DocWatts

Thank you!

Hello fellow actualizers, thought I might share a write-up from my philosophy book, '7 Provisional Truths: How We Come To Know Things, And Why It Matters'. In this section, I explore the dichotomy between Absolutism and Relativism, while offering a more pragmatic 'middle way' for thinking about knowledge, grounded in the role that our minds play in constructing an experiential reality. Hope you enjoy! ___________________________________________________________________________________________ The Enactive Approach How can we navigate between the extremes of unyielding certainty and paralyzing skepticism? One method is to chart a ‘middle way’ that’s grounded in our lived engagement with the world. Mind you, this ‘middle way’ doesn’t mean finding a lukewarm compromise that’s halfway between these opposing sides. Rather, it involves rejecting the game entirely, and shifting to a new playing field with a fresh set of rules for thinking about certainty. Our name for this framework is Enactivism, and its course-correction emerges from acknowledging the active role that minds play in ‘bringing forth’, or enacting, an experiential world. Having left the old playing field behind, Enactivism threads a course between two traditional opponents: Absolutism and Relativism. The former contending that knowledge is strictly impersonal; perhaps best personified by the statement that ‘facts don’t care about your feelings’. While the latter attests that knowledge is inherently perspectival, meaning that it’s unavoidably interpreted through a set of individual and social circumstances. Our decision to name this framework Enactivism is no accident - 'enact' means to 'carry out' or 'bring to fruition'. The etymology of our term hints at its core hypothesis: that knowledge is constructed. The key insight? Knowledge doesn’t exist ‘out there’, as a fixed feature of some ‘neutral’ Reality. Nor does it emerge as a pure invention of an isolated mind. Instead, it arises at the intersection of mind, body, and environment, through a dynamic feedback loop we call world disclosure. The crux of world disclosure is that our minds give us an experiential Reality to live in that comes pre-arranged in terms of our needs and capacities. Enactivism extends this insight by showing that knowledge emerges from the relational process between a living body-mind and its environment. Far from being passive receptors for ‘external’ inputs, our mind works in tandem with our living body and our environment to actively construct an experiential reality. The most impressive part? Most of this occurs beneath conscious awareness - our minds' considerable effort to construct an intelligible reality is largely invisible to us And while this generative process can lead to reliable knowledge about Reality, what it can’t provide is absolute certainty. Our knowledge remains inseparable from our lived perspective within Reality, and the perspectives of living minds are necessarily bounded by biology. So does this condemn us to be forever isolated within our individual perspective? Far from it! As we’ll see, our shared evolutionary heritage makes possible stable forms of knowledge that are broadly applicable. An additional aspect of Enactivist epistemology lies in its insistence that Absolutist and Relativist accounts are true, but partial. What this means is that both viewpoints contain elements of truth, but are partial in the sense that they miss the dynamic interplay between observer and observed - how mind and world define and shape one another in a dynamic feedback loop. Armed with this insight, our Enactive approach will aim to synthesize aspects of these two opposing accounts, while rejecting key assumptions from both. Enactivism rejects the shared assumption that knowledge is primarily conceptual, and mostly a matter of holding beliefs. As we’ve seen, this is flawed because it fails to account for how nonconceptual ways of knowing and being are central to everyday life. Our extended survey on the centrality of Situated Coping for everyday forms of knowing and being was an articulation of this precise point. Another area where Enactivism parts way with both camps lies in another one of their shared blind spots: treating knowledge as disembodied. This oversight has direct implications for how perspectives shape knowledge; both Absolutism and Relativism miss the mark here, though for different reasons. Absolutism gets it wrong by ignoring how perspectives inevitably shape what counts as valid knowledge. While Relativism falls short by fixating on the social and cultural dimensions of knowledge, overlooking how our shared human perspective within Reality opens the door to forms of understanding that transcend individual and societal contexts. Lastly, Enactivism shatters a final cornerstone of these opposing views: that there's an absolute boundary between ourselves and the world. It rejects the notion that Reality can be neatly divided into an 'external' world of objects and an 'internal' world of experience. As we’ll see, this taken-for-granted divide dissolves under closer scrutiny. This perceived boundary typically masks a deeper assumption: that one of these domains - internal or external - is more ‘real’ than the other. We can see this in materialist perspectives that try to ‘explain away’ consciousness, arguing that minds are nothing more than an arrangement of matter and energy. On the flip side of the coin, certain spiritual perspectives contend that physical reality is a mere illusion created by our minds. Both instances are illustrative of reductionism - trying to ‘explain away’ a particular phenomena by conjecturing that it’s in fact a property of something else. As we’ll see, one of Enactivism’s core aims is to sidestep this tug-of-war over what’s ultimately ‘real’, in favor of a pragmatic perspective grounded in everyday experience. A guiding insight of this pragmatism could be summed up as: no unmediated access to Reality - that our embodied perspective within Reality is what’s ultimately ‘real’ for us. Precisely because it’s only through this perspective that we have access to a world of people, place, and things, theorizing about what Reality ultimately 'is' is beside the point - when what we actually care about is what Reality is for us. This shift in focus opens a more fruitful path forward. By questioning the fixed boundary between ourselves and the world, we can explore our interaction with these domains without falling into the trap of reductionism. Enactivism's key insight? The divide between 'self' and 'world' is mentally constructed - indeed, the world itself is indispensable to what minds are. With this groundwork in place, it becomes clear why Enactivism offers a compelling 'middle way' for thinking about certainty - without succumbing to a half-hearted compromise between two played-out extremes. Yet instead of a stubborn refusal to find anything of value in these camps, Enactivism reveals how their partial insights can be synthesized into a fresh perspective for reflecting upon our lived experience. The cornerstone of this synthesis? It lies in recognizing that while knowledge is perspectival, perspectives aren’t boundless - they’re grounded in a shared biological and evolutionary context. As a practical matter, there are fundamentals that human beings can and must be able to agree upon to have functional societies. In every society, people fall in love, have children, get sick, grow old, and die. While the meanings we attach to these experiences vary across cultures, their universality creates common ground for shared understanding. So that’s the gist of the Enactive approach. What’s to follow is a brief followup on the Absolutist and Relativist viewpoints which Enactivism offers itself as an alternative to. Our aim is to unearth the basic assumptions behind both viewpoints, while excavating the partial truths contained within. Lastly, we’ll tie this all together with a look at the meaning crisis that’s unfolding within the West, why this crisis calls for reconstructive epistemology, and how Enactivism can play a small but promising part in bridging these divides.

