How can I learn my optional illusions?

[coberst]

How can I learn my optional illusions?

How can I reject my optional illusions?

In the dialogue “Apology” Plato writes about Socrates while in the dungeon just before drinking the hemlock that the citizens of Athens condemned him to be executed.

In the dungeon shortly before drinking from the hemlock cup Socrates spoke to his followers. He spoke about the accusations against him at the trial. He said that the sworn indictment against him was “Socrates is guilty of needless curiosity and meddling interference, inquiring into things beneath Earth and in the Sky…”

Socrates further adds that he is accused of teaching the people of Athens, to which Socrates vehemently denies that he is a teacher. He points out that in matters of wisdom he has only a small piece of that territory; the wisdom that he does have is the wisdom not to think he knows what he does not know. Socrates conjectures that he has the wisdom to recognize the boundary of his present knowledge and to search for that knowledge that he does not have. “So it seems at any rate I am wiser in this one small respect: I do not think I know what I do not.”

For Socrates a necessary component of wisdom is to comprehend what one is ignorant of.

How can I know ‘what I think I know’ but which I really do not know? How can I learn what are my illusions?

I think that the kaleidoscope might be an appropriate visual metaphor for attitude. With each turn, while the core matter (intuition?) remains the same, the presentation changes. The changing pattern is our only correspondence with the intuition (core matter?).

We display an attitude toward most any subject. An attitude cannot be described explicitly but is a notion, which is an inference, based upon behavior. We are all inclined to behave consistently to a situation and this behavior is attributed to our attitude. Our attitudes and the quality of such attitudes are judged based on observed behavior.

Britannica specifies that attitude is “a predisposition to classify objects and events and to react to them with some degree of evaluative consistency.”

If I consult my inner self I cannot focus upon an attitude but can infer such an attitude based on behavior.

If I wish to become conscious of my intuition I can through observation of behavior describe the attitude, which, in turn, allows me to ascertain the nature of my intuition.

When a mother tells her son “you must change your attitude”. The son cannot change the attitude but the son must change his intuition from which the inferred attitude emanates. This does become a bit convoluted but in essence when we wish to change an attitude we are saying that our intuition must be modified.

The point of all of this is that it is the intuition we wish to understand and our attitudes are a means to discover the profile of our intuition.

Attitudes are email from the intuition. I think email is an appropriate word because the attitude is reasonably clear and the source is mysterious and at the present unknowable.

The attitude directs the behavior. The public and I can observe the behavior and from that gain insight as to the attitude. Under attitudes one might create the categories of values, interests, sentiments, beliefs, predisposition’s, irrational tendencies, taste, knowledge, certainties etc.

The public from my behavior can infer attitudes. The question is how do I use the attitudes as a vehicle for making conscious to me the nature of my intuition? The answer is that through solitude and concentration I can focus my conscious intellect and develop inferences as the structure of my intuition.

Solitude becomes the catalysis for developing insight into the nature of intuition. This insight may provide a pattern from which further inferences can be drawn thereby making other aspects of the intuition accessible to the conscious intellect.

Solitude is not meant to be sensor deprivation, which can lead to hallucinations. Solitude and perhaps a modification of normal environment can facilitate the faculty of imagination.

Solitude creates a mood that enhances the faculty of imagination, which becomes the driving force for conscious action. The faculties of imagination and reason set the human species off from our non-human ancestors. Imagination as a force for human discontent is therefore the force for human advancement. Human flexibility motivated by the discontent of imagination has provided the impetuous for human material advancement.

Goya said that fantasy united with reason “is the mother of the arts and the origin of their marvels.” Fantasy, the child of imagination, plus reason has produced all the scientific and humanistic and artistic accomplishments. It can also help us comprehend what are our illusions.

 

[GrowingSmaller]

For Socrates a necessary component of wisdom is to comprehend what one is ignorant of.

How can I know ‘what I think I know’ but which I really do not know? How can I learn what are my illusions?

