What knowing feels like
The meaning of “knowledge” and “knowing” get discussed here a lot. I always find those discussions unsatisfying. Thinking about it now, I see that’s because the knowledge that we talk about isn’t the knowledge I experience. So, I’d like to talk about how knowing feels to me. From watching other people talk about and use knowledge, I don’t think my experience is unusual, although I don’t claim that everyone experiences it the same. I hope others will share their own experiences.
So, I’d like this thread to be about the experience of knowledge, not theories or rules. No justified true belief please. If you want to mention that type of thing in context, I won’t object, but I would really appreciate it if we don’t go off on a tangent.
For me, knowledge is not something formal or logical. Just like all my other mental experiences, it has thoughts, feelings, perceptions, memories all mixed together. I rarely just know something. The knowing is almost always in the context of action, of figuring out what to do about something. Normally, the only times I have known things in isolation are while taking tests, arguing here on the forum, and playing Trivial Pursuit.
Just about everything I know I know in the context of a body of knowledge. I don’t know facts, I know patterns, structures with many interlinked pieces. I’ve been an environmental engineer for 30 years. I know the technical aspects of the work I do from school, reading, and experience. I’ve worked on several hundred jobs in dozens of different states and a few foreign countries. On a lot of projects, I find myself seeing how things will proceed almost from the beginning, although that can sometimes be dangerous. It’s one of the great things about getting old – having seen most things before.
A body of knowledge has a feeling to it. It’s almost like I can hold it in my hands in front of me and look at it. I’m sure that’s my own idiosyncratic way of seeing things. Bodies of knowledge fit together into larger bodies. I have an image of a master BoK. I’ve described this on the forum before. I see a cloud in front of me, amorphous and …cloudy. It has everything in it – quarks, galaxies, electricity, God, love, porcupines, my children, everything. This is important – nothing is missing, the entire universe, my entire universe, is there, external and internal. The parts I know well are in focus, the parts I know to a certain extent are a bit fuzzy, and those I don’t know at all are completely out of focus. There are also parts that don’t fit into the structure I’ve created. When I become aware of them, the cloud will have to expand and change shape.
The most important thing about knowledge to me is its relation to its BoK. We talk about justification, but the most important justification does not come from testing propositions in comparison to observations. It comes from holding up an idea to the BoK and seeing if it fits. New facts can make parts of the BoK come into better focus. They can cause me to change how things are connected. In extreme cases they can cause me to restructure the whole system.
This is been a stream of consciousness post for me. There may be inconsistencies in what I’ve written and things that don’t make sense. I’ll try to work those out as we go.
Comments (65)
I'm currently reading LOGOS, by physician/philosopher Raymond Tallis, in which he explores "the mystery of how we make sense of the world". He is trying to go beyond physical empirical-based theories, into the realm of personal experience that is metaphysical. He notes that Knowledge is not isolated particular facts, but must be "networked" into a "web of beliefs" (your "body of knowledge"). The non-empirical mystery of knowledge is how we go from direct perception of real things & events, to the feeling of knowing that is sometimes described as "aboutness". His primary concern is with "making knowledge visible", like a sensation. He says, "at the heart of the difference [known vs knower] is explicitness". Which he calls "Thatter" as opposed to Matter.
The book is fairly technical, but if you persevere, you might see Knowledge (Logos versus Mythos) from a different perspective. It's probably not exactly what you are talking about, but it should be worth looking into.
Gnomon
I suspect the feeling of knowing may be the internal sensation associated with the certainty of belief. Absolute positive certainty is blind faith. But most ordinary beliefs are not that strong, and are subject to skepticism, and open to correction. In Tallis' terms, when your belief is strong, you don't just know "what", but you know "that", which is more precise and assured.
Sounds interesting. I looked the book up on Amazon and Tallis up on Wikipedia. The book is on my list for future reading. Thanks.
Quoting Gnomon
For me, the important part is that it is a coherent, comprehensive experience. There is a feeling of fullness, completeness to it. There is still plenty of room for uncertainty, but that is buffered by the interconnections, and that's appropriate because our decisions don't normally depend on one fact. They typically require a comprehensive understanding of conditions analogous to the BoK I am describing.
Just recently I read a line in [s]Tom Wolf's[/s] Tobias Wolff's "Old School" that some knowledge is felt in the back of your neck.
Also, Harvey Siegel talks about the critical thinker being appropriately moved by reason, and goes on at length about what he means by "moved" in his book "Rationality Redeemed".
Especially Siegel relates to what you're getting at here, in case you're curious.
I took a look and ordered from Amazon. I'll see if he has any insights that will be helpful for me. Thanks.
I had some knowledge of American history. The oldest layer (and framework) came from elementary and secondary school lessons. In 1400 and 92, Columbus sailed the ocean blue; the Pilgrims landed on Plymouth Rock; One if by land, two if by sea; Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence; Lincoln freed the slaves and was assassinated; Teddy Roosevelt; Teapot Dome; FDR; WWII.
Much of what I learned in school was more myth than knowledge. I didn't know that at the time. I thought I was getting the straight dope. In a different sense of the word, dope, I was getting straight dope.
