Well, A Sign Of Intelligence!

[Doctordick]

Just a quick note inspired by a Private note from Anssi.

 

Check out Le Moigne’s Defense of Constructivism

 

The critics, such as the Comité des Études et Rapports de l’Académie des

Sciences de Paris, who vituperate against any questioning of ‘objectivity’, never find it

necessary to explain a rational method that enables them to attain objective truth.

This does not inspire confidence in the epistemological basis from which they launch

their attacks. The fact that philosophers have unsuccessfully tried for more than two

thousand years to bypass the logical arguments of the sceptics, is apparently not

sufficient to dismantle a dogmatic position. This is why we are immensely grateful for

the patient, measured defense of reason that Jean-Louis Le Moigne has led for many

years.

 

I suspect that Hypography should open another forum: "Scientific Metaphysics" perhaps?

 

Also from Anssi:

 

Also it might please you to know that that co-worker of mine seems to understand the issue to the point that he realized that the defined fundamental particles are not quite realistic, but rather sociological constructs that are ultimately just representational elements, and that other cultures could represent reality in completely different form.

That brings up a philosophic issue which we have never addressed which I had hoped to reach someday. The fact that, for all possible internally consistent explanations, there must exist an interpretation which obeys my fundamental equation has some far reaching consequences.

 

Suppose some other culture could represent reality in a completely different form. Before we could examine that “alternate form”, we would have to first learn their language and build a sufficiently sophisticated conceptual picture of the universe as they see it to understand the content of that language. But, if all internally consistent explanations must obey my equation, it must be possible to map their “mental picture” (as a solution to that same equation) into our “mental picture”; without any conflict (so long as both pictures are truly internally consistent).

 

This implies that, so long as there were no inconsistencies in their picture, we would eventually come to the conclusion it was identical to ours. Take that one step further: how do I know your mental picture of reality (and/or your experience) bears any resemblance to mine (or your father, your mother, your girl friend or anyone else for that matter)?

 

That is why I, on several occasions, have expressed my fundamental equation as very analogous to the Dewey Decimal System for cataloging books. Just as the Dewey Decimal System has nothing to say about “Books”; my equation has nothing to say about “Reality”. It is a mere mechanism for cataloging our experiences in an internally self consistent manner.

 

This also brings up another issue. Most peoples mental picture of reality is not internally self consistent. How does that impact our communications? What it does is create flaws in that mapping I just brought up. When we attempt to understand someone else's perspective we map what we believe to be identical concepts into our understanding of those concepts. Our inability to understand the stupidity of others might be no more than an error in the mapping. They have perhaps worried about different issues of internal consistency than we have. There is a whole open issue of philosophy embedded in that perspective.

 

Have fun -- Dick

[Qfwfq]

When we attempt to understand someone else's perspective we map what we believe to be identical concepts into our understanding of those concepts. Our inability to understand the stupidity of others might be no more than an error in the mapping.

Think about that first, every time you are about to make certain remarks about the folks you are discussing things with.

[dduckwessel]

I hope I have not misconstrued the intent of the following (much of the article is above my head) but it well-states my own frustration:

 

“More than once, thinkers in the domain of epistemology, who endangered

the basic conventional assumptions, were effectively discredited by the dogmatists.

The novel approaches they suggested were misunderstood or deliberately

misrepresented so that the mainstream could flow on, undisturbed.”

[dduckwessel]

Is it true that until an abstract image of something is formed in one mind, others cannot grasp it? But once there is an abstact image then others (even in other parts of the world) suddenly understand it - what some people call 'collective consciousness'?

 

I know it's a metaphysical perspective but I've often wondered.

 

This is probably a poor example but I distinctly recall when my kids and I watched 'The Matrix' for the first time we were very confused. We could not initially grasp that it was portraying two different realities played out at the same time for one individual. Afterwards when I saw it, we did not know how we could have been confused about it in the first place.

[Rade]

Excellent thread topic, thank you DD.

