Knowledge, Trends, and Freedom in Human Cognition
Knowledge, Trends, and Affection
6.1. Knowledge
Faculty: Capacity for product acts.
Human Knowledge (cognitive aspect) is a structure of interrelated elements.
Sensible Dimension
- 1st Phase: Sense: A cognitive mental act triggered by a stimulus. It involves the immediate and practical knowledge of a material quality, obtained through the external senses’ response to a physical, chemical, or mechanical stimulus. Specific abilities to capture different sensations are called sensory faculties or external sense powers.
- Phases of Sensation:
- Physical Phase: Action of the stimulus.
- Physiological Stage: Excitement, reaction of the organism.
- Psychic Phase: Sense.
- Sensory Faculties: Sight, smell, hearing, taste, and touch.
- 2nd Phase: Perception: Objects are presented in an organized, shaped, and structured way. This process involves different faculties:
- Common Sense: Not synonymous with logic. It receives all sensory input and distinguishes between them.
- Sensitive Imagination: A short-term sensory file storing all sensations.
- Sensitive Memory: Stores sensations and cognitive evaluations.
Perception involves data expansion (current sensations complemented by qualities of similar sensations), object location in space and time, and value appreciation based on survival.
Sensitive Screen
- Presents concrete and material qualities of the object.
- Differs for each individual.
- Partially describes the object.
- Data Extension:
- Current sensations supplemented by feelings of different qualities.
- Current sensations supplemented by feelings of the same quality.
- Figure-Ground Law
- Data Selection: Example: Old or young woman illusion.
- Location in Space and Time
- Assessment of the Object
6.2. Intelligence and Intellectual Knowledge
Intellectual Dimension
- 3rd Phase: Conceptualization (Abstraction): The intellect abstracts a concept from a pre-sensitive image. A concept is the mental apprehension of an essence, which is an entitative principle of entity construction. Concepts are expressed through words.
- Presents abstract and universal qualities of the object.
- Identical in each individual.
- Presents the subject in its totality.
- 4th Phase: Judgment: A thought scheme of Subject-Predicate (SP). Judgments can be universal or particular, affirmative or false. Examples: All men are just. No man is just. Some men are just. Some men are not just.
- 5th Phase: Reasoning: Gaining knowledge using two or more reasons.
- Deductive Reasoning: Acquiring particular knowledge from universal premises. Example: All men are mortal (major premise) + Socrates is a man (minor premise) = Socrates is mortal (conclusion).
- Types of Deductive Reasoning:
- Simple
- Compound
- Conjunctive
- Disjunctive
- Conditional
- Inductive Reasoning: Acquiring universal knowledge from particular premises. Example: Gold, silver, copper, zinc, etc., are conductors of electricity + Gold, silver, copper, zinc, etc., are metals = Metals are conductors of electricity.
“Scholars rarely speak, those who speak so rarely are wise” (Chinese proverb)
Phenomenology of Interior Design: The human ability to introspect, unlike animals.
Full Capacity of Reflection: The ability to reflect on one’s own thoughts.
6.4. Human Language or Thought
Language is unique to humans due to their capacity for abstract thought. Language is conventional and arbitrary, with humans assigning meaning. Animal language, by analogy, uses fixed signs within a species, which are natural and not learned.
Trends
6.5. Trends and Their Classification
Trends and Appetites: A natural activity directed toward an end. The word “appetite” comes from “apetere,” meaning “to go to.” This includes both attraction and rejection.
Classification of Trends/Appetites:
- By Origin:
- Innate: Instincts are complex, innate, and specific tendencies. They are affective and cognitive. The substance of an instinct is its goal, while the form is the way it’s achieved. In animals, both are innate. In humans, instinct is insufficient due to life’s complexity, requiring will to act against instincts.
- Acquired: Habits are not instinctive but learned through education, repetition, and exercise. Example: Walking.
- By Object Presentation:
- Non-Psychic Trends (Natural Appetites): Directed towards an object not submitted for knowledge. Example: Plant roots seeking water.
- Psychic Trends: Objects presented by knowledge.
- Sensitive Trend: Directed towards an object presented by sense knowledge.
- Intellect Trend: Directed towards an object presented by intellectual knowledge. Only humans possess this.
Will: A trend directed towards an object presented by intellectual knowledge as “good” (beneficial, not necessarily moral). Acts of will are volitional and can be deliberate (e.g., buying/renting) or not deliberate (e.g., dressing).
Freedom
Freedom: Absence of coercion. Different types of coercion lead to different kinds of freedom:
- Physical Freedom: The ability to act according to one’s nature. Example: A bird can fly.
- Moral Freedom: The inability to do evil. The ability to choose good, with evil not being an option.
- Freedom of Choice (Free Will): The ability to act or not act, and choose between options when all necessary conditions are met.
Vertical Freedom: Physical and inner freedom.
Horizontal Freedom: Freedom of choice.
Good use of freedom of choice requires physical and inner freedom.
6.6. Human Meaning of Freedom
Two opposing positions:
- Sartre: Total, absolute, and unlimited freedom. Man is not born but made through free choices.
- Contemporary Personalities (Mounier and Maritain): Distinguish between individual and person. Personhood depends on actions and behavior.
- Determinism: Radical denial of freedom. Different types:
- Physical Determinism: Man is subject to physical laws (e.g., gravity).
- Physiological Determinism: Behavior is determined by genes.
- Psychological Determinism (Freud): Behavior is determined by unconscious levels.
- Socio-Cultural Determinism: Freedom is limited by educational, social, and cultural factors.
Human freedom is neither completely annulled nor absolute, but limited by deterministic factors.