Common sense is anchor

[coberst]

Common sense is anchor

We live, love, and learn by metaphor. ‘Common sense is anchor’ is, I am convinced, a useful metaphor for learning.

In what sense is common sense an anchor?

An anchor keeps us steady when we just want to lie on deck either sleeping or day-dreaming. It keeps us safely anchored in place. It is our security. If we put one out fore and aft we cannot move without a great force compelling us to move.

However, the anchor functions as security only in shallow water.

To go to sea, to explore, to discover the adventure of the deep water and distant shores one must ‘up anchor’, one must dislodge the anchor from solid ground and take a leap of faith, we must learn to develop confidence in our instincts and to navigate by the stars. It entails risk; but what form of action can we indulge our self in if we remain at anchor?

All of this is just to set the stage for stating my conviction that we must put on hold our common sense while we explore a new domain of knowledge. I am not talking about what happens in school where the teacher takes us by the hand and shows us charts and maps about other lands wherein we never leave anchor. I am talking about what we must do when our school days are over and we wish to find a new means to reach another intellectual domain.

We must place on hold our common sense while exploring new domains of knowledge until we have gained sufficient knowledge about these new domains to make good judgments. Of course, this requires that we do ‘due diligence’ when choosing our maps and charts before we set out. Seek out the best minds as your guide when entering a new domain of knowledge and then up anchor for a voyage of discovery.

Quantum Theory and Psychology are two examples of domains of knowledge that cannot possibly be explored while clutching a security blanket.

Do you think ‘common sense is anchor’ is a valid metaphor?

Have you ever explored a new domain of knowledge without a teacher at your side?

[devonin]

Re: Common sense is anchor

This isn't a CT thread. There's nothing in there to debate or really discuss beyond people saying "Sure I guess" and "Hasn't everyone?"

Lock? Sink? Ban? Something?

[Kilroy_x]

Re: Common sense is anchor

In what sense is common sense an anchor?

It limits your awareness to what the average member of the populace is already aware of. Hence if we accept Popper's characterization of knowledge as a form of biological adaption, common sense ensures that if the species is already successful we will continue to occupy a given ecological niche.

It entails risk; but what form of action can we indulge our self in if we remain at anchor?

The same types of actions most other people traditionally engage in. Also how is trusting our instincts guaranteed to help? Instincts are a form of sense; if they are the same as everyone else's then we explore largely by using common sense.

Do you think ‘common sense is anchor’ is a valid metaphor?

I think if you are trying to use metaphors to construct valid arguments it is likely you don't know how to use language.

Have you ever explored a new domain of knowledge without a teacher at your side?

Yes.

[chunky_cheese]

Re: Common sense is anchor

I find most subjects worth learning on the internet, just don't have the motivational force of an educator to learn more.

[coberst]

Re: Common sense is anchor

I find most subjects worth learning on the internet, just don't have the motivational force of an educator to learn more.

I think that it is here that CT (Critical Thinking) is an aid. A critical thinker is constantly asking questions, is constantly analyzing. It is questions, curiosity, and caring that leads one on for further knowledge. Our formal schooling has left us handicapped in this regard. Our educational system teaches us to be passive learners. It is this passivity that we must correct when our school daze are over.

[coberst]

Re: Common sense is anchor

Kilroy

We are creatures who live by abstract ideas. Metaphors are our only way to comprehend this world of symbols in which we live. See what I mean? Have you grasped my meaning?

[devonin]

Re: Common sense is anchor

If one can only grasp the world through metaphor, because the world is nothing but symbols, how can we ever claim that those symbols have meaning?

A is symbolic of B, because A represents B, but if B is itself also a symbol with no objective meaning, itself based on some other concept which is -also- a symbol...then there is no objective reality, absolutely everything is subjective, and thus even having the discussion at all is intrinsically meaningless.

He -can't- grasp "your meaning" because your intended conclusion is also only symbolic, a metaphor for your actual intentions...that are also only symbolic.

Building the ladder to heaven out of syllogism makes for a fun read, but it doesn't tell you anything useful about the world.

Put another way: You -cannot- have "A world of symbols" in itself, because symbols have to be representative of something concrete, which you seem to deny exists.

[Afrobean]

Re: Common sense is anchor

coberst, don't you ever get tired of copy pasting things here? Honestly, I don't know why the mods put up with it. Every thread you post is a copy-paste-job.

[devonin]

Re: Common sense is anchor

coberst, don't you ever get tired of copy pasting things here? Honestly, I don't know why the mods put up with it. Every thread you post is a copy-paste-job.

Fixed.

[Kilroy_x]

Re: Common sense is anchor

Kilroy

We are creatures who live by abstract ideas. Metaphors are our only way to comprehend this world of symbols in which we live. See what I mean? Have you grasped my meaning?

What about Simile? Hell, what about math? Surely math can't be purely heuristic?

