RE: What is knowledge anyway? A visit to the Shanghai Natural History Museum
Thank you for the excellent post!
I partly disagree with a bit:
Logic is not the same everywhere
This is what (some) of my philosopher friends often tell me. But I haven't been convinced by their arguments :P
I mean, on my side (comp-sci/math) we use different logics for different purposes. But those are just superficial frameworks for modelling certain things.
But as far as human thinking goes, isn't there a base, "core", logical structure that is the same for every human? I think there is.
e.g. It is that very core logic you have to use (and assume we both share), if you wanted to claim anything about this.
Basically, I think the most primitive tribal cavemen, and the most modern "smart" human, both share the same logical structure of thought. It's only the content of thought that differs.
That is, different humans have different content/meaning for words such as "truth". But the logical structure of their minds is all the same. We couldn't say that the people doing exorcisms back then where "illogical". They were perfectly logical. They just had the wrong theory about the means (exorcism) to an ends (curing something).
e.g. even if we both have different meanings for the word "logic", there's still a common X (which at least I call logic) that we have to use in order to communicate our disagreement with any propositions.
Thanks for your comment. And I think I agree with you. Even though I still agree with what I wrote. Perhaps this is because of the definition of what you consider 'logic' and the role it place in human thinking.
I agree with you, in line with Kant, that the human brain is simply organised in a specific way that makes for a universal way of considering things. Absolutely.
Yet on the other hand, I've recently read an interesting antropological study from many years ago, about how a tribe, when confronted with what we would consider as arguments / proof against their specific idea of how things worked, they would reject that proof for reasons we would never consider part of 'common sense'. And here I think people, from different cultural backgrounds, differ greatly. This article also makes an interesting point in that, how different conceptions about what is 'original' function in different cultures and histories. Perhaps interesting for you: https://aeon.co/essays/why-in-china-and-japan-a-copy-is-just-as-good-as-an-original
And thanks for your comments, good to think about this.
Cool! Will check that article. Title already interesting :) Thanks!