Can we be clear about our assumptions? Why is it important for us to be clear about the ideas that we assume to be true as we analyze how we think? All reasoning must begin with some idea that is assumed to be true. These assumptions affect the rest of our thinking about the matter in question; these assumptions are what we accept as being true. Often we make more than one assumption, in which case these two or more assumptions must be consistent with one another. I suspect most errors in thinking result from assumptions that are accepted with little or no reflection, analysis or comprehension. Even philosophers must make assumptions. When written history began five thousand years ago humans had already developed a great deal of knowledge. Much of that knowledge was of a very practical nature such as how to use animal skins for clothing, how to weave wool, how to hunt and fish etc. A large part of human knowledge was directed toward how to kill and torture fellow humans. I guess things never really change all that much. In several parts of the world civilizations developed wherein people learned to create laws and to rule vast numbers of people. Some measure of peace and stability developed but there was yet no means for securing the people from their rulers. I guess things never really change all that much. Almost everywhere priests joined rulers in attempts to control the population. Despite these continual wars both of external and internal nature the human population managed to flourish. Egypt was probably one of the first long lasting and stable civilizations to grow up along the large rivers. Egypt survived almost unchanged for three thousand years. This success is attributed to its geographical location that gave it freedom from competition and fertile lands that were constantly replenished by the river overflowing its banks and thus depositing new fertile soil for farming. Western philosophy emerged in the sixth century BC along the Ionian coast. A small group of scientist-philosophers began writing about their attempts to develop “rational” accounts regarding human experience. These early Pre-Socratic thinkers thought that they were dealing with fundamental elements of nature. It is natural for humans to seek knowledge. In the “Metaphysics” Aristotle wrote “All men by nature desire to know”. The attempt to seek knowledge presupposes (assumes) that the world unfolds in a systematic pattern and that we can gain knowledge of that unfolding. Cognitive science identifies several ideas that seem to come naturally to us and labels such ideas as Folk Theories. The Folk Theory of the Intelligibility of the World The world makes systematic sense, and we can gain knowledge of it. The Folk Theory of General Kinds Every particular thing is a kind of thing. The Folk Theory of Essences Every entity has an “essence” or “nature,” that is, a collection of properties that makes it the kind of thing it is and that is the causal source of its natural behavior. The consequences of the two theories of kinds and essences are: The Foundational Assumption of Metaphysics Kinds exist and are defined by essences. We may not want our friends to know this fact but we are all metaphysicians. We, in fact, assume that things have a nature thereby we are led by the metaphysical impulse to seek knowledge at various levels of reality. Cognitive science has uncovered these assumptions that they have labeled as Folk Theories. Such theories when compared to sophisticated philosophical theories are like comparing mountain music with classical music. Such commonly accepted assumptions seem to come naturally to human consciousness. The information about Folk Theory comes from “Philosophy in the Flesh” by Lakoff and Johnson
Can we disengage ourselves from the assumptions inherent in the environment and culture in which we live? Mostly no, but maybe to some degree yes. It's difficult to even know what those assumptions are.
I think that the assumptions we have has to be sustained though, to some degree, through various levels of reflections in real life of how those assumptions compare to reality. That things have a nature, is true in several ways, we can make an assumption about a material that we have never encountered before if we look at some of its characteristics, like how light reflects on the material (and some materials do have categories like different kind of wood - even if we see a totally new kind of wood we would probably make the assumption that it is indeed a kind of wood - other categories can include plastics, glass, textiles, etc.), by seeing some characteristics of something we can conclude what the whole of it is, by what to extent it compares to the whole. Glass and plastics can be somewhat similar so to differentiate between them we need more characteristics and if we look after them we might just find it - plastics are usually easier to scratch or if you look at the surface you might see that it has fibers that glass don't have, or that the surface of the glass reflects light in a somewhat different way (etc.). As so, even ideas, feelings and abstract thinking might have a nature or similar characteristics (parts of the essence) that make up a whole (the nature).
I think that you have pin-pointed the basic task for all of us who wish to become sophisticated thinkers, i.e. to discover the assumptions upon which our world view is constructed.
Cyperium You might find this web site about gestalt to be interesting. http://www.learningandteaching.info/learning/gestalt.htm “Abstract ideas, for the most part, arise via conceptual metaphor—a cognitive mechanism that derives abstract thinking from the way we function in the everyday physical world. Conceptual metaphor plays a central and defining role in the formation of mathematical ideas within the cognitive unconscious—from arithmetic and algebra to sets and logic to infinity in all of its forms.” An example of the abstract concept ‘A purposeful life is a journey’ is constructed from several primary metaphors. These primary metaphors are concepts developed from living experience. We are acculturated to recognize that a useful life is a life with purpose. The complex metaphor ‘A Purposeful Life Is a Journey’ is constructed from primary metaphors: ‘purpose is destination’ and ‘action is motion’; and a cultural belief that ‘people should have a purpose’. ’A Purposeful Life Is A Journey’ Metaphor A purposeful life is a journey. A person living a life is a traveler. Life goals are destinations A life plan is an itinerary. This metaphor has strong influence on how we conduct our lives. This influence arises from the complex metaphor’s entailments: A journey, with its accompanying complications, requires planning, and the necessary means. Primary metaphors ‘ground’ concepts to sensorimotor experience. Is this grounding lost in a complex metaphor? “Not at all.” Complex metaphors are composed of primary metaphors and the whole is grounded by its parts. “The grounding of A Purposeful Life Is A Journey is given by individual groundings of each component primary metaphor.” The ideas for this post come from “Philosophy in the Flesh”. The quotes are from “Where Mathematics Comes From”
That is indeed interesting. Another interesting thing is that we can find totally new ideas by seeing the "group" of ideas it belongs too and finding parts of the whole to recognize what sort of idea it is, this is very useful when presented with a problem, we have to understand what category of solutions that the solution belongs to, then find parts of the whole of that solution.