I got by for a long time on myth-history. Myth works, really, as long as one isn't trying to critically examine one's life or one's country or one's world. It wasn't until later adulthood (way way after college) that I began to read material that was more knowledge, less myth, and sometimes not myth at all.
The pieces of mythic history fit together with delusions based on myth, so how can one tell that what we had been given and what we had gathered was not all that true? Was, in fact, bullshit?
It's a process, not an event.
It takes time. First, one hears contrary information -- maybe at a demonstration. Maybe one reads contrary information in a free Newspaper, or a cheap one, anyway, like The Militant, or The Body Politic (gay paper from Toronto) -- NOT the New York Times. Or one goes to a study group. One hears stories on NPR (at least one did in the good old days), or PBS. One sees an eye-opening film like The Fog of War, about Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara who escalated the Vietnam War.
Then one starts seeking out contrary information, and one finds that it too fits together, and decidedly doesn't fit the myths on which one's delusions were based. Noam Chomsky's Manufacturing Consent was a wedge (like a log splitting wedge) that broke open a large hunk of history.
Many books, talks, magazine articles, films, discussions, etc. later, I have a new history that much better accounts for reality. A book on the history of advertising, marketing, and the creation of desires goes a long ways in explaining how I got some of the myths and delusions that are still deep in my memory.
Not only are we deluded, we have been deliberately and elaborately deceived. Somebody will say, "well that just your new myth". No, it fits too many other pieces in too deep a way. So, knowledge about history doesn't necessarily feel good -- I don't like knowing "I drank the Kool Aid willingly".***
***Historical Factoid: [i]drinking the Kool Aid™[/I] references the mass suicide of the cult led by Jim Jones in Guyana in 1978. It means swallowing all sorts of stuff.
Kool Aid, Kool Aid, tastes great
Wish I had some, Can't wait.
Jingle for Kool Aid.
Kool-Aid is a brand of flavored drink mix owned by Kraft Heinz based in Chicago, Illinois. The powder form was created by Edwin Perkins in 1927 based upon a liquid concentrate called Fruit Smack. Smack is now, at least, another name for heroin; the word is Yiddish, meaning 'sniff' (but not snort). It's a word the Yiddish lists do not eagerly embrace (unlike "schlong").
Tom Wolfe wrote a book, "The Electric Kool Aid Acid Test.
Kool Aid is the official soft drink of Nebraska.
DO NOT DRINK THE KOOL AID!
There is another way I like to think about knowing. too. We know with our bodies, we know with our feeling, we know with our intuitions, and we know with ideas, conjectures and investigations. So, knowing is knowing with. There are many, many ways to know the world with our bodies, our feelings, our intuitions and our ideas, conjectures and investigations.
"Hypotheses are nets: only he who casts will catch". Novalis
Your narrative feels like what I was describing, the development of a body of knowledge, in your case a political/historical one. It had a visual feel to me, I saw flashing images of history. Layer on layer. All you have to do is not die and you can't help but get wise, maybe, but at least knowledgeable. Mine feels similar, although you have a more cynical view of our society than I do. Maybe "cynical" isn't the right word, maybe disappointed, betrayed.
Like many others, the events that constituted my political awakening were the Watergate hearings. I wasn't cynical before or after, but that was the first time I was really exposed to that kind of information. It took place when I was living away from home and college for the first time. I had a great job in a book warehouse full of communists, gay men and women, feminists, socialists, black power supporters, and bikers. I was pretty naive.
Now, all my life feels like it is happening at the same time. Everything that has ever happened to me, that affected who I am, is happening now. That's part of the feeling of knowledge I was describing. I feel the weight of that experience every minute.
Yes, and, for me, the important part is that is it is all happening at once. It's not one little fact and one little observation - it's everything I've ever learned or known happening now. It's the fitting that matters - new stuff has to fit in with the old stuff or 1) the new stuff doesn't work or 2) the old stuff has to change.
Not dying is insufficient. Wisdom does not necessarily grow with age. There are stupid, arrogant senior citizens who were stupid, arrogant junior citizens. Look no further than our esteemed maximum leader!
No, I don't think I am cynical. But one definition of a cynic is "a disappointed idealist". I have an idealistic streak, and I am even now shocked--shocked!!!---to find that events were made to happen by various operatives. Nope -- not a conspiracy theorists -- I don't think 9/11 was a government plot or that the CIA killed Kennedy. But 9/11 is a good example of a splendidly engineered event.
The person who might well think of conspiracies is Al Gore, the way he lost the presidency in what certainly seemed like a rush to judgement in Florida, then to the SCOTUS. I really don't know how Gore managed to endure. I'd have dissolved into a puddle of bile.
The Gulf of Tonkin business was engineered. Watergate! Nixon was very actively trying to engineer a crooked outcome.
But the biggest example of being shocked was to discover that American consumer culture was not the result of Americans merely having extra cash to spend, and lots of stuff to buy. I was shocked to discover that the culture of consumption was engineered in the latter part of the 19th--beginning of the 20th century by retailers, public relations firms, housing companies, and so on. Consumption as a way of life was a radical change from the previous centuries of thrift, production, and minimal consumption. It's been the new normal for 120 years, and it required a lot of industrious labor to get people to change their behavior that much.
