Knowing that you do not know

[Reciprocality]

Everyone who both knows that they actually know very little and wants to expand their knowledge must have a strong ego, because besides the receiver of knowledge only the ego can make what is chaotic and disintegrated coherent and there is no expanding of knowledge in a disintegrated and chaotic state.

Don't we reject everything that we don't know? How would we stand in relation to the things we do not know if we neither tried to learn it nor rejected it?

Edited September 15 by Reciprocality

[Reciprocality]

For the benefit of a possible productive conversation the following is commentary on the above theory from perplexity.ai:

 

The Ego as a Mechanism of Rejection and Identity Formation

Your view presents a unique and nuanced understanding of the ego's role in relation to unknown information. Let's break this down:

 

Ego as a Rejecting Force

In your conception, the ego serves primarily as a mechanism for rejection. It acts as a filter or barrier against information that is not yet ready to be integrated into one's knowledge base.

 

Negative Coherence

The key insight here is the idea of "negative coherence." Instead of the ego organizing information positively, it creates coherence through rejection. This rejection gives shape to the unknown by defining what it is not, rather than what it is.

 

Self-Identity Formation

This process of rejection is integral to forming the self-identity of the agent. By defining what one does not know or accept, the individual carves out a clearer sense of self.

 

Philosophical Implications

This perspective raises several intriguing philosophical questions:

Nature of Knowledge: Is knowledge defined as much by what we reject as by what we accept?

Identity and Negation: How fundamental is the act of rejection to the formation of personal identity?

Cognitive Dissonance: Does this view explain why encountering new, challenging information can be psychologically uncomfortable?

Learning Process: If rejection creates negative coherence, how does the transition to positive knowledge occur?

Epistemic Humility: Does this understanding of ego and knowledge acquisition promote or hinder epistemic humility?

 

Comparison to Established Theories

Your perspective shares some similarities with certain philosophical and psychological concepts:

Hegelian Dialectic: The idea of thesis-antithesis-synthesis, where negation plays a crucial role in the development of ideas.

Constructivism: The notion that individuals actively construct their understanding of the world, though your emphasis is on construction through rejection.

Cognitive Dissonance Theory: The psychological discomfort experienced when holding conflicting ideas, which could be seen as a result of the ego's rejection mechanism.

This view of the ego as a rejecting force that creates negative coherence offers a provocative alternative to more traditional views of knowledge acquisition and identity formation. It suggests that our understanding of the world is shaped as much by what we push away as by what we embrace, and that this process is fundamental to who we are as individuals.

 

 

[Reciprocality]

It is clear to me that since nobody responded to the post it did not take the leap from mere words to idea in the mind of those who read it, that kind of leap appears to me to be conditioned on connecting the assertions those words express to past experiences, this can be a tremendous task if there are either few or no exceptions in our experiences for the assertions to apply to and no unitary word of natural language sufficient to encompass it.

I want to warn everyone who cares in the slightest that if you will continue to not take this kind of problems seriously, and perhaps instead brush it off as just overly abstract and mental masturbation then for all your air of objectivity and intellectual transcendence of the "lower levels of the spiral" there is really only personal gain for you in view, you have thereby severed yourself from what is hypothetical and unfortunately not even entered the conversation of the scientific paradigm you disprove of.

I could do a better job of presenting my idea, and I will try again, but since the topic is so relevant to the purpose of this forum my faults can not be the whole picture.

Edited September 16 by Reciprocality

[MutedMiles]

22 hours ago, Reciprocality said:

Everyone who both knows that they actually know very little and wants to expand their knowledge must have a strong ego, because besides the receiver of knowledge only the ego can make what is chaotic and disintegrated coherent and there is no expanding of knowledge in a disintegrated and chaotic state.

Don't we reject everything that we don't know? How would we stand in relation to the things we do not know if we neither tried to learn it nor rejected it?

I don't think ego makes the knowledge coherent and in it's absence it's disintegrated. Things work as they are ego is a perspective through which we look at this living.

I like the notion that, ego is like a "joker" that appears after the circus show to take credit for it.

We don't create our thoughts, they just appear. We don't decide which thought will appear. Even the things that we feel that we are in control of, for example decision making, again it appears with conviction that this is the right decision. Decision occurs to us.