Thanks for this, as it's especially relevant at our current moment: "[They] did not know before 1933 that Nazism was evil. They did not know between 1933 and 1945 that it was evil. And they do not know it now [in 1946].” ― Milton Sanford Mayer, They Thought They Were Free: The Germans, 1933-45' In Weimer Germany's last free elections, not everyone casting ballots for the Nazis would have described themselves as a Nazi, and a lot of them didn't have any particular animosity towards Jewish people. What was far more common was that folks saw some personal advantage to throwing their lot in with vengeful nationalists, and were willing to downplay and excuse the monstrous things that Hitler and the Nazis were saying and doing at the time - just as people today are willing to downplay Trump's violent hateful rhetoric, his numerous crimes, the January 6th insurrection, and the Republican Party's ongoing coup attempt. Likewise, the vast majority of Trump supporters don't think of themselves as fascist enablers, but what they fail to recognize is that today's fascism couches itself in traditional American values, weaponized against out-groups within American society - just as Nazi fascism marketed itself in traditional German values, weaponized against the out-groups of its day. It's exactly this type of dynamic that the 'Banality of Evil' was referring to.

Thank you! Let's save our democracy!!

Most of my posts tend to be in the Intellectual Stuff and the Society & Politics sections, since that's closer to my areas of expertise. I do engage in vipassana meditation, but I'll fully admit that meditation isn't the main focus of my contemplative work. I've spent the last two years writing a book on introspective epistemology (a 'field guide' to construct awareness, as I pitch it), and I've been working with some other philosophically minded folks in metro Detroit to build an in-person metamodern forum (https://fluidityforum.org/vision/). Over the years I've diverged from Leo's particular approach to spirituality, since at some point I think you do need to step aside from your initial influences and forge your own path. My work focuses more on embodied phenomenology - basically, understanding how we create knowledge from within the limitations of our lived, human perspective within Reality; and what this means for our constructed sense-making frameworks. That said, there's still a lot that I agree with Leo about, but I'd say that we have very different areas of emphasis. Psychedelics isn't a focus of my work, though I fully recognize that they can be very useful for subjective consciousness expansion. I approach nondualism in a different way than Leo. And I also place less emphasis on frameworks like Spiral Dynamics, since I feel that in practice it's often used as a form of epistemological and sociological bypassing.

