SpaceweaverTue, Mar 22, 2011 Thank you Phyllotaxis for your warm words of appreciation. Knowing that these posts were, for even one other person, a stepping stone for deeper thought or understanding, is immensely rewarding and motivating.
A few words relating to the quote you brought on the subject of epistemology: There is no sound basis to the supposition that the logical and praxeological structure of the human mind are unchanging. Even if we take epistemology in the narrow sense of human thinking perceiving and knowing, it seems warranted that at least since the mythological event of the tower of Babylon(:-)), the human mind presents an undeniable heterogeneity and diversity in thinking, perceiving and knowing. That we need to meet and walk along consensual paths we forge together, does not mean that difference must be disregarded, equalized or eliminated. On the contrary, it is difference itself that is the basis to perception, knowledge and thought. Should we take the validity of knowledge from its unifying quality? The answer is yes but only given that this affirmation of unity is intrinsically incomplete, that it is taken as the effect of the process of knowing and not its first principle or primal cause. The unknown is that which forces us into the process of knowing and it is this compelling agent that presents us with a fractal difference that permeates all knowledge and must not be equalized, or conformed to dogma (at least not for too long).
Epistemology and the structure of the human mind are connected in a curious circular equation that leaves a lot (and rightly so) to which are the initial axioms injected into it. Well, there is a lot of freedom allowed to the contemplating beings that we are at this very point. We are not entirely bound by the evolutionary imperatives that brought forth the human phenomenon. From the perspective of life, fitness is a problem with indefinite diversity of solutions, and knowledge therefore is nothing but an experiment in being or rather in becoming. Even when we take the human as a center and go with this proposition to its logical end, we necessarily reach a realism which is beyond the human as we know it and as we may ever come to know it.
Thank you Phyllotaxis for your warm words of appreciation. Knowing that these posts were, for even one other person, a stepping stone for deeper thought or understanding, is immensely rewarding and motivating.
A few words relating to the quote you brought on the subject of epistemology: There is no sound basis to the supposition that the logical and praxeological structure of the human mind are unchanging. Even if we take epistemology in the narrow sense of human thinking perceiving and knowing, it seems warranted that at least since the mythological event of the tower of Babylon(:-)), the human mind presents an undeniable heterogeneity and diversity in thinking, perceiving and knowing. That we need to meet and walk along consensual paths we forge together, does not mean that difference must be disregarded, equalized or eliminated. On the contrary, it is difference itself that is the basis to perception, knowledge and thought. Should we take the validity of knowledge from its unifying quality? The answer is yes but only given that this affirmation of unity is intrinsically incomplete, that it is taken as the effect of the process of knowing and not its first principle or primal cause. The unknown is that which forces us into the process of knowing and it is this compelling agent that presents us with a fractal difference that permeates all knowledge and must not be equalized, or conformed to dogma (at least not for too long).
Epistemology and the structure of the human mind are connected in a curious circular equation that leaves a lot (and rightly so) to which are the initial axioms injected into it. Well, there is a lot of freedom allowed to the contemplating beings that we are at this very point. We are not entirely bound by the evolutionary imperatives that brought forth the human phenomenon. From the perspective of life, fitness is a problem with indefinite diversity of solutions, and knowledge therefore is nothing but an experiment in being or rather in becoming. Even when we take the human as a center and go with this proposition to its logical end, we necessarily reach a realism which is beyond the human as we know it and as we may ever come to know it.
Hope it makes sense...