Epistemology

Lost in Translation

~ DC ~ Leave a comment

The significance of experiencing contrast in our lives gives us a perspective that will remain auspicious in our memories.  The world is continually providing us with contrast as we are not omniscient beings, hence we cannot predict future events that we will eventually weather.  For the average person much of this is “lost in translation” and If we are observant than we may find that these experiences will awaken us to a multitude of foresight in the maturation of our humanity.  Many of us struggle and find that we neglect to learn from some of these enigmatic lessons that are poised within the span of our lives.  We often can become inspired and transformed by events via our emotions that we entwine into our experience.  Much of this effort should come from within ourselves.  How we translate these lessons into our lives can be an amazing occurrence, or it can be just another non-eventful happening and at worst will taint us and leave us jaded.  What we do to make our positive experience flourish within our lives is truly up to us.

How we connect with our world and allow it to transform us is unique to each one of us.  We are bound fundamentally by the same mechanisms, yet we all also are so diversely directed by its influence.  This is a huge revelation, because this shows that we do have control how this affects us, we are in charge of how we become motivated or discouraged by events that touch us.  When I suggest how events touch us, I truly mean touch us, as they influence more than just our intellect.  There is a deeper penetration of our nature that awakens a very primitive human connection to how we relate with the world.

It is more than intellectual, and includes part of our emotive factions, and what the ancients called our “spirited” factions of our being.  We often believe that we merely receive the world as it produces the content of our experience.  I think however that we create much of what we experience by how we conform to the content and context of our experience that the world provides.  Keep in mind that I am mixing much of the established rationalistic claims and the  empiricist claims of philosophy into my claim of epistemological knowledge.  Again the significance in our ability to discern contrast in our experience is crucial on how we interpret and integrate the events that form our lives.

The Buddha twice uses the simile of blind men led astray. In the Canki Sutta he describes a row of blind men holding on to each other as an example of those who follow an old text that has passed down from generation to generation.  In the Udana (68–69) he uses the elephant parable to describe sectarian quarrels. A king has the blind men of the capital brought to the palace, where an elephant is brought in and they are asked to describe it.

When the blind men had each felt a part of the elephant, the king went to each of them and said to each: ‘Well, blind man, have you seen the elephant? Tell me, what sort of thing is an elephant?’

The men assert the elephant is either like a pot (the blind man who felt the elephant’s head), a winnowing basket (ear), a plowshare (tusk), a plow (trunk), a granary (body), a pillar (foot), a mortar (back), a pestle (tail) or a brush (tip of the tail).

The men cannot agree with one another and come to blows over the question of what it is like and their dispute delights the king. The Buddha ends the story by comparing the blind men to preachers and scholars who are blind and ignorant and hold to their own views: “Just so are these preachers and scholars holding various views blind and unseeing…. In their ignorance they are by nature quarrelsome, wrangling, and disputatious, each maintaining reality is thus and thus.” The Buddha then speaks the following verse:

O how they cling and wrangle, some who claim
For preacher and monk the honored name!
For, quarreling, each to his view they cling.
Such folk see only one side of a thing.

This is the basis of our diversity and our abilities to synthesize the elemental experiences into our cognition’s.  We are bound to how we internalize these events in a myriad of ways.  Each one of us shapes much of our experience to very personal preferences that have an effect on the outcome of its meaning and its significance to us.  We ultimately decide how we embrace it or if we reject it.

Diary of a Stumbling Man

~ DC ~ Leave a comment

As I was walking down my very dark Pacific Beach neighborhood a few nights ago, I was suffering from a bad case of vertigo I happened to catch, this gave me difficulty walking in a straight line and coincidentally reminded me of an earlier time in my life.  It was a beautiful night, warm and somewhat quiet for a robust beach community with a dense population of young people.  It was bizarre, but a part of me enjoyed the effects of my vertigo during this walk.  I was walking to the local market to pick up a few things and If you were to see me from a distance it would probably seem that I was intoxicated as my walking ability was not normal.  On one occasion I stumbled onto the sidewalk corner onto my left arm and leg taking the most damage with a few scuff’s on my elbow and knee. If anything I wondered if anyone had seen me because if you were to view this event you would probably think how dumb I must have looked.  Yes even the ego becomes aware of any intrusions upon our waking silly life events.  Walking down those dark street corners in Pacific Beach reminding me of when I was much younger.  In years past when I was only seventeen years old I remember walking the streets of a quiet neighborhood after a high school party, I was trying to clear my head walking around the neighborhood.  In this case I was evidently drunk and probably had mixed other intoxicants during that night to make my experience even that more frustrating if you wanted to do basic functions of some sort.