I was shocked to discover that many of the manners and habits which get described as "middle class" (and references the petite bourgeoisie) and may or may not have anything to do with the middle class, were introduced and encouraged by manufacturers, magazine editors, retailers, in a very deliberate effort to shape future consumption. A lot of people's material and experiential aspirations are the result. Mine too, to some extent.
Every time I read a new book about gay history, like a recent title on Chicago's "fairyland" I am shocked and annoyed to discover that 'they' were doing stuff that 'we' 1970s people thought was scandalously revolutionary 40 years (or more) before Stonewall. What all they were doing was suppressed after prohibition. Crackdowns all over the place. Which underlines one of my theories about progress: it can always go into reverse, so we should not think that todays gains are forever.
I never worked in a book warehouse, but a guy I know did, and he also loved the job.
I've got a few broad areas to compare this to. One is professional skills - I'm a contract tech writer and doc systems guy who works in many different workplaces. There are heaps of knowledge demands in those environments - first of all, the systems you're meant to be writing instructions for (currently for example a CRM for a health insurance company); but then the knowledge of all the tools that you need to turn out the knowledge, and also knowledge of the systems you need to publish/make available what you write.
In the case of publishing systems, you need to know how to make it work to satisfy a requirement. If it doesn't do that, and you can't figure it out, then you don't know how to do it. You might need to immerse yourself in online learning, hang out on tech forums, or even delve into books. But your activities are guided by an outcome, something you have to deliver, produce or make work. If you can make it work, then you know it. It's not 'fuzzy' or warm feelings or anything of the kind. It's an outcome and you know how to make it happen or you don't. (I guess there's also a certain degree of tacit or implicit knowledge also. Like, people like me don't write code, so don't think like programmers, but at the same time I've been working in the tech sector for 30 years so I have a background understanding of networking, databases, connectivity, protocols, and many other things. But I also know a lot of my knowledge is only so deep, and there are other people who know hugely more. )
But then, the other areas in my life are philosophy/spiritual practice (which are interlinked in my case) and musicianship. They're both disciplines that are kind of vocational, i.e. you have to devote yourself to them for years or even your whole life, and you get to plateaus, ridges, troughs, depressions, deserts, and so on.
Like, musically, it takes a lot of work to master an instrument and idiom to the point of being proficient, and when you finally start to get there - woo hoo. But then there's music freely available through 10 billion devices, falling out of shopping centre ceilings, there are millions of musicians in the world, and besides the public taste in music is often execrable - boo hoo. You know if you put in hours more blood sweat and tears you could be vastly improved - but who would notice? Yoo hoo. (Sorry couldn't resist the wordplay.)
As for philosophy - in my case, it's linked to the search to understand what Eastern philosophy calls 'liberation' which is a state of being or state of mind. There, you learn things also, but the outcomes are not nearly so certain. Well, in one way they are, because your 'internal climate' changes considerably over time, there's a certain sense in which the path you're on lets you know that you're coming along. But there's also a lot of uncertainty, although a large part of this discipline is learning to live with that. But that also informs the way you read the subject. I've noticed that engineers will read it like engineers. Language scholars will read it through that perspective. Nothing wrong with any of that, just an observation. In any case, this is the BOK that definitely has a feeling to it - a feeling hard to describe, 'great compassion', is one description from a Buddhist POV.
Yes, of course, but I did say "or at least knowledgeable." And with knowledge often comes some perspective at least, even among bozos. But then, I think maybe I like people more than you do, even with you Midwestern communitarian background. That's probably not true. Maybe I'm just more patient.
Quoting Bitter Crank
I have a friend, about our age, whom I worked with for a long time. Both of us came in to work early and we would have discussions about politics and social issues. We had a reputation for being cynical. When he mentioned that, I told him he and I were the least cynical people I know. I think you fit into that pattern. We believe what we've been taught about the way things are supposed to be.
Quoting Bitter Crank
Please don't see this as an attempt to stifle where you're taking this discussion. I'm enjoying it. Can you try to tie this in, briefly is fine, to the feeling of knowing/body of knowledge theme a bit.
Yes, this ties in with my discussion of the BoK I've developed with my work. That is my primary effectiveness as an engineer. I see connections that others don't. Everything I know is one single unified whole. I started to write "unified hole."
Quoting Wayfarer
Yes, and I think this is in line with what @Bitter Crank is getting at. Values, morals, feelings, skills, talents, preferences, loves, spiritual experiences, and peace/ liberation are all part of my body of knowledge. Yours too I guess. In my career, my responsibilities as an engineer and as an advocate for my clients permeates everything I do. One of the reasons I've loved the forum is the chance to hone one important part of my intellectual life - bring it more into focus as described in the OP.
Knowledge for me has everything to do with feeling. They are inextricably bound together.
I think the things you mention are part of the fullness I was talking about.
Years ago, I had an extended snail-mail correspondence on the general topic of religious belief. When asked how she knew her scriptures were true, she would reply with some variation on "it just feels right", or "it has the ring of truth". Her body of knowledge was in accordance with her "experience" as a lifelong conservative protestant Christian. But it did not "fit" with the BoK of other sects of religion.
