Genetic Epistemology’s Implications

On November 23, 2020February 28, 2021 By Chris Shuttleworth3 Comments

Jean Piaget’s framework and terminology of understanding infant and childhood development can be extrapolated for usage in cooperation with the discoveries within many other domains. If we integrate his method of educational and cognitive development to the adult mind, we can make general statements about the nature of existence. The movement described in Piaget’s system of infant and childhood development can be paralleled by the conscious development as defined in Hegel’s dialectical method. Philosophical implications of psychological, and psychoanalytic findings can grant us insight into the nature of consciousness and its further development as we find it in our current Being. This knowledge of the process of our past development, if utilized by consciously directing the process to occur in our present lives, given our current value systems, may be a crucial element to our personal development and wellbeing, and the actualization of potentialities we contain within. Pragmatic truth development in accordance with developed existential beliefs can be harnessed in accordance with conscious recognition of the dialectical movement of our psyche, and in so doing so, promote the actualization of our values. This knowledge, and ability, is invaluable as a source of psychological integration and development, and the success we strive for in the domains of significance to us.

Jean Piaget described the development of human’s knowledge systems in small yet distinct successive steps as we move through infancy and into childhood. Schematic underpinnings can be delineated within these periods as the number of schemas is relatively miniscule, their simplicity and lack of integrated experiences makes them articulable, and the number of factors which are large enough to develop us in a definite manner can be observed. As we move into adolescence and adulthood the number of factors and the relevant environmental and interpersonal influences upon our schemata increase exponentially, making change, progress, and the number of concrete adaptations or accommodations to novel knowledge difficult to pin down.

Piaget observed how in the first months of infancy the child’s schemata is entirely reflexive, inherent, and biologically instantiated. As these manifestations of inherent reflexes express themselves, they can be influenced by the childhoods own recognition of them as occurring, and circular reactions take place. Manners of orienting the head, hand, voice, and eyes develop schematically as the infant imitates his own abilities, creating schemas for sensory-motor abilities. These inherent movements and tendencies can be capitalized and reinforced in different manners based on the child’s perception of phenomena outside himself, which he imitates and thus develops his schematic underpinnings to movement. His parent’s recreations of the infant’s original manifestations serve to demonstrate his imitative competency, which develops in alignment with his intellectual power. Certain imitations that later on become means to an end, that have pragmatic signification, can be trained and developed, modifying the assimilated schema of the individual based on his accommodation to novel experiences.

The child’s reflexive desire to grab anything in the palm of his hand, as our primate ancestors cling to their mothers for years, leads to the ability to open and close his hand, grasp objects, grasp his parents hand, shake a rattle, move objects, and utilize tools. The schema for utilizing objects in the hand therefore develops as new situations arise where the infant can utilize his hands and current schematic structure, and the imitation he has of his parents reinforces his ability. A schema exists for making sounds, which he first expresses reflexively in crying, or screaming, in reference to hunger, or in the presence of other babies crying, which in the first stages the infant is unable to differentiate from his own sound. The imitative capabilities to reproduce sounds, parental reinforcement and directed recreation of the child’s voice, allow the child to imitate the sounds that he is able to make, in a manner that can be pleasing and directed by the parents. In this process the capability for speech, or the production of vocal phenomena, develops until individual words become formed. Only later does the schema used for orienting ourselves audibly develop into attaching a symbolic representational quality to the sounds we can manifest. We can see how these two examples describe the child’s dialectical movement through developing schemas of knowledge based on ability, competency, imitation, and cognitive ability. As the schemas evolve, meaningful significance to actions and schemas used as means to achieve an ends which means something to the individual becomes the primary driving force of our learning process. As they work in developing the infant’s capability and his manipulation of his abilities in accordance with phenomena in the world, so do we develop from the place of our current assimilated schematic structures in adulthood, albeit the number of factors, environmental situations, interpersonal imitations, and in general, the number of contributing factors that lead to our development are exponentially increased as time passes.

As all structures grow and either become reinforced in their stringency, or liberally move in direction that are drastically different from the original schema, the foundation for schematic development is always conservative, i.e. the original stages of development in any schema is still contained within its modification, whether or not any part of it still is expressed or not, the potentiality for its reemergence is carries through time as its integration has solidified in layers below the current manifestations.

Once an acquired ability works for whatever the activity is demanding, the child can be said to be assimilating whatever content arises in reference to that schemata. Once a novel situation arises for which his currently assimilated pattern of behavior is insufficient at manipulating, or using, then he must undergo the process of accommodating his schema to integrate the new knowledge. From that point the novel information is assimilated, and whenever it appears in his experience he has a “plan” for how to deal with it. We act from assimilation of experience to our current schema for as long as it is pragmatically viable, once it no longer is so, the process of accommodation forces us to adapt that schema to accommodate more information. In this manner our knowledge informs our orientation in the world, and we embody the Being from which the process takes place in successive steps as integral pieces of knowledge are discovered.

The manner in which the dialectical movement of consciousness works is through utilizing a current set of schemata to assimilate experience in a manner that is pragmatically sufficient for us. The objective validity of the utility of these schemata is reflected in our subjective experience in relation to the pragmatic assimilability of novel situations. Where novel situations fail to be met by prior assimilated schemata, we experience negative mental states, informing the process of accommodating our schematic foundation to include the novel problem. Whenever new experience isn’t optimally assimilated or can be utilized by the past schema, we undergo a process of accommodating our schema to include the new information into our framework. In this manner, we develop our schemas in regard to perceptive direction, perceptive ability, sensorimotor movement, for manipulating objects, behaving in interactions, situations, mental phenomena management, conceptualizations and articulations of reality, and even our overarching mode of Being from which individual manifestations of conscious content are expressed, through a Hegelian dialectical movement of progressing to higher resolution imaging of the information.