Thank you for this. The number of people simping for an OBVIOUS authoritarian grifter in what's supposedly a conscious politics forum has been disappointing. The immaturity, equivocation, whataboutism, and excuses are more reflective of what I would expect to see in a Facebook comment section, or from talking to low-information voters. It's certainly not evident of people who've put in the work to have a solid grasp of epistemology, that's for damned sure.

All that LGBTQ want is to be able to do their business, wash their hands, and go back to whatever it was they were doing without being threatened or harassed. This a total non issue. The only reason it's being harped on is to deny trans people access to public spaces. Trans bathroom panic is the modern equivalent of the 'whites only' water fountain.

What people should keep in mind is that the apt historical comparison at this point is the rhetoric and tactics the Nazis were using to destroy Weimer democracy in the early 1930s, while they still had some constraints on their behavior (just like American fascism is working to subvert the constraints that are imposed upon them by American democracy). It's unfortunate that the type of folk-history that's common here in the 'States mostly mostly glosses over how the Nazis were able to subvert democracy, with most of the focus going to the horrific things they did while they were in power (which is obviously very important, but less instructive for where we're at now). (To that end, I would HIGHLY recommend 'The Death of Democracy: Hitler's Rise to Power and the Downfall of the Weimar Republic' by Benjamin Carter Hett as a resource for anyone who wants an in-depth account of this).

The racism on display was so ugly and blatant that the public relations teams for the RNC (!!) are working overtime to backpedal from the rhetoric here. Puerto Ricans (who I remind you are American citizens) were literally referred to as 'garbage' by an RNC vetted 'comedian', reading from a teleprompter. Mind you, this is coming on the heels of Trump literally praising Hitler, endorsing a self-described 'black Nazi' for governor of North Carolina, calling immigrants 'vermin', referring to American citizens who oppose his dictatorial plans as 'the enemy within', and openly stating that he wants to deploy the military against United States citizens. Short of Trump stepping on stage in front of a swastika and calling for a final solution to the 'illegals' problem, it's hard to think of how the historical parallels could be made any more blatant at this point.

Welp, wasn't expecting a full-blown reboot of the infamous infamous 1939 Nazi rally in Madison Square Garden as Trump's 'October Surprise' (just a week before the election, no less), but we find ourselves living in strange times.

YouTube has had a longstanding policy of demonitizing and delisting videos for controversial topics that aren't palatable to advertisers (meaning they're on the site, but they won't show up in your Recommended feed). I've seen vids on topics such as suicide and the Holocaust get delisted. Ever notice a video title with 'N*zi' instead of 'Nazi' in the title? That's that the algorithm at work. Little surprise if Rogan's three hour pow-wow with a rapist who launched a violent coup against our government is deemed 'controversial' by the algorithm.

This ^. From their point of view, Trump is stern father figure who's fighting to protect their way of life from encroachment by a host of perceived enemies who aren't deserving of equal treatment (immigrants, LGBTQ people, etc). It's a form of aggrieved entitlement, born of fears about a loss of social status. Read about the psychology of what was going through the heads of people defending white supremacy in the Confederacy and Jim Crow apartheid state that followed, and you won't be far off.

Hi, MrTruf. In the event of Trump victory, I plan to stay engaged, build grass roots support for midterm elections on the local and state level, push my local representatives to resist implementing discriminatory federal policies towards marginalized people in my state, support the shit out of pro-democracy organizations like the ACLU which will be working to protect American citizens from having their rights and freedoms stripped away. Also take steps to protect myself and people I care about from state sponsored violence, if it comes to that.

Holding Trump's inner circle and the stochastic terrorists he's inspired accountable for flagrantly criminal actions isn't an iron first, it's the bare minimum for adhering to the Rule Of Law, essential for any functioning democracy. Donald Trump getting to effectively be above the law because he's got a violent Cult behind him sets a ruinous precedent. It's the equivalent of letting Hitler and his brown-shirts off the hook for trying to overthrow the Weimer government in his Beer Hall Putsch (in reality, Hitler got off the hook with a short, relatively comfortable prison sentence) - and we saw how that turned out. What's supposed to happen within a democracy is that when a political party loses, it's supposed to go back to the drawing board, figure out what went wrong, and figure out how to garner enough public support to win the next. Instead of changing course and moderating its views to be more palatable to ordinary Americans, the modern Republican Party has decided that they'd be better of ending democracy rather than competing for power within democracy.

