Throughout the last 3 presentations during TOK, one idea has remained the key and constant, and that is that our senses/perceptions are the basis for all we know. Whether it be called sense datum, perception, hearing-as, or seeing-as, whether it be based off of a belief, convention, or a name previously given, we humans have taken a step beyond the cold, hard reality-to make our lives simpler. We HAVE ignored extra possibilities and we HAVE skipped the tedious listing of all plausible instances. We have done this, because none of that matters! Today, when the group showed the ladder of categories, referring to the farmer and Elsie and Bessie the cows, it was crystal clear that generalizations were being made. Bessie was being categorized as a cow, and then an animal, then an asset, then wealth. (that's probably not completely accurate, sorry!) If, later, the farmer refers to his cow as his asset, he has skipped a few necessary levels of categorizing.
BUT here is the key: the number of conflicts that actually arise from a lack of categorization explanation, I assure you, is fewer than the number that would arise if everybody was forced to review each and every level of categorization of any one thing before actually referring to that thing.
Yes, when we humans make inferences, name things, or even just believe things, we are skipping steps, steps, and more steps. We are assuming, presuming, inferring, and referring back to our own faulty beliefs, which were based on even more faulty assumptions. And, all of a sudden, we seem to be living in a world that we actually know NOTHING about! How can we do this?; how can we live, day by day, year by year, just being A-OK with all the faulty/lack of reasoning around us??? DO WE REALLY KNOW ANYTHING?
The answer is simple. No, we do not. We know absolutely nothing about anything. And here is where you pick your path: you can trust the world your fellow human-beings have created, pleasantly questioning your own existence every so often, recognizing the faults of the human's perception, yet staying at least semi-content with the way of the world. Or, you can get rid of every last scrap of knowledge you possess, burn all your books, abandon your house, go find a tree, scrap your clothes (how do you really even know that they are clothes???), and start at the beginning, observing life through the eyes (whoops! that's a sense!) of someone void of all emotion, personality, all senses, etc.
In further reading of Abel's, "Matn is the Measure," we will most likely read about more problems of knowledge in our world. And rather than test out each new theory, each new exposure of humanity's faults, we can recognize and understand that we human's are not perfect. Any further hypothesizing and "what-if"fing" is an unnecessary use of time and energy that could be used trying to advance the world we have created, faulty or not.
so, I guess if you want one sentence for that, "ya gotta trust, or you're bust!"
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Great advancement of the discussion! You write, "BUT here is the key: the number of conflicts that actually arise from a lack of categorization explanation, I assure you, is fewer than the number that would arise if everybody was forced to review each and every level of categorization of any one thing before actually referring to that thing." In this you focus on the practical, and that is exactly what IB wants us to do. Abstracting may have its problems, but far fewer than any other means of dealing with the world.
And yet.... Let me give an example from different languages. I am fine if I know nothing more than that the Latin word "puella" means "girl." I do not have to know the etymology of "puella" that suggests the word means little or lesser boy. It really doesn't matter that when Julius Caesar spoke the word, it conjured in his mind the image of a Mediterranean girl and for me it brings forth the thought of a North American girl. My abstraction of what a girl is works just fine when dealing with the Latin word "puella." On the other hand, when Caesar describes his soldiers as being "impotentes," I need to have more specific knowledge, or I head into misunderstanding. If I go by the derivative in English, "impotent," I have in mind soldiers who are weak and frail. In fact, "impotentes" means unrestrainedly powerful and wild.
You conclude by saying, "ya gotta trust, or you're bust!" Exactly! Remember, faith is a way of knowing. In fact, it is the way of knowing that underlies all others. And while you should be able to give a reason for the faith you have in your friend's advice, the television weather report, or your math teacher's proof, you must often lean on faith that is without proof if you are to live at all.
Finally someone has hit the fact that eventhough our senses are flawed it doesn't matter, but I don't agree with the statement that we don't know anything. We know many things that exist in our own perception. What we see everything is what we know.
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