How the Mind Works

Misunderstandings

"Natanggap mo ba?" (Did you get it?)

That was what my friend asked me during our ENGLONE class yesterday. My immediate response was "oo" (yes), though I wasn't so sure on which thing she was referring to. She tried to call me on the phone for five times that day. Unfortunately, I turned off my phone so I wasn't able to answer any of them. There was no message left that morning and I really didn't know why she called. Then I just thought that she wanted to remind me of her reply to my text the other night when I asked her about something. Maybe that was why she called. [Picture on right from Wirehub]

I didn't ask her anymore. She behaved as usual which made me more convinced that I was correct with my assumption. She even smiled after she had learned that we had no Earth Science LAB that day. I got back to my own business and felt nothing so important about the question.

That day passed. Today, I woke up from bed and checked my e-mail~ Yikes! She had sent me two files the other day. I was shocked to see them and to learn by what she really meant= PAPRINT. No doubt, that was the thing that she had been asking me yesterday. I failed to read it during that time. I was wrong to think that there was nothing really so important for I misunderstood her question. Too bad. This has led me to another thought- maybe because I was online the other day so she'd assume that I would also check my e-mail. [Image on left from Kadreg]

Well, is it because of that? Maybe...

Interpretations
I thought it to be this way but you thought it to be the other way. That is the problem with our minds. I have realized that they do not always interpret things in the same way. In my case, I thought that what my friend was referring to was her reply on my text the other night. My friend on the other hand thought that I knew the thing she was talking about- the two files that she had sent. This just tells me that we cannot really know everything. It makes me remember about the two great philosophers Hume and Kant- that it is not only through sense experiences that we can be certain of knowledge. A strict empiricist like David Hume might say that there must be a necessary connection for an idea to be meaningful. This necessary connection is missing which is why metaphysics itself is nonsense.

However, there are what we call as the a priori concept and the sensed perceived impressions. Immanuel Kant believed that reason must agree with experience. Knowledge can be derived even without the sense impression. Moreover, sense impressions differ and Noumena, as what he had called, is the thing which we cannot know. We can never be sure of how a person thinks of himself and other things. What the senses can tell us is limited. Phenomena is the thing which we can know. It is how each of our minds perceives reality.