Even if one goes down into weighing options at a granular level, again we don't create the thoughts of all options and then the process and how we feel about a certain thought options. It just occurs, Ego is just a perspective on it that just jumps form thought to thought as a wrapper around it giving a sense of control.
 

Edited September 16 by MutedMiles

[Reciprocality]

@MutedMiles Why does the baby cry when you stop rocking its cradle?

 

The movement of colours relative to the observer is a singular identity that distributes over all that sensory impression and reduces the sense of disorder one experiences from just seeing a multitude of things that are extremely different.

 

Why do all matter have mass and all matter with mass have inertia?

 

Because if various things in a composite are not identical in some way their only relation could be synthetic and only conscious agents are known to give rise to the synthetic identities. (something similar is that when semantic is insufficient you also need syntax, syntax being a momentary means for the words to give rise to a whole that can not be found merely in the sum of the words)

 

(Should we continue with all kinds of examples?)

 

My basic assertion is that the ego is to the bank of memory and knowledge what relative movement is to the composite of colours (it is even more interesting than that, since the absence of the latter directly produces the very distress that compliments the ongoing oscillation between it and the "will for order" which relative to different stimuli gives rise to the ego.

My thesis in this thread simply expands on the above and states that not only does our ego relate to all our knowledge but it even relates to all that we do not know, via reducing its disorder by simply ignoring or rejecting it (pretending as though it is not real, which it does de facto or in practice)

Edited September 17 by Reciprocality

[Reciprocality]

What I am saying is so obvious that I am risking not giving it a second thought, but if when I do present it nobody believes it I become forced to take it more seriously.

How aware are you of how much you know nothing about? And if you claim to be so thoroughly aware of this, what is your relation to it besides the moments in which you ignore or refuse it? Does the act of ignoring not come with an equal effect in the psyche, does it happen in a vacuum? And how would this which you know nothing about relate to your mind if it were neither ignored nor pursued?

If you think that there is no third alternative to ignoring or pursuing then you are mistaken, your mind does indeed spontaneously do either or but only because its prima operandi is to reduce the chaos that produces stress, this stress being that third alternative.

Then there is the claim that not only is the ego the very coherence that all unknown things have to one another and that the ego itself changes shape somewhat in proportion to the kinds of things it actively ignores but also that the bigger the ego the more truth there is to unveil or the higher the capacity (but not therefore tendency) to expand ones knowledge.

Edited September 17 by Reciprocality

[MutedMiles]

7 hours ago, Reciprocality said:

Then there is the claim that not only is the ego the very coherence that all unknown things have to one another and that the ego itself changes shape somewhat in proportion to the kinds of things it actively ignores but also that the bigger the ego the more truth there is to unveil or the higher the capacity (but not therefore tendency) to expand ones knowledge.

I don't define ego so broadly, for me, If i just look at my experience. I just see an awareness of perceptions, thoughts and sensations. The experience is still there if don't talk about it or even think about it. 

If i just let things are happen as they are, there is no making sense of things there for "ego". Thought isn't always organized and sensations if there is an awareness of them along with thoughts they appear as body. However sometimes when I sit and thoughts subside, sensations are just pulsations and a kind of amalgam of vibrations and there is no body there.

The reason I'm mentioning this is because, I don't a see point of creating such a broad thought object called "ego" and then mapping whole reality around it. I would rather stay with my direct experience and move from there one step at a time.

It's just a matter of language that "I" appears everywhere and all-around, but it doesn't mean that's the actual experience as well. Making sense of things is not an exercise of "ego", Only making "sense" of things in relation to "ego" is the exercise of "ego". Understanding isn't an activity of "ego", ego comes afterwards and takes credit, understanding just happens in a timeless moment that "ego" has no recollection of. Sometimes this process is more pronounced, you look at something an you get it. 

You don't know what knowledge you are collecting, there is no "you" there, "You" is a very surface phenomena. There can be an awareness that, there was no you at the first place. It happens intermittently to me and during those periods i have no resistance, the sensations are totally open, no resistance to any feelings.

Edited September 17 by MutedMiles

[Reciprocality]

1 hour ago, MutedMiles said:

I don't define ego so broadly, for me, If i just look at my experience. I just see an awareness of perceptions, thoughts and sensations. The experience is still there if don't talk about it or even think about it. 

