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A&O – KNOW THYSELF and NOTHING IN EXCESS

ART & ORGANISM

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KNOW THY SELF but Nothing in Excess

notes

Since deep antiquity seekers of wisdom have been urged to

“KNOW THYSELF”

(And in one’s behavior, to express

NOTHING IN EXCESS,

the first of three Delphic Maxims inscribed in the (forecourt) of the Temple of Apollo at Delphi (5th c. BC)

As for LEVELS of ORGANIZATION: Even a the cellular level, one’s self is recognizable (look in on “ALLORECOGNITION” and Frank M. Burnet’s Nobel lecture, “Immunological recognition of self.” (12 December 1960))

 

SO, in pusuit of self knowledge and in full acceptance of the necessary intertwining of SENTIENCE and SAPIENCE, we can ask, who or what is this SELF?  

This question was engaged by Antonio Damasio (2003)

He asked If the readers of [the journal] Nature were asked to define the concept of ‘self’, I imagine that the answers would cluster around two principal meanings. One would be refreshingly precise:

“what the immune system identifies as belonging to the body”…The other meaning, corresponding to the everyday idea of mental self, would be more difficult to pin down. The answers would include:

“the sense of one’s own being”, or “the sum total of qualities that distinguish the mind of one person from that of another”, or “one’s personal identity”.

(READ glossed exerpts from Damasio’s writings at the  A&O notes on his ideas):

We are, of course, organisms of a particular sort embodying the evolutionary legacy from other sorts of organisms. When we are conceived begin to also embody changes in our developmental trajectory attribuutable to exposure to the environment into which we are born.  These are the necessary elements of “nature” and “nurture” and the expression of these combined experiences is our selves.   A critical attribute of this self is a relentless developmental disposition to enlarge or extend this self — to manifest motivated behavior with greater efficiency (using less energy) and and effectiveness (accomplishing goals (not least those of which we are unaware)) and a significant manner in which we do this by manipulating our environments by exploiting phenomena we have invented or discovered in the ongoing process of culture.  AND, the cognitive processes we deploy become incorporated within us as we profit from their servicing of our needs. Indeed, at every level we attempt to meet our BIOLOGICAL NEEDS with discovered or invented knowledge. KNOWLEDGE is then sorted, sifted, saved, and shared to further enlarge our competencies.

The SELF is what KNOWS while not fully knowing ITSELF.  Of course we have a certain knowledge (or at least beliefs) of facts, of causes and effects that can guide action at every level of biological organization from cellular (see note 1) to social.  All the resources of cognition are each (more-or-less) engaged in the processes of being our selves. 

“Knowledge is what is known; the confident understanding of a subject, potentially with the ability to use it for a specific purpose. It is a familiarity with someone or something, which can include facts, information, descriptions, or skills acquired through experience or education. Knowledge can be acquired in many different ways and from many sources, including but not limited to perception, reason, memory, testimony, scientific inquiry, education, and practice. The philosophical study of knowledge is called epistemology.”

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DEEP ETHOLOGY of the SELF

Success in the real world–the umwelt–seems to rely on a sense of self and places great weight upon attrubutes that are more or less unique to us alone, a kind of exceptionalism that develops as our individuation progresses from an inchoate mass of cells embedded in another individual to a fully developed congnizing self withn progressively more control of its own destiny. (see A&O notes on INDIVIDUATION and SOCIALIZATION)   

But it is that maturing individual that pays special attention to knowing ouselves, reconciling the ideal (aspirational?) self and reality through the fog of philosophy.  From the perspective of ethology, there are many factors that affect the processes that conception sets in motion.

 

DEVELOPMENT

ECOLOGY

EVOLUTION:   Most of our sense of SELF derives from an awareness of  our boundaries–but awareness implies the deployment of complementary constellations of cognitive resources, and we pay special attention to information from outside ourselves (or at least our awareness), even if we are their cause.   HOW MIGHT these competencies evolved?  “Discussions of the function of early nervous systems usually focus on a causal flow from sensors to effectors, by which an animal coordinates its actions with exogenous changes in its environment.   Jékely (et al. 2021  propose, instead, that much early sensing was reafferent; it was responsive to the consequences of the animal’s own actions. We distinguish two general categories of reafference—translocational and deformational—and use these to survey the distribution of several often-neglected forms of sensing, including gravity sensing, flow sensing and proprioception. …. Reafference is ubiquitous, as ongoing action, especially whole-body motility, will almost inevitably influence the senses. (Corollary discharge—a pathway or circuit by which an animal tracks its own actions and their reafferent consequences—is not a necessary feature of reafferent sensing but a later-evolving mechanism.) We also argue for the importance of reafferent sensing to the evolution of the body-self, a form of organization that enables an animal to sense and act as a single unit.”  (Jékely et al. 2021)  

 

PHYSIOLOGY

 

 

 

 

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CAN “ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE” help us know ourselves?

