Active and passive thought

In my previous post I mentioned "background thinking" as a process that brings to our mind thoughts that we did not search for or even did not want to deal with.

A friend then said: "I am a very instinctive person. What about instinct? Where is it in your model? Is it part of the background thinking?"

Good question! 

HOW WE KNOW: ACTIVE & PASSIVE PROCESSES

In fact, beside instinctive, there are also other thought processes of this kind, like "intuitive", "creative" thinking. They all produce thoughts in a spontaneous way, without an active construction and control by the individual, who behaves rather passively in relation to them.

Based on this I would distinguish two main areas of thinking: ACTIVE & PASSIVE processes.

Then the flow of thought can be conceived as a continuous alternation of active and passive thought.

Active and passive thought processes form a unity in their duality,  they complement each other and they also influence each other.

For example in the mantra meditation technique, actively repeating the same sentence (and related meaning) has an influece on passive thinking.

A similar example are people suffering from obsessive thoughts: in this case the mantra comes from passive thinking processes and influences the active thought processes and so on.

Last but not least advertising: even if the message is actively perceived and interpreted, the goal is to influence the passive thinking of the person so that he or she will buy the product or service "instinctively".

My "Two-Worlds" model is intended as a model of the ACTIVE processes of thinking, those that we can control directly.

A model of PASSIVE thinking will follow later, becaue it requires the ACTIVE model as a prerequisite.

 

Two-worlds model v2

Two friends are having a conversation:

• One says: "I am afraid that something happened that damaged my body".
• The other asks: "How do you know?"
  

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Here is a sketch for a model of HOW WE KNOW that I wish to further develop for contributing to that conversation in a supporting, creative and responsible way.

HOW WE KNOW: A TWO-WORLDS MODEL 

1. The world in which we live is the INTEGRATION of TWO WORLDS:
   WORLD 1 is the SHARED PHYSICAL world or world of physis;
   WORLD 2 is the INDIVIDUAL LOGICAL world or world of logos
2. Because of this INTEGRATION we do not notice the two worlds separatedly, we experience them as ONE REAL WORLD.
3. The integration of physis and logos in one individual is the product of a functional system of our brain: ATTENTION (Ceccato's model)
4. ATTENTION, conceived as a system that we can control (cybernetic system), is the system that we use to construct our individual LOGICAL world
5. The attentional system enables us to construct our logical world by means of ATTENTIONAL OPERATIONS. 
6. In this way ATTENTION provides the basis for the AWARENESS, REGULATION and EQUILIBRATION (control) of our logical world.
7. But this awareness, regulation and equilibration are NOT UNDER DIRECT CONTROL by the individual. We notice this through "background thinking", a process that brings to our mind thoughts that we did not search for or even did not want to deal with.
8. Thus, although we construct the LOGICAL world, after constructing it we do not have direct CONTROL on it
9. What about EMOTIONS? Emotions are ENERGIES that are triggered by our logical world and after that they fuel its activities
10. EMOTIONS provide the energy used by the brain for constructing, regulating, equilibrating and being aware of our logical world.
    

MB / 14.7.2022

To know how we know

 "All men by nature desire to know"

... but very few desire to know HOW they know.

Original: πάντες ἄνθρωποι τοῦ εἰδέναι ὀρέγονται φύσει.
- Aristotle (384–322 BC), at the beginning of his book "Metaphysics", a treatise of "first philosophy".

 

That is why, since Aristotle, the human mind has not evolved: we just use it. That is not enough for promoting peace, #MindfulPeace.

Aristotle thought that the mind forms ideas by TAKING the "forms" of things and separating them from the "matter" of things. This way of producing ideas was for him the basic process  that enables us to understand the nature of things.
Unfortunately he made a small mistake here:
we do not "separate" forms from things: instead, we "produce" forms (mental constructs) that we ADD to the "matter" of things, like a potter modeling clay, thus producing the "experiential" things of our experiential world.

The Operational Constructivism Manifesto 2018

1.   OWN WORLD. Although we share the same environment, each of us lives in his own world (thank you A. Schopenhauer).

2.   COPERNICAN REVOLUTION. In this own world, that every human being constructs for her/himself, the objects conform to her/his knowing (thank you I. Kant).

3.   OPERATIONS. For constructing you need operands, operations and schemata (thank you S. Ceccato): together they form a faculty of mental constructs, not a faculty of representations.

4.   AUTOPOIESIS. This faculty of mental constructs works in an autopoietic way (thank you H. Maturana): the outcomes of constructing extend that same faculty, which constructed them (outcome-function dualism).

5.   SELF-ORGANIZATION. In this way, in the course of doing, a self-organizing, intelligent system comes into being (thank you J. Piaget), a whole of compared and connected mental constructs (thank you I. Kant).

6.   VIABILITY. In this system priority belongs to viable mental constructs, i.e. those which stand the test of doing (thank you E. von Glasersfeld).

7.   INNER WORLD. Hence, this own world, is an inner world, made of mentally constructed objects, events, human beings, relationships, social interactions, etc.: all things that each of us constructs by her/himself.

8.   OUTER WORLD. The outer world (physical world) provides material for the construction of mental constructs and is used as environment for testing their viability.

9.   EXPERIENCE. From the coupled control of the outer and inner world (controlled processes) by means of thinking (control unit) arises experience.

10.    KNOWLEDGE. The own world in which each of us lives, is hence primarily an experiential world (thank you E. von Glasersfeld) and knowledge is the logic of this experience.

11.    RESPONSIBILITY. Consequently, the responsibility for knowledge, belongs to the bearer of experience (thank you H. von Förster).

Marco Bettoni

Basel, 26. Oktober 2018

Why responsible? EvG 2002

In 2002 Ernst von Glasersfeld wrote in his obituary for Heinz von Förster:

• Heinz put the new view into a nutshell: «Objectivity is the delusion that observations could be made without an observer.» Instead of worrying about an inaccessible external reality he focused attention on the world we build in the course of interactions with others in the domain of our experience. 
• Though this experiential world is a social construction, it is also individual because each constructs it according to his or her own experience. And because there is always more than one way of constructing, we are all responsible for the world in which we live.
• In Memoriam H.v.F., http://www.oikos.org/foerster.htm

Knowledge: making sense of experience - EvG 1990

In 1990 Ernst von Glasersfeld wrote:

• If the view is adopted that “knowledge” is the conceptual means to make sense of experience, rather than a “representation” of something that is supposed to lie beyond it, this shift of perspective brings with it an important corollary: the concepts and relations in terms of which we perceive and conceive the experiential world we live in are necessarily generated by ourselves. In this sense it is we who are responsible for the world we are experiencing.
• As I have reiterated many times, radical constructivism does not suggest that we can construct anything we like, but it does claim that within the constraints that limit our construction there is room for an infinity of alternatives. 
• It therefore does not seem untimely to suggest a theory of knowing that draws attention to the knower’s responsibility for what the knower constructs.
• An exposition of constructivism: Why some like it radical . In: R. B. Davis, C. A. Maher & N. Noddings (ed.) Monographs of the J. for Research in Mathematics Education, #4. Reston, VA: National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, pp. 19–29.