[Fis] Consilience & patchiness of knowledge

Dear FISers,

Returning to Terry's reference on Nu�ez & Lakoff (I could find the book and
have just started the reding) their des-mystification attempt on the
'Platonic' idealizations surrounding mathematical knowledge looks quite
interesting. For my taste, however, their initial grounding on 'embodiment'
of knowledge is not enough --shouldn't we attemtp a higher concretion on
putting knowledge just in the middle of our action-perception cycle? I may
be wrong (and further reading the book will tell), but initially the ideas
proposed by Berthoz ('The brain sense of movement' 2003) seemed more
propitious for a sensori-motor analysis of cognition.

In the extent that we assume idealized properties for the whole lot of
concepts, theories, disciplines, and social accumulation of scientific
knowledge... we get caught in a dual, unrelated world: abstracted, smooth,
more or less reducible continua of knowledge on the one side, and effective
patchiness and limitations at any level on which knowledge may be created
and put into practice in the other.

If knowledge refers to those cognitive-memory-learning constellations that
mediate in between our action and perception recurring cycles, that have to
be socially complemented by external physical supports --so that that very
created knowledge may be accumulated, exchanged, circulated, etc.-- then, I
do not know, but it seems that an intermediate road between the internalist
and the externalist may be taken. And given that effective social action
--always in interaction with knowledge-- occurs at multiple organization
realms, from individuals to groups, companies, institutions, cities,
regions, countries, Empires..., not always capable of producing the
adequate 'thought collective' interpnetration, the inherent patchiness of
real knowledge becomes even more interesting. Consilience of closure
appears as quite difficult a social enterprise!

Best regards

Pedro

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Received on Fri Nov 12 12:06:52 2004