A.I. is a DRAMATIC and PROVOCATIVE TECHNOLOGICAL DEVELOPMENT IN OUR CULTURE that collates or mines the vast deposits of knowledge we have gathered. It is a powerful cognitive prosthesis that can vastly extend our competence in at least some areas of cognitive function.   Lost, however, in some discussion of this wonderful new tool in the fact that the knowledge begins with us and necessarily includes some very deep biases (as well as occasional shallow biases as it is deployed in popular culture)… So, AI is US. 

“There is yet another area of research in “extended cognition,” data showing that the extension of the cognitive systems does not even stop at body boundaries (also cf. Teske 2013). Andy Clark’s Natural-Born Cyborgs (2003) describes human beings as human-technology symbionts, and suggests that we have been that way since the invention of words. What distinguishes our long developmental dependency and our neuroplasticity is that we are able “to enter into deep and complex relationships with nonbiological constraints, props and aides” (Clark 2003, 5). Pens, paper, wristwatches, notebooks, calculators, cell phones, and Internet access are just the most recent layers of our extended cognitive systems, and include wide temporal and spatial extension. “Offloading” cognitive functions to calculators, written text, and clocks alters our brains over the course of our lives, and has a long history. Why limit the understanding of mind and person to our boundaries of skin, as “our sense of self, place, and potential are all malleable constructs ready to expand, change, or contract at surprisingly short notice” (Clark 2003, 33)? Anyone who has ever awakened wondering about the ownership of a benumbed hand, or felt personally violated by incursions on one’s property, understands this implicitly. The neural events, conscious and unconscious, that occur inside our skin are also embedded within a social and technological matrix that plays no less a role in knowing ourselves.” From Teske (2017)[i]

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SELF-KNOWLEDGE may begin at the cellular level as physiological phenomena and interactions become established according to their efficiency and effectiveness at maintaining homeostasis within the constraints our human being, but as consciousness develops an awareness of the power of knowledge motivates progressively more pusuit of both internal and external knowledge. Manifest as both nonconscious and conscious processes (such as curiosity) and varying according to its need to find balance with our other biological needs, this will never end.

WHY WRITE?  “I encountered Joan Didion’s famous line about why she writes—“entirely to find out what I’m thinking”—many times before I read the essay it comes from, and was reminded once again to never assume you know what anything means out of context.”Read Elisa Gabbert’s essay in the Paris Review

STORIES.  Amongst the most powerful ways of organizing the knowledge that informs our sense of self is story telling.  This is a large part of John Teske’s thinking: “Part of the epistemological crisis of the twentieth century was caused by empirically establishing that introspection provides little reliable self-knowledge. While we all have full actual selves to which our self-representations do not do full justice, we focus on the formation and existence of a narrative self, and on problematic reliability. We will explore the cognitive neuroscience behind its limitations, including pathological forms of confabulation, the generation of plausible but insufficiently grounded accounts of our actions, and the normal patterns of narrative creation and checking. The evolutionary logic of self-deception may produce adaptive results, particularly in service of the “commitment  strategies” that give our species results otherwise unobtainable. It is largely in our close relationships  with other human beings, the relationships  so well served by these very strategies, that we may find the powerful counterbalancing feedback which may provide positive change and self-transcendence. Nevertheless, we will also warn about a shadow side for which religion can provide both acknowledgment and hope.” (Knowing Ourselves  by Telling Stories to Ourselves.  John A. Teske (2017)  Zygon, vol. 52, no. 3 (September 2017) pp 880-902.)

 

 

[read Catherine de Lange reporting  “Who do you think you are? Why your sense of self is an illusion.”]

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I am of old and young, of the foolish as much as the wise,

Regardless of others, ever regardful of others,

Maternal as well as paternal, a child as well as a man,

Stuff’d with the stuff that is coarse and stuff’d with the stuff that is fine,

…

A learner with the simplest, a teacher of the thoughtfullest,

A novice beginning yet experient of myriads of seasons,

Of every hue and caste am I, of every rank and religion,

A farmer, mechanic, artist, gentleman, sailor, quaker,

Prisoner, fancy-man, rowdy, lawyer, physician, priest.

 

https://iwp.uiowa.edu/whitmanweb/en/writings/song-of-myself/section-16

 

But recall Walt Whitman’s insight: Do I contradict myself? / Very well then I contradict myself, / (I am large, I contain multitudes.)  (Walt Whitman, Song of Myself, 51)

 

SELF-KNOWLEDGE and SELF-HEALING? 

