thought have to be accepted for any argument or proof to be possible. Again this constitutes one of the epistemic conditions for transcending private experience and establishing community. Since knowledge is a priori it can be known independently of experience. Mathematical and logical principles are examples of it. Experience cannot prove that mathematical and logical principles are true. Yet it is experience that elicits a priori knowledge through particular experiences. Through experience we become aware of these general principles. All applications of a priori general propositions involve an empirical element. Human knowledge is a combination of the empirical and the a priori. It is this combination that creates the conditions for communal knowledge that transcends private knowledge.

In my view much of mainstream Marxism tends to ignore this combination and over-emphasise the experiential aspect of knowledge lending itself to some form of crude empiricism.

Much of the above was inspired by the analytical philosopher, Bertrand Russell. Much of his philosophy has been of enormous significance. Even to this day much of his philosophy is still underestimated. It was eclipsed, in varying degreest, by younger philosophers and by some of his peers such as Wittgenstein and probably Carnap. And In Ireland mainstream Marxism is more influenced by continental philosophy than it is by analytical philosophy. Given that without modern symbolic logic, a product of analytical philosophy, there would have been no large scale computer technology in existence today we see its significance. The same cannot be said for the non-analytical philosophy continental philosophy.

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Comments (22 of 22)

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Being Human is not always being Huwoman.

by Tim

Wed Jan 26, 2011 19:32

With the Roman Slaveholders Empire conquest of the British Tribes, the enslaving Sextus society set about destroying the Matriarchy. The matriarchy had at the time a lingo of its own with such concepts as fundawomanal, huwomany, herstory etc. That language was deliberately destroyed to break with the solidarity that it showed to the local and national aspirations of the conquored people. Hence forth all must obey the Empire and the Roman male domination of their natural equality of 50,50 law making, and male superiority became the only way to express the language and thus every woman became a human. And only Humanity was allowed and never huwomany.

The penalties of using their own language with a gender parity expression was subject to death and enslavement in a slaveholder pen. Everyone was mortally bound to the Empire and male superiority. That is the entire working classes of the enslaving empire. With the dissolving of the Roman Slaveholders Empire, the officials rather than lose their ruling positions created a religion that held male superiority throughout the Roman Church and thus extended their privilaged positions. So much is this so that they never even bothered to change the fraudulent calendar names of the Roman Empire which still appears to this day as July, for Julius Caesar, and August for Augustus Caesar, March for the Legions march etc, and most
other months Latinized, such as October, September, November, December etc.

The original lunar calendar of the British Tribes which has new year as the first day of the year in which the light becomes longer in the changed season. Dec. 23. The natural new year is the first day that the days become longer, and a new set of conditions arrive for the new years growing season begins. None of these conditions were even mentioned by the collaborators with the Roman Occupation and in this new millenium one would think that the society of the people ought to restore the matriarchy and its language as well as the correct measure of time of the solar system would occur on the natural calendar to put in place an intelligent materialism and measure of matter-in-motion.

Huwomany is a matriarchal word that is more favorable to the creation of life on this planet. Man being the hunter and killer cannot rule correctly and causes to many useless unjust wars and destruction of the planet. The polity is elected genetically equal, that is 50-50 in nature, and that natural equality needs to come back to the collective so the natural harmony and joy of the species can return.

O.M.G.

by Grammarian.

Thu Jan 27, 2011 11:18

"And only Humanity was allowed and never huwomany."
Carry that linguistic foolishness to its logical conclusion and we get the following linguistic nonsense:

Take the word "Womankind."
(But the word "man" is in the word "wo-man".)

So the word "woman" becomes the word "wo-person."
(But the word "son" is in the word "per-son".)

So the word "person" becomes "per-daughter."

Therefore a "woman" becomes a "wo-per-daughter".

Therefore female "hu-man-ity" becomes:

"Hu-wo-per-daughter-ity."

American linguistic political correctness has not quite gone that far.......yet!

Grammarian is right

by Woman

Thu Jan 27, 2011 12:16

To a woman a man is a mere truncated woman without flourish of "Wo-".

then again..

by opus diablos - the regressive hypocrite party

Fri Feb 04, 2011 15:10

...some women like a bit of truncation.

Hard to please them all.

