"What do I know?" This sentence is the motto of the skeptical philosopher Montaigne. When people's boasting has reached the extreme and become a fashion, you can imagine how much courage and wisdom it takes to dare to run counter to it! Indeed, it is necessary to pour some cold water on human arrogance to sober it up. These cold waters are reflections on all existing knowledge systems and ways of understanding from the level of the first philosophy.
Anyone who has read philosophy knows that most ancient Greek thinkers are full of skepticism. Great wisdom tells us never to admit that anything is true unless I know it clearly. The author believes that this general skepticism also applies to the principle of consultation. Consultation is to solve problems, and solving problems depends on the acquisition and application of truth. Universal skepticism is undoubtedly a good way to discover the truth. Therefore, if you want to pursue the truth and find the "key" to solve the problem, you must doubt everything as much as possible.
The reason for doubt is that all the knowledge we accept is true and false; Some have a high degree of certainty, and some have a low degree of certainty. Moreover, they are so closely intertwined that we form a lot of prejudices in our minds and believe all these things as true, which hinders our understanding of the truth.
Descartes, the originator of European philosophy and the pioneer of rationalism, once made two vivid metaphors: one is to compare it to building a building, and to find a solid foundation, first remove the floating soil and sand, so as to find out the rocks or mud. The second is to compare this suspicion to picking rotten apples. If you want to pick out rotten apples from a basket, the correct way is to empty the basket first, then check the apples one by one, and then pick out the ones that are not rotten.
This truth tells us that the best way to avoid making mistakes is to pour out all the knowledge we have in our minds, no matter which one is truth or falsehood-universal doubt, and then study them one by one and keep what is considered truth and beyond doubt. Of course, we should be wary that the general doubt referred to by the author here is methodological doubt, which is different from skeptics' doubt for the sake of doubt, and this will only lead to nihilism. We use this rule in order to discover the truth, gain clear knowledge and solve problems.
The second consultation principle: consult like doing math.
"Everything is important" is an important viewpoint put forward by Pythagoras, a famous ancient Greek scholar. He believes that everything has a number, and everything has a number. Number is the prototype of things and also constitutes the order of the universe. If you want to understand the world around you, you must find out the numbers in things. Once you master the structure of numbers, you can control the whole world. Therefore, the philosophical circle believes that among all the knowledge, only mathematics and geometry are most qualified to be called real science. At the same time, mathematical method is also a method to popularize knowledge. Descartes said in his book Planning for the Soul: "That long series of coherent reasoning is extremely simple, and geometricians are often used to applying them to obtain things that are difficult to prove, which reminds me. As long as you don't take the untrue things seriously and push them from one thing to another according to the deductive procedure, there will never be a distance. Mathematical method is also other scientific methods, and it is a real and simple set of rules. Anyone can apply, and it is very convenient. As long as you follow it carefully, you will never take the fake as true. Over time, knowledge will grow unexpectedly and gain the highest knowledge that reason can know. "
There are two basic methods used in mathematics: one is intuition; The first is deduction. The so-called intuitive thing is different from the feeling thing. It doesn't stem from the deceptive judgment constructed by imagination, but something that needs no doubt at all. For example, everyone knows the fact that he exists; The fact that thought exists; The fact that a triangle has only three sides and a sphere has only one face. As long as we look at these facts with the eyes of the mind, we will immediately have obvious feelings, and the mind will also have obvious ideas about these facts. These ideas are pure ideas. Similarly, it is the same for us to do consulting projects. In the process of studying any problem, we usually encounter such a simple idea. The solution to all difficult problems must rely on their strength.
Deduction is also a rational activity, but unlike intuition, they are not simple rational activities. We must first assume some truths (or definitions), and then draw some conclusions with these definitions. For example, after we know the definition and theorem of a triangle, we can deduce that the sum of the internal angles of a triangle is equal to the sum of two right angles. So the function of intuition is to provide the latest principles of science and philosophy. Deduction is to apply these principles to establish some theorems and propositions. Deduction does not need the direct proof of intuition, and its certainty is given to it by memory to some extent. It can draw a conclusion through a series of indirect arguments, just as we can know the last section of a long chain by holding the first section.