 

Here is a 2005 paper by Le Moigne:

 

http://www.intelligence-complexite.org/fileadmin/docs/ateliers/0505formalismes.pdf

 

Here is a review of the philosophy of Le Moigne, apparently reviewed by Le Moigne:

 

http://archive.mcxapc.org/docs/ateliers/erikss1.htm

 

---

 

But, not all agree with the approach.

 

--

 

Critical Review of Le Moigne (from Wiki):

 

Numerous criticisms have been leveled at Constructivist epistemology. The most common one is that it either explicitly advocates or implicitly reduces to relativism. This is because it takes the concept of truth to be a socially "constructed" (and thereby socially relative) one. This leads to the charge of self-refutation: if what is to be regarded as "true" is relative to a particular social formation, then this very conception of truth must itself be only regarded as being "true" in this society. In another social formation, it may well be false. If so, then social constructivism itself would be false in that social formation. Further, one could then say that social constructivism could be both true and false simultaneously.

 

Another criticism of constructivism is that it holds that the concepts of two different social formations be entirely different and incommensurate. This being the case, it is impossible to make comparative judgements about statements made according to each worldview. This is because the criteria of judgement will themselves have to be based on some worldview or other. If this is the case, then it brings into question how communication between them about the truth or falsity of any given statement could be established.

 

Social Constructivists often argue that constructivism is liberating because it either (1) enables oppressed groups to reconstruct "the World" in accordance with their own interests rather than according to the interests of dominant groups in society, or (2) compels people to respect the alternative worldviews of oppressed groups because there is no way of judging them to be inferior to dominant worldviews. As the Wittgensteinian philosopher Gavin Kitching[4] argues, however, constructivists usually implicitly presuppose a deterministic view of language which severely constrains the minds and use of words by members of societies: they are not just "constructed" by language on this view, but are literally "determined" by it. Kitching notes the contradiction here: somehow the advocate of constructivism is not similarly constrained. While other individuals are controlled by the dominant concepts of society, the advocate of constructivism can transcend these concepts and see though them. A similar point is made by Edward Mariyani-Squire[5]

 

--

 

I offer another constraint of the approach of Le Moigne. By definition, a phenomenological hypothesis is constrained to analysis of the black box (or black machine). Details of the process inside the box are by definition outside explanation, outside interest of Le Moigne. As example, the basic biological equation of photosynthesis CO2 + H2O + photons + chlorophyll --> glucose + O2 is a Le Moigne type phenomenological hypothesis. The limit of the Le Moigne approach is that it cannot explain the origin of the O in O2 from the black box, is it from CO2 or H2O input functions? The answer to this question requires use of a representative hypothesis, to look to the details of the black box, a type of thinking outside the phenomenological hypothesis. Thus, the approach of Le Moigne can never lead to the development of a fundamental law concerning the process of explanation, details are outside phenomenology.

[AnssiH]

Numerous criticisms have been leveled at Constructivist epistemology. The most common one is that it either explicitly advocates or implicitly reduces to relativism. This is because it takes the concept of truth to be a socially "constructed" (and thereby socially relative) one. This leads to the charge of self-refutation: if what is to be regarded as "true" is relative to a particular social formation, then this very conception of truth must itself be only regarded as being "true" in this society. In another social formation, it may well be false. If so, then social constructivism itself would be false in that social formation. Further, one could then say that social constructivism could be both true and false simultaneously.

 

A simpler version of that whole paragraph would be "if nothing is true, then 'nothing is true' is false". Or "if everything is uncertain, how can you know for sure that everything is uncertain?". It's just that same old word play...

 

Actually that argument reflects a simple paradigm conflict. From a constructivistic paradigm, the "socially constructed truth" refers to the ontological correctedness of the choice of "mental terminology" as to how reality is being understood. That includes the careful definitions of scientific explanations, and the everyday ideas about reality. To say it is socially constructed means that the chosen terminology contains many conventions, that were chosen accidentally over some other equally valid conventions, and those other choices would have led us to believe to the existence of very different kinds of fundamental entities.

