From Chapter 18 of 30 Philosophers: “The Grand Rational Framework is a continually evolving type of common knowledge. While common knowledge represents any commonly known bit if information in a region, the Grand Rational Framework represents all knowledge. It corresponds to the material world and includes both rational and speculative frameworks, but only rational ones […]
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30 Phil, Chapter 18: In this new look at universals and the problem of universals, we use the traditional framing of realism, nominalism and Abelard’s middle ground of conceptualism. The role is science is used to update this exploration and introduce the idea that things like color don’t actually exist at all.
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30 Phil, Chapter 18, Peter Abelard, Touchstone 47: The Idea of Ideas. The Idea of Ideas is a new look at epistemology. It asserts empirical, rational, and irrational entities exist in the Material World, independent of the minds of beings who can discover, label, and use them as ideas. When this theory refers to “beings,”
30 Phil, Chapter 18, Peter Abelard, Touchstone 46: Pattern Recognition. Humans possess an extraordinary ability to identify patterns both in nature as well as in our minds. It is fundamental to how we understand the world, and at the core of the universals debate. Building on pattern recognition, our minds also engage in pattern ranking.
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30 Phil, Chapter 18, Peter Abelard, Touchstone 45: Object-Oriented Nature. Our minds naturally categorize the world into objects, properties, and their interactions. We mentally reduce the complexities of reality into objects. For instance, when we interact with a battery, we use its interface, the positive and negative terminals unconcerned about the details. In this somewhat
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30 Phil, Chapter 18, Peter Abelard, Touchstone 44: Intent. The concept of intent has deep roots. Aristotle, in his Nicomachean Ethics, argued that voluntary actions guided by intention were essential for moral responsibility and virtue. Similarly, Roman law incorporated the concept of “mens rea,” a guilty mind, as a vital element in determining guilt. In
38 Generations Ago 30 Phil, Chapter 18: Peter Abelard and Universals Born in 1079 in Le Pallet, a small village in France, Peter Abelard hailed from a noble lineage. His father, a knight of the local lord, intended for his son to follow in his footsteps. Instead, Peter chose a path of knowledge. His brilliance
The Greeks knew the Earth is spherical. For example, Pythagoras (570-495 BCE), Aristotle (384-322 BCE), and Euclid (circa 450 BCE) wrote about the Earth as a sphere. Eratosthenes (276-194 BCE) even calculated the circumference of the Earth to within 1%. He also wrote about the idea that India could be reached by sailing westward from
98 Generations Ago 30 Phil, Chapter 8: Plato and Rationalism Plato was a Greek philosopher born in Athens. He was a student of Socrates and a teacher of Aristotle. Plato’s Theory of Forms asserts that the reality is only a shadow, or image, of the true reality of the Realm of Forms — abstract, perfect,