In evolutionary terms, the positive feeling associated with knowledge and truth is "adaptive". It is a reward for being on the right track toward your goals (survival, reproduction, love, etc). Unfortunately, that feeling of certainty may sometimes reward maladaptive behavior --- as in the dilemma of fanatical faith in one scripture versus another. Which is the true guide to salvation : obedience to Allah, or love for Jesus? Both sides on this question feel confident that they are on the correct course toward their heavenly reward (survival of the fittest). But at least one of them must be wrong --- and maybe both.
So a reliable (adaptive) body of knowledge must have some validation beyond the subjective intuitive (dopamine) feeling of fitness. That's why scientists are supposed to test all proposed new facts with a skeptical challenge. So they can see if the new knowledge corresponds to (fits) the real (objective) world, or just their personal BoK. Religions tend to give preference to the "tried & true" facts engraved long ago in their immutable tablets of stone. But Science has learned that bodies of knowledge quickly become outdated, as new facts (observations) come to light, that don't fit into the old paradigm.
The BoK of Faith is immutable. The BoK of Skepticism is adaptable to changing conditions. Which is the better resource for truth depends on whether the world is evolving or static.
I'm not sure if you are proposing it, but I am extremely skeptical of evolutionary biology or sociobiology. Looking for correlates between specific genes and specific behaviors seems wrongheaded to me.
Quoting Gnomon
I don't think many people's bodies of knowledge, including committed religious believers, are made up only, or even primarily, of religious elements. There are religious scientists, engineers, doctors, plumbers, philosophers, cashiers. Religious people care about baseball, cooking, their families, politics. One of the problems, challenges as the cliche goes, of living in a heterogeneous society is trying to find common ground. I've never found that to be particularly hard. In my experience, it's harder here on the forum than it is out in the world.
Quoting Gnomon
Maybe you've misunderstood my use of the word "fullness," which seems close to your "fitness." It's intellectual, perceptual, spiritual as much as it is emotional. It all fits together.
Of course a body of knowledge can't be unconnected from the outside world. A small portion of what makes up the structure comes from science. The great majority does not, including things we think of as facts. I knew about gravity before I ever knew about "gravity." I knew about philosophy before ever knew about "philosophy." That doesn't mean that news of the detection of gravity waves isn't interesting and may not change the way I think about the world. Then again, it probably won't change it that much. My day to day life is lived at human, Newtonian, scale.
Quoting Gnomon
I think that's a very, very oversimplistic way of looking at things. Even though I come from science and engineering and have no particular religious beliefs, there are aspects of my BoK that have more in common with religious believers than with so called "rational" or "scientific" believers. I guess maybe you'd call them spiritual understandings, although I wouldn't. I see them as just as intellectual and justifiable as pi * r^2.
Reading better history than what we were given in high school (and college too, for that matter), I gained a more granular understanding of "what happened" in Russia under the dismal Romanovs as well as the dismal Bolsheviks; in Germany the brief Weimar years and the Nazi years; in the United States the promise of abolition, emancipation, and reconstruction followed by decades of retrogression through legal and extralegal suppression of black people; the history of the labor movement reveals how good theory and practice led to solid progress for workers, but was followed by weaker strategy and a very determined effort on the part of Capital to suppress labor rights, and so on.
Several years of focused reading on these topics (in the last decade, mostly) is responsible. There is a lot of hand-wringing over the rise of populism in Europe and the U.S., as if populism was equivalent to fascism. It isn't; but there is some common ground they both occupy. For the "leftish politicians" populism is a retrograde movement. Remainers in UK must feel a sharp sense of disastrous retrograde movement as the conservatives (and whoever the hell voted for Brexit) decided to negotiate their way out of union with the continent and now, under Boris & Co., crash out.
40 years ago I wasn't very familiar with the long term objections to Social Security, Unemployment Insurance, Disability Insurance, Medicare, and Medicaid of the conservative wing of the Republican Party (and the 1% masters). I became aware of court and legislative challenges to each of these programs, and enduring objection to what most people would call progressive programs. Unless there is a significant change in Congress, the conservatives will produce a retrogressive decay in these programs, not by frontal attacks in the courts, but by simply starving the programs at choke points. The IRS has been subject to this kind of choke-point retrogression.
I read maybe 20-25 books about Detroit, Chicago, and Baltimore. Detroit and Baltimore, in particular, were places that were once considered among the best cities in the country -- prosperous, forward looking, great architecture, colleges and universities, beauty, and tons of industry. Lots of pollution too, of course, but working factory smoke stacks = money and jobs. The greatness of those two cities was turned to humiliation with remarkable swiftness. I won't go into it now, but their humbling was caused by quite understandable economic change and very deliberate policy. Chicago has been surpassed by Los Angeles in population, but it still is a competitive "Second City". Chicago had the advantage of not depending on a single industry (autos) like Detroit did.
The motives and strategies of regression have become part of my body of knowledge about history that once upon a time I didn't have. I figured Social Security and Medicare were here to stay forever more, world without end, amen. It now seems possible, even a bit probable, that they won't, not because the country is going broke, but because of specific policies held by particular groups.
When I graduated from college in 1968 I would not have been able to teach anything better than the shoddy product I received. Now I could teach a much, much better course.
