Focusing on the Intellectual WOK

I couldn't think of a fun pun for this unit title. I apologize. 

The Intellectual way of knowing is, to me, the process of thinking about the meaning of the things you are experiencing. It is the need to go beyond just knowing and into the understanding. 

The other night a group of friends and I ended up sitting around the table talking late into the night. The topic? The cinematic merits of Lord of the Rings movies. And we aren't even film kids. Now, had we just stayed up that late geeking out about Lord of the Rings, that would have been the way of knowing called being a huge nerd. However that wasn't the conversation. The conversation went deeper than just "oh man that scene was really cool!" or "yeah that actor was bad". The conversation discussed the ideas. It discussed the metaphor created by the barbaric way Denethor was depicted eating. It discussed the emotional impact created by juxtaposing that with Faramir's suicidal ride towards Osgiliath, a ride he makes on Denethor's command. We discussed not the what but the why. 

In Plato's Symposium it isn't enough for them to just say love exists. Instead they talk about the nature of it and the why. The things we think of as intellectual, the philosophy, the psychology, all have to do with the explanation of our nature and motivations. The intellectual WOK is about explaining the Why for the What that we do. 

In this way, the Intellectual WOK becomes a second level or counterpart to all the other ways of knowing. It is the process of taking the what which you know from your world view, and expanding it to a why. It is the process of connecting Ways Of Knowing together. Taking the fact that this image is calming and finding the scientific reason behind it. it is the process of connecting the dots. 

I would have liked to learn more about philosophy as a subject. Talk about some of the big parts of it, maybe learn a little history of the ideas. I think that would be cool.