The Integration of Knowledge

Carlos Blanco

The Integration of Knowledge

by Carlos Blanco (Author)
©2020, Monographs, XX, 520 Pages
Theology & Philosophy

Series: History and Philosophy of Science, Volume 9

The Integration of Knowledge explores a theory of human knowledge through a model of rationality combined with some fundamental logical, mathematical, physical and neuroscientific considerations. Its ultimate goal is to present a philosophical system of integrated knowledge, in which the different domains of human understanding are unified by common conceptual structures, such that traditional metaphysical and epistemological questions may be addressed in light of these categories. Philosophy thus becomes a "synthesizer" of human knowledge, through the imaginative construction of categories and questions that may reproduce and even expand the conceptual chain followed by nature and thought, in an effort to organize the results of the different branches of knowledge by inserting them in a broader framework.

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Title
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About the author
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Contents
Acknowledgments
Preface
PART I A Model of Rationality
- 1. The Nature of Rationality, Knowledge and Thinking
  - 1.1 The General Concept of Rationality
  - 1.2 Postulates of a Theory of Knowledge
  - 1.3 The Meaning of “Thinking”
    - 1.3.1 The Association and Integration of Ideas
    - 1.3.2 Knowledge as “Justified Information”
  - 1.4 Truth, Completeness and Rationality
    - 1.4.1 A Critique of Solipsism
    - 1.4.2 Truth, Totality and the Noumenon
  - 1.5 Rationality and Human Psychology
    - 1.5.1 On Some Models of Rationality in the Social Sciences
    - 1.5.2 Global Rationality, Temporal Scope and the Opportunity Costs of Being Rational
    - 1.5.3 Objectivity, Subjectivity and Rationality
- 2. The Form of Thinking
  - 2.1 The Scope of Logic
    - 2.1.1 A Priori and A Posteriori Elements
    - 2.1.2 Beyond the Transcendental Realm
    - 2.1.3 Fundamental Logical Principles
  - 2.2 Logical Consequence and the Idea of Causality; Mind and Thermodynamics
    - 2.2.1 Causality and the Exchange of Energy
    - 2.2.2 Human Logic and Natural Laws
  - 2.3 The Concept of Truth and Its Evolutionary Understanding
    - 2.3.1 Efficiency as Biological Rule
    - 2.3.2 Truth and Efficiency
- 3. The Limits to Knowledge
  - 3.1 Analytic and Synthetic Limits
  - 3.2 Relativity, Uncertainty and the Possibility of Physical Measurement
    - 3.2.1 On the Notions of “Measurement” and “Frame of Reference”
    - 3.2.2 A World without Relativity
    - 3.2.3 Quantum Uncertainty and Relativity
PART II Ontology and the Natural Sciences
- 4. The Epistemological Dimensions of the Scientific Enterprise
  - 4.1 Logical and Ontological Continuity in Nature
  - 4.2 Scientific Explanations as Models of Mechanisms
    - 4.2.1 Imagination, Reason and Experience
    - 4.2.2 The Design of Scientific Models
    - 4.2.3 The Process of Validation
    - 4.2.4 Explanations, Laws and Functions
  - 4.3 The Alphabet of Categories and the Condensation of Complexity
    - 4.3.1 Conceptual Atoms and the “Factorization” of Complexity
    - 4.3.2 Models, Systems and the Principle of Selection
    - 4.3.3 Complexity and the Fundamental Categories of Physics and Chemistry
    - 4.3.4 The Whole, the Parts and the Possibility of Reduction
- 5. Mathematical and Scientific Laws: Rationality in Thought and Nature
  - 5.1 Mathematical Laws
    - 5.1.1 Mathematics as “Rationalized Imagination”
    - 5.1.2 Brief Historical Sketch
    - 5.1.2.1 The Rationalization of Infinity
    - 5.1.2.2 Logicism, Intuitionism and Formalism
    - 5.1.3 Axioms, Foundations and Presuppositions
  - 5.2 Physical Laws
    - 5.2.1 Patterns of Rationality in Nature: Elementary Particles, Laws and Constants
    - 5.2.2 The Laws of Nature
    - 5.2.2.1 The Character of the Laws of Nature and the Problem of Determinism
    - 5.2.2.2 The System of Laws of Nature
  - 5.3 Biological Laws
    - 5.3.1 The Principles of Variation and Selection
    - 5.3.2 Laws, Complexity and Emergence
    - 5.3.3 Towards a Definition of Life: Cells, Genes and Evolution
PART III The Human World
- 6. On the Mechanisms of the Human Mind
  - 6.1 Philosophy and Neurobiology
  - 6.2 Brain, Complexity and the Qualitative Dimension
  - 6.3 Instruction, Competition and Cooperation
  - 6.4 From Molecules to Thinking
    - 6.4.1 On the Nature of Perception
    - 6.4.2 Towards a Neurobiological Theory of Consciousness
    - 6.4.3 The Concept of Consciousness
    - 6.4.3.1 The Problematic Definition of Consciousness
    - 6.4.3.2 The Conscious, the Unconscious and Subjectivity
    - 6.4.3.3 The Mind as the Limit of Matter
    - 6.4.4 Mind, Subjectivity and Freedom
- 7. Creativity and the Bridge between the Sciences and the Humanities
  - 7.1 The Neurobiological Understanding of Creativity
  - 7.2 The Scope and Limits of Analogy
  - 7.3 Paradoxes, Incompleteness and the Nature of Human Creativity
- 8. The Foundations of the Social Sciences
  - 8.1 Difficulties of the Scientific Method in the Social Domain
  - 8.2 Analytic and Synthetic Strategies
  - 8.3 The Social Sciences and the Problem of Agency
  - 8.4 On the Principles of a Social Theory
- 9. Knowledge and the Development of the Human Mind
  - 9.1 Technology, Ideas and Social Change
  - 9.2 The Explanatory Value of Information
  - 9.3 Knowledge, Imagination and Mental Frameworks
- 10. The Possibilities of Humanity
  - 10.1 Art, natura naturans and the Creation of Worlds
  - 10.2 Knowledge and Human Realization
    - 10.2.1 The Convergence of Knowledge and Ethics
    - 10.2.2 Automation, Work and Social Progress
  - 10.3 The Infinite Scope of Questioning

Pages:

XX, 520

Year:

2020

ISBN (HARDBACK):

9781433167140 (Active)

ISBN (EPUB):

9781433167201 (Active)

ISBN (PDF):

9781433167195 (Active)

DOI:

10.3726/b15380

Language:

English

Published:

New York, Bern, Berlin, Bruxelles, Oxford, Wien, 2020. XX, 520 pp.

Carlos Blanco is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Universidad Pontificia Comillas, Spain. He holds two Ph.D.s (in philosophy and theology) and a master’s degree in chemistry. He is the author of twenty books and over fifty papers dealing with epistemology, philosophy of science, history of ideas and Egyptology.

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The Integration of Knowledge

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