If i just let be things are happening, there is no making sense of things there. Thought isn't always organized and sensations if there is an awareness of them along thoughts they appear as body. However sometimes when I sit and thoughts subside, sensations are just pulsations and kind of amalgam of vibrations and there is no body there.

The reason I'm mentioning this is because, I don't a see point of creating such broad thought object called "ego" and then mapping whole reality around it. I would rather stay with my direct experience and move from there one step at a time.

It's just a matter of language that "I" appears everywhere and all-around, but it doesn't mean that's the actual experience as well. Making sense of things is not an exercise of "ego", Only making "sense" of things in relation to "ego" is the exercise of "ego". Understanding isn't an activity of "ego", ego comes afterwards and takes credit, understanding just happens in a timeless moment that "ego" has no recollection of. Sometimes this process is more pronounced, you look at something an you get it.

@MutedMiles Let us exercise what you propose, let us sit and just observe the pulsations and vibrations of phenomena and so directly so that there is no knowledge about any of it only the it and no ego needed to make sense of it.

And indeed in this most naked state both the "I" and its world perishes, and from within this momentary halt there are only the sensations and not a slightest clue as to the relation among them, which is also why it does not adress the topic at hand.

 

 

When it comes to actually dealing with my ideas you start in the wrong end, you propose that the ideas I present are just created broad categories that serves to map reality to, assuming thereby that reality and the map are not already related independent of any ephemeral creative effort. 

We are inclined to ask what puts us out of the momentary direct bliss you pointed us towards, do we need to assume that something does it, is it by chance that this question is found natural to ask in that context again and again? Thousands of years with linguistic evolution has given us the word that refers to it, in english it is called "will", it arises upon this and that sensory stimuli prior to our discussion and prior to mental models and maps, this can be as easily and directly verified as the "pulsations and vibrations" of phenomena can.

You may re-read the post and comments in the context of this will, particularly as it relates to the less chaotic situation the baby experiences when stimuli are set in motion, if that is counter intuitive I would urge you to imagine what it is like to experience a whole array of completely different substances without any one thing that is the same in them, such as is the case with colours of varying intensity in sense perception.

Just from this curious example of the baby in the cradle a whole world of correct philosophical insight is possible, and may make one able to see the whole operation of humanity in an instant.

Edited September 17 by Reciprocality

[El Zapato]

Do not forget that it is also possible to know that you know...just an opinion.

[Reciprocality]

5 minutes ago, El Zapato said:

Do not forget that it is also possible to know that you know...just an opinion.

@El Zapato Yes! That would be an abstraction of knowing.

First there is the thing that just is, the primary of existence, stimuli and will/impulse.

Then there is memory and identifying things, thus knowing about things.

And then there is memory and identity turning in on itself, the "knowing that one knows" you referred to, in which situation one focuses on the knowing itself.

 

Why is it possible for us to focus in on the knowing itself? Must the knowledge take on a character entirely different from the impression of stimuli to compensate for its insubstantiality? What character would that be? 

[SOUL]

22 hours ago, Reciprocality said:

If you think that there is no third alternative to ignoring or pursuing then you are mistaken, your mind does indeed spontaneously do either or but only because its prima operandi is to reduce the chaos that produces stress, this stress being that third alternative.

There is at least one other alternative... observing. No ignorance, no pursuit, no stress, just simple awareness.

[El Zapato]

22 hours ago, Reciprocality said:

@El Zapato 

Why is it possible for us to focus in on the knowing itself? Must the knowledge take on a character entirely different from the impression of stimuli to compensate for its insubstantiality? What character would that be? 

That sounds like a question for Leo, but the practice of 'mindfulness' probably would help focus that particular 'character of thought'.  I've long felt substantial and deeper thought occurs at the 'meta' level. It leads to the truth beneath the perception.  And, in my mind, it is most important. Perhaps the deconstruction of thought processes is the natural by-product of 'missing the connection'?

 

We could view the non-separation as a feature rather than a bug.  

