Studying Epistemology

[soos_mite_ah]

I'm starting to become more critical of my thought processes, ways I go about making decisions, the ethical implications of the things I just mentioned, and any biases I might have that might skew my perspective of a situation. 

I want to also get into epistemology more but I'm not really sure where to start. 

At the same time, though I'm naturally becoming interested in questioning myself, I'm also drawn towards being more confident in my perspective, my analysis, and my experiences.  

How do I go about doing all of this? 

[peanutspathtotruth]

Have you read The Book of Not Knowing by Peter Ralston? It's a great guide to deconstructing your epistomological workings through direct experience. It's very hands-on in that it shows you what it teaches through immediate practicing / contemplating.

[Synchronicity]

I’m sure there will be quite a few people here who will have some great books and resources to recommend. So on top of that, I’ll add having a deeply epistemological discussion with other people as a good technique to have your own views or biases reflected back on you. Each person in the convo acts as a mirror to each other. But there’s no judgement against certain ideas. Just a mutual investigation of them. 
 

I do this with a few people - sometimes in a group - and it seems to create a lot of healthy openness as well as introspection. 

[WonderSeeker]

@soos_mite_ah Here's a fun primer: 

Really contemplate the coherence vs. correspondence theories part. It helps you to delineate "intra-" vs "inter-" when you draw distinctions.  

The rest is about various ideologies. Just somewhere to start!

[Leo Gura]

You don't learn epistemology from books.

You need to contemplate on the workings of your knowledge.

[Rilles]

Integrate The Ladder Of Inference into your daily life, its a great tool.

[Leo Gura]

I started contemplating epistemology when I was 16.

[Vision]

37 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

I started contemplating epistemology when I was 16.

I started when I was 15, which was over a year ago

I didn't even know that epistemology was a thing at the time. I was just very curious. 

There's a huge epistemological advantage to contemplating when you're young. In any culture, we get programmed with beliefs, constructs, and labels as we grow older. They further cement into our paradigm the longer we hold onto them.

For most people, deprogramming tends to be half of the work, I can see how it would even be one of the hardest parts of this work. When your mind is still malleable, and you've had 15-16 years of programming compared to the 25-80 years of programming most people have, this serves as a big edge.

[Leo Gura]

5 minutes ago, Vision said:

There's a huge epistemological advantage to contemplating when you're young.

Absolutely!

Contemplating at that age is magical. The mental freedom and flexibility is glorious.

If you combine it with the core things I teach, you will reach super-human levels of self-understanding.

[Vision]

1 minute ago, Leo Gura said:

Absolutely!

Contemplating at that age is magical. The mental freedom and flexibility is glorious.

Certainly is.

My favourite thing to do is just contemplate, whether in my head or in a journal. I'm usually never bored nowadays because of it, you can put me in a long line waiting to go to the supermarket (COVID) and I'll be happy standing there, contemplating things, mining with my mind for juicy insights as if I'm mining for diamonds in Minecraft.

But this often works to my detriment when it comes to things like meditation and strong determination sitting. Some question that I've been curious about comes up and I start contemplating it when I want to be meditating. Or I'll start fantasizing about ideas.

I guess that's just the nature of us INTP's  

[Vision]

@soos_mite_ah 

The Book of Not Knowing by Ralston can help a lot. But I think that epistemology is something that will best be developed through contemplation. 

I've developed my epistemology through solo contemplation. Another tip I'd give is to contemplate while reading books or listening to videos/audiobooks. 

When you're consuming material, pause and contemplate the things that are being said for yourself. If you don't do this, you'll give your authority away to teachers and teachings. 

Remember that you are your own authority. The most authentic answers will come from you. View teachings as leads towards the path, not the path itself.

[peanutspathtotruth]

2 hours ago, Vision said:

But this often works to my detriment when it comes to things like meditation and strong determination sitting. Some question that I've been curious about comes up and I start contemplating it when I want to be meditating. Or I'll start fantasizing about ideas.

I guess that's just the nature of us INTP's  

It's not so simple - contemplation can be a trap and addiction as well. The deepest contemplation happens beyond thought, so maybe look into why you can't let go of thinking when you set out to meditate.

4 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

You don't learn epistemology from books.

 

2 hours ago, Vision said:

@soos_mite_ah 

The Book of Not Knowing by Ralston can help a lot. But I think that epistemology is something that will best be developed through contemplation.

Well the point of this book, and some others, is exactly to direct your attention to immediate experience and show you what it means to contemplate. Just as a guided meditation doesn't meditate for you, but if you let it sink into consciousness, it shows you how to see.

[Leo Gura]

3 hours ago, Vision said:

But this often works to my detriment when it comes to things like meditation and strong determination sitting. Some question that I've been curious about comes up and I start contemplating it when I want to be meditating. Or I'll start fantasizing about ideas.

I guess that's just the nature of us INTP's 

Yeah... that's a bitch.

But when you do psychedelics you become a metaphysical super-tyrannosaur

[soos_mite_ah]

18 hours ago, peanutspathtotruth said:

Have you read The Book of Not Knowing by Peter Ralston? It's a great guide to deconstructing your epistomological workings through direct experience. It's very hands-on in that it shows you what it teaches through immediate practicing / contemplating.

Not yet but I'll check it out

16 hours ago, Synchronicity said:

I’m sure there will be quite a few people here who will have some great books and resources to recommend. So on top of that, I’ll add having a deeply epistemological discussion with other people as a good technique to have your own views or biases reflected back on you. Each person in the convo acts as a mirror to each other. But there’s no judgement against certain ideas. Just a mutual investigation of them. 
 

I do this with a few people - sometimes in a group - and it seems to create a lot of healthy openness as well as introspection. 

16 hours ago, WonderSeeker said:

@soos_mite_ah Here's a fun primer: 

Really contemplate the coherence vs. correspondence theories part. It helps you to delineate "intra-" vs "inter-" when you draw distinctions.  

The rest is about various ideologies. Just somewhere to start!

9 hours ago, Rilles said:

Integrate The Ladder Of Inference into your daily life, its a great tool.

Cool, thanks. 

10 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

You don't learn epistemology from books.

You need to contemplate on the workings of your knowledge.

That makes sense as far as direct experience instead of relying on outside references goes. 

I want to say that I started contemplating things in general pretty young but I don't know if contemplating period would be efficient. Would analyzing your biases, being critical of where and how you get your information, and analyzing your surroundings/ culture and how that shapes what you know count as contemplation? What are some guiding questions that you'd recommend I start with?