Egyptograms

Please post your notes from the Egyptogram lessons. Also, please refelct on the Egyptogram experience. Did you enjoy the exercize? Why or why not?

REASON
1. Apriori knowledge 2. Basic assumptions/premises
- We are not PURE empiricists, rather we use apriori knowledge, we make assumptions, and we infer from past experiences. We are rationalists!
-An assumption/premise has to be followed by a conclusion
-Rational knowledge is DEDUCTION (moving from a general claim to the specific conclusion), whereas induction leads from the specific to the general (i.e. empiric experiences lead to thoughts)
-Deductions are made from a syllogism, which must include 2 premises that lead to a conclusion, 3 terms that occur twice, and a quantifier (ex: 1. All dogs are mammals. 2. Fido is a dog. 3. Therefore, Fido is a mammal.)
-Logic is used to determine whether or not a syllogism is valid, not whether it is true! and just because something is valid, that does not mean it's also true! A statement may be logically valid without being true.
-Plato's version of Truth = public, independent, and eternal
-Truth is a property of statements and is not involved in reasoning and logic.
Ex: All Panthers are Pink. Huey Newton is a panther. Therefore, Huey Newton is pink.
-Context, language, and who is owning the statement also help to make a statement valid or invalid.


The Egyptogram Experience:
This was a little weird for me because I am not one who likes word games and puzzles, and it's hard for my brain to work that way, thinking letters and syllables mean signs and signs mean sounds and letters or syllables, or sometimes a God or.... They have different rules than our language and use their "linguistic symbols to organize experience" a little differently than we do. But I thought this was a good activity to show us how we use apriori knowledge and/or reasoning with language and making meaning, and to open and challenge our brains to accept different ways of writing and reading language, so yes, I enjoyed it.

Notes 4-2-09
Rationalists: Those that believe Reason is the ideal way to achieve knowledge.
Empiricists: "Perception people"
Truth: What IS the case (i.e. property of statements) --> justification of truth: empiricism/perception, authority, reason (logic), language.
"This pen is blue." = deduction because general knowledge of what blue is is used to make this specific deduction.
Reason uses logic -> there is deductive and inductive reasoning
Logic: Does conclusion follow premise?
SYLLOGISMS... rationalists believe using syllogisms preserves truth, they do not CREATE truth!
Ex: All A's are B's; some A's are C's; therefore some B's are C's. -> valid conclusion (logical)
Ex: All A's are B's, all B's are C's, therefore all C's are A's. -> INvalid conclusion (illogical)

Kpelle story reflection:
I was kind of shocked when I read the story about the Kpelle tribe not being able to figure out simple syllogisms, because to us it seems so natural, and I don't usually have to think much about them, I mean, maybe the correct answer, but not HOW to determine it... However I knew from reading stories and books and stuff that non-western tribes often have very different thinking than us and don't perceive hypothetical situations the same as we do. So I don't really know what else to say about the story, it made me think about how we solve logical problems with reasoning and drawing conclusions from premises, and how context plays a role in that process and sometimes has to be "thrown out" to understand the meat or basic meaning of the syllogism within.