Dealing With Facticity: My Apology (and re-introduction)

The shame's on me Source

Too far, too fast.

And far too bold.

I apologize for my historical style with deep regret. I'm being coached now, and I request a reboot.

Not a do-over; it's far too late for that. What I ask of people (that is, anyone who reads this) is a fresh start from a different place.

I have no excuse for my past modes of operation. I'll do my utmost to develop my communication skills. I request coaching from anyone who will get at all confused or offended by anything that I'll write.

I've learned that I did too much too quickly, and that this was much less effective than proceeding more slowly and more surely might have been.

I've figured out (from Tigrilla's advice) that I've overburdened the space with TMI. I'm working to figure out how to manage this in order to support anyone who wants to understand what I've learned in the past fifty years about how people think and learn. My opinion is that knowledge of thinking and learning facilitates developing better thinking and learning.

I request feedback from each of you on my content and my style; a fresh start.

So:

Hi. I'm Mike. I've worked in education, and I've also studied science, philosophy and psychology. I'm here to broadcast a bit of news that I think might well be of importance to learners everywhere. Here it is:

It's possible that knowing the truth about things isn't the best way to know about things!

If this seems strange to you, and I believe (from my past experience) that it probably does to many people, then please hear what I mean by that.

That's one thing that I learned in my studies, and I've come to believe in that possibility rather strongly. However, I don't intend to persuade or convince anyone that my belief is true, and here's why.

The following quote is taken from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postmodern_philosophy.

I almost never consult wiki sites, because I was an academic and I discredited them. Yet, today I found something which might be useful; I see it as consistent with what I've learned.

It's about the postmodern revolution in philosophy, and it's important (if it's important at all) for at least two good reasons. First, it dominates contemporary philosophy, having undermined and superseded everything that people previously understood about knowledge. Second, it's the source of a great deal of academic, social and individual confusion about what makes sense and what doesn't.

I added stress (in bold) on the phrases about truth. I also put in one editorial comment (not italicized).

Lyotard defined philosophical postmodernism in The Postmodern Condition, writing "Simplifying to the extreme, I define postmodern as incredulity towards metanarratives,"[1] where what he means by metanarrative is something like a unified, complete, universal, and epistemically certain story about everything [or anything] that is. Postmodernists reject metanarratives because they reject the concept of truth that metanarratives presuppose. Postmodernist philosophers in general argue that truth is always contingent on historical and social context rather than being absolute and universal and that truth is always partial and "at issue" rather than being complete and certain.[2]"

[1] Lyotard, J.-F. (1979). The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge. University of Minnesota Press

[2] Aylesworth, Gary (2015). Zalta, Edward N., ed. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2015 ed.) Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University

There. Please forgive me for my transgressions.

If you're interested, then I'll be happy to do more!