8. Knowledge verses Understanding
If I can sense 'being', I simultaneously experience being. That is, I now also 'know' being. This experience, also recorded and remembered in the memory stores of Analogos, comprises our 'knowledge of being'. If we can make the judgment of 'being' we must necessarily 'know' we 'are'. We may not use any words or concepts or labels. It is not necessary to even realize it. The knowledge is embedded in the experience. How do I know that I am well? I simply sense and know it! This is primary and fundamental. Being and knowledge arise simultaneously together. They are two faces of the very same phenomenon. It is only intellect, reflecting upon the experience which, in its necessary way, divides them into these two facets in order to understand them. Thus being and knowledge, which cannot occur one without the other, become the ontological and epistemological judgments of Analogos. Our intellectual realization and subsequent conceptual understanding of being and knowledge results in 'existence and understanding.
Some simple examples may suffice to clarify the opaque language necessitated by accurate description above.
Horses both 'are' and 'exist'. Horses have both 'being in Actuality' and 'existence in Reality'. This is because we can sense them; we can see, smell, touch, hear and feel actual horses. We can experience them directly and they generate these sensations which imply their being to us. We judge that they 'are' even if we have no name for them, even if we have never experienced or seen an actual horse before. At the same time, we have all heard 'about' horses, seen 'pictures of' horses, statues 'of' horses, read books 'about' horses and in which 'horses' were referred to. We may have even looked up horses in the dictionary and found the definition of 'horse', a four legged ungulate which eats grass and hay and goes whinny, whinny, whinny! All of this hearing about, reading about, and talking about horses refers to the 'concept' of horse(s). So, in addition to the actual direct experience of horses, we can have indirect experience of horses via the concept of horse, conceptualized in words (verbal concepts) and images (pictorial concepts). By virtue of conception, horses now attain ontological status in the intellectually generated world of Reality. They now 'exist' in Reality and our realization of them results in our understanding of them, because, at minimum, they are identified by receiving a name.
On the other hand, Unicorns have only 'existence' in the world of Reality, having been generated as a concept by intellect. We cannot go out an experience actual Unicorns by seeing, smelling, touching them etc. Unicorns have no corresponding 'being' in the world of Actuality.
Man's Reality has grown stupendously in recent centuries as the intellect of Man has garnered power and exploded. We have generated new ideas and new concepts in every domain of thought. We have generated endless new languages with which to think about and talk about them with. These new languages encode the ideas in the form of concepts and symbolic representations. They thereby become fixed in Reality. Old books and old ideas, no matter how foolish or erroneous, seem never to go away. Like metaphysical viruses, they lie dormant in unopened books waiting to leap out and infect the intellect of the next reader, springing to life anew in the Reality of the susceptible victim.
Language is Man's metaphysical tool of understanding. And as Man's tools have evolved from the simple stick to the infinite variety of tiny instruments and giant machines, so have our metaphysical tools increased in number, variety and specificity. Just look at a modern college catalog of courses to find the innumerable 'language systems' available by means of which we can think about and discuss various aspects of the world. These are erroneously thought of as "subjects" for study. There is an excellent analogy between the development of symbolic languages and the development of tools; these are the metaphysical and physical tools of Mankind. By means of these tools, man can manipulate material. For material is the foundation of all being and experience. One might say that material, containing the Latin term 'mater', is in fact, the mother of all experience.
In summary, I suggest that Man is best conceived as a creature of dual psychic nature, having two simultaneously operating judgmental systems using different languages. These are Analogos and Logos. These generate two types of mental phenomena, Sensations (sensations-emotions-feelings-images) and Symbols (concepts, ideas and symbolic languages). These can be thought of as comprising two separate worlds, the world of sensations called Actuality and the world of symbols called Reality. The process of interpretation and translation from the language of experience (Actuality) into the language of intellectual understanding is called 'realization'. Thereby the world of Reality is created. Each judgmental system is an ontoic/epistemoic system (Analogos is the ontic/epistemic system and Logos is the ontological/epistemological system). Analogs generates 'being' and 'knowledge' while Logos generates 'existence' and 'understanding'.
It is important to realize and understand that none of the above is 'true'. The reason is that Logos or Intellect does not perform the 'truth function'. The 'truth function' is performed by Analogos. What it knows is its truth. It can only know truth. Analogos alone is capable of knowing 'anybeing' (anything) at all. However, the question is: is the above conception correct? I have worked to see that it is internally consistent, coherent (to some), correspondent to experience and to existing understanding in neuroscience. I believe it is also reasonable, logical, acceptable, even desirable. It is however fundamentally important to realize that there is no such thing as 'truth' in the form of ideas or concepts. We create our understanding out of our own language and experience. All of our ideas and concepts, however useful, remain but beliefs and opinions in the world of Reality, often defended strongly because they may have 'cash value'.
Albert M. Iosue
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