I propose that rather than starting our study of knowledge with the notions of pure universals and pure particulars (with the task of asking how one relates to the other) that we instead start somewhere in the middle: cultural objects. These are not uneventful intangibles to be observed only with the mind's eye; nor are they purely subjective processions of impressions and/or actions. Rather, they are somewhat objective and somewhat subjective inasmuch as both you and I can both relate to them through our interactions with each other, with the objects themselves and with the environment wherein we find the objects. For example, you and I can both stop at that stop sign "over there" or use that car to get somewhere. Or we might play a game of chess together. Or we might both visit a park. Or we might email each other about how the president's poll numbers are doing.
Taking such mundane objects as our starting point, we might inquire about how the above template might be applied to nature, numbers, and God--and friendship.
Numbers, for example would be seen--not as untouchable objects of Platonic apprehension nor as so submerged in practices that they could not re mistaken for Platonic forms, but as something like Platonic forms inasmuch as accessible by all regardless of time or place, yet reachable only through practices such as counting. Knowing truths accessed through practices wouldn't be a pure beholding but a kind of engagement--even if the object known is something intangible and as hyper-objective as the Pythagorean formula or 2+3=5. Approaching knowledge in this way may dissolve some problems/antinomies.
More later...
Here's another thought. I can't remember why I recently recognized how important this approach to knowledge is so important, but maybe writing down the following will help.
Add to the starting point that the common object is something like the common good. Or rather that the common good as such is one particularly good and helpful example of the objectivity I have in mind.
Add to the previous addition: that there is a kind of openness to more and more of the same in each of these objectivities. And that this openness is a kind of condition for the possibility of intelligibility. For example, there's a kind of openness to the infinite in mathematics, inasmuch we claim to see that, for example, 4x+3x=7x is true for any x and hence for an unlimited variety of x's, otherwise the equation wouldn't be a mathematical truth.
The way in which calculus starts with the assumption that infinite processes are intelligible could be mentioned here and developed...
Something as different from math as friendship could also be brought up in the same regard, for it involves (inasmuch as it is genuine friendship) an openness to more, an openness to an infinite variety of possibilities. As the sorts of things that you and your friend can face together increases, so much the truer it becomes that you are friends. Inasmuch as you are genuinely friends, you are open to what is the most important good for each other, and this involves an openness to that good as found in other, friendly people as well. Cliques are not genuine friendships because they are tight precisely by being closed to others: they share in common not an attraction to reason, that is, to each other's openness to reality in all its factors, but rather, what they share in common is a kind of valuing of otherness as such.
Marriage is a kind of friendship, but its parallel to the above need not entail spouse swapping. For marriage is an openness to a common good that is linked to the raising of children. Even sterile couples share this openness, and they do so even if they never worry about their own ability to have children. They share it because they inherit membership in a society where marriage has that connection to child-raising virtues, and they value that openness and participate in and promote it through their own virtues.
God is intelligible in this conception of knowledge as that toward which every human action is ultimately directed, as that common good in which all share when they share any common good; as that which must be most celebrated, enjoyed, revered, honored and worshipped. The most proximate intelligibility of the divine in this conception is qua the one of worship. And worship is a kind of dancelike procession before the Lord of all. Worship is the pinnacle of culture.
The concept of science as closed system (or rather, as a "so-called but not-really closed system) can be addressed in an interesting and fruitful way using the template that I've been trying out in this post (methinks).
More later.
Taking such mundane objects as our starting point, we might inquire about how the above template might be applied to nature, numbers, and God--and friendship.
Numbers, for example would be seen--not as untouchable objects of Platonic apprehension nor as so submerged in practices that they could not re mistaken for Platonic forms, but as something like Platonic forms inasmuch as accessible by all regardless of time or place, yet reachable only through practices such as counting. Knowing truths accessed through practices wouldn't be a pure beholding but a kind of engagement--even if the object known is something intangible and as hyper-objective as the Pythagorean formula or 2+3=5. Approaching knowledge in this way may dissolve some problems/antinomies.
More later...
Here's another thought. I can't remember why I recently recognized how important this approach to knowledge is so important, but maybe writing down the following will help.
Add to the starting point that the common object is something like the common good. Or rather that the common good as such is one particularly good and helpful example of the objectivity I have in mind.
Add to the previous addition: that there is a kind of openness to more and more of the same in each of these objectivities. And that this openness is a kind of condition for the possibility of intelligibility. For example, there's a kind of openness to the infinite in mathematics, inasmuch we claim to see that, for example, 4x+3x=7x is true for any x and hence for an unlimited variety of x's, otherwise the equation wouldn't be a mathematical truth.
The way in which calculus starts with the assumption that infinite processes are intelligible could be mentioned here and developed...
Something as different from math as friendship could also be brought up in the same regard, for it involves (inasmuch as it is genuine friendship) an openness to more, an openness to an infinite variety of possibilities. As the sorts of things that you and your friend can face together increases, so much the truer it becomes that you are friends. Inasmuch as you are genuinely friends, you are open to what is the most important good for each other, and this involves an openness to that good as found in other, friendly people as well. Cliques are not genuine friendships because they are tight precisely by being closed to others: they share in common not an attraction to reason, that is, to each other's openness to reality in all its factors, but rather, what they share in common is a kind of valuing of otherness as such.
Marriage is a kind of friendship, but its parallel to the above need not entail spouse swapping. For marriage is an openness to a common good that is linked to the raising of children. Even sterile couples share this openness, and they do so even if they never worry about their own ability to have children. They share it because they inherit membership in a society where marriage has that connection to child-raising virtues, and they value that openness and participate in and promote it through their own virtues.
God is intelligible in this conception of knowledge as that toward which every human action is ultimately directed, as that common good in which all share when they share any common good; as that which must be most celebrated, enjoyed, revered, honored and worshipped. The most proximate intelligibility of the divine in this conception is qua the one of worship. And worship is a kind of dancelike procession before the Lord of all. Worship is the pinnacle of culture.
The concept of science as closed system (or rather, as a "so-called but not-really closed system) can be addressed in an interesting and fruitful way using the template that I've been trying out in this post (methinks).
More later.
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