When I graduated from college I would not have been able to teach an English Literature or composition class as good as what I had been taught. At 22, I was woefully lacking in the BoK called life experience to appreciate the pile of literary stock English majors are supposed to be knowledgeable about and love. Now, 51 years later, I've had enough love affairs, funerals, severe disappointments & glorious achievements (exaggerating a bit), mourning and celebration, religious enthusiasms and disappointments, financial progress and regress, conflict and cooperation, etc. to actually GET much more of what literary characters are experiencing. Boswell was once boring; now he's a contemporary.
So now that there is about zero chance of it happening, I have at my command a fairly cohesive body of personal experience, literary and historical reading, and much broader interests, that I would make a very good teacher.
I tell people I've gotten to a place where I'd finally make a fairly successful 17 year old. Which is good, since that's the place where my personality has hid out for 50 years. I kept trying till I got it right. I still wouldn't make a good teacher.
It is wrong headed, because specific genes evolved long before the specific behaviors arose that we most like to dwell on.
Some people like to gamble (roulette, poker, farming, real estate, see what is going on in dark alleys, etc.). The set of genes that enable some people to comfortably gamble (take real risks) arose long before poker, farming, and dark alleys came into existence. 100,000 or 200,000 years ago, risk takers must have had some advantages, or they would have died young without progeny. Perhaps they were more successful hunters than the nervous nellies who hung back. Perhaps they were willing to see what lay over the next mountain as they explored the world, and found fertile valleys.
We wouldn't have evolved genes for academic success because academies appeared just 5 minutes ago. But organized thinking must have been an advantage a million years ago, granting H. erectus, H. habilis, or H. heidelbergensis a big of better life.
A principle of evolution that seems to me true is that "new features do not appear from nowhere." If batters can hit a little ball moving at high speed, it is because genes were developed a very long time ago for vision and body movement coordination. What mammal doesn't require that kind of capacity?
But I agree with you -- there is no poetry gene, no leather scene gene, no civil engineering gene, no Formula 1 gene.
Well, taking tests, arguing on the forum and playing Trivial Pursuit are all actions too, but it seems to me that I can just sit here and know things - like Paris is the capital of France, or the acceleration of Earth's gravity is 9.8 ms^2. When I hear a news story about something that happened "in Paris", I can establish that connection with France, which is then another connection to a location on the planet - thanks to my geographical knowledge. It is about having categorical relationships established in the mind. I can recall this information, so knowing, or knowledge is more like memories of prior patterns that produced fruitful outcomes - whether it be getting an answer correct in Trivial Pursuit, tying one's shoes, fixing a computer, or understanding relationships (like knowing what someone means when they say "in Paris").
Knowledge seems to come in degrees as there are some with more knowledge in a subject than others, but does that mean that the others really don't know the subject?
What does it feel like to have thought you have knowledge of something but now realize that you were wrong? How do you "know" that you ever possess "knowledge"?
No. I was not referring to any genetic determinism interpretation of evolution. I was just noting that "emotions" and "feelings" are internal motivators that urge you to keep doing the fitness maximizing stuff, and to quit doing the stuff that is not in the interest of your "selfish genes" (it's just a metaphor). But humans are able to overrule those urges when necessary, as in bravery despite the fight or flight feelings of fear.
People's belief systems (BoK) may also encourage them (via a feeling of certainty) to ignore adaptive behavior for the real world in order to adapt themselves to a future ideal world. The question is "how do you know which is more important, the here-&-now, or the utopia-to-come? One way to answer that question is to compare various belief systems and to weed out the bits of "knowledge" that are mutually contradictory.
The "oversimplistic" closing remark was intended to cut through the BS surrounding feelings; not to be a complete overview of empirical knowledge versus "spiritual understandings". :smile:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reward_system
Sure, and I acknowledged that. I also said that is not the normal way knowing works, at least not for me. It's not the important way that knowing works.
Quoting Harry Hindu
That's one of the reasons I don't like to think of knowledge as a collection of facts that you know or don't know. As if Newton didn't know gravity because he didn't understand the physics of black holes. Thinking of knowledge as a structure allows you to incorporate change without having to throw the whole thing out and start over.
I haven't had such ecstatic moments for I'm not so gifted in the intellect but I've substituted that with something Christopher Hitchens calls "vicarious redemption". It's much like spectators of a game. A goal by your favorite player feels as real as if you'd done the scoring yourself.
If one takes a reductionist approach all of philosophy and almost everything else may be reduced to a chemical dance of hormones and neurotransmitters. That is humbling for we are animals after all but it's also incomplete because the mental world has it's own objects and rules. A married man with a child must be both a husband and a father.
I don't want to be pedantic, so I'll let @StreetlightX do it for me. Here is a portion of the OP from a discussion he started a couple of years ago. It changed the way I thought about genetics and evolution. The whole discussion is really interesting.
Quoting StreetlightX
See, Streetlight, somebody does pay attention to you.
Quoting Gnomon
Well, ok, but there was definitely a whiff of the rationalist condescension people use toward spiritual or religious ideas in your response.
