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The Essence of Knowledge is Simulation and Logical Construct
来源:Lecture Notes in Arts, Literature and Linguistics. Volume:18. February 21-23,2022, pp.169-178. | 作者:Yong Duan | 发布时间: 2021-12-29 | 14836 次浏览 | 分享到:
It is an important basis of ontology to explain clearly what the subjective world contains. Frege and other Western philosophers were seriously wrong about concepts and the foundations of mathematics. The simulation is to mimic something with a fake product. People's knowledge about the world is also a kind of simulation. The content of knowledge is fake product relative to the object. The difference between people's knowledge and the object that is simulated can be made on purpose. The altered knowledge doesn't necessarily have real object corresponding to it. These thought games can bring about more value of knowledge and benefit in practice. The civilization and culture of human being mainly come from the innovative thought games. The logical construct of sentences describing something is a simulation of the thing or thought game. A symbol is a substance used to create an association in mind. Logical constructs have three advantages compared with real things: simple, useful, and stable. The concept is the logical construct produced after abstraction of things. Different degrees of abstraction can produce different degrees of concept. Abstract concepts of most disciplines retain more attributes, so they are not easy to analyze and study. The concepts of numbers and points, lines, planes and bodies are the results that retain few attributes after abstraction, which are simpler than concepts of other disciplines and easier to analyze and study.
Key Words: Epistemology; Logical construct; Concept; Simulation; Maths; Geometry

The thought games of maths and geometry can lead to many theorems and conclusions that can have a great guiding effect on real life. That is just like people who have played chess for a long time can learn many life philosophies from the game.

2. Geometric Shapes are Simple and Useful but Unreal

Geometry deals with points that have no size, lines that have no width, surfaces that have no thickness, and bodies that are regular. In the objective world all points have a size, all lines have a width, all planes have a thickness, no bodies are regular. Therefore, the points, lines, planes and bodies studied in geometry do not exist objectively, but are symbols and logical constructs imagined by human being.

Humans create logical constructs for simplicity. All concrete things are infinitely complex, subjective things are much simpler. When creating logical constructs, there is always a process from simple to complex. The logical constructs created at the beginning are all very simple. Geometric forms are simple and useful but unreal logical constructs.

For example, the surface area of a cube is equal to the length of the sides squared times 6, which is very simple and very precise. But if you want to calculate the surface area of an irregular rock, can you figure it out? There is no real cube in the objective world. A regular cube is a logical construct created in human mind and can only exist in the subjective world. The cube in the objective world is not a regular cube, all have various bumps or defects. Humans create regular cubes for the purpose of simplification, an abstraction from the real cube.

Some real things are useful, some real things are not useful. All we want is useful things. For example, a park wants to paint a huge stone, they need to calculate the surface area of the stone, and then decide how many barrels of paint to buy. They don't need a precise number, just a rough estimate. So they can simplify the irregular shape of the stone into regular polyhedron, which make it easier to calculate. The surface area of this regular polyhedron is a simple and useful but unreal number.