The scientific and manifest images

As a followup to my previous post, I’ll note that Dan Kaufman has posted a second round in his proposals for metaphysics:

• Prolegomena for a Pluralist Metaphysics: The Scientific and Manifest Images

As background, I’ll note that I am sitting at my desk.  According to the manifest image, my desktop is solid wood.  According to the scientific image, my desktop is mostly empty space surrounding a sparse array of atoms.

The scientific image is how physics sees the world.  The manifest image is closer to how we see the world.  But sciences vary.  Biologists are concerned about individual organisms.  And those belong in the manifest image, rather than in the scientific image.  Likewise, most of the concerns of psychology fit better with the manifest image.

In my view, philosophy (by which I mean academic philosophy) is mainly oriented toward the scientific image.  And, in my opinion, it should be more oriented toward the manifest image.  I think that’s also how Dan Kaufman sees it, but perhaps I am misreading him.  Please go read his post to see what he says.

Where I come in

A little background about myself.  I started studying learning (or how humans learn) in the 1980s.  And I quickly found myself disagreeing with philosophers.  I imagined myself to be a solitary animal or organism on some planet, with little or know innate knowledge of the planet.  And I had to work out ways of learning about that planet.

The nature of knowedge — a personal perspective

In my previous post, I wrote

When I read John’s statement (either version), as quoted above, I see John mentioning the nature of knowledge as an important topic.  I’ve read a lot of epistmology (the subfield of philosophy that deals with knowledge).  In all honesty,  I have not learned anything at all about the nature of knowledge from that reading.

Here, I want to talk informally about what I take to be the nature of knowledge.

To me, knowledge is closely connected with learning.  I see knowledge is the result of learning.  I guess that makes me an empiricist, at least in the broad sense of the term.

At around 10 years of age, while walking home from elementary school, I wondered about knowledge.  In particular, I wondered if knowledge could be just those natural language statements such as we learn in school.  But, as I pondered that, it seemed impossible.  It seemed to me that there was nothing in those sentences that said how our language sentences connect with the world.

The problem with philosophy

The problem with philosophy, is its excessive obsession with logic.  I was reminded of this when reading a blog post by Massimo Pigliucci:

• The “meta” itch

Massimo is actually discussing the urge to study meta-ethics, as providing a logical foundation for ethics.  And he explains why he is resisting that urge.

That’s good.  I never had such an urge myself, perhaps because I don’t see logic the same way that philosophers do.  The idea of a logical foundation for ethics seems to me to be a hopeless non-starter.

Mathematics and logic

Yesterday, Massimo Pigliucci posted on the relation between mathematics and logic:

• The (complicated) relationship between math and logic

so I though I would offer my opinion on that topic.  I see things differently from Massimo, but that’s probably just the different perspective as see by a mathematician (me) and a philosopher.

Massimo cites Peter Cameron (a mathematician) and Sharon Berry (a philosopher – actually a student of philosophy of mathematics).  Check Massimo’s post for the links.

How I see logic

I think it was in 4th grade elementary school, that I first heard of logic.  The teacher introduced it, with some examples to illustrate the use of logic.  I recall that it seemed rather easy to do logic.  All that I had to do was use clear thinking.  So I never did actually try to learn the rules of logic.  I just went by clear thinking, as appropriate.

I am posting this as one of the posts on my own views of philosophical topics.  No doubt my view of logic is partly shaped by the fact that I am a mathematician.  And, as a mathematician, I of course use a lot of logic.  But my basic view is still much the same as in 4th grade.  That is, I see logic as clear thinking.  It is a formalized or formalizable view of clear thinking, but it is nevertheless something that comes from clear thinking.