You don't have to be Archimedes to have a sense of the comprehensive experience of knowing. I don't think it's an issue of intelligence. It's an issue of awareness. Knowledge is not all that simple - somehow connecting a phenomenon with a truth statement. It is worth some introspection.
Evolution is simply the survival of the good-enough, not the fittest. And the good-enough can be incredibly fucked up. Anyway, off topic.
Quoting Wayfarer
Which is to say that my instinct is to say there is no feeling to knowledge. My feeling says that knowing feels the same as believing falsity. But perhaps this is off topic?
So this is another of your threads where you are only interested in promoting your version of things and all other versions aren't normal or important. No thanks.
Maybe it would be best for you if you avoided my threads from now on.
There's condescension on both sides. If you Google "knowing and feeling" you will quickly notice that it's a popular topic among Christians, who are annoyed that scientists arrogantly assume that the knowledge of Reason (fact ) is superior to the knowing of Faith (feeling). So they feel encouraged by a quote from Francois Lelord : "knowing and feeling are two diferent things, and feeling is what counts." That assertion simply turns the Reason/Emotion equation upside down to "prove" that Faith (in the word of God) should take precedence over Fact (word of Man, Science). Some scientists feel that religious Faith and rational Facts are mutually incompatible, and propose to resolve the conflict by assigning each approach to Non-Overlapping Magisteria (NOMA). Many defenders of Revelation over Reason, believe that, although different ways of knowing, they are compatible as long as Faith has the last word, and reigns supreme. So who is condescending to whom?
I think that Human animals are motivated primarily by subjective feelings and intuition. But they also have the ability to look at the world objectively and rationally from the perspective of the Other. That allows us to settle differences of opinion by exchanging views rather than by exchanging blows (fighting). Which way of knowing dominates depends on the context. Muslims and Christians put their faith in different Revelations. So, they have a strong inclination to fight over who's right. Or to simply condescend to those who cannot accept their version of The Truth. I am a compatiblist, but I can critique both sides.
Feeling is much more personal and persuasive (and real) than abstract knowledge. But by translating passionate Feelings into impartial neutral Facts, humans can try to find some common ground between opposing beliefs. And that is the function of Philosophy : to reconcile objective empirical Facts with subjective biased feelings.
[i]My reality versus your reality :
"The difference between knowing something to be true, and feeling like something is true is that feeling like something is true allows you to actually experience what your mind knows. When you feel like something is true, then that principle can genuinely operate in your life. When you feel like something is true, it becomes a reality for you."[/i]
https://letyourselflearn.com/2013/08/05/the-difference-between-knowing-the-truth-and-feeling-the-truth/
PS__My reference to Evolution was to the general Darwinian principle of adaptation to context, not to the later genetic interpretations. The simplistic "one gene, one trait" notion was a popular meme, but was quickly abandoned by scientists.
Love Stephen Jay Gould, who came up with that. His writing amazes me. I learned a lot about writing and truth from reading his essays. Hate NOMA. Complete bologna. ....Ok, now I've calmed down. Gould could condescend with the best of them.
Quoting Gnomon
Yeah, but I'm talking to you, not them. Also, we claim to be the ones using reason. We're the ones who have to keep inappropriate emotion out of our arguments if we don't want to be hypocrites.
Quoting Gnomon
I really disagree with this. There is no reason to translate feelings into facts. Facts are never neutral. As I've said, you can't reach the truth without human values. As I alluded to in the OP, there is only one world.
Quoting Gnomon
I'm not clear - is this what you believe or what you think I believe? Either way, I have no argument with the thought.
Then we will have to agree to disagree. In my opinion, the function of Philosophy, as opposed to Religion, is to find some objective worldview that all reasonable people can agree on. Religion is inherently subjective and biased, and its power comes from appealing to feelings.
Quoting T Clark
That was a quote that seemed to answer the implicit intent behind the topical question. I agree with the quote as stated, but it omits the pragmatic reason for Philosophy's attempt to discover absolute Truth in order to mediate between the relative truths of human feelings. The TV series Closer to Truth was an example of a scientist trying to find common ground between personal opinions and objective facts. Rational philosophy will never reach absolute Truth (God's values), but by canceling-out conflicting human values, we may get closer to a general truth that we can all live with.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Closer_to_Truth
Has anyone ever, in the long history of the world, come anywhere close to finding "some objective worldview that all reasonable people can agree on?" Answer - No. Reason - because there isn't one, never was one, never will be one, never can be one. Although I refuse to agree to disagree on principle, I will agree to leave it there.
Quoting Gnomon
Again, there's not one small, sweet chance.
Nice writing here...
That's true, but has any subjective worldview come close to absolute Truth? We can either strive to get closer to objective truth, or give-up that dream of mutual understanding, and just retreat into our little isolated cells of solipsism. It's the realization that an insular worldview leads to misunderstanding and mutual distrust that drives us to seek the holy grail of unbiased objectivity.
Our disagreement may be a case of Ethical Subjectivism (realism) versus Ethical Objectivism (idealism). There is some validity to both views. But I am too aware of my own ignorance to have the know-it-all feeling of certainty that some people seem to take pride in.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Objectivity_(philosophy)
"Successive epochs are associated with an ever expanding body of knowledge and, possibly, bandwidth of understanding. Such growth, what is more, is driven by a willed sense of our ignorance, by cultivated doubt, by active uncertainty, by the feeling, based on previous experience, that our objectivity has serious limits."
