Knowledge has an intentionality that enables concepts, statements, and arguments to function as logical tools for getting knowledge of something.
The most basic feature of all knowledge and awareness is that it's always about something other than itself. It refers to something other than itself. We have an experience of beauty, a feeling of pain, a concept of a triangle. We make statements about gravitational objects, and arguments that are about the interior angles of a triangle equaling two right angles. All awareness, all consciousness, all knowledge, is about something other than itself. It tends into, or intends, something distinct from itself. Intentionality is one of the most basic traits of knowledge. All knowledge is intentional and every item of knowledge is an intention.
The moment we start to think about it, we can see the same of/about structure contained in instances of knowledge in all acts of will. I intend to study, the purposing of something, and so on. Willing and purposing are intentional because they contain a cognitively intentional element. I can find out the purpose of being courteous only when I have knowledge of what courtesy is.
So knowledge is intentional: it's always of or about something other than itself. It points or refers to something other than itself. This distinguishes instances of knowledge from other things. My concept of a triangle or my statement about its interior angles is of the triangle or about the triangle. But the triangle isn't of or about anything. It's just itself. So intentionality is the unique and most basic general characteristic of all items of consciousness.
That being so, the tools used to get knowledge are also intentional. Knowledge tools, like knowing itself, are necessarily revealing, disclosing, and meaningful. The tools we use to know reality must be signs of reality. So all cognitive tools are signs. An understanding and use of logic requires some knowledge of signs.
1-5.1
Thursday, December 04, 2008
Tuesday, December 02, 2008
I Conceived, I Stated, I Reasoned
Thinking about my experience has made me aware of three kinds of logical tools corresponding to three things I use in language in trying to understand myself and my world. I don't see any way to do without them. I can know something only by having some concept of it and making at least some statements about it and if needed constructing some kind of argument to support those statements.
But why are these tools usable in these ways? Why do I use them? What makes them useful to me for knowing and understanding things?
But wait a minute: What am I looking for in "why" questions? What kind of answer do I want?
I'm looking for a reason, an explanation, a cause.
What and why questions implicitly contain a third question: Is there something?
When a child asks "What is that?", implicit in this question is a further question: "Is that something?" "Is there anything there?", and an assumed answer: "Yes, there is something there." When the child asks, "Why do birds fly?", the further question, "Do birds fly?" and its assumed answer, "Yes, birds do fly", are present as silent determinants. This question as to whether something is such and such is usually tacit because the question concerns things which are immediately sensed and whose "whether" is therefore beyond question. Hence "whether" questions usually increase as my mind extends itself beyond immediate sensation, and consequently as I mature.
But even in children the question is often explicit: "Is it raining outside?" "Do dogs go to heaven?" "Is Santa Claus real?"
What kind of answer does a "whether" question require? Answers using the word "is" or something equivalent, as in:
"Yes, it is raining."
"No, Santa Claus is not real."
"I don't know whether dogs do go to heaven or do not."
A "whether" question asks for an answer concerning the existence, reality, or factuality of something.
So there are three knowledge objects: what, whether, and why.
"What?", "Why?", and "Whether?" are natural and inescapable questions for me. They seek three kinds of objects: a characteristic, a reason, or a fact.
The mind intends three aspects of reality: essence, cause, and existence.
And that is what I'm seeking to know.
So the objects of knowledge are phases of the reality around me, and there are three kinds: The "what" of things is their essence or nature, which I seek knowledge about when I ask "What?" type questions.
The "whether" of things is their existence or nonexistence, which I seek knowledge about when I ask "Whether?" type questions.
And the "why" of things is their cause or reason, which I see knowledge about when I ask "Why?" type questions.
These three kinds of knowledge objects are precisely correlated with and determine the nature of the three logical tools. The tool for knowing a what or essence is an idea or term or concept. The tool for knowing a whether or existence is a statement. And the tool for knowing a why or cause is an argument or demonstration.
Furthermore, since language is designed to convey knowledge, there will necessarily be three types of language tools corresponding to the three types of logical tools and the three objects of knowledge. If I'm asked what I'm reading, I might say "a blog". The language tool corresponding to a concept and to a "what" is a word or phrase.
If I'm asked whether or not this is a logic blog, I might answer, "Yes, it is or claims to be a logic blog." The language instrument corresponding to a statement and a "whether" is a statement, although not always a declarative statement.
And if I'm asked why this is a logic blog, I might reply, "Because it's a blog that is explicitly concerned with the universal tools for knowing, and any blog with this explicit concern is a logic blog."
So the language tool corresponding to an argument and to a "why" is an integrated set of statements.
The parallels between knowledge objects, logical knowledge tools, and language knowledge tools can be summarized in this way:
ATTAINING AND CONVEYING KNOWLEDGE
KNOWLEDGE
Tools
Objects
(1-4)
But why are these tools usable in these ways? Why do I use them? What makes them useful to me for knowing and understanding things?