This dialectical movement promotes inclusion of added complexity as we experience novel situations, arising subjective phenomena, and abstract connections through acquired knowledge. As time passes, our perceptive system naturally becomes integrated with novel stimuli, our consciousness integrates novel pragmatic means of orienting ourselves in the world, and our schema used in navigating the world, both in embodied form (how we move, act, and orient ourselves to our environment), as well as the schema used to conceptualize and experience reality subjectively (mental experience, thought, emotion, content of consciousness) becomes modified.

Conceptualizations that represent objects not in the immediate environment, or abstract connections between representations that are merely linguistic, develop to greater degrees of clarity and provide more accurate depictions of reality that we can utilize for a pragmatic edge on the environment. The objectivity of our embodied orientation and our abstract conceptualizations is predicated on the pragmatic relation they have to enhancing our lives. A threshold of adequate framing, or a level of experiential evidence, reasoning, or embodied thought on a subject, can be the necessary instigator to the adoption of beliefs that are objective by nature and progressively pragmatic by such movements. Often times beliefs, concepts, and beneficial schematic rewiring’s can be in the process of developing without manifesting themselves, until they reach that threshold of “perceived” adequate pragmatic benefit which, if occurring in this manner, exists prior to conscious realization of its development.

Scientific truths, in contradiction to supernatural explanations, develop a positive belief in this manner. It isn’t until they are pragmatically framed and beneficial to us as a biological organism that the belief system is modified to accommodate itself to them, and to have the schema to henceforth assimilate incoming datum to that conceptual schematic. For as long as we are ignorant of the benefit of objective facts to us, for as long as the value of scientific discovery remains below the threshold of pragmatic utility, we will not adopt the belief. A progressively secular society that values scientific truth, our social adaptation to that society, and the framing of such truths to be useful individually (inextricably tied to the social), provides further ability to enhance unorthodox beliefs that are able to find that pragmatic utility and become actualized in our Being. When beliefs are harmful to our wellbeing, and in extreme cases, to our lives and our family’s ability to survive, their pragmatic value to us almost never reaches the pragmatic threshold of viability. It is for this reason that the escape from a heliocentric worldview, or metaphysical supernatural claims, took so long to develop, the belief in the contrary, no matter how logically coherent and empirically validated they were, was less viable an option to us biologically.

Truth claims validated by logic in a world characterized by punishment for blasphemy produced a perceived and actual cost to our subjectively intuited wellbeing, our place in the social world, our actual survivability, and our genetic imperatives ability to progress towards its goals. As openness to ideas, ideology, and different beliefs became more accepted in society, and the pragmatic benefits of operating on different belief systems developed, our ability to modify our schemas that result from modified value and belief systems expands in terms of potentially viable modes of being. For most people, across most spans of time, as long as beliefs are unviable options to us pragmatically, their objectivity is rendered negligible, and they are not adopted. It is only those who risked and often lost their lives that were able to adopt contrarian viewpoints, articulations, and the tangential adoption of novel beliefs, that the further progression of knowledge and their acceptability progressed societally.

The ability for more people to cross over the threshold in adoption of unorthodox or novel belief systems, philosophies, or even ideas that contradict the social milieu’s agreeableness, provides the starting point for further imitation in the expanding influence of the rebel’s expression of himself. As the rebel’s views become able to be expressed, so does the ability of others to imitate his belief system, as well as his act of rebellion. As different ideas become viable to be imitated, and exist in the world, our ability to accommodate them to our worldview is enhanced as new information is presented to us. For many people, without the instigation of external conceptualization and beliefs, and our ability to intellectually adapt ourselves to them and perceptively recognize them accommodate our existing schemas to incorporate them, there would be no change in our Being, our current assimilated schema would be sufficient. As evidence grows to support the pragmatic potentiality of differing perspectives and conscious methods of articulating the world, our personal philosophies become primed to modification by the psychological accommodation system. The rational conclusion to take the leap into novel information (i.e. knowledge, worldviews, to improve our lives, to generate improved moral, metaphysical, belief, and value systems) is supported by the imitative ability of perceiving those who have done so before, and our ability to recreate this act of rebellion against the social milieu becomes the instantiator of all the worlds progressive technologies, philosophies, and domains of knowledge.

The concretization of this general principle can be seen in the examples provided by specific details of our historical development, in our current society, in empirical observation, and in subjective experience. We find ourselves in the epoch marked by the transformation of the Enlightenment period, in a society that values logic and reason, and their usage in application to objective claims. The ideas and truth-claims that we can make now go relatively unmitigated by restrictive speech, or punishment based on ideology. On a fundamental level, beneath perceptions and consciously held belief systems, the pragmatic viability supersedes the objectivity of claims and is the mitigating factor in adoption of a consciously held belief. This describes the difficulty in adopting the positive belief in non-self, hard determinism, illusory nature of free will, or a morality of rational self-interest or selfishness not at the expense of others. In actionable manifestations, many patterns of behavior are seen by the majority of people as an unpragmatically feasible pursuit and are therefore socially “selected against”. The pursuits of academic studies in a hedonistic environment are seen as not pragmatically viable, abstract thinking and personal ambition are deemed less valuable than social acceptance, indulgence, and entertainment. Long term character development is not acted out as the primacy of “the present moment”, or “living for today”, are easier psychologically to “live out”. The belief that “were not good enough” or we “ought to strive to do better”, or “progress through pressure, difficulty, and challenges”, are not universally actualized in modern society despite the reluctance we have to admit their virtue. Based upon the perceived negative wellbeing, time allocation, and energy needed to live them out, they fail to become embodied despite verbal and conscious adherence to the belief in their benefit. The absence of actualizing these ideas in our lives show their absence in our belief structure, despite our verbal admonition of their benefit.

The mode of being and the schemas used within it both transcend themselves as significant information is integrated. As we deterministically apply our developed schemata to situations their utility is tested and reflected by our biological and subjective wellbeing. Both our subconscious systems, such as our body’s perception, and our conscious systems, such as thought that uses conceptualizations to “order” the “chaos” of experience into articulated representations, become improved through new information, by every experience, moment to moment, and is modified in a relative manner.

