alien conclusions and implications

the conclusion of the alien metaphor was that first-order knowledge has first person ontology, and second-order knowledge has third person ontology. so, what's the difference between knowing and knowing how to know? a previous blog entry stated the following after a form of proof of sorts:

"therefore, abstraction of pure abstraction is only way to know how to know (theoretically; in practice, metaphysics does negligibly interfere)"

thus, it follows that whatever metaphysics fits closer to the definition of pure abstraction is the best way of knowing how to know. not surprisingly, math would be the most ideal, followed by the hard sciences, the social sciences and "soft" sciences, and then the humanities.

so, how does this compare to simply "knowing"? again, citing the same previous blog entry:

"there never exists absolute states of *to know* and *to be*, just relative degrees of both"

if such a schema is deemed to be true, then any form of dualism, including property dualism, is invalid. also, unlike in a previous post where the two are deemed to be mutually exclusive in the framework of materialism, since only degrees of *to know* and *to be* exist, with neither in its ideal, pure form, then the co-existence of both is not a logical impossibility. so, barring radical philosophies of mind like quantum consciousness, the *to know/to be spectrum* seems compatible with present ideas of materialism.

first-order knowledge is superior to second-order knowledge because by achieving a more "pure" form of science, one can establish the variables necessary for abstraction to be more metaphysically accurate representations of themselves in abstraction. in turn, one can obtain a better "universal" -- but not necessarily "particular" -- understanding of the universe relative to the goals of the discipline's methods. and first-order being is obviously superior to second-order being, as it is more fulfilling to experience things first-hand than vicariously (generally speaking -- this is also subjective and open to debate, but i think it is self-evident that first-order being is preferable to second-order being.)