Philosophical Concepts: Knowledge, Truth, Memory, and Formation
C. Descartes
Descartes established the rationalist interpretation of concepts, believing in inherent truths and ideas formed by the mind without experiential intervention. He considered modes of thought and ideas to be interdependent.
D. Hume
Hume posited that individual beings are known as sense perceptions. One can think about various things using their sensitive representations.
E. Kant
Kant distinguished between empirical concepts, derived from experience through multiple perceptions, and pure concepts or categories, which are independent of experience and relate empirical concepts in judgment. Categories express the conditions for a priori knowledge, representing the structure of thought, while empirical concepts provide the content.
Knowledge and Truth
The aim of knowledge is to apprehend truth. Is it possible to know reality?
Several philosophical traditions offer answers:
- Skepticism: Questions the possibility of knowing objective reality and achieving truth.
- Relativism: Denies the existence of absolute truths.
- Realism: Supports the possibility of knowing reality as it is.
- Idealism (Subjectivism): Finds it impossible to know reality itself.
How do we know the truth?
Two primary solutions exist:
- Empiricism: All knowledge comes from sensory experience.
- Rationalism: Knowledge is solely a product of the intellect.
What is truth?
Conceptions of truth include:
- Truth as a property of things: Authenticity.
- Truth as a property of understanding: Emanates from the knowing subject. This includes:
- Truth as adequacy.
- Truth as coherence.
- Truth of certainty.
- Pragmatic truth: Knowledge’s ability to achieve goals.
Memory
The ability to store and retrieve information, locating it in time and space.
Memory differs from imagination:
- Accompanied by emotions.
- Cannot be altered voluntarily.
- Forms an organized whole with other memories.
Memory develops in several stages:
- Fixing: Recording information based on attention.
- Coding: Classifying information automatically or voluntarily.
- Storage: Retaining information.
- Evocation: Retrieving information spontaneously or voluntarily, including recognition and location in time and space.
Memory Types:
- Term memory: Recent events.
- Delayed memory: Distant past memories.
- Short-term memory: Holds information briefly.
- Long-term memory: Stores information indefinitely.
Causes of Forgetting:
- Poor fixation.
- Headbands (likely a typo, consider revising).
- Interference.
- Repression.
Memory Dysfunctions:
Deficit:
- Aphasia: Forgetting language.
- Anterograde amnesia: Inability to form new memories.
- Retrograde amnesia: Inability to recall past events.
- Lacunar amnesia: Affects specific time periods.
- Elective amnesia: Affects a specific topic.
Excess:
- Hypermnesia: Recalling seemingly lost information.
- Paramnesia: Fabricating memories to fill gaps.
- Ecmnesia: Experiencing past situations as present.
- Hallucination of the past: Feeling of having experienced a situation before.
Formation of Concepts
A. Plato
Plato argued for the existence of essences as objective realities, independent of thought but intelligible (ideas or forms).
B. Aristotle
Aristotle believed universals are inherent essences. Beings share a common essence within their species, with individual differentiators provided by the subject. Knowledge requires understanding the form of the individual and concrete.