Given our current social milieu and the potentialities open to us, a cursory framing of our own value systems and the pursuit of developing in accordance with them is more possible than ever before. As we develop belief systems, and attach meaning to pursuits, activities, people, and in general, that which promotes our subjective experience, we simultaneously have become better equipped to pragmatically actualize the development in the directions we choose. As our development through assimilation and accommodation continue to reshape the schemas we use to operate in the world, so does our ability to consciously direct our being towards the values we explicitly articulate for ourselves. Our manner of existentially Being-in-the-world, both in its instantiated form, and its conceptualized form, is itself a piece of objective causality that can lead to further dialectical movement and progress in accordance with our views. As we intuit further scenarios and environments that pose a problem to our currently assimilated schemas, that produce an undesirable subjective experience or hinder our growth and our pursuit of what we value, we can intellectually direct our Being to rationally modify ourselves to accommodate our current system to the novel experience. We can choose (deterministically arising after relevant knowledge is revealed) to voluntarily develop ourselves in where we are lacking, in taking on challenges, difficulties, and accommodating ourselves to pragmatically or objectively truly existing information. Disagreeable information, personal inadequacies, and psychological problems can be elucidated and encountered voluntarily, and with the required knowledge, experience, time, and effort, can be overcome.

While this requires abstract intelligent reasoning, time, and knowledge of the relative causal connectivity that would lead to such development, it nonetheless remains a potentiality for us. Psychological development continues through the dialectical movement with or without our mindful awareness of conscious experience, but consciously directed activity in accordance with developing ourselves, by remaining within a mode of being that is characterized by fallibility and openness to experience, given our current situation of pragmatic viability to pursue our values, affords us the appropriate area to consciously develop ourselves and our manner of Being-in-the-world in accordance with what we value. By doing so we utilize for ourselves ourselves the ability to meaningfully progress towards that which we desire, and improve our subjective experience of life. In any domain of inquiry that we wish to improve, if we can consciously utilize our developmental ability to accommodate novel experience to the assimilated schemata, we can transcend our current mode of Being to one which is more optimally suited to navigate the world in the manner we wish to do so.

Writing and Conversation Terminology

On February 28, 2020June 25, 2020 By Chris ShuttleworthLeave a comment

(Reddit Question: Do you speak in conversation the same way you speak in your writing?)

No, I don’t speak verbally the same way I write, mostly due to the factor that I solely write about philosophical concepts, and most people I talk to aren’t having a conversation with me about philosophical ideas. Aside from that, the ability to precisely articulate ideas are accentuated in writing, as we are able to visually examine the conceptualizations of our language into coherent strings of words, sentences, paragraphs, etc., the luxury of which we don’t have in conversation. Whereas we mostly speak in common conversation “from the hip” and more spontaneously, when I write a higher degree of clarity and precision is used, and careful selection of diction, as well as more time is taken in thought before language is produced. The degree to which rational coherency of ideas is expounded in thought or speech is less than the conscious reiteration of examination of a string of words visually presented to us, we can comb over it, examine its parts in relation to a whole, and modify the structure to be a clearer representation of the intuited representation in which we wish to re-represent.

We must speak to our audience, and when writing philosophy my audience is truly an audience of one, for myself. It would be truly naive to suppose that an external audience is attuned to the exactly relevant literature and terminology which I’ve been exposed to, and vice versa, I understand the lack on my part to have the completely relevant experiences to render someone else’s work intelligible in the way in which they seek for their ideas to be represented based on their experience, to the exact same degree as them (ideas, of course, are shareable, but our direct connection to them is wholly unique). Our experience, our entire understanding, mode of Being, perception, and language acquired (and its specific definition) are all unique to the individual, and whereas it contributes to the clarity of an author to seek to represent their ideas in an accessible nature to others, when one writes for one’s own creative production and expansion of understanding (and representation of reality) one doesn’t need to explicitly define every term they are using so as to improve the experience of an external audience. I’m aware that we all have different levels of experience with different authors, and that’s okay, but I truly write for my own expansion of understanding, and secondarily sometimes choose to share as someone else might find it interesting or insightful. But when writing on phenomenology you have to use loaded terms which entail a longer description to be able to pack more meaning into less words. The usage of personalized definitions to certain words and their esoteric nature is often criticized in the accessibility of philosophy, but I see this aspect to be of a positive nature. Whereas the layperson would find it difficult to wade through more advanced thought due to the usage of loaded terms and distinct differentiated definitions of specific terms, this form actually renders the ideas in a work more articulate and specifically clear to the person who is able to decipher it. The ideas become more profoundly expressed when the definitions of the concepts which make up the structure of an idea are explicitly described and specific to a certain representation. There are undoubtedly different philosophical writing styles, and areas of inquiry, and they aren’t all for everyone.

Few people “enjoy” reading Husserl, Heidegger, or Hegel, due to their writing styles, yet if you “strive on diligently” and attempt to understand what they are saying, it can be incredibly rewarding and insightful.

Training and Challenges

On January 21, 2020June 20, 2020 By Chris Shuttleworth2 Comments

The challenge is the training, and the training is the challenge. In any area we wish to improve, we must push ourselves past what we are comfortable with in the taking on of something difficult, this trains us to better handle the situation or area of expertise or attribute in our next encounter with it / implementation of it. Reversely, when something challenging occurs, we rely on our past training to overcome it.

We must first endeavor to find what it is we wish to become, what traits we wish to embody, what skills we want to improve, what virtues we wish to display. We must establish a value system (Value System Instantiation). While this is inherent in us all, it is useful to our progression in any individual value (meaningful phenomena), to philosophically examine our current value structure, find the truth of what ours currently is (or at least a conceptualization of part of it) and work to philosophically expound aims in order to providing values which we can justify and prioritize.