 

Evidently, someone reading it from different paradigm, can make the assumption that socially constructed truth also refers to the self-consistency of definitions. It doesn't. Constructivists are still very much concerned with self-consistency. In fact, you could say that is the only thing they are concerned with. The "sociological truth" just refers to what can become known about something that was fundamentally "unknown", not what can we know about something that we can simply decide to be so (such as mathematical definitions).

 

Another criticism of constructivism is that it holds that the concepts of two different social formations be entirely different and incommensurate. This being the case, it is impossible to make comparative judgements about statements made according to each worldview. This is because the criteria of judgement will themselves have to be based on some worldview or other. If this is the case, then it brings into question how communication between them about the truth or falsity of any given statement could be established.

 

It brings that into question doesn't it. DD actually referred to that issue already in the OP, and think about this; isn't this always the case with any human communication. Our understanding is always semantical, we just try to interpret each others, and we cannot actually compare our interpretation to what was intented. In that sense, perfect communication is not possible, but it is not necessary either.

 

The only way to communicate is to try and understand the meanings used by the other party. That can be very hard, depending on how far apart the personal terminologies of the participants are. Case in point, what I just commented above about paradigm conflict.

 

Social Constructivists often argue that constructivism is liberating because it either (1) enables oppressed groups to reconstruct "the World" in accordance with their own interests rather than according to the interests of dominant groups in society, or (2) compels people to respect the alternative worldviews of oppressed groups because there is no way of judging them to be inferior to dominant worldviews.

 

Well we all must operate under our best assumptions, and what we all do regardless of our particular philosophical stance is that we try to find inconsistencies in our own ideas, and in the ideas expressed by others (or how we interpret their expression, under our best assumptions).

 

That's the way a constructivist would phrase the situation. "there's no way of judging other world views to be inferior" is an invalid interpretation of constructivist paradigm... ...at least that's what it looks like to me :)

 

As the Wittgensteinian philosopher Gavin Kitching[4] argues, however, constructivists usually implicitly presuppose a deterministic view of language which severely constrains the minds and use of words by members of societies: they are not just "constructed" by language on this view, but are literally "determined" by it. Kitching notes the contradiction here: somehow the advocate of constructivism is not similarly constrained. While other individuals are controlled by the dominant concepts of society, the advocate of constructivism can transcend these concepts and see though them. A similar point is made by Edward Mariyani-Squire[5]

 

This also sounds like someone has confused the stance "ontological beliefs are sociological conventions", with the idea that all epistemological tools would be sociological conventions.

 

I offer another constraint of the approach of Le Moigne. By definition, a phenomenological hypothesis is constrained to analysis of the black box (or black machine). Details of the process inside the box are by definition outside explanation, outside interest of Le Moigne. As example, the basic biological equation of photosynthesis CO2 + H2O + photons + chlorophyll --> glucose + O2 is a Le Moigne type phenomenological hypothesis. The limit of the Le Moigne approach is that it cannot explain the origin of the O in O2 from the black box, is it from CO2 or H2O input functions? The answer to this question requires use of a representative hypothesis, to look to the details of the black box, a type of thinking outside the phenomenological hypothesis. Thus, the approach of Le Moigne can never lead to the development of a fundamental law concerning the process of explanation, details are outside phenomenology.

 

Same response to this as above. Also note that the chosen ontological ideas are connected to underlying reality, via; "All organisms can be said to act intelligently when they are capable of learning, that is to say, when they abstract regularities from their experience and use these regularities to create and maintain their inner equilibrium."

 

That is to say, that even if you don't know what is the meaning of some set of events, it is possible to attach your own definitions about their meaning to any regularities. That is a reference to inductive reasoning, and definitions created in order to anticipate "the future" (in order to make intelligent choices that maintain "inner equilibrium", as he calls it). Your own definitions are essentially then a chosen language to express those regularities in some useful terminology. Like short-hand references to some massive amount of events (i,e. each individual and indivisible fundamental entity of your world view arose as an interpretation to some large collection of events).

