http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/Re-Direct-conversation-tp3137870p3196205.html
Hello all-
As a lurker and occasional leaper in frays herein, an open question,
re discussions that involve philosophy, perception, paradigms, etc:
> If the desire is to know and then to know more, to find things out by asking and referring to others who have asked, why does the conversation only draw from a particular tradition, generally identifiable as western philosophical eurocentric thought ?
There is so much information, applicable and important to these discussions from other areas of western science - neuroscience, developmental biology, cognitive psychology, and more.
Then, of course, there is the entire rest of the world, with vast fields of empirical investigation and scientific methodology in other cultures and eras.
Those examinations themselves have influenced the discussion here, whether you are aware of it in the moment or not. Humans everywhere have been arguing about all this since we could communicate. Arguments and philosophies arose, then traders and explorers would travel and exchange ideas, and then the church somewhere would say no, which galvanized others' interests, who then took the knowledge further...
Their jargon is as specialized as yours, but the desire to know, and the areas explored, are the same.
The desire to understand these concepts seems to be a fundamental human urge.
This is a genuine question, because I have spent a lifetime investigating with great rigor the same questions you all discuss here. I am driven to look everywhere for answers, since my goal is knowledge of the world, and of myself in it. Limiting myself is not intellectually defensible to me.
That youall, intelligent and educated persons, seem to contain your investigations must have a reason.
If I know your reason, then my leaps into the fray here can be more germane to your conversation and not just to my own (and perhaps to those other lurkers who write, but do not 'send' as quickly as me).
I have attempted to phrase this in as non-judgemental a way as possible: I am not interested in trying to exert my viewpoint, but to understand your choice of platform for these discussions.
Thank you-
Tory
In philosophy, empiricism is a theory of knowledge which asserts that knowledge arises from experience. Empiricism is one of several competing views about how we know "things," part of the branch of philosophy called epistemology, or "the Theory of Knowledge". Empiricism emphasizes the role of experience and evidence, especiallysensory perception, in the formation of ideas, while discounting the notion of innate ideas (except in so far as these might be inferred from empirical reasoning, as in the case of genetic predisposition).[1] Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College