___Raymond Tallis, LOGOS
You seem to have very different ideas of how the world and knowledge work than I do. I don't believe the idea of objective or absolute truth is a very useful one. I think a search for it is one of the primary causes of the misunderstanding and mutual distrust you refer to. There are a lot of people on the forum who agree with you. This probably isn't the place to get deeply into that.
Chasing the dream of absolute Truth is not practical for materialistic purposes. Pragmatic empirical scientists like Richard Feynman are sometimes dismissive of idealistic theoretical philosophers. They waste their time chasing unicorns. But Einstein was an idealistic theoretical scientist, and there were no known applications for some of his flights of imagination (like riding on a light beam). But his abstract and paradoxical concepts opened the door to technologies that would have seemed like magic in his day. It's necessary for scientists in atom smashers and chemical labs to be realistic. But it's also necessary for theoretical scientists (and philosophers) exploring beyond the current paradigm to be somewhat idealistic. It takes all kinds. :smile:
“Shoot for the stars, but if you happen to miss, shoot for the moon instead.”
? Neil Armstrong
I was trying to make a stronger statement. I do not believe that absolute or objective truth exists. That's not quite right, because the existence of absolute truth is a metaphysical question. Metaphysical questions don't have true or false answers. It is a matter of usefulness. I don't think the idea of absolute truth is useful and I think it is misleading.
I don't want to go off topic, which I think we're starting to do. There are lots of threads on the forum that discuss this issue. I've started some. It's an issue that is near and dear to me. I don't think there are any active right now. Actually, there is one "Metaphysics - What is It," that @Pattern-chaser started and which closed out last week. Maybe PC wouldn't mind us reopening it to discuss this issue.
:up:
Quoting T Clark
By all means! :smile:
I don't think that's necessary. We are simply talking about two kinds of knowledge : the personal kind that is validated by feelings (physical), and the abstract kind that is out there beyond our grasp (metaphysical). If you don't think metaphysics is a "useful" concept, then there would be no point in discussing it regarding the private "feeling of knowing" versus the general set of "what is known" (science), or the universal set of "what is knowable" (epistemology).
My original comment was simply an attempt to point-out that the visceral feeling of knowing is equivalent to Faith --- what's true for you, may not be true for me. Faith is based on a fractional understanding of reality. Only by sharing and comparing our personal beliefs can we get a feeling for truth and knowledge in a more general sense.
"The paradox is that for knowledge to count as knowledge at all, it must be processed in an individual consciousness"
___Stephen Anderson review of LOGOS
"The point, however, remains : we individually know little of what is known."
___Raymond Tallis, LOGOS
I find it a very useful concept. What I said is that 1) the concept of absolute reality is a metaphysical one. 2) As a metaphysical concept, it isn't true or false, it's useful or not useful and 3) I believe it is not useful because it is misleading.
Quoting Gnomon
All knowledge is based on a fractional understanding, science no less than other types. I think you have misunderstood what I mean when I say knowledge includes feelings. The body of knowledge I've been talking about is everything I know - intuition, observation, personal experience, what I feel, what I perceive, what I remember, what I've studied and read, and every other thing I've done that gives me experience and understanding of the world. That incorporates uncertainties about the knowledge included. It also incorporates other people's understanding of how things works when I decide it's relevant and useful.
When push comes to shove, the body of knowledge is mine. It has to be, because it's invented, developed, evolved, figured out, made up, whatever - for my personal use making the decisions I am responsible for. I don't think I can give a better explanation than I put in the OP. I think you and I are far apart in our understanding of how these things work. I think that the distinction between reason and faith is not a very helpful one in this context. My understanding of your belief is that they are the heart of the matter. Please set me straight if I'm wrong.
As we've gotten into this, I think I now agree with you that this subject is relevant to the theme set up in the OP. Given that we're so far apart, I'm not sure where we go from here.
My personality is self-critical. So I have never had the feeling of self-confidence and certainty that you, and many others, seem to have. Consequently, I am constantly testing my personal beliefs and feelings against those of other people -- as in this thread -- to see if they know something I don't. Likewise, I have learned that my intuition often jumps to unwarranted conclusions, so I use my meager reasoning abilities to examine my BoK closely, looking for flaws. I also was raised in a fundamentalist religion, where human reason was considered dangerous in matters of faith.
Hence, for me personally, you are correct, that making a distinction between Reason and Faith is essential to my search for a reliable body of knowledge. Although that critical attitude toward beliefs in general causes my BoK to be less rigid than the firm ground of True Believers, as you said : "When push comes to shove, the body of knowledge is mine." That's why I take care to keep it cleaned-up and weeded-out from contamination with false beliefs. :smile:
PS___If my comments are off-topic and irrelevant, I will apologize for hijacking your thread.
As I wrote in my previous post, I was wrong when I said the subjects you have raised do not belong in this thread.
Quoting Gnomon
I don't know something you don't, I just see things differently than you do. These are metaphysical questions, it's not a matter of .... wait, I've already said that. A lot.