In those early years I had never experienced this kind of behavior as my body was not accustomed to the intoxicating effects.  It was however very new and an unlikely learning experience I would never forget.  I do not encourage this type of behavior since I do not believe in altered states of consciousness produced by some drug induced state.  But it is indeed a new kind of experience that does give one new ways of looking at things.  It can possible give you an alternative way at problem solving since you have subdued your usual conscious mind approach to the world, and as much as it changes the way we look at things, it also likewise hinders our problem solving abilities as well. One can easily evoke the mid sixties era and how the Beatles changed the way we listened to music during that time.  The influence of their experimentation with the music due to the influences upon them during this time is very similar to the point I am trying to make.

As a psychology student I learned in my Physiological Psyche class that if you learn under the influence of (lets say caffeine),  you are likely to recall that information in a similar state of being, such that you would probably like to have caffeine in your system to recall what you had learned on earlier study sessions under the influence of caffeine.  One can easily extrapolate from this hypothesis to other kinds of agents that influence our thinking and our behaviors.  Think drinking intoxicants and trying to pick up dates at bars under these conditions, one may learn certain social skills that will inevitably help them in achieving their goal of capturing the attention of others.

Alcohol tends to diminish social fears, boosts ones awareness and limits inhibitions, and that may just be enough to capture the attention of others de facto under the influence of similar intoxicants.

Unfortunately many of my former school mates in high school were  predetorial using drink to subdue others under the influence rather than be proper gentlemen.  The maturity level is certainly crucial in the developing human being, as many rely upon devious means to make the sporting effect of adolescent charms and taking advantage of others under such conditions.  I was never like that, and I always could tell who one could trust when push came to shove.  I have never respected anyone who relied upon these techniques to gain upon their prey, and I protected several from any funny business which later spawned a nick name as a senior in high school, “the saint”.  I think maybe this was a kind of name that really looked down upon me rather than one of good fortune.  I inadvertently became the protector by disrupting the events to unfold when things got “out of hand”.  I only lectured on the side of when you wake up tomorrow, you will find yourself in total guilt that you had to use alcohol to achieve your goal.this only occurred by chance on only a few occasions.   To me you weren’t any good if you had to use alcohol, or other intoxicants, I was the advocate for being honest.  No other way was superior to this way, because it was the real test of being genuine.  I despised the pretentious.  There can be a lot of ego in high school and early adulthood, and I found very early on that I was not going to play by the rules of the conspicuous arrogant fools that treated others as if they were trifle amusements.

Ironically years later I was far from being “the saint”, as I too had my demons to chase but my true nature did always show, and I did have these memories that I am proud of.  It’s funny how on two completely different tangents of our lives can bring about fond memories on both sides of the spectrum of the life-cycle.  One of a middle-aged man, and the other that of a teen-aged young adult.

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Ringo Starr

“A lady that I know just came from Colombia. She laughed because I did not understand. She held out some marijuana uh-huh, said it was the finest in the land. I said, no-no-no-no, i dont smoke it no more. It only makes me fall on the floor.No thank you please, it only makes me sneeze, and then it makes it hard to find the door. A lady that i know just came from Morrocco, Spain. She laughed because i did not understand. She held out a ten-pound bag of cocaine, said it was the finest in the land. I said no-no-no-no, i don’t *sniff* no more, it only makes me fall on the floor. No thank you please, it only makes me sneeze, and then it makes it hard to find the door.
A lady that i know just came from Tennesee. She laughed because i did not understand. She held out a jug of moonshine, uh-huh, said it was the finest in the land. I said no-no-no-no, i don’t drink it no more, it only makes me fall on the floor. No thank you please, it only makes me sneeze, and then it makes it hard to find the door.Ringo Starr’s No-No Song”
― Ringo Starr