Philosophy is crucial to our psychological wellbeing, and having a framework of values that we can explicitly expound, makes it easier to pursue them consciously, and look for ways to direct our being towards their attainment. Without this type of consciously directed approach to pursuing values, we will continue down a haphazard unconscious approach of unknowingly improving in whatever areas might present themselves to us, or pursuing the value structure currently purported in our given culture / DNA.

If it is philosophy and martial arts, we must consciously direct ourselves to read / write / think philosophy, we must direct our body to improve strength and endurance and technique in gyms. For virtues such as compassion and courage and stability, or to be able to be okay in tough situations, for the benefit of others, we must push ourselves to embody these virtues, especially when they are hardest to display. In this way the challenges become the training, and the benefit from manifesting such traits becomes habitualized, improved, and internalized (unconsciously assimilated), through their execution.

For example, a crisis in life, the loss of a loved one. If we wish to be strong, and we wish to be calm and compassionate for other family members, we can practice this during the crisis, by embodying it. This is optimized through past acceptance of difficult situations, past overcoming of deep emotional loss, philosophical understanding of the possibility of such crisis happening (preparedness). Thus if we had trained for the loss, and when it happens, we embody the virtues we have previously accepted as being most beneficial in the situation, we are able to consciously direct ourselves towards their manifestation, as well as unconsciously draw upon our past, in terms of experience, psychological training, past habitualization, so that the perceived difficult situation becomes something we can actively overcome. Not overcome as in time passes and we get through the loss, but overcome in the most virtuous way possible, with strength and compassion, without allowing ourselves to slip into turmoil or unwholesome behavior, but on the contrary, we can show fortitude and reverence for the loved ones, console others who are suffering at a deeper level than us (who aren’t as prepared or don’t have the same experience / ability to overcome). By doing this not only are we doing good, by reducing the suffering of others, but we find our own suffering reduced within the present moment, and are actively setting ourselves up for future improvement through training the virtues we wish to embody. The challenge in the moment itself becomes experience, becomes a positive habit, itself becomes a part of us, and a good part, in that it is training us for next time, it will reinforce what we have previously decided was optimal, and allows for further growth, strength of character, and conscious wellbeing in future situations that arise.

Conscious Employment of the Unconscious

On October 20, 2018June 6, 2020 By Chris Shuttleworth3 Comments

An unbalanced psyche in the direction of overwhelming conscious direction to action will unerringly result in an overwhelmed psychic state. A clear distinction must here be made between conscious awareness – an awareness of consciousness’ contents, and conscious direction – an arising thought in consciousness with the intentional content of directing an action or proceeding subsequent phenomena. While conscious direction is an emergence from the unconscious, and conditioned by prior factors, its biological role is useful in everyday life to override automatic instincts, emotions, and other natural hindrances, as well as for understanding and maneuvering through complex social behavior and innovation and exploration of unknown frontiers. The conscious rational faculty always is employed in conscious direction, and is a tool we have at our disposal for intuiting and planning, for evaluation and contemplation. This is entirely useful, most of the time, but as we will see, employment of rationality, and conscious direction, can often be sub-optimal and a hindrance to progressing towards our aims, and in manifesting action in accordance with our values. That being said, one can be aware of the content of consciousness while limiting consciousness’ desire to counter the unconscious in controlling every moment of the individual’s life.

Wisdom dictates the appropriate action in a given circumstance, in certain circumstances it is most beneficial to consciously employ the use of the unconsciousness in acting spontaneously or emotionally as opposed to the rational attitude of consciousness. This is possible to do, and can cause relief in circumstances of “overthinking” minute decisions of little importance, by consciously employing a spontaneous unconscious mode of being (reciprocity) in the face of the present moment’s perceived qualities. We can opt for this mode of being marked by spontaneity rather than conscious direction when the situation calls for acting quickly rather than having a delayed, rational response. The conscious employment of this method doesn’t upset the ego and the controlling nature of the ego, neither does it give too much free roam to the unconscious as it is conditionally put into play.

A conscious direction to walking on the muscular or individual motion level, is increasingly impractical as you grow past the infants initial understanding of the action. It is something best picked up, learned, and delegated to the employment of the unconscious. You can spend all day focusing on the raising of the heel, the bend of the knee, the twist of the hips, in making a single step, or, as we normally do, we merely walk without conscious direction of the individual motions. We can see here how overthinking in the form of over directing in many cases is entirely impractical. In this way one can delegate, or resist the urge to have a consciously directed mindset, and in turn utilize the psyches unconscious to the benefit of the individual, this is part of the integration aspect in the growth of consciousness. The ability for the psyche to use its parts to the best of its abilities is here the topic in question. One wouldn’t want to unconsciously direct an army, just as one wouldn’t want to consciously direct every movement of every soldier, we don’t want to remain unconscious through life, neither do we want to focus on blinking or inhaling and exhaling every moment of the day.

While the unconscious is not conscious by its very nature, the relinquishment of control by the conscious part of the psyche is possible, enabling a spontaneous, perhaps emotional, instinctual response. This instinctual or habitual response can be trained in accordance with our consciously uncovered value system, through the prior employment of conscious direction. Every experience seeks to better inform our knowledge, both consciously integrated and unconsciously collected, and the conscious direction towards patterns of behavior can serve to form the body and its responses to the environment in an optimal way. In terms of recognizing the difference, and evidence towards the usefulness of the employment of unconsciousness, we can attempt to experientially realize it in our everyday experience. Just try consciously either smiling or mean mugging any passing human as they pass you on the street, then consciously choose to stop, and just allow the whole of the psyche to naturally give the response which is most naturally manifests, given the individual interaction. Or consciously choose to blink your eyelids down, then back up, then restrict the conscious directing of the activity, and see how every moment of the day your unconscious is directing your eyelids. This demonstrates the effect, and ability of consciousness in both its own ability to be a direct causal precursor, which yet is still determined by causes, but also to relinquish the conscious knowledge in the form of a thought depicting the bodies next action, causing an “unconscious” reaction.

