Tag Archives: epistomology

Knowledge is Capricious

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Daniel Boorstin, a noted American historian declared in his book, “The Discoverers: A History of Man’s Search to Know His World and Himself,” that, “More appealing than knowledge itself is the feeling of knowing.” Boorstin in this quote had gleaned from his study of history that the comfort of “the feeling of knowing” often, if not most of the time, would triumph over knowledge itself.  Throughout history we have records of cultures in which “the feeling of knowing” proved to lead to their demise while letting that “feeling” give way to some critical thinking could have allowed them to continue, though with a moderated view of reality.

It is comforting to feel that one knows, permitting one to “know” that one knows.  It is so comforting that human nature has hard-wired us to prefer “knowing that we know” in the interest of preserving our tribe.  But when the world grows so small…as we are now experiencing…then “knowing what we know” begins to compete with other tribes who “know that they know” with equal conviction. Then violent conflict ensues unless leadership is available which will direct us to tolerate the notion that diametrically opposing ideas of reality can co-exist. There is no need to attempt to obliterate “them” just because we see “them” as, “not knowing correctly.”

The core issue is the comfort of “feeling that we know” not understanding the wisdom of poet W. H. Auden who told us that, “feeling knows no discretion but its own.”  Auden knew that our view of the world is not a rational matter, but one whose origin lies beneath the surface in the murky realm of feelings, closely akin to the unconscious.  But to recognize this truth is to take away the certainty that we can have in believing our beliefs and discounting anything or anyone that threatens them.  Another word for this realm of feelings is the heart, that center of our being which is unlocked only when we are willing to forego the tyranny of rational thinking and permit the grace of a non-tyrannical rationality which is quickened with the intuitive wisdom of the heart.

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Here is a list of my blogs.  I invite you to check out the other two sometime.

https://anerrantbaptistpreacher.wordpress.com/

https://literarylew.wordpress.com/

https://theonlytruthinpolitics.wordpress.com/

Being “Right” is a Pyrrhic Victory

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I’ve had a life-long battle with “being right.” It is certainly not unrelated to having been born and bred in “right-wing” social, political, and religious culture in the deep South of the United States where “rules” predominate. And it is always “rules” that makes one “right,” or allows him to think that he is. I think very early on I had a heart like most people but then I was offered a bargain, “Hey, you forgo that tumult in your heart where emotion and reason are doing battle, give in to reason and let it reign, and you will have the consolation of being ‘right.”’ So I spent the first two decades of my life assiduously striving to live according to the rules, failing to see just how closely this life-style approximated that of the Pharisees who Jesus upbraided so often. Since then, the “ruled” life has slowly given way to the burgeoning power of emotion, a process that received a boost in my mid-thirties when I discovered poetry. Now, nearly three decades later there is some indication that this warfare is getting closer to resolution as emotion and intellect are working much more in tandem than ever before. Now instead of using my intellect to rigidly carve up the world…and myself…I use this gift to seek common ground with others believing that there is a Unity that underlies this world of multiplicity.

And having those two dimensions of the heart working in tandem should be our goal. When “flesh and mind are delivered from mistrust” (Auden), we are witnessing something akin to the Spirit of God being present though the “Spirit of God” certainly needs more discussion than I choose to give it now. Reason, without the balance of emotion (or heart) is just an effort to stay in control, to tyrannize one’s own self and simultaneously try to tyrannize those around him. Therefore, Goethe was astute when he noted, “They call it Reason, using Light celestial, just to outdo the beasts in being bestial.”

Now occasionally the old demon of “being right” will surface again. Recently it teased me briefly and then I took the bait slipped into the “being right” mode. It was a veritable black hole for a while until I managed to right myself and escape its clutches. For, there is no end to “being right”. We have the Taliban as one example of this but we have similar expressions of the same dark force present in our own country. And, yes it got me recently. It will always be a temptation for it is so wonderful to “know” that you are right and to “set someone straight.”

