Practical Cognition :: essays research papers

Practical CognitionTheories of Knowledge (Karl Marx)In his early years of writing, Karl Marxs ideas were similar to AmericanPragmatism, especially his ideas about epistemology. He defines law in apragmatic fashion and explains cognition in terms of practical needs of thehuman being. While some of his ideas were non followed to their pellucidconclusion, nor made sense, the fundamentals of his epistemology containvaluable ideas which can be viewed as furthering pragmatism as a respectablephilosophy. His theory of cognition states that cognition is a biologicalfunction of the human which is used as a tool for his survival.Marx defines truth in a pragmatic way. The truth value of a perspicacity is due tothe usefulness of accepting or rejecting the judgement. A statement is true ifaccepting it makes a positive difference or has a helpful work and it isfalse if accepting it causes difficulty or dissatisfaction. The meaning of astatement is the practical result of accepting the statem ent. In general, then,the truth or falsity of a statement is relative, not unaccompanied to the individualaccepting or rejecting the statement, but also to the circumstances in whichthat person finds himself. Truth is relative, but Marx is not an thoroughrelativist (no angiotensin-converting enzyme to be taken seriously is) because there is a constraint tohow relative the truth can be Humans are making the truth judgements, andhumans have a common element, viz . their needs, which do not vary greatlybetween people.Humans are in contact with nature at a fundamental level. The humanunderstanding of nature is a consequence of the fact that nature confrontshumans when they try to fulfill their needs. This is the case with any organism,and separately species reacts according to the tools of that species. One of the humantools is the intellect, and it works through the cognition of the perception ofelements of nature. Cognition occurs as the organizing of sensory data intocategories. Without the ability to make generalizations, man would not be ableto think. Moreover, the human capacity to think is exactly the same as makingabstractions about experience. There is nothing more to descriptions of theworld than those abstractions. expand about the world are described only interms of generalizations, for if there were a word for a specific detail uniqueto only one event, then that word would be nothing but a name -an abbreviationfor the term, the specific detail x , unique to only this one event, y .The assimilation of the external world, which is at first