Officers With PhDs Advising War Effort

[marct]

Hi WM,

I like the three distinctions you make, but, being a follower of Plato's epistemology, I would add a 4th. Thus, folks fall into the four varieties of "knowing" that Plato's Socrates describes in his allegory of the Cave and his metaphor of the divided line (The Republic, Book VII) See my comments below in that regard.

I must admit that I have never liked Plato's version of Socrates hat much - I always preferred Xenophon's. Still and all, your point is well taken.

I would subdivide this category (Greek doxa into "believers" and "true believers." The former have some rational basis for their axiomatic structures; the latter's axioms are just "God-given truths" not otherwise subject to much real reflection.

The only problem I have with this distinction, and I would grant that it is a valid one in some situations, is that I believe it is a sliding scale distinction, rather than a qualitative distinction. This is based on the observation that "rationality", which relies on logic, is culturally specific rather than universal. I would certainly grant that some cultural logics are closer to an hypothesized transcendent logic, and I'd say that it is usually only in the realm of mathematics or, possibly, music that we get the closest approximations of this transcendent logic (yes, there are definite Pythagorian influences operating in my brain ).

With all that being said, at some fundamental level we are all theologians. What becomes the real differentiator is how aware we are about the beliefs and assumptions that undergird all of the rest of our so-called knowledge.

γνῶθι σεαυτόν - couldn't agree more (for those of you whose Greek is rusty, this reads "gnothi seauton" or "know thyself"). I would, however, point out that the routes to knowing yourself are, in and of themselves, culturally bound and symbolically limited. Not too many people have tried to analyze the similarities and differences in a scientific manner, Charlie Laughlin has done some work on it, but there really aren't too many others.

The truely ironic thing is that those of us who read and post to SWJ may be guilty of the same sin. I just trust that we tend to be a liitle more reflective about our presuppositions than the average person who tunes into Rush Limbaugh or reads Ann Colter (I don't mean to single out conservatives by these two examples--they just happened to be the first two names to come to mind).

Personally, I rarely listen to neo-cons - they are way too neaveau for my tastes . More seriously, I think that Bill's posts are spot on in some ways, and that there will be an inevitable spill over into who we, as individuals, hang out with. In my opinion, I think that it really does go back to how well you know yourself and how comfortable you are with going outside of your "comfort zone".

Sorry for the long post and the heavy philosophizing, but this thread is about Ph.D. advisors, isn't it?

Yupper . I think the philosophizing is very useful, whether or not any particular individual agrees with the specifics of any particular philosophical position. The important thing, to my mind, is to create an environment which encourages an airing of basic axiomatic assumptional differences. As an example of another related, I would point to the discussion concerning ROEs and Battle Drill-6.

Marc