How We Know
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About the Book
HOW WE KNOW: An Epistemological Exploration
We begin our exploration with the way our senses supply self-evident principles upon which all knowledge is based. The mind turns sense perceptions into abstractions, bits of knowledge isolated from the mass of information gathered in a single experience.
Evidence indicates that we remember abstractions, not total experiences, and that the “things” we remember are assemblages of abstractions that we organize mentally as a network of relations. We never know “reality” but only its effects, and logic never provides certainty, only probability. The need to make judgments without certainty explains free will.
Imagination, our ability to plan, anticipate and create follows from the nature of memory, as does how much we depend on others for useful information. Memory’s needs also explains curiosity, aesthetics, why we enjoy using our minds, and how minds differ.
The book closes with an analysis of two major epistemological errors: the dichotomy between faith and reason and identifying the soul as the “form” of the body.
About the Author
Jim Mann, who majored in philosophy over 60 years ago, returns to that first love in the person of Professor Marcy. Jim has been writing articles and books for over 50 years. He served as adjunct professor of marketing and advertising at the University of New Haven and director of the school's new products and concepts laboratory. He has worked as consultant for such firms as ITT, Panasonic, Reader's Digest, American Broadcasting Company, Cablevision, Ladies' Home Journal and Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. He was founding editor of Media Management Monographs from 1974 to 1990 and before that editor and president of The Gallagher Report.