Of the Conduct of Understanding

[TallBill]

"No man ever sets himself about anything but upon some view or other, which serves him for a reason for what he does; and whatsoever faculties he employs, the understanding with such light as it has, well or ill informed, constantly leads; and by that light, true or false, all his operative powers are directed.... Temples have their sacred images, and we see what influence they have always had over a great part of mankind. But in truth the ideas and images in men's minds are the invisible powers that constantly govern them, and to these they all, universally, pay a ready submission. It is therefore of the highest concernment that great care should be taken of the understanding, to conduct it aright in the search of knowledge an din the judgments it makes" - John Locke

While the power of thought frees us from servile subjection to instinct, appetite, and routine, it also brings with it the occasion and possibility of error and mistake. - John Dewey's response to John Locke's paragraph

So my understanding is that you either dont think.. and act upon instinct, appetite, and routine(such as animals).... or you do think and are guaranteed the possibility of error and mistake...

-btw, wtf happened to my first attempt to post this.. lol.. the thread got started, but my post didnt!

 

[TallBill]

anyone?

 

[Moonbeam]

Server error?

As I find myself forced to say more and more often, people seem habituated to setting up two eronious alternatives and warring between them. Both points of view have elements of truth in them, but neither is complete. When we speak of instinct, we usually mean some animal response like a reflex. The problem with that is that to truly act from instinct would be to act wity full capacity instinct. In order to fully use ones instinctual faculties one would have to be in touch with ones capacity. One would have, in other words, to be what one really is. Who can say what the instinctual capacity of a human being is. We know that 'wise men' chance upon some great realization or another. We hear terms like 'find oneself' What is it they find? Folklore is replete with stories of inexplicable psychological phenomena. We know almost nothing about the brain and study people as they are, perhaps not as they can be. There are rumors of a Truth, a Knowledge, a Secret that persists throughout time. How does empathy work? What does it mean to know what another is feeling? It would have to be, it seems to me, a combination of thinking and feeling, the thinking part an ability to analyse the body language and other external manifestations of states of mind coupled to a personal experience of those states by the empath. Surely this faculty would between individuals perhaps by gift, but certainly more importantly by capacity to be aware of ones feeling state. Maybe this could be called being awake to ones feelings. A cursory study of people will quickly reveal that almost everybody hasn't the slightest idea what they are feeling, but equally dificult is their reluctance to see that either.

 

[TallBill]

actually.. thats what Dewey is saying in a previous chapter... the feel/think thing... it then goes further in saying "To say 'I think so' implies that I do not as yet know so"

btw, im not sure what to "think" about this stuff.. im just lookin for a little insight i guess..