Lundy Bancroft

“Alcohol does not a change a person’s fundamental value system. People’s personalities when intoxicated, even though somewhat altered, still bear some relationship to who they are when sober. When you are drunk you may behave in ways that are silly or embarrassing; you might be overly familiar or tactlessly honest, or perhaps careless or forgetful. But do you knock over little old ladies for a laugh? Probably not. Do you sexually assault the clerk at the convenience store? Unlikely. People’s conduct while intoxicated continues to be governed by their core foundation of beliefs and attitudes, even though there is some loosening of the structure. Alcohol encourages people to let loose what they have simmering below the surface.
ABUSERS MAKE CONSCIOUS CHOICES EVEN WHILE INTOXICATED”
― Lundy Bancroft, Why Does He Do That?: Inside the Minds of Angry and Controlling Men

Conflicted

~ DC ~ Leave a comment

Why do we dwell on an emotionally charged idea, or maybe why do we dismiss it altogether?  Have you thought about just how you have formed your ideas and beliefs about the world, and what just prevents us from dismissing the baggage we often collect?  Are we willing to question the foundations of our belief system when there is a conflict about what we’re told, and what we deem true?

The lack of having any external support group when you are feeling low is excruciatingly painful.  The strength to pick oneself up is much harder, when your internal voice has to operate without prejudice, when your internal voice diminishes your own internal criticisms that are weighing heavily upon you so that you may overcome the obstacles that you face.  Having conflicting conscious thoughts will always place you under scrutiny with your own judgments and this is sometimes a burden we do not freely share with others only to quietly suffer within our own creation of doubt.  But why must we anguish over these times of self-doubt?  Perhaps it is because we listen and acquire information from sources that give us a faulty valuation.  We’re taught to listen and respect our elders, the authority figures in our lives since they have benefited from their experience for more years than we have.  But I urge the reader to question authority since the argument is of a qualitative nature, and not one based on a quantitative accumulation of knowledge despite its inherent appeal to some.

If an internal struggle of conflicting feelings and thoughts that are remnants from adversarial external sources which have filtered into part of our thinking, then it may result as a troublesome cognition.  At a time of duress, we may give these critical token thoughts more weight than what is actually merited.  When we have contrary thoughts that disturb our resolve, we may lose focus on what is important and lose our bearings within the fog of ridicule.  If the diagnosis is a conflict that we ultimately control, and that we are the sole proprietors of our appraisals, then why does this seem to accommodate antagonism within our own minds?  Are we not in the best place to undertake a corrective direction in our thinking?  The answer could just be the way our thinking normally occurs.  How we process our information, and how we learn this information influences our decisions on how we also filter what we think we know and have come to believe.

How our thinking has evolved through-out our lives with a blending of experience, observation, rational, and emotional syntheses that have created and forged our thoughts and influenced our belief systems is commonly accepted as fact.  Some beliefs are conscious, and some operate on deeper levels we may not be consciously aware of.  I submit that we are creatures of habit, including our processes of reasoning.  Over time we form patterns of thought based on presuppositions about how we see the world.  Our patterns of thinking are much like a learned response directly correlated to the sympathetic nervous system.  The sympathetic nervous system is one of three major parts of the autonomic nervous system (the others being the enteric and parasympathetic systems).  Its general action is to mobilize the body’s nervous system fight-or-flight response.  It is, however, constantly active at a basic level to maintain homeostasis.  The homeostatic response to the world in our belief system may just operate at levels we do not question or lend ourselves to very often, hence the subconscious thoughts that drive many of our conscious thoughts bring about deeply felt concepts that influence us.  Whether we are to conclude self-doubt in times of conflict or conversely whether we are influenced on an alternate level is due to these presuppositions we rarely question.  They are the subroutines in our daily thoughts, the notions that lead us to make conclusions binding feeling and logic together that can change the way we see the world.  A convoluted fabric of thought, feeling and drives that work together to create a consistent view of what we observe that may at times disrupt our lives when conflicting notions enter into this process.