I say all this to say, we don’t know exactly when and what we should be consciously aware of, or in which situations to rationally or spontaneously enter into, this is a question of wisdom, and I think a mixture of both is the only answer, and a well-integrated psyche is that mode of being which is best prepared for such an endeavor. Through experience we learn which things we value enough to provide optimal conscious direction in response to, and which things are better off handled unconsciously. It is possible to consciously direct the implementation of unconscious behaviors and this can often be useful and wise.

On Drug Use and Legalization

On May 20, 2018June 4, 2020 By Chris ShuttleworthLeave a comment

People must fulfill their sensual desires, so they can realize they do not provide lasting happiness, and desire instead an inner peace not dependent on externals, or possibly even abandon craving and attachment, and desiring altogether. Once realized that even the most profound stimulating consciousness altering substances doesn’t produce enlightenment, and that there is still something lacking, only then will one seek the truth to be found within this present moment.

All drugs should be legal, out of the government’s hands, and up to the individual. There are good, and bad reasons to do drugs. For medicinal purposes, life saving reasons, is the best reason. Next would be for scientific research purposes, in discovering ways to improve the welfare of living beings, as well as understanding reality, consciousness, and in general, the scientific understanding of the brain and cognitive structures / psychology. Next would be for personal spiritual growth, experiencing different states of consciousness, expanding perspective, to learn about the mind, and better it. Next for social fun, enjoyment, a good time, so to say. Next, to escape from reality, escape from the normal state of consciousness, which is one of suffering. And the worst reason to be doing or trying drugs is to fit in with the masses, to be cool, or like someone else, for popularity, social pressure, or for status contrary to one’s own beliefs. So there is a range of intentions when doing drugs which can be used as a reference in whether you are doing them for the right reasons, the first three I would say it would be positive, and the rest negative, thus I would encourage drug use if someone had honest intentions of the first reasons, and discourage it for the other reasons, based on its potential benefit to the individual and others.

This is a hierarchy of what is a good reason to a bad reason, relating to individual welfare, societal wellbeing, insight, wisdom, and inner peace. As always, the moral realist perspective holds, in that there are right and wrong answers to moral questions, based upon the axiom that morality necessarily entails the suffering and satisfaction of life, and the movement away from complete utter suffering for all beings across time would constitute the “good”. Thus, here we refer to the use of drugs being “right” when the net wellbeing of the situation is optimal to the progression of the individuals who indulge. This isn’t necessarily a utilitarian account of pleasure, as I believe suffering, as a rule, will always outweigh the pleasure, but rather, it is in looking for a morally neutral, or in a better case, a wellbeing optimal position, in which the use will instantiate.

In general, if someone wishes to try a new substance, they should do extensive research and be prepared mentally and physically for the experience, as well as be aware of the potential risk and negative side effects, or else they have the potential of paying the price of ignorance later on. If the experience ends up being a net positive, then more power to the individual, if they can avoid attachment, addiction, or injustice to others, the possibility of which the doer must be aware of beforehand in order to combat the actualization of these effects, and if under their sway, the responsibility rests on the government to imprison them for wrongdoing, and on the universe to choose to help them out of addiction or never escape it, a possibility which is important to be known prior to indulgence. If the individuals experience turns out to be negative, or leads to addiction or injustice, the individual will suffer the consequences, his family and society will too, which is the greatest argument against legalization of most drugs, yet must be the price we pay for freedom and liberty.

The possibility of the benefit of positive attributes such as knowledge, wisdom, understanding, and free exploration of one’s own consciousness can potentially outweigh the negatives in certain situations. It’s worth noting that even a negative experience on drugs can teach you how your consciousness can be changed, and the silver lining may outweigh the present dissatisfaction with the experience. Of course trauma, and a lifelong causal influence of misery or addiction, is something one must keep in the forefront of their mind as a possibility when consuming any type of mind altering substance. Wisdom will be necessary to avoid pitfalls, and improve the quality of one’s experiences. The majority of people are currently using drugs for purposes low in the above hierarchy, yet, for government to take away the possibility, albeit of the small minority who are interested in an honest, virtuous inquiry into the most important aspect of all life, consciousness, is a crime in itself. The ignorant, unintelligent, unwise, unvirtuous people will undergo the misuse and abuse of drugs and pay for it in suffering, but this is the price a nation must pay for its freedom to explore the unexplored, and seek the truth.

There also exists a hierarchy for the most beneficial drugs for the purpose of spiritual insight, and medical treatment. I think if drugs like meth/crack/heroine were legal, and the public is properly informed on their effects, neural toxicity, chance of death, moral defilement, etc., then most people would never try them, and those that do, do it fully understanding what they are getting themselves into, and if they break the law on drugs, if morals change to commit crimes, then they will face familial/societal/federal punishments for their acts, whether it came from ignorance, delusion, or enlightened thought, the law of the land will still hold (the question on the current law of the land and its atrocities is another conversation). Complete legalization of drugs would also reduce gang activity, street violence, improve the quality and price of substances, reduce criminal acts that are secondary to its acquirement and the underground business, lessen danger in the unknown content of drugs coming from currently unlicensed, anonymous sources, in which the drug could be spiked, impure, and the possibility of robbery and violence in acquiring it also gets significantly removed as the business moves from thugs in alleyways to licensed businesses with FDA tested quality.

On Contentment

On February 15, 2018June 4, 2020 By Chris ShuttleworthLeave a comment

Is it good to always be content, or is it good to not be content so as to strive to better yourself or the lives of others? Always be content, but still strive on diligently, mindfully, with wisdom, to better yourself, and the universe. I believe it’s healthy to always be content with the present moment. This means that no matter what changes may take place in your life, which come to you through your conscious understanding, you will be content with the fact that the present is good enough. This doesn’t mean you won’t rise up against injustice, strive to help others, or try to better yourself. It means that in the process of doing these things, you will remain peaceful and calm, controlled and not chaotic. It seems like wisdom is the only answer to most questions. You can recognize something is not good, or be unhappy, or dislike something that is happening, while remaining content and accepting of reality as it is in the present moment. This doesn’t mean you quit attempting to solve problems because the present is good enough, it means you pursue them with wisdom, attempt to be virtuous, and whether you succeed or fail you remain equanimous and content with the result, always learning something new from the experience, then move on. It is this process of wisdom in testing and displaying virtue that naturally cultivates contentment and peace. Having few desires is crucial to this concept.