But wait a minute: What am I looking for in "why" questions? What kind of answer do I want?
I'm looking for a reason, an explanation, a cause.
What and why questions implicitly contain a third question: Is there something?
When a child asks "What is that?", implicit in this question is a further question: "Is that something?" "Is there anything there?", and an assumed answer: "Yes, there is something there." When the child asks, "Why do birds fly?", the further question, "Do birds fly?" and its assumed answer, "Yes, birds do fly", are present as silent determinants. This question as to whether something is such and such is usually tacit because the question concerns things which are immediately sensed and whose "whether" is therefore beyond question. Hence "whether" questions usually increase as my mind extends itself beyond immediate sensation, and consequently as I mature.
But even in children the question is often explicit: "Is it raining outside?" "Do dogs go to heaven?" "Is Santa Claus real?"
What kind of answer does a "whether" question require? Answers using the word "is" or something equivalent, as in:
"Yes, it is raining."
"No, Santa Claus is not real."
"I don't know whether dogs do go to heaven or do not."
A "whether" question asks for an answer concerning the existence, reality, or factuality of something.
So there are three knowledge objects: what, whether, and why.
"What?", "Why?", and "Whether?" are natural and inescapable questions for me. They seek three kinds of objects: a characteristic, a reason, or a fact.
The mind intends three aspects of reality: essence, cause, and existence.
And that is what I'm seeking to know.
So the objects of knowledge are phases of the reality around me, and there are three kinds: The "what" of things is their essence or nature, which I seek knowledge about when I ask "What?" type questions.
The "whether" of things is their existence or nonexistence, which I seek knowledge about when I ask "Whether?" type questions.
And the "why" of things is their cause or reason, which I see knowledge about when I ask "Why?" type questions.
These three kinds of knowledge objects are precisely correlated with and determine the nature of the three logical tools. The tool for knowing a what or essence is an idea or term or concept. The tool for knowing a whether or existence is a statement. And the tool for knowing a why or cause is an argument or demonstration.
Furthermore, since language is designed to convey knowledge, there will necessarily be three types of language tools corresponding to the three types of logical tools and the three objects of knowledge. If I'm asked what I'm reading, I might say "a blog". The language tool corresponding to a concept and to a "what" is a word or phrase.
If I'm asked whether or not this is a logic blog, I might answer, "Yes, it is or claims to be a logic blog." The language instrument corresponding to a statement and a "whether" is a statement, although not always a declarative statement.
And if I'm asked why this is a logic blog, I might reply, "Because it's a blog that is explicitly concerned with the universal tools for knowing, and any blog with this explicit concern is a logic blog."
So the language tool corresponding to an argument and to a "why" is an integrated set of statements.
The parallels between knowledge objects, logical knowledge tools, and language knowledge tools can be summarized in this way:
- I conceive an essence or "what", and express it through a word or phrase.
- I state an existence or "whether", and express it through a sentence.
- I reason about a cause or "why", and express it through one or more sentences called arguments or paragraphs.
ATTAINING AND CONVEYING KNOWLEDGE
- Knowledge Object --> Logic Tool --> Language Tool
- Essence/What --> Concept --> Word/Phrase
- Existence/Whether --> Statement --> Sentence
- Cause/Purpose --> Reason/Argument --> Paragraph
KNOWLEDGE
Tools
- Logic Tools
- Concept
- Statement
- Argument
- Language Tools
- Word or Phrase
- Sentence
- Paragraph
Objects
- Essence or What
- Existence or Whether
- Cause or Why
(1-4)
Friday, November 28, 2008
Linguistic Analysis
All of the so-called special and artificially designed logical languages are really no more than ad hoc deviations from ordinary language.
Logic Truths and Language Statements
Concepts, statements, and arguments are just ordinary words and statements combined according to a prior system. In this sense, logic itself is merely ordinary grammar and language. I can't come to know or understand anything without having some kind of idea about it. Hence I can't know anything without naming it and using words to describe and discuss it.
Concepts by themselves are not knowledge. Concepts have to be combined in statements. Words and word combinations by themselves just don't make complete sense. Words have to be put into some kind of statement in a structure first, to make a complete thought or become capable of being true or false. In other words, logic is in a sense just the grammar of thought. And logic is the knowledge tool in the same way that language is.
Both language and logic are required to communicate, achieve, obtain, and have knowledge.
I take my use of language for granted, usually not even thinking about it or having any concern with perfecting my use of it. And I treat logic the same way, which is part of why I'm likely to think of mind tools as artificially contrived instruments of scientists instead of basic natural knowledge tools such as concepts, statements, and arguments.
Concepts, statements, and arguments I also take for granted and hardly ever try to understand or master them.