If there is no objective truth, is there subjective truth?
Let me restate or expand my statement - I don't believe that what we call objective reality is useful in many situations. I have no trouble thinking of things that way when we're talking science in a limited fashion, e.g. when we're talking about broader issues of knowledge, e.g. reductionism, I think it's misleading.
So, yes, I don't think that the idea of subjective truth is useful. In some ways, it is the heart of the matter for me.
A simulation is an objective reality - its subjectivity relies on its relativity to our own.
Is it misleading or are we mismatching - tempo or rhythm?
Not sure if I understand. The simulations I've worked with - groundwater and surface water models - are systems of simplified equations that are solved by a computer and then put together into description of the system - either visual or written. It's no more objective than the equations and data that go into it.
Whether we view the weather physically or virtually - both are simulations, who relate to the same derivation of possible weather.
The tempo of physically observed and virtual weather is the same. Which is to say they are principally and/or functionally the same.
But the rhythm of the two, which is to say the composition, does not align. This makes them practically different.
To illustrate:
A client must pay 18.75 for groceries and gives you 20.
You may either add to 18.75 til 20 or subtract 18.75 from 20 to deduce his change. Same tempo, different rhythm.
Going back to the topic at hand: What knowing feels like
I'm curious why you would consider an objective truth a hindrance - as the title sets an objective tempo?
All answers would thus follow to be principally objective, yet practically subjective and I think it would be hard to be mislead by one due to their layered functions.
If there is no objective truth to the query, then any posited quality would be worthless - methinks.
To summarise: How do you question without objectivity? How do you question, for lack of a better word, void?
I really don't understand this. The modeler has created the weather model to allow her to predict the real weather. They are no more the same than the word "weather" is the same as the rain and clouds.
Quoting Shamshir
I wrote elsewhere, I can't remember if it was in this thread, I don't believe that objective reality exists. That's not quite right. What I really believe is that it is not a very useful way of thinking about things in many situations. As I've said many times, the existence of objective reality is a metaphysical question and, as such, it doesn't have a yes or no answer.
Pardon me, if my explanation is shoddy.
I'm simply asking - why do you add 'real'?
What is the difference besides practical semblance?
They are based on the same principles, so their derivations of weather - excluding how each is made - are functionally the same.
Quoting T Clark
And that's the - problem, maybe?
Objective reality is inescapable and the metaphysical question you propose, is situated within its stable ground.
I still don't understand. I don't see how the weather we experience in the world is any more like the weather model than the George Washington Bridge is like a picture of the George Washington Bridge.
Quoting Shamshir
I don't see it that way. I don't see any reason to just repeat my arguments.
I find knowledge is in knowing the who, what, where, why, when and how *not* to "believe" (in) something by virtue of either: being not necessarily true, or certainly not true.
A hypothetical that has application to the real world:
Person A "believes" book Q is the perfect, unaltered word of a god. They "believe" their 'state' empire has preserved it without blemish and it unreservedly reflects true revelations by god, to a man, through an angel. The entire worldview of person A is constructed upon this "belief" and thus relies on it exclusively.
Person B "knows" book Q is *not* the perfect, unaltered word of a god. They are acutely aware of certain information/facts which undermine and/or render the claim regarding book Q necessarily false, thus have "knowledge" of who/what/where/why/when/how and if not to believe.
I feel the difference is a matter of conscience. Whereas person A has not subjected their "beliefs" to scrutiny, person B has actively used the conscience (ie. asked the who, what, where, why, when, how and ultimately if) and tried the claim, tested if/where necessary, and finds something to either be necessarily true or necessarily untrue.
I find ultimately the quality of the conscience can be determined by the quality of the questions it is able to form and pursue. A good conscience asks good questions that derive meaningful answers that advances their understanding, allowing them to ask even more meaningful questions.Those who are bound to "believe" without subjecting the "belief" to scrutiny via (con)science do not use the conscience in this way, if at all.
I would denote the "dark ages" as the "age of belief" and say humanity is due to drop "belief" as a viable basis of existence. This "believer" vs. "unbeliever" division that has existed is essentially the most principle division over the past few thousand years responsible now for the deaths of hundreds of millions.
It's simple.
Without an objective reality - there's nothing to base your question on, and it is void.
The very rejection of an objective reality denotes an objective reality as a prerequisite.
How could you come to reject what isn't? You would be rejecting nothing.
I don't understand your point. Does this make sense? "The very rejection of the existence of Superman denotes the existence of Superman as a prerequisite."
Are you suggesting the imperceptibility of Superman denies this?
Sorry, you've lost me.
I'll say it again - objective reality neither exists no doesn't exist. It is a metaphysical concept. We can choose to use, consider it or not. I often choose not to consider it.
You, along with the aforementioned proposition are composed of objective reality - and if you were not, you would be inconceivable, and thus void.
There is no choice in the matter - it is inescapable.
I don't agree. We've probably taken this as far as we can right now.
You won't convince me. I won't convince you. You have learned something today - there are people, at least one person, who doesn't think objective reality exists. That's probably as much as you're going to get out of this.
I thought I already did end it on a high note. My intent was to be friendly and conciliatory while saying I don't think it will be fruitful to continue the discussion at this time.