1. The world of a person's life is dominated by his cognitive world. Because each person's "ideas" constitute the core content of their "living methods". This is easy to understand: everyone lives according to their "ideas". "Thoughts" are equal to people's cognitive world, and "living methods" are equal to people's living worlds.
2. A person's cognitive world construction is governed by three factors. The first is the source of information. Second logical analysis ability. The third is cultural traditions. Because the essence of cognition is the input, processing, digestion and output of information. Without a source of information, there is no cognition. The input, processing, digestion and output of information can only produce effective cognition if it follows the principle of orderliness. The essence of logic is the orderly principle of information input, processing, digestion and output. Therefore, without logic, there is no real sense of cognition. Different cultural traditions have different effects on the construction of man's cognitive world. Anthropologists have given a large number of examples of this.
3. If the source of information is open and unpolluted, a person's cognitive world will have a good opportunity to develop. So what authoritarians (such as Hitler) liked to do was limit and contaminate the nation's sources of information.
4. Receiving systematic formal logic education since childhood, logical analysis ability can be trained. It is particularly important to note here that the so-called logic here refers to the formal logic of Aristotle's tradition, not the Hegelian dialectical logic. With the ability of logical analysis, a person has the ability to recognize the world of self-help. On the other hand, if a person's logic education is cut off from a young age, thus losing the best opportunity to develop logical analysis ability, it is inevitable to lose the ability to save oneself from the cognitive world. Authoritarians (such as Hitler) liked to cut off the logic education of their citizens.
5. If a person's source of information is controlled or contaminated, and logic education is cut off, the creation of his cognitive world is left with only the last pedestal: cultural traditions. If the cultural tradition in which he or she is found lacks a critical spirit, the person will unfortunately end up living in a cognitive black hole, with the whole consciousness of the mind controlled by others, living as some people want him or her to live.
6. Why is liberal arts called liberal education? Before explaining this, I need to explain the meaning of "freedom "libertas". Freedom has two meanings or two meanings.
7. In the Roman tradition, "liberty (Latin: libertas)" is the instrument of distinction between "man in the natural sense (homo)" and "man in the legal sense (latin: persona)": the former has only life in the natural sense, "things" belonging to the legal world (Latin: res), the latter has life not only in the natural sense, but also "life" in the legal world, "man" in the legal world (Latin: persona, Person). In a nutshell, freedom in the first sense refers to man's external identity, a legal attribute of man as a man rather than a thing.
8. Freedom in the second sense is the inner identity of man. In order to break the blame of the original sin theory, Augustine developed the second layer of "freedom". Scripture says that Adam and Eve were created by the Creator. However, the Scriptures also say that both Adam and Eve had original sin and were expelled from the Garden of Eden. If Adam and Eve were created by the Creator and Adam and Eve sinned, should Adam and Eve's sin be attributed to their Creator? This was a conundrum that Augustine faced. Imagine this: Musk made a robot With highly developed intelligence, Robert, after being created, committed a crime, then, the cause of this crime is in Musk, or in Robert? In our legal sense today, Robert is a created "thing," despite its highly developed intelligence. Therefore, Robert's sin is not in Robert, but in his creator, Musk. Because the law cannot hold a "thing (Latin: res)" responsible, only the "persona" who created it. How did Augustine solve the above puzzles? Augustine believed that adam and Eve created by the Creator were not "things" but "homo", but that this "homo" "had" "persona" of the Creator from the beginning of creation. Unlike the Roman tradition, the Christian tradition holds that "man in the natural sense (Homo) is born "man in the legal sense (Persona in the Legal Sense)". However, the "law" here is not a law in the sense of "national law", but a law in the sense of "natural law". This means that adam and Eve can blame themselves for the cause of their original sin, because they are not "things," but "persona" or homos with "persona."
Since Adam and Eve are not things, but persons with "persona", they have the reason (Latin ratio) and will of the Creator (Latin: voluntas). The next question is, is the cause of their sin attributable to their reason, or to their will? The cause of sin involves the question of good and evil, and the will is the ability to choose between good and evil. Therefore, the cause of sin needs to be found in the will. If the will of Adam and Eve is completely subordinate to the will of the Creator—just as an uncivilized child does exactly according to the will of his parents—then we cannot attribute the cause of his original sin to the will of Adam and Eve, but only to the will of his subordinates. If the will of Adam and Eve were independent and free, then the cause of their original sin could be attributed to their own will. It was here that Augustine achieved a philosophical breakthrough: the key to being human is his independent and free will. Because Adam and Eve were endowed with "persona," they were people of reason and will. And because their will is independent and free, and because it is the ability to choose between good and evil, the root of Adam and Eve's crime lies in the misuse of their free will, that is, deviation from the teachings of the Creator. The second connotation of freedom in the history of ideas was thus discovered.
9. From the perspective of the above two levels of freedom, "born free" also has two connotations. Man in the natural sense (Homo) naturally becomes a person in the legal sense (Persona) through the natural fact of "birth". This is the first connotation of "born free". The second connotation is that man's "will" naturally remains independent and free. Inferred from these two connotations, the restriction of a person's freedom is either to limit his legal status or to limit the independence and freedom of his will. The first layer of restrictions belongs to the explicit restriction of freedom, and the second layer of restrictions belongs to the implicit restriction of freedom. "I want X" (= expression of will) because "I see X as good" (= expression of reason). If you endorse this, then you are endorsing the relationship between reason and the will: the independent and free use of the will subject to rational judgment. If someone manipulates your ability to judge rationally, the independent and free state of your will will will be limited. The first premise of rational judgment is the ability to speak, that is, the ability to act as the third logos as language, and the second premise is the ability to reason. Liberal arts has seven skills: grammar, logic, rhetoric, arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and music theory. The first three arts are called the first three arts, which are used to train people's "speech" ability, and the last four skills are called "last four arts", of which arithmetic and geometry are regarded as theoretical mathematics, astronomy and music theory are regarded as applied mathematics, and they are used to train people's "rational" ability. When a person has the most basic "speech" ability and "reason" ability, he has the ability to "I regard X as good" (= rational expression) and can independently and freely express "I want X" (= expression of will). On the other hand, if a person's most basic "speech" ability and "reason" ability are conceived by others, it is difficult to realize the true sense of free will, and therefore it is impossible to recognize the inner freedom of man as a human being. It is in this sense that liberal arts is called liberal education.
10. "Logica" in liberal arts is the central system. Because the first art of the first three arts (grammar) needs logic to complete, and the third art of the first three arts (rhetoric, that is, the study of great classics) also needs logic to complete. The latter four arts are based on logic as the keel.
Logic education is about human nature, and the task is heavy and the road is long!
October 9, 2021 Written in Beibei, Chongqing