But logic and language are not the same thing. The English word "house" is different from the German "haus", and "haus" is different from the French "maison". Yet all three have the same core meaning, different as words, but all conveying the same basic idea or concept. So there's some difference between linguistic entities called words, and the ideas I intend to convey using those words.
And there's a similar difference between statements and truths:
These two statements have different grammatical sructures, but say mostly the same common or basic thing. Both statements are designed to express the same basic truth. Given multiple languages, there are a large number of ways to express this truth using statements with different syntactic structures. But unlike grammar and linguistics, logic is about the inferential structures of intended truth, not directly about statements and their linguistic and grammatical structures.
So there are thought rules and active thinking, logical entities and the language used to communicate thoughts about logical entities.
1-3 (8-10)
Concepts by themselves are not knowledge. Concepts have to be combined in statements. Words and word combinations by themselves just don't make complete sense. Words have to be put into some kind of statement in a structure first, to make a complete thought or become capable of being true or false. In other words, logic is in a sense just the grammar of thought. And logic is the knowledge tool in the same way that language is.
Both language and logic are required to communicate, achieve, obtain, and have knowledge.
I take my use of language for granted, usually not even thinking about it or having any concern with perfecting my use of it. And I treat logic the same way, which is part of why I'm likely to think of mind tools as artificially contrived instruments of scientists instead of basic natural knowledge tools such as concepts, statements, and arguments.
Concepts, statements, and arguments I also take for granted and hardly ever try to understand or master them.
But logic and language are not the same thing. The English word "house" is different from the German "haus", and "haus" is different from the French "maison". Yet all three have the same core meaning, different as words, but all conveying the same basic idea or concept. So there's some difference between linguistic entities called words, and the ideas I intend to convey using those words.
And there's a similar difference between statements and truths:
- He laid the book on the table.
- Er hat das Buch auf dem Tiseh gelegt.
These two statements have different grammatical sructures, but say mostly the same common or basic thing. Both statements are designed to express the same basic truth. Given multiple languages, there are a large number of ways to express this truth using statements with different syntactic structures. But unlike grammar and linguistics, logic is about the inferential structures of intended truth, not directly about statements and their linguistic and grammatical structures.
So there are thought rules and active thinking, logical entities and the language used to communicate thoughts about logical entities.
1-3 (8-10)
Mind Tool Inventory 1
I never can know anything without already having some idea or notion of what I'm dealing with. An idea, concept, term, or notion is a prior logical tool that must be used to know anything.
Whatever the exact definition of ideas may be, I still can't know anything without having some idea of what the thing in question is. Otherwise I could not distinguish the thing in question from nothing at all. Any alternative ends up being a rose of a different name, as well as love's labor lost.
Now while ideas, such as "eternity", "logic", "higher than", "evanescent", "fortitude", or "parallelogram", are knowledge tools I can't do without, they're not the only ones. I could multiply my ideas indefinitely, but they still would not be knowledge in the usual sense of the word, although they do assume knowledge about themselves and general reality.
The Idea of the Statement
Suppose I have the ideas of "dull" and "logic". I still have not arrived at the truth that logic is dull, not until I've combined my ideas in a way that will make them capable of being true or false. The notion of parallelogram in itself is neither true or false. Nor is the notion of "logic", "dull", or "angiosperm". And even in combination, ideas do not necessarily become true or false.
Suppose someone were to ask me, "Blue people whom Caesar trusted---is this true or false?" the question could not be answered. But if someone were to ask me, "Caesar trusted blue people," that would present to me something I could believe to be true or false.
So to find truth or knowledge I must also combine my concepts into statements., because only through statements can ideas be true or false and be enough to call knowledge. Just as I can't know anything about anything unless I formulate a statement about it, saying whether the thing in question is this or that, or what is true about it. The tool I use to come to know whether or not something is this or that is the statement. Truth and knowledge are obtained only by using statements.
Another tool is argument. Suppose I have the ideas of logic and "a waste of time", and suppose I've temporarily formulated the statement "Logic is a waste of time". Do I know this for a fact? Am I certain? After all, a statement is susceptible to either truth or falsity. But which is it? Is it true or is it false that logic is a waste of time? The ideas and the statement aren't enough to answer the question. I have to look for some evidence of the truth or falsity of the statement. And to advance evidence is to construct an argument in support or refutation of it.
So I might say "I talked to my friends and they say logic is a waste of time. Therefore I believe it's true." Or I might say, "Any subject that deals with thoughts and words and not with laboratory-testable facts is a waste of time."
There are many arguments that logic is a waste of time, but they're still arguments.
And as arguments, they assume that logic is crucially important. Argument has to be used in the daily process of trying to know and understand things.
(1-2)
Whatever the exact definition of ideas may be, I still can't know anything without having some idea of what the thing in question is. Otherwise I could not distinguish the thing in question from nothing at all. Any alternative ends up being a rose of a different name, as well as love's labor lost.