Study metaphysics and compare that with science. You might not actually be illuded metaphysically, but the applied discipline or rigour of science probably will make your beliefs more tentative or circumspect.

 

[coberst]

Study metaphysics and compare that with science. You might not actually be illuded metaphysically, but the applied discipline or rigour of science probably will make your beliefs more tentative or circumspect.

Science is an empirical study whereas philosophy is an a priori study.

 

[Chesterton]

Science is an empirical study whereas philosophy is an a priori study.

So I guess we need Divine Revelation.

 

[Tinker Grey]

So I guess we need Divine Revelation.

non sequitur

 

[coberst]

So I guess we need Divine Revelation.

The superficial student of social theory “is compelled by the very logic of his inquiry to become its apologist. Even if he were critical of his society, his very level of investigation condemns him to becoming its apologist…because the surface of society is ideologically constituted, so that whoever remains confined to it can do little more than reproduce the underlying ideology.”

All accepted social theory becomes ideologically constituted because society in general becomes its apologist. Society in general becomes an apologist for a social theory because that society, which has never been taught critical thinking, is unable to comprehend matter beyond the appearance of reality.

The inquiring mind requires a philosophical attitude if it is to illuminate that which is beneath the surface of social reality. I claim that ‘CT (Critical Thinking) is philosophy lite’ is a useful and accurate metaphor for the student of social reality. CT is the first step toward facing and conquering the “apologists’ dread”.

I think that Marx would say that ideology is a set of ideas to which a group of individuals place great trust. Within this group of individuals most will become apologists for this ideology because most members have never been taught to think critically. Thus every set of ideas to which many are drawn will become an ideology. An ideology then is a set of ideas that is very popular and which is forcefully promoted by a large number of apologists. Thus the ideology is enforced by force.

The difference in being a critical thinker or an apologist is that the critical thinker is conscious of his or her fallibility and is conscious of the assumptions that are part of the set of ideas making up that particular domain of belief.

The critical thinker recognizes the tendency to be biased and can remain rational about his or her set of beliefs. The Christian or the Muslim who remains a critical thinker rather than an apologist can keep the set of beliefs while maintaining a balanced view of that domain of knowledge and how that domain of belief fits into a society in harmony.

“Strange as it may seem, Marx’s concept of apologia bears a remarkable resemblance to, and can be best understood in the context of the traditional discussion of the nature and task of philosophy.”

Philosophy is, as a philosophy professor said to me when I asked him what philosophy was about, a radically critical self-consciousness form of inquiry. Philosophy is the only domain of knowledge that has the attitude and discipline required to critically question its assumptions. All domains of knowledge start with assumptions and if these assumptions are challenged then the whole domain of theoretically defined knowledge loses its theoretical rational and legitimacy.

Pull away the foundational assumptions of any domain of knowledge and the edifice crumbles without it.

A system of knowledge is inherently limited and distorted by its assumptions. Because of these assumptions it abstracts certain aspects of reality and conceptualizes the subject matter in a highly selective manner in accordance with the assumptions. The physicist restricts her focus to matters that can be quantified in terms of weight, time, distance, and perhaps wavelength.

“Each form of inquiry operates within the framework of and the limits set by its basic assumptions, and offer an inherently inadequate account f the world.” Since non-philosophical inquiry is not aware off or able to question its assumptions “they have a constant tendency to claim universal validity and transgress into areas not their own.”

The author argues that “the assumptions underlying and constituting a point of view may be not only methodological, ontological, and epistemological, but also social…To be a member of a society is to occupy a prestructured social space and to find one self already related to others in a certain manner.”

An ideology is systematically biased by its assumptions and it constantly must protect its assumptions from erosion if it is to maintain the status of its ideology. For Marx the ideologist becomes a constant apologist for his ideology. An uncritical or vulgar social theorist, even though personally very critical of the established order cannot overcome the social osmosis resulting from the society and is unable to realize his critical intentions.

Quotes from Marx’s Theory of Ideology by Bhikhu Parekh.