In other words, intuition is the basic principle of invention and deduction is the most basic conclusion. However, some philosophers think that deduction is flawed, because the same principle often leads to different conclusions, so there should be another way to correct it. The method of this correction is experience, which is called resorting to facts. In a word, intuition is to find the simplest, most unquestionable and undefended elements in human knowledge, that is, to find the simplest and most reliable ideas or principles. Then they are deductively reasoned and all reliable solutions are deduced. Deriving this principle, we will find that it is roughly the same as the company's "fact-based", or the method itself is derived from this principle.
The third consultation principle: from simple to complex, analyze step by step.
As mentioned in the previous rules, in order to prove the most difficult problems, geometricians always use a series of simple and easy reasoning to draw conclusions. This law tells us that all problems become difficult because of complexity. Then, if we break down a difficult problem into thousands of tiny parts of Qian Qian and simplify it, it will not be a difficult problem. The company's "picking fruit first" and "cutting sausage piece by piece" are based on this principle. The application points of this law are as follows: first, don't take falsehood seriously, start with understanding the simplest things, and then explore step by step whether other truths can be derived from this truth, and other truths can be derived from these conclusions, so as to proceed from simplicity to profundity and from simplicity to complexity in turn, so that there can be no unsolvable problems and undiscovered truths in the world.
Analyzing this law, we can draw a conclusion that it is based on the belief that everything has procedures. If we can't find a natural program from the thing itself, we should at least conceive a logical program for it. This analysis and synthesis are perfect. Because the principle of synthesis is: first determine the definition and axiom, and then prove the program with the help of geometry, from simple definition and axiom to complex knowledge. Synthesis and analysis are originally two procedures for us to know things: analysis is a retrospective procedure, which aims to show that complex concepts are composed of many other simple concepts; Synthesis is a gradual process, aiming at proving that one or several simple concepts can be combined with other simple concepts to form another concept. These two cognitive processes are closely related. The last element of analysis is the first element of synthesis. When an idea can no longer be analyzed, it is the ultimate analysis.
Similarly, when an idea can no longer accommodate the combination of other ideas, it is integrated to the saturation point. These two concepts are extracted from mathematics, but their application in mathematics is very different from that in philosophy. In mathematics, analysis and synthesis are applied separately, while in philosophy, they should be combined into a program, because if something is not comprehensive, it cannot be analyzed. If a thing cannot be analyzed, then it has no comprehensive existence. In addition, in the analysis, we assume that the simple is obvious and the complex is questionable, so it is a deduction from the unobvious to the obvious, that is, from the unknown to the known. The last unknown element is regarded as known, and the first synthesis of known elements is regarded as unknown. In synthesis, we also assume that the simple is obvious and the complex is questionable, but it changes from obvious to inconspicuous, so we regard the known initial elements as knowledge and the unknown final synthesis as ignorance.
The fourth consultation principle: review thoroughly, without omission.
This rule is established to assist the application of analysis and synthesis. It tells us that when solving problems, we should clear up your thoughts and avoid confusion and entanglement, and your thoughts must be complete. It includes the steps of checking synthesis and checking analysis, so that the consistency of deduction is strictly observed and will not be exceeded in deduction, so as to ensure the clarity and inevitability of truth.
Therefore, the correctness of reasoning can be guaranteed by listing all the facts related to the problem in detail without any omission. This is in line with the company's MECE (mutual independence, complete exhaustion) principle. Some people think that the solution to a problem is to list the components of the problem that you must solve first. When you feel that these contents have been determined, think again carefully. Is each content an independent and clearly identifiable thing? If so, then your content list is "independent". Does every aspect of this question come from one (and only one) of the listed contents, that is, have you thought of it all? If so, what you have listed is "completely exhaustive". This tells us that, as far as certainty is concerned, although enumeration is not so intuitive, it still enables us to make correct and definite judgments on things that attract our attention. By enumerating, we may get a clearer conclusion than by any other type of argument (except simple intuition).