Practical Cognition

Title	Practical Cognition
# of Words	725
# of Pages (250 words per page double spaced)	2.9

Practical Cognition

Practical Cognition

Theories of Knowledge (Karl Marx)

In his early years of writing, Karl Marx's ideas were similar to American
Pragmatism, especially his ideas about epistemology. He defines truth in a
pragmatic fashion and explains cognition in terms of practical needs of the
human being. While some of his ideas were not followed to their logical
conclusion, nor made sense, the fundamentals of his epistemology contain
valuable ideas which can be viewed as furthering pragmatism as a respectable
philosophy. His theory of cognition states that cognition is a biological
function of the human which is used as a tool for his survival.

Marx defines truth in a pragmatic way. The truth value of a judgement is due to
the usefulness of accepting or rejecting the judgement. A statement is true if
accepting it makes a positive difference or has a helpful influence and it is
false if accepting it causes difficulty or dissatisfaction. The meaning of a
statement is the practical result of accepting the statement. In general, then,
the truth or falsity of a statement is relative, not only to the individual
accepting or rejecting the statement, but also to the circumstances in which
that person finds himself. Truth is relative, but Marx is not an extreme
relativist (no one to be taken seriously is) because there is a constraint to
how relative the truth can be; Humans are making the truth judgements, and
humans have a common element, viz . their needs, which do not vary greatly
between people.

Humans are in contact with nature at a fundamental level. The human
understanding of nature is a consequence of the fact that nature confronts
humans when they try to fulfill their needs. This is the case with any organism,
and each species reacts according to the tools of that species. One of the human
tools is the intellect, and it works through the cognition of the perception of
elements of nature. Cognition occurs as the organizing of sensory data into
categories. Without the ability to make generalizations, man would not be able
to think. Moreover, the human capacity to think is exactly the same as making
abstractions about experience. There is nothing more to descriptions of the
world than those abstractions. Details about the world are described only in
terms of generalizations, for if there we...

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