[coberst]

Re: Common sense is anchor

What about Simile? Hell, what about math? Surely math can't be purely heuristic?

Math is abstract.

We commonly think of metaphor as something like analogy. We are trying to explain something to someone and we say this something new is very much like this other something you are familiar with. This is one form of metaphor but there is another metaphor that is automatic and unconscious. The child playing with objects has an experience of collecting objects in a pile. This experience results in a neurological network that we might identify as grouping. This neurological structure that contains some sort of logic related to this activity serves as a primary metaphor.

The child has various experiences resulting from playing with objects. These experiences result in mental spaces with neural structures that contain the logic resulting from the experience. When the child then begins to count perhaps on her fingers these mental spaces containing the experiences automatically map to a new mental space and become the logic and inference patterns to make it possible for the child to count because counting contains similar operations.

Primary metaphors are the contents of mental spaces developed in experience and the contents then pass to another mental space to become the bases for a new concept. The contents of space A is mapped to space B to then be the foundation for the new concept at space B. This mapping is automatic and unconscious.

[Kilroy_x]

Re: Common sense is anchor

Math is abstract.

Even identity? Even, that is, the statement that A=A? Admittedly it is trivial, but surely not abstract?

The child playing with objects has an experience of collecting objects in a pile. This experience results in a neurological network that we might identify as grouping. This neurological structure that contains some sort of logic related to this activity serves as a primary metaphor. The child has various experiences resulting from playing with objects. These experiences result in mental spaces with neural structures that contain the logic resulting from the experience.

I'm not sure about this. It seems from most accounts that children have an innate faculty for counting small numbers of things. This has been demonstrated with babies, who are prior to the stage in which they would group things.

This mapping is automatic and unconscious.

In that case what purpose does our analysis of common sense have? There seems to be a contradiction here, you initially stated that we need to let our instincts guide or intellectual pursuits; yet if we are capable of inhibiting our instincts surely what we are describing does not consist of entirely unconscious processes?

[devonin]

Re: Common sense is anchor

It seems from most accounts that children have an innate faculty for counting small numbers of things.

The ability to comprehend basic counting, with respect to things like "which group is larger" is common to virtually every animal species in the world. It is a survival trait when escaping predators or choosing prey.

While we have an ability that seems to progress past what -most- things are capable of, namely that we can both see the groups and further analyze their contents (We can see 2 lions and 6 dogs, and decide we have better odds with the dogs, while many animals would simply try to go where the smallest number of obstacles are.) the simple fact that we appear to be born with the ability for basic counting doesn't actually say much.

[coberst]

Re: Common sense is anchor

Kilroy

Our common sense is our intuition. It is what we have collected as a world view. It consists of both what our unconscious and conscious has constructed for us.

In the statement A=A, my typing it is a literal experience and thus the neurological constructs are not abstract. However the symbols A and = are abstract constructs.

At birth an infant has a minimal innate arithmetic ability. This ability to add and subtract small numbers is called subitizing. (I am speaking of a cardinal number—a number that specifies how many objects there are in a collection, don’t confuse this with numeral—a symbol). Many animals display this subitizing ability.

In addition to subitizing the child, while playing with objects, develops other cognitive capacities such as grouping, ordering, pairing, memory, exhaustion-detection, cardinal-number assignment, and independent order.

Subitizing ability is limited to quantities 1 to 4. As a child grows s/he learns to count beyond 4 objects. This capacity is dependent upon 1) Combinatorial-grouping—a cognitive mechanism that allows you to put together perceived or imagined groups to form larger groups. 2) Symbolizing capacity—capacity to associate physical symbols or words with numbers (quantities).

“Metaphorizing capacity: You need to be able to conceptualize cardinal numbers and arithmetic operations in terms of your experience of various kinds—experiences with groups of objects, with the part-whole structure of objects, with distances, with movement and location, and so on.”

“Conceptual-blending capacity. You need to be able to form correspondences across conceptual domains (e.g., combining subitizing with counting) and put together different conceptual metaphors to form complex metaphors.”



Quotes from “Where Mathematics Comes From”

[devonin]

Re: Common sense is anchor

It sounds as though you're suggesting that say, the numeral 4 is metaphorically symbolic of say, "the number of apples" and that we've developed this metaphorical sense as we develop our experiences in the world. I get the impression that you are saying "You can only identify the number of apples by the symbol '4' if you've experienced a number of things in your life to which you associate the symbol '4' ie. You don't know a 4 when you see one, until you've had a 4 pointed out to you enough times to see them on your own.

But once again, I ask you: If -everything- is metaphorical and symbolic, what are all of these symbols symbolic -of-? We use the symbol "4" for "The number of apples" in a way that is predicated upon there -actually- being four -actual- apples that are not symbolic of anything but are simply objectively existing apples.