I offered a snippet of Auden’s observation about this matter earlier. Now I will share the context:

If…like your father before you, come
Where thought accuses and feeling mocks,
Believe your pain: praise the scorching rocks
For their desiccation of your lust,
Thank the bitter treatment of the tide
For its dissolution of your pride,
That the whirlwind may arrange your will
And the deluge release it to find
The spring in the desert, the fruitful
Island in the sea, where flesh and mind
Are delivered from mistrust.
(W. H. Auden “The Sea and the Mirror)

 

Epistemic Closure and the Republican Party

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I had my weekly cup of coffee with God earlier this morning. As we sipped our celestial Starbucks, he pointed to an open-air classroom nearby where young gods were studying, preparing for their future rule of various worlds. “Let’s listen in,” he suggested to me. I obliged readily, knowing of course who I was dealing with.

The “young gods” were being lectured to about epistemic closure, the notion of living in a bubble and assuming that one knows about everything when in reality he/she “knows” only through a small prism. The teacher then ran a video that I have shared here before from Saturday Night Life, illustrating the phenomena vividly. (http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x9yn49_mr-belvedere_shortfilms#.UUWfUDctU9U)

Then the teacher continued, “Now for a couple of days we are conducting a laboratory experiment in epistemic closure on an obscure little planet called Earth. We are very concerned about this cosmic poison for wherever it gains a foothold, it is almost impossible to eradicate; and it is the one thing that prevents us from accomplishing our Purpose. It is Satan’s favorite weapon.” He then pointed to the screen and zoomed in to a place called “The United States” and suddenly the din of the Republican Party’s internecine squabbling filled the room

Now laying aside my reverie…

Those of you who look on from other countries must be appalled at what you are seeing in the current performance of my country’s political circus. But, please note that the gods are giving you a lesson about what can happen in your own country if it, or any faction within it, draws its boundaries too narrowly and refuses to broaden them. Now I am wont to note at this point of this argument that this tendency is present with all groups, liberal and conservative. HOWEVER, let me note this time that the “open-mindedness” I advocate will never be found on the extreme right fringe of any group as people of that sort desperately hate open-mindedness and desperately cling to “truth” as seen through the narrow prism of their hate-filled heart. It is amusing on one hand to watch the ultra-conservative’s quest for “purity” in their own rank as it creates frustration and consternation within their own ranks. But on the other hand it is not amusing at all, but very sad, as we see in the Taliban what would happen if our culture did not have sophisticated structural limits.

But this boundary dilemma is part of the human experience and reflects a tendency that we have to watch for even in our own heart. With my government’s current impasse…and specifically the Republican imbroglio…we have an object lesson in the lunacy of the human heart, individually and collectively. We are our own worst enemy; as Pogo once noted, “We have met the enemy and he is us.” The human temptation to create a cocoon…an Eden on earth…can be so compelling that it is counter-productive and can even lead to our own demise. As W. H. Auden feared, “We have made for ourselves a life safer than we can bear.”

The answer is “self” awareness or “consciousness” which we can never acquire unless we first recognize that we don’t have it in the first place. In other words, the first step in seeing the light is realizing that we live in darkness just as Plato told us in the 5th Century BC and Jesus told us a few centuries later. And that is to name only two who have offered light in our darkness. Others certainly preceded them and many have come since and are even present today. “But Truth met him and held out her hand. And he clung in panic to his tall belief and shrank away like an ill-treated child.” (W. H. Auden)

 

Epistomology and Confirmation Bias

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The recent controversy in the United States over Chuck Hagel’s nomination by President Obama for Defense Secretary has given rise to the usual right-wing hysteria and obstructionism. Last week these conservatives seized upon a humorous note made by a New York newspaper columnist who facetiously suggested that Hagel had opined in Islamist radical newspapers, taking that columnist’s satirical quips as being factual.

This illustrated the problem with interpretation for all of us, conservative or liberal. We must remember to utilize the Shakespearean “pauser reason” when we hear or read something, recognizing that it is human nature to seize upon data that satisfies our agenda. Another example was Michelle “Deep Penetration” Bachman about a year ago when she sonorously intoned re the presence of sharia law in two United States communities, presenting the preposterous allegation as casual fact. Shortly thereafter someone pointed out that this was not true and that one of the cities had not existed in decades. Bachman had come across this juicy tidbit and must have had childish delight as she thought, “Oh, wait until I get to announce this!” Well, if she would have employed this “pauser reason”….recognizing that she was about to posit something that was very sensational…she could have had her handlers verify the report. But the information was just too much a “tasty morsel” and she had to pass it on, knowing that her paranoid base would go for it, much like pigs after slop.

