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Devoted
Donor
Location: New England
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I started on it, then decided to Google. I came across this page from some book. I'll quote the relavant portion of it:
Quote:
Our examination of concrete judgments of fact revealed that the fulfilling conditions for a judgment are often given in presentations rather than in previous judgments. Further, they revealed that the link between the conditioned and the fulfilling conditions can be given in cognitional structure itself. Experience, understanding and judgment work together, as we have indicated briefly already. Understanding mediates between the levels of experiencing and judging. How do we know that our understanding is correct? How do we know that our definitions of color are correct? The purpose of this present section is to explore these questions.
Our appeal, again, is not to some theory of knowledge but to our own experience of knowing. If you have tried to do the addition sum suggested in the preliminary exercises, hocus, pocus, presto, you will have been involved in a series of individual insights. Some of them will be correct; you think a little and realize that they must be correct and, secure in that knowledge, you move on to the next step. For instance, it is not difficult to see that P must be equal to one. There are no single numbers which, when added together along with one, will give you twenty. So that the P of presto must be equal to one. All other possible values are excluded. No further questions arise. There is no need to delay over the matter; you move on to the next clue. Write down everything you know about the values of the letters. Substitute the values that you know. Look for clues. Is there any other letter that we can pin down? You can say that the letter O is even; any number added to itself gives an even number. What about R? It must be either 1 or 0. But it can't be 1 because P is already 1. So it must be 0.
You might then focus on H and say it must be 9. But must it? Consider other possibilities. Ask further questions. Oh, yes, it could be 8, if there is a carry one from the previous column. After that it is a matter of trial and error. The important thing is to recognize the point at which you know that you are right and must be right, and the point where you are still considering possibilities and still asking questions. In mathematical examples it is very clear when we have reached a correct insight because there is a checking process that shows that it is correct and a complete closing off of further questions indicating that nothing further could interfere with the conclusion already reached. A mistaken insight is open to be overturned by the asking of further questions and the realization that we left out some possibility or necessity.
Note then that insights give rise to further questions. There may be questions about the matter in hand which have not been settled and other possibilities have to considered and checked. Or our questioning may conclude that the matter in hand has been solved and further questioning on that matter is fruitless, so we spontaneously move on to further matters which have yet to be understood.
Hence we introduce an operational distinction between vulnerable and invulnerable insights. We operate spontaneously on the principle that an insight is invulnerable if no further pertinent questions arise that could overthrow it. Contrariwise, an insight is vulnerable if there are further pertinent questions to be asked and answered about the matter in hand. This is a law immanent and operative in cognitional process. Go over your experience of solving any of the puzzles and you will notice it at work. You know that a student in class has solved a puzzle, when you see him relaxed, gazing about the room, getting bored as he waits for the others to find the solution. He has no further questions to ask and it is boring to spend more time on the matter.
This criterion has to be treated with some care. It is not as easy as it sounds. An insight is invulnerable if no further pertinent questions arise, but we have to allow the questions to arise. We have to be open to all possibilities, we have to be able to ask the relevant questions, we have to have the time and the interest to follow up the further questions, we have to be able to exclude other distractions as we pursue our investigation to the end. Questions can come to an end for many reasons other than that we have reached an invulnerable insight. So we have to lay down further qualifications.
Give further questions a chance to arise. The first insight, however brilliant and exciting, may not be correct. You have to ask the question for reflection, is it true? is it correct? and that may reveal that something has been left out and the whole process has to start again. A judgment is a rash judgment if it is made hastily with too little reflection and no time for further questions to arise.
We try to prevent further questions arising if we are unwilling to change our established position and feel that asking further questions may undermine our position. So we avoid the further question by reinforcing our limited stance, digging in our heels; we resort to rhetoric and prevent reflection. Openness to all further questions is a characteristic of the pure desire to know and is the knife that cuts through prejudice, bias and dogmatism. We can avoid all mental activity by indulging in a well-meaning activism which aims at changing the world without first understanding it.
We noted before that each individual judgment is dependent on a context of other judgments. Our present judgments are dependent on our past judgments. Our judgments are linked to our direct insights and our various experiences. There is a whole context of our education, mental habits, ways of thinking, opinions, and judgments that has been built and intertwined over a lifetime. There can seem to be a vicious circle here. Single judgments depend for their validity on a context of prior judgments. But if the prior judgments are wrong or warped or biased, how do we get out of the mess? This is something like the problem of the hermeneutical circle. To understand the whole of a book you have to first understand the parts; but you cannot understand the parts without understanding the whole. This seems to lead to a logically impossible position.
We would solve this by appealing to the self-correcting process of learning. How, in fact, does our understanding develop? It develops in small painful increments. We get a vague idea of the whole from the table of contents and we get a vague idea of the part by skimming the first chapter. We go back to the whole and have a better understanding as we return to the parts. It is the process of learning that breaks the supposed vicious circle.
It is the same with a context of judgments that has gone a little bit awry. We do not have to reject the whole lot in order to start again afresh. Descartes recommended the system of methodic doubt; discard everything that can be doubted and, if there is anything left, start there. This seems rather radical especially as, if you start doubting everything, there is no obvious place to stop. But Newman suggested an alternative procedure; accept in general what you reasonably can, but if you spot a mistake dig it out root and branch. He was recommending the self-correcting process of knowing. Keep asking questions, be open to alternatives. If there is an incoherence it will eventually be exposed. If there is a mistake, then, it will show up by not fitting in with other data. We can learn from our mistakes. Why did we overlook such data, what other mistakes might have been made; correct the context and see how that effects other things. The context that is skewed can be straightened out, reoriented, and purified.
The process of reflection tends to be discursive not deductive. It is discursive in the sense that we proceed step by painful step; we often take two steps forward and one backward. Questions in one area tend to a limit where we are satisfied that we have sufficient evidence; maybe in another area we turn up evidence that would have a bearing on the previous material. We go round in circles, we move up spirals, we go over our tracks, we make mistakes but the later context will often reveal them to be mistakes. Our thinking is rarely deductive; we rarely proceed logically from premises to conclusions. That may be the form in which we present our conclusions but that is not how the whole process of questioning, imagining, formulating, defining, reflecting, evaluating, etc. goes on. Our minds conduct a kind of mixed up conversation with ourselves in which there are many voices, many levels, many desires operative, but the general orientation is towards the reflective understanding leading to judgment.
Interference with the process of knowing usually comes from the motive force, from the temperament, the intention, the self-interest of the knower. Rashness and indecision are usually rooted in temperament. Some people are prone to jump at the first possibility; they have not the patience to wait, to think, to reflect. Others have sufficient evidence but are paralyzed by fear of being wrong. They are so afraid of making a mistake that they do nothing and affirm nothing. The ditherer cannot make up his mind.
More serious distortions can be introduced by twisted motivation. To live continuously by the pure desire to know and to be open to all questions is a rare achievement. More common is taking up a position that one likes and then finding the evidence to bolster it.
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If you can follow that without your eyes crossing...
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I can't read your signature. Sorry.
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