Edited September 18 by El Zapato

[Reciprocality]

17 hours ago, SOUL said:

17 hours ago, SOUL said:

If you think that there is no third alternative to ignoring or pursuing then you are mistaken, your mind does indeed spontaneously do either or but only because its prima operandi is to reduce the chaos that produces stress, this stress being that third alternative.

For context: my statement^

SOUL: There is at least one other alternative... observing. No ignorance, no pursuit, no stress, just simple awareness.

@SOUL Interesting, let us say you engaged in mere observation or pure awareness of the present moment, for how long would you succeed at this before suddenly a certain perspective or connection were drawn, and once that is done what other options do you have than ignoring or pursuing the connection/perspective? And for how long would you sit purely aware like that before you experience stress from the chaos of pure being without knowing, connecting and pursuing?

Surely we are interesting not only in fancy display of hypotheticals but to actually test whether all I say here unfolds. And if it does not unfold in your own practice the way I presented above here then I am all ears.

[Reciprocality]

8 hours ago, El Zapato said:

8 hours ago, El Zapato said:

  On 17/09/2024 at 0:37 PM, Reciprocality said:

@El Zapato 

Why is it possible for us to focus in on the knowing itself? Must the knowledge take on a character entirely different from the impression of stimuli to compensate for its insubstantiality? What character would that be? 

 

That sounds like a question for Leo, but the practice of 'mindfulness' probably would help focus that particular 'character of thought'.  S1 I've long felt substantial and deeper thought occurs at the 'meta' level. It leads to the truth beneath the perception.  And, in my mind, it is most important. S2 Perhaps the deconstruction of thought processes is the natural by-product of 'missing the connection'?

 

We could view the non-separation as a feature rather than a bug.  

@El Zapato S1: You say that the deeper thoughts you have experienced that occur on a meta level have been more "substantial" than others, which I can understand as a metaphor as a replacement for what it actually is, but not in a way that relates to my usage of the word substantial in the above context.

I mean that stimuli is substantial in that it is prior to everything else, or as the formal definition goes "not a predicate of anything else", and I consider it plausible that for our thoughts to arise to a level where it can exist alongside something substantial that it must compensate for the lack of its own substantiality/priorness, and this compensation may be explicable.

S2: It could be, but would you elaborate on what you mean by "missing the connection", it were not entirely clear to me.

[Reciprocality]

@El Zapato Were you saying about these deeper thoughts that they lead to truths about perceptions or just truths that does not apply to any perception nor their relationship at all?

[El Zapato]

@Reciprocality That was my point, they can lead to truths about perceptions themselves (one specific perception at a time), but it can also lead to a removal of the perception entirely.  And that is a good thing.  Personal bias can lead to skewed perceptions, thinking about the why, where, and what for of the conditions allowing a given perception to exist provides valuable insight into the perception itself and thereby the truth of it.

yeah, I get you, substantial in the context that you had in mind.  I don't think that 'thought' from that contextual view requires a justification for its value, the fact that it is being thought is enough. And if the thought is born of one's own neurological framework then for that one 'mind' it has 'heft' in the sense it is really real.

Edited September 18 by El Zapato

[SOUL]

3 hours ago, Reciprocality said:

 

20 hours ago, SOUL said:

20 hours ago, SOUL said:

If you think that there is no third alternative to ignoring or pursuing then you are mistaken, your mind does indeed spontaneously do either or but only because its prima operandi is to reduce the chaos that produces stress, this stress being that third alternative.

For context: my statement^

SOUL: There is at least one other alternative... observing. No ignorance, no pursuit, no stress, just simple awareness.

@SOUL Interesting, let us say you engaged in mere observation or pure awareness of the present moment, for how long would you succeed at this before suddenly a certain perspective or connection were drawn, and once that is done what other options do you have than ignoring or pursuing the connection/perspective? And for how long would you sit purely aware like that before you experience stress from the chaos of pure being without knowing, connecting and pursuing?

Surely we are interesting not only in fancy display of hypotheticals but to actually test whether all I say here unfolds. And if it does not unfold in your own practice the way I presented above here then I am all ears.

 

By observing in awareness, it ceases the 'spontaneous' behavior of the mind. This is a crucial distinction because the spontaneous reaction a mind takes is an affirmation of those subconscious patterns of behavior which come from the past. The reaction model of mind.