You should do what is right always, and if your present situation is one of much physical pain, or psychological suffering, or someone you care about is in these situations, the wise thing to do is not to be content with it and not react, but be accepting of reality for what it is, analyze what you can do to better the situation, then act accordingly. If there is nothing possible to fix the situation, you should be wise enough to accept that too. So it’s contentment, with conditions. Those conditions imply action and striving towards an optimal goal, and in finding meaning in every moment. We can do this by thinking of every moment as containing the potential for training towards our ideal aim in the domains of character traits, in embodying virtue that we value, and in progressing towards the potential person we would like to be. This training can entail multiple dimensions, depending on what we desire to improve upon, whether it be in developing the mind to be able to handle novel situations, in developing the character to react to the situation appropriately, or potentially in better understanding ourselves and reality through introspection into the content of our own Being in a phenomenological analysis. In any moment you can pay attention to your psyche, what’s passing in and out of consciousness, and create the preconditions for an intentioned consciousness directed towards what you value, or wholesome states of Being. In addition to the positive potentiality, we can also utilize the ability of conscious intentionality to direct our mode of being through causal instantiation of habits and action patterns that work to modify unwholesome or negative states of Being, or diminish the effect they have upon us (based on a solid understanding of the psyche and its contents). I understanding the causal relationships between stimuli, in the form of prior causes and their effects to the current state of consciousness, we can utilize the ability to modify our experience, in one way we can do this to remain content regardless of the content of experience, to merely accept what the moment presents and not be either averse or attached to the content.

Social interactions can be viewed in a similar manner, in the potentiality they contain to improve our habitual formation in solidifying virtuous speech, actions, and intentions in reciprocity as well as directed interaction. On a surface level, this can be done by speaking the truth, manifesting action out of compassionate intention, in managing the psyche by not acting upon egotistic or persona emergence in the psyche. In recognizing the mode of being which is present in the moment, through signals given off from action, thought, and in general, experience, we can take note of the potential manifestations which would stem forth from such a being, and resist or encourage actions depending on how the mode of being is situation in relation to our values. These are some trainings to better yourself you can undergo in any moment of your life, it can make any moment meaningful, and can teach you how to remain peaceful, and content in this very present moment, while not remaining stagnant, and instead being useful, and productive to society in cultivating a good person to reciprocate with, as well as bettering yourself in your own experience of life

Moments of moral shame and dread, or in analyzing criticism of our own shortcomings, do not necessarily need to be impediments to this contentment, but they will inevitably be. We shouldn’t stop looking or listening to criticisms of our faults, and we shouldn’t be content in relation to those errors, we should seek to make amends for them, and to recognize the error in our ways. That being said, while we can hold ourselves responsible for our mistakes through acknowledging them and seeking to rectify them, we can, possibly, remain content within our being that doing so is the right thing to do. We should never seek to stagnate, or remain infallible in our beliefs towards better modes of being. We can always recognize the potential for ourselves to be better, and strive to do so, while simultaneously being okay with the state of things in the present. On a practical note, our desires and unsatisfactoriness is necessarily a condition of our experience, and drives every present moment, here we are seeking to instantiate a contentedness within our psychological relation to experience. The biological desire to achieve this contentedness, may itself produce suffering, and the desire inherent in us and our experience cannot be eradicated, but the psychological story and motivation we can give to ourselves to be able to deal with this fact of existence, can here be optimized to increase individual wellbeing. This is the possibility of contentedness which we are here describing. It is the psychological reaction to the stimulus of the world, it is putting ourselves in relation to the facts of existence, and being okay with the circumstances we find ourselves in, whether we’re rebelling against them or not. It can be developed as an underlying aspect of the mode of being which produces the experience that we experience, and this is something which must be trained, and consciously directed to begin its manifestation. We can understand the all-pervading dream of conscious contentment as being lofty, unrealistic goal, and seems like an impossible Utopian state of mind, which, in an ultimate sense, it is, but that doesn’t mean that we can’t get better at managing the different situations and experiences that shake us from it, and in so seeking, and in so training ourselves, we can move closer, to a degree, to that ultimate contentedness that we form as an impossible ideal, but recognize as being more conducive to a better experience through its production of better reactions to novel situations. In those times with which we experience unwholesome states of being, whether it be due to misfortune, injustices done against us, or acts we regret, we can seek to accept reality for what it is, seek to psychologically place ourselves in a position that is optimal to the overcoming of such difficulties, allowing a calm and rational starting place that is better suited to the reciprocity necessary in confronting difficulty.

Benefit of Self-Analysis of Belief Structures

On October 23, 2017June 4, 2020 By Chris ShuttleworthLeave a comment

Our biases or culturally and epoch based opinions we consider normal, may not have always been normal. Look at what you think is normal, as being strange, and see things from a different perspective. Do you have sufficient evidence and rationally coherent beliefs? Are your beliefs compatible with each other? Where do contradictions lie, and how can you justify yourself? There is a dependent origination for everything, a cause to every effect, things exist based on prior causes, and your conscious state is interwoven into the web of causality. If you can be a cause, you can influence the future, be the cause that produces the future which you wish to manifest. Others may show you reasons and truths, but consciously justifying it is your job, and your actions, and in general, your Being, create a ripple effect of causality, which can potentially modify the world in a useful and beneficial way, or the contrary, optimizing this modification towards wellbeing and truth is our individual responsibility. In making sure we manifest the values which we have developed as being important, there are better and worse ways to do so, and we should diligently strive to uncover what these ways are, and through experience, learn what does and doesn’t fall in line with our beliefs.

