Re:KNOWLEDGE

[Guest guest]

The only thing I know for certain is how much i DON'T KNOW!!

aohowell

all,If I may wade in the water here. Busy and moreover preoccupied by the need to attend to a family health situation over the last four months, nevertheless this caught my eye. Forgive me too for not being aware of the context or of what the details of our group's discussion up to this point has been.Still, I very much enjoy the directness of the following presentation. > How can anyone believe something to be true and yet say it may be not true?> There is something very very very wrong here! > If one is not sure, then he just says, I don't know! > Look, you can't believe something if you doubt it also!> What the heck?From my limited perspective, nevertheless, I am intimately acquainted with a modest range of problems and means to address the same, that are both formally, and, generally, given in this basic form; the form given above.Thus:"If [A], then (just) "Or: following from 'not being sure,' 'not being in the know.' To be more precise: not being sure, then surely, 'not being in the know.'This is simple and may be processed from many perspectives. Aristotle comes to mind, for one perspective. With Dr. Jung, one perspective considers the truth of: "How can anyone believe something to be true and yet say it may be not true?" and we know this from the psychological conception of psyche situated between or betwixt two pressured opposites--torn between truths.There are many perspectives, each variously dealing with 'if A then just (or surely) B;' alternately: if A, B follows always.Also, and of most interest to me, is the imposition of this 'structure' as a problem--how to resolve it?This lands in the territory of the Koan, of the paradoxical fable, of the teacher's fruity aphorism lent to the ripening student, etc..I've been collecting, (or gathering,) these teaching instruments for around 25 years, and some address the so-called "binary thinking problem."My favorite is the Sufi aphorism, perhaps by way of Rumi, and/or Shams, versioned by Barks, or maybe Bly."What is essential, is not important,what is important is not essential."In this, one would have to work into the A, then into B, and then, well, "get out alive!" The scientist and mental cosmonaut Lilly, put it wonderfully, when he remarked,"My beliefs are unbelievable!"And, finally, I've always resonated with the hippie elder Krassner's formulation,"My only sacred cow is that I have no sacred cows."(Really gives the flavor of the formula spiraling in on itself; hmmm, a possible solution wound up in this. For sure, man, my only sacred cow is the groovy certainty of having no such cow. And, man, don't have a cow!)***It would be my experience that this problem of approach, has evoked in almost any discipline some means of addressing it. This has always struck me as one of the real places of overlap between the most esoteric mysticism, and, the scientific method. Although, in noting this, the problem expressed as a sort of generic aspect of mysticism, is itself a very practical, basic, "beginner's" kind of conundrum. Or not.As for science,How can anyone believe something to be true and yet say it may be not true?simply needs a revision:What is understood to be true is at once also understood to be subject to not being true.Belief--maybe not much entering into this perspective. This is fine too: what is certainly true is understood to be subject to not being true.***What I find thrilling is this:Look, you can't believe something if you doubt it also!because it really stands alone. I could script the challenge myself:Student asserts to Teacher: You can't believe something if you doubt it also!Teacher: _________________________________ *See what you come up with.***For me, one helpful distinction (in all this) is that between Condition and Process. Belief (and all such psychological/behavioral modes,) being an aspect of process, and any estimation of what is true or real or 'the case' constituting the condition(al). (Example: I believe the car is surely red = I surely believe the car is red.) So it would be that our wholehearted even absolute feeling, sense, belief, in the wholly positive (or negative) condition, or: 'what is true;' postulate; premise; experience; observation; reflects, may reflect, for example, understanding A leads ineluctably to B--like, for sure, man--and yet, at the very same time the actuality of Process makes possible something rather altogether different.About the same thing, but now it goes: understanding with great certainty the A to some degree leading to B to some other degree, or, understanding to some degree the A apparently surely leading to B, like it does so every darn time I saw it (last) do so! ...at least.(Enter here, Hume's Problem of Induction.)Yet, the kicker for me is elegant. "There is something very very very wrong here!"Hey, wait, one doesn't need any of the three 'verys.' Verily, if it's wrong, just say so, or, offer the distinction between very wrong and very very very wrong! <|;-}=Subhuti was able to understand the potency of emptiness, the viewpoint that nothing exists except in its relationship of subjectivity and objectivity. One day Subhuti, in a mood of sublime emptiness, was sitting under a tree. Flowers began to fall about him."We are praising you for your discourse on emptiness," the gods whispered to him."But I have not spoken of emptiness," said Subhuti."You have not spoken of emptiness, we have not heard emptiness," responded the gods. "This is the true emptiness." highest regards to all, in Clepheland*Student says to teacher: You can't believe something if you doubt it also!Teacher: well, yes...and...no!