Open dialogue sounds great in theory, but it only works when both sides are operating in good faith. Stemming the flow of disinformation, disrupting the ability of fascist groups to perpetuate violence, and piercing Trump's cult of personality through an election loss and legal consequences for his flagrantly criminal behavior is a start. Reforming our institutions to make it harder for minoritarian rule would be necessary as well - the Electoral College, Supreme Court, and Senate are obvious places to start. While heart-to-hearts may get some members of Cult like organizations like MAGA or the KKK to reevaluate their beliefs, there's difficulty in scaling that up to tens of millions of people. Fortunately for us, we don't have deprogram everyone who's in the MAGA Cult. We just need to disrupt their ability to dismantle our democracy.

Not at all - MAGA is, and will always be, a minoritarian position, supported by perhaps %30-35 of the country. Stopping it hinges upon the rest of the country taking enough of an interest in our democracy to save it from violent fringe extremists.

No point in trying to reach people within the MAGA Cult, who truly give no fucks as to whether the talking points they're sock puppeting are true or not - when what they're looking for is a powerful daddy figure to persecute their perceived enemies.

Which is a tacit endorsement of political violence, and consistent with fascist sympathizers who downplay and excuse MAGA's violent rhetoric and actions. This kind if attitude has no place within a democracy. A consistent trend among MAGA fascists is the same DARVO psychological tactics that abusers use to gaslight their victims: Deny, Attack, Reverse Victim and Offender. MAGA's response to Jan 6 follows DARVO manipulation tactics to a tee. Deny that Trump did anything wrong by sending an arm mob to attack the Capitol. Attack anyone who tries to hold Trump and his inner circle accountable. Reverse Victim and Offender by decrying that Trump is the victim of a witch hunt by the January 6th Commission and the Department of Justice, who've been working to holding him legally accountable for his crimes.

Virtually every policy in Trump's Project 2025 agenda will make it harder to start a family. Paid family leave? Gone. Overtime pay that people depend on to pay their bills? That's gone too. IVF fertility treatment? Illegal. Child tax credits? Cut. Free school lunches? Nope! Early childhood education programs including head start? Also cut. Abortion access in case something goes wrong (ie a medical problem) during the pregnancy? Prepare to be prosecuted for murder.

Democrats can use a process called Budget Reconciliation to bypass the filibuster (indeed, this is how The Inflation Reduction Act was passed under Biden). But the types of bills that are passed under the process is somewhat limited : it happens once a year, and it's provisions have to have a plausible connection to the federal budget. Which is why investments in green energy can be included, but abortion legalization is likely to be shot down by the Senate Parliamentarian who oversees budget reconciliation, since it's far more tangential to federal spending.

Well, there's close to a %100 chance that Harris wins the popular vote (Hilary was an awful candidate and even she managed to win the popular vote against Trump), but because of the antiquated Electoral College, democrats have to outperform to win presidential elections.

I voted for Stein in 2016 and regret it to this day. The Green Party under Jill Stein is a grift that exists to siphon votes away from the Democratic Party. This is evident from the fact that they do zero campaigning between presidential election years, and aren't trying to build up a base of support and electoral presence through local elections where they might have a chance of winning. Mind you this is DESPITE the fact that I'm very much to the Left of the Democratic Party. But I'd much rather be advocating for progressive social democracy under Liberalism rather than fascism. No point in voting third party until Ranked Choice Voting becomes the norm throughout the country.

Also, some helpful flyers that I've been handing out as part of my door knocking . Folks who don't pay attention to politics aren't fully aware of Trump's fascist plans for a second term.

First off, thank you! Here in Michigan, the only reason that we don't have a total abortion ban from the 1800s in place is because Democrats were able to get an amendment codifying abortion rights onto the ballot, and then into our state Constitution in 2022. I happen to live in a critical bell weather county in the must-win suburbs of Detroit. I'm not only voting for her, on the weekends I've been part of a door knocking campaign with the Michigan Democratic Party as well. If you're worried about the outcome election, I'd highly recommend giving canvassing or phone banking a try. At the very least, make sure that people close to you (friends, family members) who haven't decided to sell out their country for a red hat have a plan to VOTE. If you're part of social activity like a church or even a gaming group, taking your friend without a car or your grandparents to the polls can make a huge difference if enough people do it.

The thing about accelerationism is that it has a tendency to blow up in your face. Sure, nazism blew up in the face of German nationalists, but 70 million people died as a result. Don't forget that there's a ticking clock for addressing existential threats like climate change. 4 years of a Trump dictatorship could set back an entire generation of progress on this issue, if the United States completely abdicates its responsibilities for addressing climate change.