As children we develop a basis for meeting the world on how the world is presented to us.  Most children have a very natural way of experiencing the world, until they matriculate through the cultural pathways placing various lenses upon their scope to shape a reality largely based upon the teaching of their families.  Much of what is cultivated on pre-cognitive levels comes at a very early age, between birth and maybe six years of age.  The developmental stages of childhood maturation are still in development and not yet “hard-wired” at this age.  Our mental processes are forming from the examples given to us by our families and we build upon these foundations as we grow.  It is precisely some of these foundations that we no longer tap into and question.  They are the subroutines, the pre-cognitive staples that formulate some of our learned beliefs about the world.  They are very elusive since they are found in deeper structures within the brain, given the immense amount of neural pathways formed in childhood and developing until they lose their functionality.  The principles on which we form our ideas is largely influenced by these obscure percipient vestiges of thought.  We are seldom taught the skill to search deeper into our assumptions.  The contributions of Ludwig Wittgenstein in his philosophy of language are an invaluable insight on this topic when analytic philosophy is applied to our logic.

If these premises are sound, then where does that lead us?  Does this explain why hypnotic suggestion can displace deeper modes of thought we seldom have access to?  Why the importance of right thinking in the eightfold path is crucial for Buddhism?  Why the Zen use the Koan to disrupt the minds normative way of thinking?  Or perhaps why so many psychological personality disorders exist due to the formation of traumatized neural pathways during childhood?  Enneagram theory accounts for much of this due to its approach.   Again I ask, does this explain why we torture ourselves, being conflicted by ideas that we have only partial answers to, since much of the presumptions are buried deep within our minds?  I refer you to the work of Dr. Bruce Lipton for further analyses on this matter.  I highly recommend the work he has uncovered.

If the human experience is largely based on our ability to mediate its variables and problems, to arbitrate the ethical conditions that life brings us, then paying attention to what we conclude about our condition is preeminent.  Indeed, misjudgement is the cause for many mistaken paths we lead ourselves.  The purpose of trial and error, testing ourselves to the rigors of our decisions in everyday life is part of being human and also essential for our ability to learn through experience.  Learning that we must be mindful of our prejudices, that we must pay attention and heed to new information that may not be consistent with what we think we know is crucial to expanding our views.

Before you judge others or claim any absolute truth, consider that you can see less than 1% of the acoustic spectrum.  As you read this, you are traveling at 220 kilometers per second across the galaxy.  90% of the cells in your body carry their own microbial DNA and are not “you”.  The atoms in your body are 99.99999999999999% empty space and none of them are the ones you were born with, but they all originated in the belly of a star.  Human beings have 46 chromosomes, 2 less that the common potato.  The existence of the rainbow depends on the conical photoreceptors in your eyes; to animals without cones, the rainbow does not exist.  So you don’t just look at a rainbow, you create it.  This is pretty amazing, especially considering that all the beautiful colors you see represent less than 1% of the electromagnetic spectrum.

 

The earlier statements I’ve made about this paradigm of psychology are based on my studies.  I draw from many sources and fields to illustrate my views.

Epistemology – Inspire Me

~ DC ~ Leave a comment

illusion of knowledge

Have you believed something to be true for years, and then suddenly received information that led you to conclude that your belief turned out to be false?  Did it change the perspective of the world you live in and disrupted similar beliefs you once held to be true and valued?  Such questions have prompted philosophers to ask and examine since the days of antiquity, and more recently others in psychology, behavioral neuroscience, linguistics, education, cultural anthropology, sociology, and neurology have also made inquiries about the nature of just what indeed constitutes “knowledge” and exactly how do we acquire these “matters-of-fact?”

A fundamental starting point for all of our beliefs and what we hold to be true begins with how we attain the information, what we do with that information when we process and analyze it, (or lack of processing and analyzing),  and the resulting effects these beliefs have upon our world-perspectives and perceptions of incoming events, existing ideas, and thoughts or feelings that populate our minds.

