Hobbes was the first British empiricist which meant that
he thought that we receive our knowledge through the senses…
that there were no innate idea’s from which we received
information about the world, we received our knowledge through
the senses, vision, hearing, touch, taste, smell and from these senses
we understand the world…but he was skeptical and by that he meant
the ancient idea whereas our senses are unreliable and not to be trusted…
so what does the modern age do that the ancient age was unable to do?
the modern age creates tools that aid in our senses ability to gather knowledge…
we have tools that aid in our vision, telescopes and microscopes and
aids for our hearing like radio telescopes…
we use such aids for our own personal use like glasses and hearing aids…
as I use both, I can tell this, the act of using tools like this is they distort…
for example, my hearing “hears” a noise and then it interprets it,
these tools we use to aid us, stand between us and the event they
are used for…I don’t hear noise directly, I hear the hearing aid
understanding of the noise…to state it slightly differently,
the hearing aid mediates between the noise and me…
tools are like that, they mediate between the event and
the person using the tool…
now one might think the difference is slight, but is it?
once again, in my experience, we have to think about human communication…
communication is not just the words said, but HOW the words are said…
you can have one sentence mean different things by how you say that sentence…
for example, take the sentence, you agree with me…
can be taken several different ways depending on the inflection
of the voice and the context of the sentence…
you agree with me? can be a straight forward question…
you agree with me? you dam well agree with me or I am firing your happy ass…
you agree with me? agree with me so we can convince the boss of this idea…
the target is the third party, not the two having the conversation…
and I am sure there are other ways this sentence can be used…
so what does this have to do with hearing aids?
I can hear the words, you agree with me? but I don’t often
hear the subtlety in the way the sentence is asked…
and sometimes the question asked is about the subtlety in
the question…sometimes the hearing aid won’t catch the
subtlety in a question, the inflection in the question and so
I misunderstand what is really being asked… do you agree with me?
oftentimes is not about whether you agree or disagree but is about something
else and that something else is hidden in the subtle way a question is asked…
the use of tool to expand our senses means we aren’t getting the sense results
directly from the source to the senses, but that the tool used mediates between
the event and the senses… we are one step away from direct experience of the event
we are trying to experience… so understand that the use of tools, to understand
experiences are not direct understanding of that experience, the tool mediates
between the event in question and the senses…
is this true of all tools? I would say yes, we don’t pound in the nail with our hands,
we use a hammer and that hammer mediates between the nail and our hands…
is this true of the tool we call “logic”? Once again, I would say yes…
we use logic to mediate between the event in question, say, math
and our senses… we experience math differently because we use
logic to understand the math… we experience math second hand, as it were,
the logic mediates between the math and our senses…
but what does this mean? what does the understanding, that when we use
tools that we then don’t experience the event directly but we experience
it second hand through the use of the tool…
I am not sure…
Kropotkin