We Don't Know What We Don't Know!

The longer that I live, the more that I realize how little that I know. At 17, I thought that I knew everything. But that is the nature of maturity............to realize that there is so much to learn, and so little time in which to learn it.

I think that the important thing is to always keep your mind open to the exploration of new ideas. Constantly question what you think that you already know. And don't dismiss, out of hand, anything that seems strange or exotic to you.

I will go to my grave knowing only a tiny fraction of the the stuff that is "out there". The important thing is that I keep expanding my knowledge, and not be concerned about what passes me by, or goes over my head.

There is an infinite amount of things we don't know, and much of that we can't know. I don't know if it is valuable to worry about these things.

There are a number of things we know we know. In math or science we are "sure" of a number of things (in math the word "proven" has a subtly different meaning than in science), but there are questions that we safely consider resolved. In these cases, you don't need to stop questioning (and you shouldn't) but you can safely base other assumptions in the resolved topics knowing that it will take extraordinary evidence and unlikely circumstances to "disprove" something that has been widely proven.

More interesting are the things that we can know, but don't yet.

I like Phoenix idea of "expanding knowledge" and in science this is what we are doing. We have a body of things we do know, and use these to develop new theories around the edges.

Then we go exploring to check these theories. I just read exciting news about the people exploring the period of "inflation" of the Universe that followed the Big Bang.

Of course, each time we expand our knowledge it opens our eyes to new questions... things that we can study and eventually understand.

This exploration and discovery... expanding our knowledge is very exciting to me.

You speak of ways to think that fit closely what CT would teach. I assume you have never studied CT. I am perplexed why people like yourself seem to have zero interest or curiosity about learning more about CT. Tell me, if you will, why do you refuse to become curious enough about CT to even check into the matter. Or perhaps I am mistaken and you have studied this matter.

Ebrown

Let me ask of you the same thing I asked of Phoenix. Why you will not take a little time and investigate what CT is about.

Oh. This isn't a discussion thread... it is a sales thread.

I did a Wikipedia search and didn't find anything appropriate that you may be selling other than a timezone and a New England state.

Oh Please, do elaborate....

ebrown

I am that person who has discovered how to perceive color but cannot convince my colorblind neighbors to do the exercise necessary to perceive color. It is all very frustrating. That is why I ponder the problem of learning to know what you do not know.

In case you have not read any of y posts this is one on CT.


CT (Critical Thinking)

"The noblest exercise of the mind within doors, and most befitting a person of quality, is study."
William Ramsey, Nobel Prize Laureate in Chemistry, 1904

"Understanding is a kind of ecstasy."
Carl Sagan, Celebrated Scientist


I once asked a philosophy professor "What is philosophy about?" He said philosophy is "radically critical self-consciousness". This was 35 years ago. Only in the last five years have I begun to understand that statement

I took a number of courses in philosophy three decades ago but it was not until I began to study and understand Critical Thinking that I began to understand what "radically critical self-consciousness" meant.

I consider CT to be ?'philosophy light'. CT differs from other subject matter such as mathematics and geography in that it requires, for success, that the student develop a significant change in attitude.

Anyone who has been in military service recognizes the significant attitude adjustment introduced into all recruits in the eight weeks of boot camp. During the first eight weeks of military service each recruit is introduced to the proper military attitude. During the eight weeks of basic training there is certain knowledge and skills that the recruit learns but primarily s/he undergoes a significant attitude adjustment.

I would identify the CT attitude adjustment to be a movement from naïve common sense realism to critical self-consciousness. It is necessary to free many words and concepts from the limited meaning attached by normal usage?-such a separation requires that the learner hold in abeyance the normal sort of concept associations.

The individual who has made the attitude adjustment recognizes that reality is multilayered and that one can only penetrate those layers through a critical attitude toward both the self and the world. To be critical does not mean to be negative, as is a common misunderstanding.

If we were to follow the cat and the turtle as they make their way through the forest we would observe two fundamentally different ways that a creature might make its way through life.

The turtle withdraws into its shell when it bumps into something new, and remains such until that something new disappears or remains long enough to become familiar to the turtle. The cat is conscious of almost everything within the range of its senses, and studies all it perceives until its curiosity is satisfied.

Formal education teaches by telling so that the graduate is prepared with a sufficient database to get a job. Such an education efficiently prepares one to make a living, but this efficiency is at the cost of curiosity and imagination. Such an education does not prepare an individual to become critically self-conscious.

If we wish to emulate the cat rather than the turtle we must revitalize our curiosity and imagination after formal education. That revitalized curiosity and imagination, together with self directed study prepares each of us for a fulfilling life that includes the ecstasy of understanding.

I think that radically critical self-consciousness combines the attitude adjustment of CT and combines it with the curiosity of the cat and then takes that combination to a radical level.

A good place to begin CT is: http://www.bu.edu/wcp/Papers/Educ/EducHare.htm

Would this little post lead you to read the web site I note here?