 

When I say "events" there, I'm referring to whatever undefined information there is underlying our mentally experienced perceptions (i.e noumena).

 

So, it seems pretty clear that a lot of the criticism going back and forth between different philosophies has to do with incompatibility of paradigms. I have found that often people share quite similar ideas, but use incompatible terminology to discuss it.

 

What is interesting with DD's work is that, when you understand his intention properly, it is just cold logic that represents explicit relationship between things that we wouldn't intuitively expect to have any connection.

 

-Anssi

[Rade]

..That is to say, that even if you don't know what is the meaning of some set of events, it is possible to attach your own definitions about their meaning to any regularities. That is a reference to inductive reasoning, and definitions created in order to anticipate "the future" (in order to make intelligent choices that maintain "inner equilibrium", as he calls it). Your own definitions are essentially then a chosen language to express those regularities in some useful terminology.

Here you reference my example of how the basic biological equation of photosynthesis CO2 + H2O + photons + chlorophyll --> glucose + O2 is a Le Moigne type phenomenological hypothesis.

 

So, if I understand you, you are saying that even if we don't know the meaning of why or how the O2 is being released (as a set of events) during the photosynthetic process, it is possible to attach definitions to the process. But, what is gained by these definitions ? To say we don't know the meaning in this circumstance is to say we don't know if the O2 is released from (1) CO2, (2) H2O, (3) both, or (4) neither during the photosynthetic process inside the black box. Attaching definitions prior to meaning has nothing at all to do with "anticipation about the future" release of O2, and in no way can be used to help "make intelligent choices" about which of the possible mechanisms (1,2,3 or 4) is used by a plant to "maintain inner equilibrium" by the release of O2 molecules. Definitions can never be applied to any set of events prior to meaning, otherwise they would be meaningless definitions. Such an approach can only lead to grand delusion.

 

This is why I said that adoption of the phenomenology hypothesis approach of Le Moigne to anticipate the future and to gain meaning about black box events is a highly constrained program and can never lead to true meaning because it can never penetrate the black box of the circumstance. To gain true meaning of any set of repetitive events, such as how O2 is released from plants, one must reject phenomenology and adopt a representative hypothesis to falsify all possible ways O2 could be released (1,2,3 and 4). And of course history shows that biochemists did in fact reject the phenomenological approach and today we know which of the four possibilities provides true meaning to the set of O2 events. I have no problem with black box theory, it has its place in science. But I reject the claim that it can produce any fundamental law of true meaning, for the simple reason that it can never penetrate the black box, and here is where the meaning is to be found.

 

What is interesting with DD's work is that' date=' when you understand his intention properly, it is just cold logic that represents explicit relationship between things that we wouldn't intuitively expect to have any connection.[/quote']Could you please give a few examples of relationships between things that we learn from DD that we could not learn from intuition.

[Doctordick]

Think about that first, every time you are about to make certain remarks about the folks you are discussing things with.

Oh, I think about it all the time. Have you ever considered such things?

 

I think most of humanity is pretty well, “dumb as a rock”. My mother told me, “you learn more by listening than you do by talking” so I pretty well spent most of my life listening. The older I got, the more sense the universe made. But, when I finally started to talk, everyone just wanted to talk back. Listening is, indeed, a very rare talent. :(

 

Have fun -- Dick

[dduckwessel]

If one idea is expressed two very different ways but the semantics of one is rejected, isn't that emotional rejection rather than intellectual rejection?

 

For some reason the semantics of the one (even though concurrent with the other) has elicited a negative emotional response and the person is reacting not to the idea itself but to the memory of something associated with it?