But, I reiterate, “This childish naivety is not just a conservative problem. It is a human problem.” We always have our preconceptions and then seek information that confirms this bias, a phenomena known as “confirmation bias” or “epistemic closure.” Yes, even “LiteraryLew”, is susceptible and guilty of this human frailty…cursed be the thought! If we recognize this truth, it can humble us a bit and make us less apt to be too smug and arrogant about our “lofty” ideas and our “gospel” truth. Our ideas might have “lofty” qualities and our truth might have “gospel” qualities but probably not as much as we would like to think. Those “other guys”, that ubiquitous “them”, might just have validity in their perspective and have something to offer us.

 

My Paean to “Mindfulness” in the Blog-o-sphere!

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I love meeting “mind” and will share a Robert Frost poem on the matter. And by “mind” I don’t mean the routine, mechanized palaver, the “well-worn words and ready phrases that build comfortable walls against the wilderness” (Conrad Aiken) but a “discerning” mind, one that is quickened by what I like to call the “Spirit of God”, one that is wry and witty, one that can “rock ‘n roll”, is even sarcastic on occasion and certainly ironic, one that can trot out an occasional “word fitly spoken”, and to sum it up, one that is “present”. And every time I stumble upon one of these “minds” I am given pause and say to myself, “Hey, let’s check this fellow (or fellow-ess) out! Somebody is home!” And this occasionally happens even with a five year old student. And even with my beloved dachshunds, Ludwig and Elsa, I often get the distinct impression that “Somebody is present here”.  (But these doggies are going to have to hurry up and develop more fore brain capacity  before they can offer me subtlety!)

Emily Dickinson described “a mind too near itself to see itself distinctly.” She was describing a mind that lacks these qualities, a mind too self-absorbed for the person to see beyond the end of his/her nose….or should I say “knows”? This self-absorbed mind lacks self-reflection without which there is no awareness.

And I have met many of these aforementioned “mindful” people and try to make sure I circulate in a circle where they are apt to be found. And I read literature by writers who are gifted with this quality. Movies and even television-shows can offer this god-given perspective if one is discriminating about his/her choices.

And in the past two years I have discovered that the blog-o-sphere is full of men and women who have this “Presence” and share from it daily. To you, my dear friends, I today doff my hat and thank you for all you have added to my life and continued to do so daily. You know who you are. You are a gift to me but also to your family, friends, and community. What I like to call “The Spirit of God” vibrates in your heart and therefore “winds of thought blow magniloquent meanings betwixt me and thee.” (Archibald MacLeish)

A CONSIDERABLE SPECK
By Robert Frost

A speck that would have been beneath my sight
On any but a paper sheet so white
Set off across what I had written there.
And I had idly poised my pen in air
To stop it with a period of ink,
When something strange about it made me think.
This was no dust spike by my breathing blown,
But unmistakenly a living mite
With inclinations it could call its own.
It paused as with suspicion of my pen,
And then came racing wildly on again
To where my manuscript was not yet dry;
Then paused again and either drank or smelt—
With loathing, for again it turned to fly.
Plainly with an intelligence I dealt.
It seemed too tiny to have room for feet,
Yet must have had a set of them complete
To express how much it didn’t want to die.
It ran with terror and with cunning crept.
It faltered: I could see it hesitate;
Then in the middle of the open sheet
Cower down in desperation to accept
Whatever I accorded it of fate.
I have none of the tenderer-than-thou
Collectivistic, regimenting love
With which the modern world is being swept.
But this poor microscopic item now!
Since it was nothing I knew evil of
I let it lie there till I hope it slept.

I have a mind myself and recognize
Mind when I meet with it in any guise.
No one can know how glad I am to find
On any sheet the least display of mind.