Intellectual Acuity
I think that reality is multilayered like an onion. We live our life on the surface rarely penetrating the surface of reality. To seek a comprehension beyond the surface requires some kind of intellectual acuity.
Most people are familiar with the arts as a form of intellectual acuity but far fewer have any recognition of self-learning through books as a means of developing an intellectual acuity that can penetrate the surface reality.
What do you think of this opinion?
I’m going to poke you with a few questions, not because I disagree, but because I think that what you said is kind of vague, and I need more ideas.
What kind of books are we talking about?
And what is this reality that we are talking about?
The “arts and books” you speak of is only a fraction of reality. There is so much more going on in the real world. If you limit it to only arts and books, you’re missing out on other kinds of intellects. In which there are many.
The books depend upon the interests of the individual. I prefer non fiction but others may well prefer quality literature and poetry. It is important that the individual is motivated by a search for understanding that which s/he desires to comprehends.
I might use movie as my analogy. I think that our day-to-day lives are like watching a movie. We can go a step beyond that reality by examining backstage to see how a movie is made. Then we can seek understanding of a deeper level by searching out how the director and producer put together a movie with the writers. Then we might find a deeper reality by examining the reality of the movie studios or the independent makers of movies.
In the world of physics we might study Newton and his laws. Or we might go further and try to comprehend Relativity. Then we might go further and seek to understand QM.
We might study one million other things in our quest for understanding our world beyond its appearance.
I agree completely. Just recently I examined the book “Frames of Mind” by Gardner. Gardner speaks of multiple intelligences; Linguistic, Musical, Logical-Mathematical, Bodily-Kinesthetic, Spatial, and Personal.
One can use books to learn and increase one’s understanding of the world? You don’t say!
Not only that, but he’s taking the bold and radical stance that learning and increasing one’s understanding is a…get this…GOOD thing!! I’m quite frightened by such forward-looking thinking, and I think I’ll go watch American Idol until any urge toward self-improvement has gone away.
That was my initial thoughts also but I have the feeling he is veering towards something more complex but perhaps not being able to state it quite yet.
For my take, I read a lot of fiction on varied subjects. And from this I have learned things which in later years I have come to need. Others have studied a subject or read non-fiction on a subject but their knowledge wasn’t particularly greater than mine on the subject.* So if the OP is saying ‘Can we learn when we are not actively trying to do so’ then i’d have to say yes.
*I’m not talking things like quantum physics here!
I think that reality is not like an onion at all. I think it takes on the appearance of having layers of varying levels of importance and subtlety by virtue of how we perceive it – and of course by how we have to talk about it.
The thing that is like an onion (or to be more precise, the thing that it is useful to talk about as though it were like an onion) is between your ears. And only the intellect thinks that intellectual acuity is of paramount importance.
Self learning through books seems to me as good a place as any to start, especially for a person given to approaching life primarily through the intellect.
well, there was this philosopher guy who once said somethin’ similar back in Ancient Greece, ya see–some guy named Plato. But he didn’t know too much 'bout 35-mm movies, so he talked about a cave with shadows and stuff…
http://faculty.washington.edu/smcohen/320/cave.htm
(and now for a serious comment: )
I loved taking philosophy 101 when I started university. It really did improve my intellectual actuity.
Zelie
In general I read history, science, and light philosophy (I generally do not try to read original stuff but read from a secondary source).
For example I have been trying to understand the meaning of ‘understand’ for a long time and I think I now have an answer. I will stop the effort but I constantly am prepared to take it up again should something reignite my doubt as to my answer or that I find something that will add to my understanding.
I have been working at understanding “Philosophy in the Flesh” for months and I now feel that I understand the fundamentals of the theory but I will continue to work on ‘rounding out’ my understanding. I think that this theory defined in this book will become the first paradigm for cognitive science. It is a revolutionary theory that I recommend at every opportunity.
I also have read a bit of Dewey. I like Dewey especially his “Habits and Will” which focuses on the importance of habit in our character development and in our development of an intellectual life. I got started in the matter of understanding while studying empathy. Empathy is a process of imagination constructing something that will help a person to understand another person.
For example one might try to construct in imagination something about the life of a terrorist so as to understand why that person could do such a thing. The caring is associated with the desire to understand because in understanding ones enemy can best combat that enemy.
The terrorist need not be the object of caring. The caring is associated with combating the terrorist. I care enough about fighting terrorism that I will make the effort of empathy.
I do not mean caring to be necessarily or even occasionally associated with caring for the well being of some one. I use the word care to mean that I care about understanding this domain of knowledge.
I am a great fan of CT (Critical Thinking) and the effort to introduce this subject into our schools and colleges. CT is the fundamental requirement for self-actuated learning, I think.
Just recently I examined the book “Frames of Mind” by Gardner. Gardner speaks of multiple intelligences; Linguistic, Musical, Logical-Mathematical, Bodily-Kinesthetic, Spatial, and Personal.
I graduated as an engineer and after about 10 years I decided I wanted to teach and deided to get a graduate degree in philosophy. This study of philosophy was a major happening for me. Although I did not get my PhD and went back to engineering my life was effected signifiantly as a result of that study.
Signifiantly. You mean both significantly and defiantly? If so, that would explain a lot. 
Yes but by the same token, seeing “The Making of…” usually ruins one’s ability to suspend disbelief and enjoy the film. I expect this problem extends to life in general as your metaphor suggests. I often think I’d be happier if I were dumber.
Well, damn me for not showing up sooner today. You said what I was going to!
Since you were an engineer, you know that things can be viewed on various levels - system, sets of components, sets of subcomponents, etc. Reality is the same way. At the highest level we’re just specks on a planet, at the lowest level we’re composed of atoms and quarks and, perhaps, strings.
Each level can be viewed in different ways also. A ruler can be seen as a straightedge, or as something to measure with, or something to whack someone with.
Do you have any particular levels you’re looking at? No one has the capacity to hold them all in our heads at one time.
Intellectual acuity is for the purpose of suspending belief in the cape being held by the Matador. The bull needs to believe less in the wiggling cape. Do not believe ‘ignorance is bliss’, that is the motto of the bull just before the knife.
What interests me most, at this time, is our bifurcated world that is created by our great ability to reason in matters of technology but our inability to reason well in matters of living together without destroying our self. We rate an A+ for instrumental rationality and an F for communicative action rationality. And it is the gap between these two forms of rationality that is going to be the death of us if we do not find some answers.
But I think that if enough people pursued the learning that interests them we could began to really use our great brain to find a solution. We need more people who can synthesize. Wisdom is in the ability to synthesize.
We can clearly see that there is no bi-univocal correspondence between linear signifying links or archi-writing, depending on the author, and this multireferential, multidimensional machinic catalysis. The symmetry of scale, the transversality, the pathic non-discursive character of their expansion: all these dimensions remove us from the logic of the excluded middle and reinforce us in our dismissal of the ontological binarism we criticised previously. A machinic assemblage, through its diverse components, extracts its consistency by crossing ontological thresholds, non-linear thresholds of irreversibility, ontological and phylogenetic thresholds, creative thresholds of heterogenesis and autopoiesis. The notion of scale needs to be expanded to consider fractal symmetries in ontological terms.
I think that settles it.