 

I believe that it's virtually impossible to separate emotion from memory (if the emotion is strong enough) and visa versa. Therefore, is it important to critical thinking (obviously a politician wants to elicit an emotional response from his hearers at election time) to change the semantics so that it does not trigger an emotional response but rather an intellectual one?

[Rade]

Suppose some other culture could represent reality in a completely different form. Before we could examine that “alternate form”, we would have to first learn their language and build a sufficiently sophisticated conceptual picture of the universe as they see it to understand the content of that language.

Another example following your approach would be to suppose two observers A and B represent the reality of the elephant E from the face for A and from the rear for B. Thus, the two forms of reality of elephant are A-E and B-E. Each uses different words to communicate their respective pictures of the reality of the elephant to the other (eyes, ears, insert words for the other end?).

 

But' date=' if all internally consistent explanations must obey my equation, it must be possible to map their “mental picture” (as a solution to that same equation) into our “mental picture”; without any conflict (so long as both pictures are truly internally consistent).[/quote']I agree that the mental picture of the elephant when viewed from the front by A-E can be mapped into the mental picture from the rear by B-E.

 

This implies that' date=' so long as there were no inconsistencies in their picture, we would eventually come to the conclusion it was identical to ours.[/quote']Here is where the logic fails. Map all you want both mental pictures of A and B into any mathematical equation, and the end result will be that A will always come to the conclusion that the front of the elephant mental picture is not identical to the mental picture they obtained via the mapping process obtained from B concerning the picture of the rear of the elephant. The ONLY thing they would both reach agreement on is that they both have "a mental picture" of an entity called an "elephant". The one thing that would be known for certain by both A and B is that their respective mental pictures after the mapping are not identical, A would have only a fuzzy mental picture of B-E and likewise B would have only a fuzzy picture of A-E. Neither could claim to have identical mental pictures that the other has internally.

 

Take that one step further: how do I know your mental picture of reality (and/or your experience) bears any resemblance to mine (or your father' date=' your mother, your girl friend or anyone else for that matter)?[/quote']Because you know that to say you have a mental picture of reality [R], it is not necessary to know any of the specific details of [R], e.g., the resemblance comes from the fact that [R] exists as something you Y-R, girl-friend G-R, father F-R, mother M-R can form mental pictures of. But, Y-R can never know the identical mental picture of G-R, or F-R, or M-R, for there are only two ways to know anything, either from inside the thing, or from outside the thing.

 

That is why I, on several occasions, have expressed my fundamental equation as very analogous to the Dewey Decimal System for cataloging books. Just as the Dewey Decimal System has nothing to say about “Books”; my equation has nothing to say about “Reality”. It is a mere mechanism for cataloging our experiences in an internally self consistent manner.

But, just as each number in Dewey Decimal System forms a map of specific books, and thus says something about that book (this is the row shelf on which you will find the book to read), in exactly the same manner, your fundamental equation says something about Reality (to find this mental picture of reality speak to G-R, to find that mental picture speak to F-R, etc.). To find meaning using either Dewey Decimal System or your Fundamental Equation, one must unite Reality with Experience, with Reality taking priority, for before experience, first must exist something to experience.

 

This also brings up another issue. Most peoples mental picture of reality is not internally self consistent.

This is a false claim. All mental pictures of Reality are "internally" self consistent for that person (the mental picture of the elephant from the front by A-E is equally self consistent as the mental picture from the rear by B-E). The flaws in communication come about when either person claims that their mental picture of the elephant IS the only internally self consistent picture. When this occurs, all mapping is impossible because we make no attempt to understand that someone else's perspective is NOT identical to what we understand, resulting in the inability to understand that our own stupidity might be no more than an error in thinking we CAN map identical concepts of others into our understanding of those concepts.

[AnssiH]

Here you reference my example of how the basic biological equation of photosynthesis CO2 + H2O + photons + chlorophyll --> glucose + O2 is a Le Moigne type phenomenological hypothesis.

