With all of the thoughts a person might have and the statements they might encounter throughout their life, there is a need to sometimes reflect on how to distinguish between concepts to see if one has already discovered a truth (or simply thought of a concept before) or if other people are treating identical facts and ideas as if they are actually distinct. Without this, one cannot truly know how precise one's worldview gets or if others are mistaking one truth for many. This has ramifications for how well a person grasps originality (in the sense of autonomy or novelty) and engages in communication, as there are many different ways to linguistically express a given thing.
This is not to say that repeatedly dwelling on or discussing a certain truth, possibility, or experience is automatically negative! There are some truths that are unavoidable because they underpin all other truths, known and unknown, and some things might need to be emphasized to others for their own personal benefit. Thinking otherwise is not the rationalistic point of distinguishing between concepts. However, there are more than just a handful of important truths and ideas and there are far more ways to articulate those truths and ideas. Even if someone had discovered all epistemological and metaphysical truths about something, there might still be dozens of ways to express those truths in interpersonal communication, and the latter is philosophically important in its own right.
How can someone tell if a phrase or sentence amounts to merely a restatement of a familiar idea? When it comes to wording, one can tell if a statement is just a reworded version of another idea by reducing the language down to the intended concepts behind it. There are numerous ways to communicate specific ideas with words or even to phrase as sentences in one's mind without telling others. If the concepts overlap, the ideas are the same, even if they are presented using new words. This is one reason why it might seem as if many people are focusing on separate topics when they are really just elaborating in the same core concepts with no intentional differences on that level.
On a non-linguistic level, even if a person has not thought of something new or more specific than other ideas, they can still experience a deepening of their feelings and appreciation for concepts so that it almost seems as if they are reasoning out something new when they are only developing a deeper version of an existing attitude. Still, it would be irrational to think that intensifying feelings for an idea means that the idea itself has changed or that some new aspect of it has come to light. Reason certainly does reveal the ways that any given truths and concepts are different, but the psychological perceptions of them, which can change, do not reflect the nature of the concepts themselves. This mirrors how linguistic expressions of truths can vary even though the logical facts do not.
The way to tell how different one idea is from another, if they are distinct at all, is to break the components down rationalistically and recognize where they diverge. The way to identify if someone is revisiting a former claim of theirs or stating a claim another person has separately made in a different way is to look past the words to the concepts behind them. Introspective clarity, effective communication, and precise philosophical knowledge are all at stake when it comes to understanding how to distinguish ideas on both a conceptual and linguistic level. One does not even need to have thought about this to have already encountered circumstances where this kind of awareness is helpful or needed.
No comments:
Post a Comment