Now while ideas, such as "eternity", "logic", "higher than", "evanescent", "fortitude", or "parallelogram", are knowledge tools I can't do without, they're not the only ones. I could multiply my ideas indefinitely, but they still would not be knowledge in the usual sense of the word, although they do assume knowledge about themselves and general reality.
The Idea of the Statement
Suppose I have the ideas of "dull" and "logic". I still have not arrived at the truth that logic is dull, not until I've combined my ideas in a way that will make them capable of being true or false. The notion of parallelogram in itself is neither true or false. Nor is the notion of "logic", "dull", or "angiosperm". And even in combination, ideas do not necessarily become true or false.
Suppose someone were to ask me, "Blue people whom Caesar trusted---is this true or false?" the question could not be answered. But if someone were to ask me, "Caesar trusted blue people," that would present to me something I could believe to be true or false.
So to find truth or knowledge I must also combine my concepts into statements., because only through statements can ideas be true or false and be enough to call knowledge. Just as I can't know anything about anything unless I formulate a statement about it, saying whether the thing in question is this or that, or what is true about it. The tool I use to come to know whether or not something is this or that is the statement. Truth and knowledge are obtained only by using statements.
Another tool is argument. Suppose I have the ideas of logic and "a waste of time", and suppose I've temporarily formulated the statement "Logic is a waste of time". Do I know this for a fact? Am I certain? After all, a statement is susceptible to either truth or falsity. But which is it? Is it true or is it false that logic is a waste of time? The ideas and the statement aren't enough to answer the question. I have to look for some evidence of the truth or falsity of the statement. And to advance evidence is to construct an argument in support or refutation of it.
So I might say "I talked to my friends and they say logic is a waste of time. Therefore I believe it's true." Or I might say, "Any subject that deals with thoughts and words and not with laboratory-testable facts is a waste of time."
There are many arguments that logic is a waste of time, but they're still arguments.
And as arguments, they assume that logic is crucially important. Argument has to be used in the daily process of trying to know and understand things.
(1-2)
Tuesday, November 25, 2008
Logic, Naturally
We live in a common everyday world of persons and things, beings that exist with their own unique natures and traits, that act and are acted on, and whose being and behavior exist and are intelligible through causes. Our logical tools, such as definitions, syllogisms, universal concepts, affirmative and negative statements, inductions, relations of oppositions, and so on, are adapted to cognizing a world of everyday experience.
Some may say that this common world of everyday experience has been discredited and displaced as a result of the world view of modern science, particularly physics. And a logic adapted to a knowledge of everyday experience must now give way to a logic adapted to getting to know the esoteric world of modern physical science.
But as long as one remains within the context of the elaborate mathematical constructions and theories of modern physics, a logic adapted to the intentional function of enabling us to come to know things in terms of what they are essentially, through their causes and in their acts of existing, appears to be out of place and irrelevant, since mathematical theories of physics seem unconcerned with things such as causes, essences, substances, acts of existing, and so on.
But that does not imply that our world or our logic for understanding our world is discredited or displaced. Scientists cannot avoid being human, immersed in an everyday world of living and nonliving things, friends and enemies, birth and death, joy and sorrow, change and permenance, intelligibility and mystery. And as an inhabitant of this world of common experience, a scientist cannot avoid thinking and reasoning and trying to understand as a human being. So a scientist will want to know what this is, whether that is, and why something else is, a concern with essences, existences, and causes. But such concerns are served only by a human or humanistic logic.
Concepts, statements, and arguments are necessary instruments that we naturally use in trying to understand the world.
Some may say that this common world of everyday experience has been discredited and displaced as a result of the world view of modern science, particularly physics. And a logic adapted to a knowledge of everyday experience must now give way to a logic adapted to getting to know the esoteric world of modern physical science.
But as long as one remains within the context of the elaborate mathematical constructions and theories of modern physics, a logic adapted to the intentional function of enabling us to come to know things in terms of what they are essentially, through their causes and in their acts of existing, appears to be out of place and irrelevant, since mathematical theories of physics seem unconcerned with things such as causes, essences, substances, acts of existing, and so on.
But that does not imply that our world or our logic for understanding our world is discredited or displaced. Scientists cannot avoid being human, immersed in an everyday world of living and nonliving things, friends and enemies, birth and death, joy and sorrow, change and permenance, intelligibility and mystery. And as an inhabitant of this world of common experience, a scientist cannot avoid thinking and reasoning and trying to understand as a human being. So a scientist will want to know what this is, whether that is, and why something else is, a concern with essences, existences, and causes. But such concerns are served only by a human or humanistic logic.
Concepts, statements, and arguments are necessary instruments that we naturally use in trying to understand the world.