Look at why you do anything, where you learned it, even with language and thoughts, it all comes from somewhere, this is where practice in mindfulness helps you realize what is automated or cultivated and what you control. You can control what influences affect you, thus you consciously control the causes that will produce an effect from you in the future. This is the importance in discerning the right influences which enter into our experiences, teachers, friends, even something subtle such as music can affect you, so choose your influences to reflect your beliefs or they may lead you to be someone you don’t want to be. The danger is in allowing content contrary to our values to affect us, and in its re-occurrence, rubbing off on our character and beliefs and becoming habituated. Once contrary values become instantiated in our Being, and they become normalized, you won’t realize where you went wrong, or that you went wrong at all.

Correct Speech

On February 1, 2017June 4, 2020 By Chris ShuttleworthLeave a comment

Be wise and discerning in sharing yourself, understand the audience, and their perspective. Many things people won’t be able to understand, or they will judge you negatively based on what you tell them due to ignorance of the nature of the situation, and that’s alright, and not a terrible thing, people have different perspectives and understandings, and predicting the effect of our speech is important in discerning what we should say. All speech that is withholding, often denoted as a “white lie” is not exactly dishonest, but can at times be appropriate. White lies become immoral when the information withheld would be beneficial and useful to the observer, more so than detrimental, the discerning of such effects is clearly quite a task to carry out, but, with experience and greater understanding of people’s psychology, we can better predict the resultant effects of speech. Every situation, every person, every moment, contains within it the possibility of good and bad, and what we say, or reveal, contains the same possibility. Intention and desired outcome is important, the reason why we say something is something that truly should matter to us, and we should look to understand why we want to say certain things to certain people, and in this way we can better understand our own nature.

Correct speech is based upon honesty, but also usefulness and beneficiality, some things said, although they may be factual, are not the best way of teaching or helping another. At times it is easy to assume that it is always a good thing to tell the truth and if something really happened or if we truly are thinking about something in the moment, then there is no crime done in sharing it with someone. This isn’t as obviously useful and beneficial as it may initially seem, and often times, this line of thinking does not lead to an optimal outcome. There is a way to remain honest, and display an idea, without involving the ego, without causing suffering. There are many times when a certain form of honesty can be unvirtuous, in those words which are truthful yet hold bad intentions, or intentions solely focused on painting our own image, or those utterances stemming from an unintegrated part of the psyche, such as the persona. This doesn’t mean that the flip side isn’t true. There isn’t anything wrong with helping someone else get to know us, and our intentions can still be pure in doing this, if we are mindful of it and deem it wise to do so. This is more beneficial than just letting the ego run wild in building a picture of ourselves to impress the other person, such as in persona dominance, but genuinely sharing information that is pertinent to the other person getting to know us, because they have told us they wish to do so. In many cases there are two sides to one coin, and we should look to integrate both sides into one overarching view, in all subject matters of importance.

In practical usage, we must be careful with our speech, to the degree we do so, the better our experience. In Buddhist doctrine, Correct Speech is characterized by a number of factors that, in each individual distinction, we can see the benefit of, but in the totality, may be “perfectionist” or stressful to uphold. The idea here isn’t to stress ourselves out, but rather, strive to perfection, and see how we can better use our speech towards beneficial and useful means. In Buddhism correct speech is characterized by the complete abstinence of any speech that is not beneficial and useful, not conducive to aiding the other person, or yourself, in alleviating suffering and providing wellbeing. Speech must be unequivocally true, and based on intentions towards the wellbeing of others. Speech that is untrue, unbeneficial, promoting unwholesome actions such as violence, stemming from ignorance, “Wrong View” or not in alignment with the dharma, “Wrong Intentions” or ill-will, speech stemming from negative emotion, such as anger, speech characterized as gossip and even idle chatter, are all considered “Wrong Speech”. Speech that is of other people, who are not around, in a way that criticizes their character, such as in gossip, is prohibited in Buddhist Correct Speech. While in our lives the criticism of another person can serve to aid the person we’re in conversation with by providing them useful knowledge, the gossiping that is here listed, is of a nature that is merely out of hate or ill-will for the person we are gossiping about. This type of speech creates division between people, rather than union, we should aim at bringing people closer together in harmony, rather than creating separation. Any speech that springs from bad intentions, that merely looks to paint ourselves in a deceptively “good” light, through the admonition of another, is considered wrong speech. But the Buddha expands to even more restrictive ends in his conceptualization of Correct Speech. Talk that is for entertaining purposes, talk of popular people, of events, of “village talk” or “idle talk” such as about politics, or inconsequential speech that doesn’t serve the purpose of alleviating suffering, or providing the truth about a better way to live, truth that is merely neutral in content and neither useful nor detrimental, is also admonished in the Buddhist conception. Any speech that is of a harsh tone, or stemming from anger, frustration, or negative emotion, rather than from a calm, peaceful, loving mind, is also to be stifled with mindfulness, and he states we should work to make our speech come from a place of love, while maintaining a soft, non-aggressive tone. In my opinion, this aspect of Buddhist Correct Speech is not optimal, always, as a general rule, it is practical, but there are situations in which I believe a harsher tone is necessary to convey the message, in times when the optimal solution or teaching must be characterized by some tough love, where our tone may be more aggressive. As long as the intentions are pure, the content is true, and the message is beneficial and useful, I believe the speech can be presented in a less than harmonious way. We ought not always embody trait agreeableness, there are times when being disagreeable is in our best interest.