 

So, if I understand you, you are saying that even if we don't know the meaning of why or how the O2 is being released (as a set of events) during the photosynthetic process, it is possible to attach definitions to the process.

 

Heh, no that's not what I mean.

 

This is actually a typical mis-interpretation from your part, because you haven't picked up what we mean by "an explanation of undefined events". Molecules and elephants are not "undefined events", they are in themselves explanations of massive collections of undefined events. Or the way I often put it, they are your terminology, or your interpretation, of some collection of information whose explicit meaning is unknown. Just keep in mind that I am using quite different terminology than you are, see if you can figure out how I mean these things;

 

If you are looking at a circumstance where "O2 is being released", then that very perception is already an interpretation of some large collection of information (even if we are talking about a single molecule, the amount of raw information behind that simple perception is huge). That such and such collection of events is to be interpreted as an entity that we call "O2", is already a choice of terminology; that is the terminology with which we mentally understand some particular collection(s) of "events" (we can't actually know what the events are, we can only know what our interpretation of them is).

 

"An explanation" refers to some process or translation by which some collection of undefined events became interpreted as an "O2 molecule", or as any other set of defined entities. I,e. how do you get to the point that any objects or elements have been defined at all.

 

So think about your elephant analogy. You always start from the idea that some elements (in this case "an elephant") have got an objective existence to themselves. Where-as what we are talking about is the translation by which some collection of undefined events has become interpreted, according to some world view, as "an elephant".

 

Again, a constructivist stance is not that "elephants exist objectively, but we are able to transform them mentally into something different looking things". You think so because you are looking at this from your paradigm. The constructivist statement is that "elephants are part of our mental terminology with which we have come to categorize some collection of information".

 

Next time you try to come up with a thought experiment, think about it from the perspective that any indivisible element of your world view, is not based on an indivisible set of information.

 

So, if that gets you closer to what I was actually saying, then think about the fact that, even if the meaning of some information is unknown at the get-go, it is always logically possible to generate expectations about it via inductive reasoning (via regularities). But you still need to establish a useful terminology to express those expectations. A constructivistic epistemology refers to the argument that the terminology that we use, such as the definitions of modern physics, is just one possible language to express our expectations. I,e. that we should not imply that the elemental entities of our particular world views have objective existence, because many alternative ways to represent the same underlying undefined events exist. Rather, we should view our defined entities as short hand references to some regularities, within something whose true nature cannot be known.

 

Btw, you asked me long time ago to read some description of objectivism, I think of Ayn Rand or someone, and tell you what I thought. I said that depending on how she means it, I could agree or disagree. I said that because it is entirely possible that to her "reality exists objectively" just means that our ideas about reality are based on something "out there", while not meaning that our representation of that "something" could be known to be true to reality. It is possible that her ideas are largely identical to constructivistic stance, and that her own expression of disagreement to Kantian philosophy is based on her misinterpretation of what Kant meant. It is entirely possible to interpret her words in a way that they would actually agree with Kant's words, but the terminologies to discuss the issue are quite different.

 

Could you please give a few examples of relationships between things that we learn from DD that we could not learn from intuition.

 

That if you have any sufficiently large set of regularities within any sort of collection of events, those regularities can always become validly represented with terminology that is identical to the terminology we call modern physics. That is, it is possible to interpret any regularities via few universally applicable categorization choices, plus few universally applicable assumptions/approximations/simplifications (whatever you want to call them), and end up with the idea that you are looking at relativistic and/or quantum mechanical particles (different approximations lead to different definitions), that obey exactly the defined laws of physics.

 

The existence of that relationship implies that the terminology that we use to succesfully predict reality, is a general method of expressing inductive expectations. Which implies that our perceptions of persistent entites are essentially just our own terminology or translation of some collection of information.

 

That is a result that would not appear intuitively to most people. It contains quite many logical steps that make the important relationships unobvious. And on the other hand, the large amount of connections between our mentally understandable concepts makes it difficult to see how we understand things via circularly defined collection of concepts.