The Cutting Edge.

by Cosmologist.

Fri Feb 04, 2011 16:08

The present limits of human knowledge involves trying to reconcile "Quantum Physics" with "Relativistic Gravitation".
Both are "true".
But incompatible.

No luck so far.
The best minds on earth beat their heads against the wall trying to reconcile the two.

no trouble

Sat Feb 05, 2011 14:57

I did that years ago, around the time I cracked cold-fusion by jamming the ice-cream into the frozen yoghurt.

The current limits of human knowledge are preoccupied with how to pre-empt the nuclear bitter-lemming quantum-leap over the time barrier into the ex-dimension.

We're just warming up the polysyllabic colloidoscope at the minit. Give us a coupla aeons. First we have to crack the pentagonal quark, and thats more strange than charming. Requires acute disCERNment.

Up, Down, Top, Bottom, Strange, and Charming Quarks.

Sun Feb 06, 2011 10:19

"First we have to crack the pentagonal quark, and thats more strange than charming."
You know your physics Opus.

Our own James Joyce coined the word "Quark".

Murray Gell-Mann was reading Joyce at the time he deduced that the particle must exist.
So he named it in honour of Joyce.

"Three Quarks for Muster Mark" is the Joycean quote, I think.

Quark, quark...

Sun Feb 06, 2011 11:23

My source says '...it may be impossible for them to occur in the free state.'

Is that why Joyce had to go abroad to find them?(as you said, in Finnegans Wake).

Quark is also a type of low-fat curd cheese. I may try it in my next fusion experiment, if I can source a supply through the free cheese scheme. Better get in before the next budget though, after that its let them eat nettles.

You know of course that you have to be extra careful if you set out to split the lepton. This dangerous particle is so named because if the syllabic colloider is not properly adjusted you can generate a premature and negatively charged random -ton particle, which under the influence of a passing graviton can interact with the toe to create the counter-directional positive lep.

The Strong Nuclear Force.

Sun Feb 06, 2011 11:48

Quarks hide themsevles in groups of three in protons and neutrons.
From experimental evidence,not a made up ad-hoc theory..
(Hence "Three Quarks".).

Bound with the "Strong Nuclear" force, a force 10 to the power of 33 stronger than the force of gravity.

Nice diagram here (pay attention!):

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Standard_Model_of_Ele...s.svg
.

.

The Galwegian Electron.

by Cosmologist

Sun Feb 06, 2011 12:09

Forgot to mention.

The Quark was not the first particle to be given a name in Ireland.
The Electron was given a name in Galway University in 1874 by George Johnstone Stoney.

See:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electron

Quote.
"After studying the phenomenon of electrolysis in 1874, Irish physicist George Johnstone Stoney suggested that there existed a "single definite quantity of electricity", the charge of a monovalent ion."

So the electronics industry began in Galway.

handy

Sun Feb 06, 2011 12:23

All the way from the nebular to the nebulous.

But what happens if the Big Bang reaches max expansion and re-implodes under its inherent material gravity. Sudden blue-shifted quasers?

And should we not have a triage system of research grant allocation, so that the space race, and other esoteric blue-sky projects like CERN etc., wait til clean water, food and health are secured on a more equitable basis?i.e. has science space/time for ethics?

CERN has already paid for itself.

Sun Feb 06, 2011 12:50

The world spends more on chewing gum than it does on CERN.

A young researcher in CERN came up with an idea that we call the World Wide Web.
His name was Tim Berners-Lee:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tim_Berners-Lee

Quote:
"On 25 December 1990, with the help of Robert Cailliau and a young student at CERN, he implemented the first successful communication between an Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) client and server, the Internet.."

That technology is why we are able to communicate as we are right now.

CERN and the World Wide Web will do more to drag the third world out of poverty than any banker or politician ever did.

if you sprinkled sugar on that...

Sun Feb 06, 2011 13:07

.. you could feed the billion undernourished in the supressed world with it.

With food prices being driven skywards by the same wuncha speculatin bankers, CERN and the web wont see them catching up with the near billion obese in the overdeveloped world. Let them eat our depleted uranium dust?Or that of our extractive industries as we Egyptianise their democratic facades.

