What have i learned during the first theme ???
This book from Russell is a canonical book, you
can go back to it and read it now and then as it has a fundamental knowledge.
Russell believed that we cannot know anything, the only thing that we know is
propositions about possible facts and every statement of fact must have a
system of knowledge. Also he is using the term “sense-date” for what we know
immediately about something through our senses. Sense-data is the most
important thing in knowledge by acquaintance. Russell’s main goal was to formalize knowledge by putting propositions and statements of fact in a true or
false formula and connect philosophy with science.
A proposition is based on knowledge by
description, while a statement of fact is based on knowledge by acquaintance. In
some cases a statement can be meaningless i.e. “The king of France is bold” as
we know that there is not a king in France. In this case, we just have to find
ways to translate these problematic statements in order to understand them. Basically
propositions and statements of fact are verbal expressions. Some other verbal
expressions can be questions or commands. All verbal expressions have the power
to change the world. For example when the priest during a wedding says here I call
you man and wife, from that moment and on these two people will be a married
couple.
Also very interesting, is a Russell’s famous student Ludwig Wittgenstein belief that our emotions shape our knowledge. He used the quota that “The world
of a happy person is much different than the world of an unhappy person”.
According to him, our emotions can change our sense-data. But Russell has not
done any reference on the impact of emotions to our knowledge; he just believed
that all the sense-data we get from our environment, are being categorized in
our minds.
In the end of his book, Russell attacks Hegelism
by supporting that we cannot know the totality of world, we know only the
individual facts. And also he was opposed to the beliefs of Kant and idealism
in general, who supported the idea that matter exists only in relation to ideas
(in our minds). Russell on the contrary, believed that physical objects exist independently;
world exists even without our experience.
The big idea is that in order to have
knowledge, we must have mediation! And today Media can make knowledge possible,
through all these different types like videos, sounds, images and their converge. There are more details about media convergence and it's effects an the book "Convergence culture" by Henry Jenkins.
I think it’s very interesting that you mentioned Wittgenstein and his belief that emotions shape our knowledge. What do you think about this? I think that our world and our sense-data are influenced by our emotions. For met it would be also interesting to know how we could order the sixth-sense into this topic. On the one hand it’s like emotions ‘build’ by the brain. On the other hand you can also feel something indescribable from the outside. For example when you walk into a room full of people you can sometimes feel the mood of a group.
SvaraRaderaI support Wittgenstein's belief too. The are examples in our every day lives that prove that our emotions are shaping our knowledge. For example, if you are happy and go for a coffee with your friends, the sense data that you will get from your environment will be absolutely different from these that you would get if you were sad and miserable. There is a quota that says "When i am happy, i am putting on my pink glasses". This actually means that when we are feeling bliss we are more positive about everything, we thing that everything will be as we want it to be. So this leads to the fact that, yes our emotions shape somehow our knowledge.
SvaraRadera