|
The traditional education process often do not teach us concepts from the basic but rather starts us in the middle of the abstraction tree. If we want to tie a concept back to reality, what is the best process to do so? My attempt to tie the concept of mortgage back to reality is by breaking the words to its definition and then using recursion on each concept that makes up that definition. Example: Q) What is a mortgage? A) A debt on a house owed to a lender. (3 concepts found in this definition - debt, house, lender) Q) What is a debt? A) Money owed to a third-party Q) What is money and what does it mean to owe it to a third-party? A) Money is a form of stored value. Owe means I have to give the party the stored value either today or some time in the future. Q) What is a stored value? A) A value that is produced but saved rather than consumed immediately. Examples of stored value: Apples. Wheat. Fish. Gold. Money (if backed by gold or faith [don't get started on this. :) ]) Q) What is production? What does it mean to produce a value? etc. Thoughts? |
Yes, that's the basic process, except one must be careful in choosing definitions that bring one closer to the perceptual level. Doing this is not mechanical or trivially easy. For example a good definition of "friend" is "a person who shares my values", but you aren't going to find that in a dictionary.
If you don't define your terms well, you can end up in circles.
Also, I assume you are assuming that concepts such as "is" and "a" and "to" are already reduced, in your thinking.