But you answered my question. The 'invisible hand' of the market retains its mailed grip on scientific amorality. Not intelligent. But then, science will have notified you that there are several dimensions to intelligence, besides the reductive analytic.

CERN invented IP Addresses.

by Engineer.

Sun Feb 06, 2011 13:29

"As we Egyptianise their democratic facades."

The IP addresses which enable one Egyptian revolutionary's mobile phone to communicate to another Egyptian revolutionary's mobile phone were invented in CERN.

( All "version 4" IP addresses ran out this very week incidentally, all four billion+ of them.
New IP version 6 addresses are in the pipeline though.)
.

An insult to science.

by Scientist

Sun Feb 06, 2011 14:59

"The 'invisible hand' of the market retains its mailed grip on scientific amorality."

No it doesn't.

You confuse weapons designers and the craven people who polish the bald heads of sweating generals and who also polish the bald heads of sweating politicians with real scientists.

Science tries to be as logical as Mathematics.

science no longer serves us. it has been pwned by corporate psychopaths.

by feudal castrato

Sun Feb 06, 2011 15:13

the search for knowledge = search for more money for psychopathic corporations

we send multi billion dollar spaceships to dead planets to see if we can colonise them while the paradise planet we live on is systematically turned into a polluted toilet full of electronic junk, toxic waste and our own excrement, most of which which science seems pretty uninterested in dealing with because it isn't very profitable

not a lot of intelligence driving the whole science agenda it seems to me. Just a bunch of blinkered monkeys with lab skills doing the sociopathic corporations bidding to generate ever more vulgar profits to the detriment of all else including our prospects of long term survival and quality of life.

meanwhile people multiply mindlessly and impoverished into lives of dirt and disease and suffering under more and more authoritarian or chaotic regimes, using up the earths resources in uncontrolled and inefficient ways.

I see another easter island. Man is not intelligent as far as I can see.

HST has no commercial purpose.

by Astronomer.

Sun Feb 06, 2011 15:32

The Hubble Space Telescope has no commercial purpose.
It is for the curious mind of mankind.

.

I'm not just completely talking out my ass either...

By the way, I'm a recent student of physics at university and when I questioned my professor in a focus group about the complete lack of context in our degree course and why there were no "ethics of science" modules to be seen anywhere in our course, he and everyone else looked at me as if I had two heads. I had dared to voice the taboo words. it was as if somehow I was breaking an unspoken covenant. We were training to be corporate brain slaves and would be well paid but must never question our masters nor think too much about the long term ramifications of our chosen science discipline.

He muttered something about it being an interesting point in a rather embarrassed tone then quickly changed the subject. That is typical of the response you will get in irish science departments today. They know where the funding is coming from down the road and won't rock the boat. The last thing they need is a bunch of well informed scientist employees questioning what they are up to.

There were lots of posters for well known corporations and exhortations to join their companies in the hallway outside. I love science but it has been totally hijacked by vested interests.

its not like open source

Sun Feb 06, 2011 15:46

Astronomer...if that is so then where do all the patents from research on hubble end up?
like most things they end up with private corporations

public purse pays for most of the research
private vultures pay a little into the kitty and pull a few strings in return for very valuable patents.

Not a bad business model. You get the best brains around researching materials etc for your future products for feck all..

Right Wing Anti-Science.

by American

Sun Feb 06, 2011 16:03

"I love science but it has been totally hijacked by vested interests."

You must have been listening to Fox News.
Right wing Americans often say that "Scientists are so left wing they are communists".

The fundamentalist Sarah Palin often points the finger at Scientific American Magazine.

That oldest magazine in America (150 years and counting with perfect track record.) sometimes pokes fun at her right wing s**pidity.

Palin is hopelessly out of her depth.

can we have a discussion here?

Sun Feb 06, 2011 16:15

scientist/american/astronomer/physicist/pete you are a destructive wanker. Anything we try to discuss you derail with your own unique brand of stupid polluting crud. what has sarah palin to do with anything? go away you twit

Jingoism.

by Inish Bofin Man.

Sun Feb 06, 2011 16:23

Palin represents the retreat from logical argument into nationalist Jingoism.

"America is Great"

P.S.
Inish Boffin is greater.

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What is human knowledge?

Comments (22 of 22)