Do we live in a world of our own creations, where our constructs of reality are determined largely by our abilities of intellect, perception, intuition, and logical analysis?  Ask any law enforcement detective about the reliability of eye-witness testimonies and you’ll probably find the error rate is a good indication that we are not as accurate as we would like to be.  Are we sure that the information we receive from the world around us is authentic and true, or can it be that much of this information is interpreted by the limitations of our minds and therefore susceptible to errors of judgement?   Think also about how reliable our information actually is after we screen for biases from the originating sources themselves; such as corporate owned media conglomerates that have proven to fail to give an accurate account due to editorial pressures, political alignments, skill set deficits from journalists and other news team personnel, as well as budgetary concerns that all impede the conditions for a truthful contingency.  If we are ultimately responsible for comprehending the beliefs that we hold to be true, why do we not then challenge more of the information that we perceive from a constant duplicity of sources?

pause

Instead of going off in the direction I think I once wanted to say something about, I find a compelling diversion with this topic.  The author had the intention to connect to some of the readers with an illustration and an examination of the basic human desire for a deeper need for meaning in their lives.  Since only a select population would have any interest in this subject, then this sample population becomes even more specialized.  I have no utopian aspirations so I do not partake in the notions of posting something I believe everyone would like, but simply realize that I may only capture a fragment of this reading population that has any interest in such matters.

A closer inspection of what we may know, and how we acquire this knowledge of the world raises questions about the validity of these fundamental beliefs if we proceed down that path of reasoning.  Despite all information that one can write on the topic of epistemology, much has been covered through-out the ages and this author has decided that a stale treatment of its history should not be read here.  A conclusion that many have come to hold is the truth that most people cannot “be reached” through ordinary means or measures.  Unfortunately logic alone, will not change a great deal of the population, largely due to their own limitations, awareness and comprehensive skills including the abilities of the author of this post.  When I speak of “being reached”, the author intends to suggest that people often do not rethink their positions and thus continually fail to challenge the status quo in their thinking.  I envision that one must have something more, something with more tenacity, and fortitude in the language of the communicator when considering this goal.  One must have something that can connect to people on a deeper level, and possibly more than just one level; but rather on a multiplicity of levels which just might optimize this communication.  ERGO: One must be able to INSPIRE!

The dangers of the fragility of the human mind have been demonstrated over countless ages that we have broadcasted our dominion.  In the infancy of our intellects, for some of us we often imposed quasi-truths to make sense out of the world that fills in the gaps of our reckoning.  As for others, many have often used alternative mechanisms to decide just how they should encode the world around them including illusion, myths, pseudo-sciences, and quite possibly the most prominent offender; misinterpretation.

Historically, whichever of the tolerant dictates of the current cultural paradigm are employed, there often leaves a byproduct of consciousness that has not yet been tapped.  The courage to discard useless mythologies, and baseless or senseless philosophies has left an indelible mark in these societies that take special notice of some of it’s distinguished persecuted or heretical members.  Whichever school of thought one imparted their beliefs to, it was either fear, or misunderstanding that would take precedence in past evaluations when these members have surfaced in the musings of the denizens over the years.  The examples that come to mind are people such as Socrates, Copernicus, Mahatma Gandhi, Nikola Tesla, Galileo Galilei,  Albert Einstein, Werner Heisenberg, Jesus Christ, Siddhartha Gautama, Confucius, Plato, Lao Tzu, Immanuel Kant, Robert Bauval, John Anthony West, Robert Schock, David Hume, Søren Kierkegaard, and the list goes on.

The mass appeal to the misguided is only a reflection of the work we have to overcome as a people if we are to evolve our thinking processes.  It begins by thinking for ourselves.  Attend not to the spells cast out from the sycophant’s and the sophists.

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“Challenges are what make life interesting and overcoming them is what makes life meaningful.” – Joshua J. Marine –
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“If the facts don’t fit the theory, change the facts.” – Albert Einstein –
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“The only thing worse than being blind is having sight but no vision.” – Helen Keller –
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“Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don’t matter and those who matter don’t mind.” – Dr. Seuss –
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“If not us, who? If not now, when?” – John F. Kennedy –
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”Every truth passes through three stages before it is recognized. In the first, it is ridiculed. In the second, it is opposed. In the third, it is regarded as self evident.” – Arthur Schopenhauer –