 

But it also explicitly demonstrates the epistemological reasons why quantum mechanical definitions institute the most accurate prediction mechanism we have created so far, regardless of whether or not quantum mechanics represents ontological reality at all. There are very clear epistemological reasons for its highly general validity, having nothing to do with reality itself being quantum mechanical (i.e, observer dependent or "non-local realistic" or a multi-verse or temporally transactional or whatever particular ontological interpretation one might have about quantum mechanics).

 

Likewise there are clear epistemological reasons to the validity of our everyday interpretation of the collection of information surrounding us. It just contains more approximations, but can be derived from the same epistemological premise.

 

-Anssi

[dduckwessel]

 

While other individuals are controlled by the dominant concepts of society, the advocate of constructivism can transcend these concepts and see though them. A similar point is made by Edward Mariyani-Squire[5]

--

 

 

 

On constructivism (a good deal is over my head but the basic concept I get and find it refreshing), I don't believe I have heard the term before (or possibly I did but paid no mind) but it makes so much sense to me. Thank you for your posts btw, they are very helpful to me. In fact all of the posts by everyone have helped me immensely. :)

[Qfwfq]

But, when I finally started to talk, everyone just wanted to talk back. Listening is, indeed, a very rare talent. :(

Is this the reason why you never listen to me and only talk back? :doh:

[dduckwessel]

The existence of that relationship implies that the terminology that we use to succesfully predict reality, is a general method of expressing inductive expectations. Which implies that our perceptions of persistent entites are essentially just our own terminology or translation of some collection of information.

 

That is a result that would not appear intuitively to most people. It contains quite many logical steps that make the important relationships unobvious.

 

Yes there were many steps involved...first it was seeing the 'strings of ideas' and then the realization that it was a clever puzzle...then understanding the 'rule of thumb' for interpreting (the principle of confirming)...then many, many hours of study and cross-referencing to separate ideas...too there were the glitches (synonymous words and whole phrases)...I enjoyed it so much it didn't seem like work.

 

 

And on the other hand, the large amount of connections between our mentally understandable concepts makes it difficult to see how we understand things via circularly defined collection of concepts.-Anssi

 

This is my present difficulty...how to adequately present it (terminology) so that others can see that which is so glaringly evident to me (but to be fair only after many years of study). Perhaps I need to go back to the beginning and show the steps I took?

[coldcreation]

Yes there were many steps involved...first it was seeing the 'strings of ideas' and then the realization that it was a clever puzzle...then understanding the 'rule of thumb' for interpreting (the principle of confirming)...then many, many hours of study and cross-referencing to separate ideas...too there were the glitches (synonymous words and whole phrases)...I enjoyed it so much it didn't seem like work.

 

This is my present difficulty...how to adequately present it (terminology) so that others can see that which is so glaringly evident to me (but to be fair only after many years of study). Perhaps I need to go back to the beginning and show the steps I took?

 

Dduckwessel,

 

Your dducktive vs inducktive reasoning seems to have little bearing on the topic of this thread.

Your personal ddifficulies are irrelevant here. You appear to be trying to wessel your 'closed thread' topic into this one, i.e., how you arrived at your biblical interpretation cconclusion.

 

There is nothing wrong with participating in other threads, but highjacking the topic for one's personal interests are a benefit to no one, especially not to you at this point.

 

 

[dduckwessel]

always the bulldog CC...the conversation is about me...however, maybe you have some wisdom there...perhaps I should leave it to the experts!

[coldcreation]

always the bulldog CC...

 

Ah, not always...

 

 

the conversation is about me...

 

This is exactly what I'm saying: the conversation is not about you and your endeavors to reinterpret the bible. Read the OP.

 

 

however, maybe you have some wisdom there...perhaps I should leave it to the experts!

 

You don't have to leave it to the experts. Everyone can have their say. Anyone can make mistakes. Interpretations are open to discussion and deliberation.

 

 

CC