Being mindful of the content of the present moment, in paying attention to what manifests itself as a precursor to our action in communicating using language, we can identify speech that is of any of the above admonished speech, and seek to consciously promote that speech which is wholesome. Mindfulness of the thought precursor behind speech may be hindering in “over thinking”, yet, until our character is sufficiently grown so that it’s spontaneous manifestations are in accordance with our value structure, we must promote the beneficial habit forming practice of being mindful of what we say. Until the source of speech is purified, we ought not respond spontaneously in conversation, that is, if we wish to cultivate the character trait of being able to produce Correct Speech. Mindfulness in regard to our current state of being, including our emotional state, can also inform us as to the source from which our speech is coming from. Any state of being that is characterized by negative emotion, and not one of good-will towards the conversant, ought to be mindfully avoided at the first sight of its recognition, in this way, we can use the Buddhist practice of paying attention to the present moment, to modify the speech which we produce, through being aware of our current state and its implied inclinations.

We should seek to be more careful and articulate in our speech, to be wise in everything we do or say. We may sometimes feel like we want to share something, for our own gain, and a lot of times this is okay, but also, a lot of times this is not the way to fix a problem, or to accept what has happened to us when the content is specifically producing negative emotions within us. Many times another person cannot solve these problems for us, we must seek to conquer our own demons before unleashing them upon the world. They are ours, and our responsibility, only with someone truly ready, truly a seeker, with little dust on their eyes, can we reveal the whole truth to. We must be wise in who, how, and when.

As far as following universal maxims, or dogmatic rules from which to follow in the use of Correct Speech, I think such rule following is quite dangerous, as novel situations need be handled with tailored responses, and often universal maxims fail to take into account extreme cases where they are less than optimal. When the stakes are highest, and the effect of true speech in terms of violence, or profound suffering results, we must be conscious of employing ulterior methods than the general values we have listed above in producing speech. Lying, deceiving, speech from ill-will, while generally are in fact beneficial, are not all inclusive to every situation we may find ourselves in, and in extremely rare cases, their implementation may be optimal towards the saving of life, or the preservation of life. If you still think along the lines of “I’m going to tell the truth, regardless of its content, it’s virtue,” then you are thinking to shallowly. There is so much more nuance to truth telling, sometimes the truly best thing to say is not the exact objective truth, but rather metaphorical truth, or the lesson learned from it. There are truths to useful way to operate in the world, and this itself can aide others in the navigation of their lives, we shouldn’t limit truth to purely objective and scientific truth, but expand it to the knowledge which would aide in progressing another person toward their goals, or in opening them up to the potentiality of a different perspective, or way to be in the world. While this may seem opinionated, if we look from the objective standpoint of better or worse solutions to alleviate suffering and provide lasting wellbeing, or better or worse ways of being to improve one’s journey towards a desired end, we can categorize, morally, the beneficial and useful nature of some content of knowledge in proportion to another, the revelation of this, would be metaphoric truth, or truth which can be used for practical purposes, insofar as it is an objectively better way of navigation towards a desired outcome. As in all else before, discerning when and how to reveal metaphorical truth is a task of prudence, and experiential knowledge of effects of certain concepts and ideas can better serve us as data points to use as reference to know the proper speech given a situation.

Events and experiences need to be filtered through the language of the audience, in order to have a meaningful connection. The language we use should be tempered by the person we are in conversation with, we wouldn’t explain a concept the same way to an academic colleague as we would our child, although the same “truth” may be present in each, the way we go about articulating the idea, the terminology and form of rhetoric we use in conveying it, must be appropriate so that the knowledge conveyed is in terms understandable to the audience. Be yourself, but be wise, and don’t follow a simple maxim. We should constantly be updating our articulation of concepts, and ideas, so as to better be able to represent them symbolically in the speech we use to convey them, as well as, obviously, to sharpen up our conceptualizations into a more useful format. The way we do this with our speech, it has been argued, creates the thoughts which fill our experience, so a more precise and articulate way of conceptualizing, for ourselves, produces a greater ability to categorize and judge reality as we experience it, modifying our experience and shaping the way we see the world. As we become more articulate, and better able to clearly conceptualize reality, the clearer we can make distinctions, and the better teachers we come, effecting our speech positively. Look deeper, think harder, doing and saying the right thing isn’t easy, because its implications can be long lasting and significant. Its effect can change more than we can calculate, and anything that comes from us we must take responsibility for. This doesn’t mean over analyze every word, but in general, we must work to ever improve our speech, if we wish to live our best potential lives, and to aide others in their journey. It’s not always in telling someone the answer that teaches them, but sometimes the question, or the journey, is more valuable.

Utilization of the Will

On June 1, 2016June 4, 2020 By Chris Shuttleworth1 Comment

The will of the individual is always the same unchanging desire throughout life, but how you achieve what you will, and what you are willing, can always be changed and redirected. For example, my will yearns after the feeling of happiness, or freedom from pain, and also wants to acquire the most accurate view of truth about the world, my will is directed at knowledge and wisdom to make the best decisions in every situation, it seeks physical pleasure, and mental stimulation. I think everyone shares this basic nature, but how it affects our lives, and how we act on it, and in which manner or towards which aim or within which activity, is all something that is differentiated.

This will, will never change, we won’t ever be free from desire, from want, it drives us every moment of the day. We can take steps and work to change what it is we do with it, what it is directed at, and we should try to do this consciously in a way that aligns with our values. We should work to expand our mind, and focus our attention on the things that truly matter to us, instead of being carried away by biological and culturally ingrained urges. We should work to understand our subconscious, and the physical system which includes our brain, which produces our conscious awareness, but at the same time, we should use our ability to reason and contemplate in affecting how we act.

Here we can realize that the bottom up system, our physical nature, produces our conscious thought, but also there exists the top down system, where this consciousness in turn will affect the action of the system. We must understand both, and utilize the ability to reason. We must integrate both aspects into our understanding of who we are, as they both are significant and working in every moment. We will eventually get to the deterministic nature of every phenomenon we experience, but what is important here is that what we think, will also determine what kind of experiences we are having, and the proper wisdom and influences and knowledge will be useful in understanding and implementing the conscious system which we potentially have in our grasps within every moment of our lives.

Seek Truth

Tag: Practical Philosophy