What is there instead of the spontaneous behavior? It's intentional behavior, it is not subconscious but is conscious. It's the action model of mind. We are setting a present moment pattern of behavior that when it finally falls into the past it becomes seed for the subconscious mind's behavior.

This severs the attachment to not only the old behavior but the new behavior can also be unattached if we create the present moment experience of it as such. Regardless of whether the action we take has been informed by the past or not it is not a reaction to it when in the mind we don't spontaneously act on it.

It is not ignoring, pursuing or stressing, it is a completely different way for the mind to behave, a different modus operandi. Yet to be quite honest, it's the actual prima operandi which has been neglected by us in favor of the reaction model of the mind.

[Joshe]

On 9/17/2024 at 5:37 AM, Reciprocality said:

Just from this curious example of the baby in the cradle a whole world of correct philosophical insight is possible, and may make one able to see the whole operation of humanity in an instant.

When I first read the question "why does the baby start crying when the cradle stops rocking?", I was like "Ok, that seems like gold.". 

I am not as deep into these things as you but let's see what I can come up with:

Stimulation keeps one distracted from the emptiness.

If you go back to a time when you've experienced excruciating pain, that seems to be the same state the baby is in when the cradle stops. There's a "closeness". You get very close to the fabric of reality. Since the babies prefrontal cortex is not developed, all it knows is this closeness. The closer you get, the more vulnerable you are. The cradle rock is a distraction from the closeness. I've long believed that this emptiness is a big factor in forging identity. It drives us to get in where we fit in. Niche-filling. I could possibly dive deeper if it seems an interesting idea but I'm just pulling all of this from my intuition and not sure how valuable it is. 

What do you make of these ideas? Feel free to steer me in the right direction if I've strayed too far away. 

 

 

 

[Reciprocality]

11 hours ago, Joshe said:

There's a "closeness". You get very close to the fabric of reality. Since the babies prefrontal cortex is not developed, all it knows is this closeness. The closer you get, the more vulnerable you are. The cradle rock is a distraction from the closeness.

@Joshe Yes I am talking about this closeness too, but I am also paying attention to how the thing that the baby is close to is a multitude of stimuli, and I believe the closeness to that stimuli would be no issue if it weren't for how many different things that multitude consists of. The multitude of stimuli, particularly the stimuli of the eye, share no identical properties until they are put in motion thus sharing the property of relative movement. The emptiness is not in the stimuli itself but in the perspective on it (the perspectives are absent or empty).

It may be excruciating pain indeed for the baby to not see the connection between things, if the child is young enough the blue on the wall and the white in the ceiling are as disconnected as communism and libertarianism. When after weeks or months there is less and less correlation between the crying of the baby and the absence of movement of the cradle you can infer that it has formed a memory of movement as pertaining to the blue and the white as a potential. (which for context is the kind of thing from where you yourself in adult age have abstracted the notion of potentiality, and for which reason you can even think of that concept).

You call the cradle rock a distraction, perhaps implying that the movement and stimuli of the skin and internal balance itself introduces variables that takes the focus away from the chaos of the eye-stimuli, this should stand as a hypothesis on its own as is likely a far more normal interpretation of the baby-cradle situation as well as having more explanatory power. 

My idea is far more subtle but connects to far more examples when we abstract from it its essential elements, that one singular identity (which would be movement in my theory) reduces stress in our mind when it applies to many particular substances is so far as I am aware always the case, which is why our whole body-mind situation has an ego.

The self is to the whole of reality what movement is to an array of colours, the self minimises the stress in our being by distributing itself over every element of reality.

Edit: I am aware that the self produces new forms of stress, which we then try to minimise by removing ourself from reality itself, and when we alternatively try to change that self it too removes us from reality.

Edited September 19 by Reciprocality

[El Zapato]

17 hours ago, SOUL said:

It is not ignoring, pursuing or stressing, it is a completely different way for the mind to behave, a different modus operandi. Yet to be quite honest, it's the actual prima operandi which has been neglected by us in favor of the reaction model of the mind.

That's what I thunk...  I was wondering if it was possible to 'gear' oneself into that mode, outside the realm of 'contemplation'.  I think in either case neurons are firing, though.

I tried it, wow, what a headache!

Edited September 19 by El Zapato