Epistemology‏

Epistemology is the study of knowledge and justified belief. It is concerned with the nature, sources and limits of knowledge.

“Wisdom is knowing how little we know.”
– Socrates

Epistemology has been primarily concerned with propositional knowledge, that is, knowledge that such-and-such is true, rather than other forms of knowledge, for example, knowledge how to such-and-such.

There is a vast array of views about propositional knowledge (knowledge which requires no actual experience), but one virtually universal presupposition is that knowledge is true belief, but not mere true belief.

For example, lucky guesses or true beliefs resulting from wishful thinking are not knowledge. Thus, a central question in epistemology is: what must be added to true beliefs to convert them into knowledge?

This question is generally discussed in a debate between rationalism and empiricism, or the question of whether knowledge can be acquired a priori or a posteriori:

• Empiricism: knowledge is obtained through experience.
• Rationalism: knowledge can be acquired through the use of reason.

Certainty‏

When contemplating the property certainty, as with knowledge, it turns out to be very difficult to provide an uncontentious analysis. Because of its many different conceptions and dimensions, the full value of certainty is surprisingly hard to capture. To that end, below is a list of quotations to help sketch a definition of the property certainty.

“Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is absurd.”
– Voltaire

“The scientist believes in proof without certainty, the bigot in certainty without proof.”
– Ashley Montagu

“There is no such thing as absolute certainty, but there is assurance sufficient for the purposes of human life.”
– John Stuart Mill

“I believe that we do not know anything for certain, but everything probably.”
– Christiaan Huygens

“What is known for certain is dull.”
– Max Ferdinand Perutz

“To be uncertain is to be uncomfortable, but to be certain is to be ridiculous.”
– Chinese proverb

“Inquiry is fatal to certainty.”
– Will Durant

“It is the certainty that they possess the truth that makes men cruel.”
– Anatole France

“If you tried to doubt everything you would not get as far as doubting anything. The game of doubting itself presupposes certainty.”
– Ludwig Wittgenstein

“Since we can never know anything for sure, it is simply not worth searching for certainty; but it is well worth searching for truth; and we do this chiefly by searching for mistakes, so that we have to correct them.”
– Karl Popper

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Semantic Satiation

Semantic satiation occurs when you say or think of a word for so long that it loses its meaning.

It has been used by speech therapists to reduce speech anxiety with stutterers by creating semantic satiation through repetition, thus reducing the negative emotions linked to the pronunciation of certain words.

“The explanation for the phenomenon was that verbal repetition repeatedly aroused a specific neural pattern in the cortex which corresponds to the meaning of the word. Rapid repetition causes both the peripheral sensorimotor activity and the central neural activation to fire repeatedly, which is known to cause reactive inhibition, hence a reduction in the intensity of the activity with each repetition.”

– Leon Jakobovits James

Left or Right?

Simplistic Example of a Semantic Network used as an Example Explanation

There is no semantic explanation of left and right.

For instance, it would be impossible to describe right and left to an alien in a distant galaxy verbally without a visual cue or common reference point.

Also – on a completely different note – it might be the case that the alien might not be symmetrical and who have no need to know left and right.

Adults have been noted to remember right and left by looking at their thumb which they sucked as a child.

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Mind Map

A mind map is a diagram used to represent words, ideas, tasks, or other items linked to and arranged around a central key word or idea. Mind maps are used to generate, visualize, structure, and classify ideas, and as an aid to studying and organizing information, solving problems, making decisions, and writing.

The elements of a given mind map are arranged intuitively according to the importance of the concepts, and are classified into groupings, branches, or areas, with the goal of representing semantic or other connections between portions of information. Mind maps may also aid recall of existing memories.

By presenting ideas in a radial, graphical, non-linear manner, mind maps encourage a brainstorming approach to planning and organizational tasks. Though the branches of a mind map represent hierarchical tree structures, their radial arrangement disrupts the prioritizing of concepts typically associated with hierarchies presented with more linear visual cues. This orientation towards brainstorming encourages users to enumerate and connect concepts without a tendency to begin within a particular conceptual framework.

The mind map can be contrasted with the similar idea of concept mapping. The former is based on radial hierarchies and tree structures denoting relationships with a central governing concept, whereas concept maps are based on connections between concepts in more diverse patterns.