Wangechi Mutu: “An artist … is a healer. First, they heal themselves, and then they try bit by bit to heal others.”

(from “I am Speaking, Are you Listening?”-  Exhibition Film (June 30, 2021) in website for Exhibit at the Legion of Honor Museum, one of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco. )

more about “The Wounded Healer.”

 

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There is a NEED TO KNOW and there are important physiological mechanisms to reward knowing in general and making new connections (we are, after all. INFOVORES) 

Self-actualization is at the pinnacle of Maslow’s hierarchy of motivational needs — as we have adapted it to biology, self-actualization arguable represents the maximal INCLUSIVE FITNESS of which an organism is capable: its greatest expression of potential to represent itself in the future– a way of persevering beyond one’s corporeal life.  (Inclusive fitness combines direct transmission of genes you possess) and indirect transmission of genes you share with more-or-less closely related kin).

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BUT, Can you ever truly know yourself? READ: about how bias and delusion distort self-perception/  There is an ancestral (evolutionary) indifference to stimuli in our environments for which there is no adaptive advantage–at least advantage sufficient to lock it in to our genome by means of natural selection (such as colors outside the visible spectrum, sounds outside our range).  These are the most obvious examples of congenital bias.   

DYNAMIC BALANCE. The pursuit of self-knowledge can never be complete: following every path of connectedness we inevitably reach a point beyond which our skepticism exceeds our confidence … and we might remember the rule of evolutionary success doesn’t require perfection, but only that we are more successful in meeting our biological needs than competitors when resources are limited.  (hark back to Sartre’s, l’existence précède l’essence from our notes on existential phenomenology).    

LEVELS of ORGANIZATION:  One’s vantage point cannot be other that one’s self:  We are organisms that behave in relationship to our environment to meet our needs and maximize our fitness.  We can look to lower levels–organs, tissues, cells– and higher levels–families, communities. But it begins with you!   And our chosen framework for analysis and integration is ART and DEEP Ethology.   

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PERSPECTIVE ON YOU: from New Scientist 12 Dec 2020 pp32-44:

·       You are stardust: The long view of when your existence really began

·       How nature, nurture and sheer randomness combine to make a unique you

·       Think your sense of self is located in your brain? Think again

·       You are not one person: Why your sense of self must be an illusion

·       Why it’s the aliens living inside you that create your sense of you

·       Do we have free will or are all our decisions predetermined?

·       If we can’t change the world, does anything we do matter?

·       Why we’re in tune with our emotions – but suck at judging our smarts

·       If the multiverse exists, are there infinite copies of me?

Read more: https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg24833121-300-you-are-stardust-the-long-view-of-when-your-existence-really-began/#ixzz6mf93HAgi

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DEVELOPMENT of the ORGANISM and its “self”. To know one’s self is integrally related to the concept of individuation, the process by which a person learns their boundaries and the extent to which their personal environment affects them and to which they can affect their environments.   All personal competencies are a negotiated compromise between individuals and their environments.   The pursuit of holism, of “being one with everything,” involves less an integration into the environment than a productive transparent (or frictionless) interaction between individuals and their environments.  Self-knowledge and the knowledge of one’s environment, including other people, involves a process of reciprocity, which in principle urges each player on to fuller development of their potential in the sense of a dynamic dialectic in which “Parts and wholes evolve in consequence of their relationship” (Levins and Lewontin 1985:3)​​​​​​[ix]

 

  • Individuation and socialization are simultaneous processes and reflect levels of organization.  The individual pursues self-actualization as principle NEED.  

 

He who is unable to live in society, or who has no need because he is sufficient for himself, must be either a beast or a god.

(Aristotle 384-322 BC, Politics bk. 1, 1253a

.Fragments of the process have been identified and manifest if not reified in most if not all fields that pursue control (as in man controlling nature[xi]) and relinquishing of control (as in submitting to god as a non-negotiable constraint). 

  • In cognitive neuropsychology, parts of the brain are seen in dynamic balance, not least intuitive and conscious processes.
  • In the psychology of creativity, the play of nonconscious automatisms are often in play, as in Keats, I had not been aware of the beauty of some thought or expression until after I had composed and written it down” or E.M. Forster, who said “I write because I don’t know what I think until I read what I say.”[xii]
  • In physics, the tension might be exemplified in Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle in which complementary variables such as position and momentum, cannot both be precisely known and can thus be viewed as not individuated.  Also, two quantum entangled particles cannot be understood independently: Two or more states in quantum superposition, e.g., as in Schrödinger’s cat being simultaneously in a half dead and half alive state, is mathematically not the same as assuming the cat is in an individual alive state with 50% probability. The “natural criterion of individuality has been suggested.” [xiii]

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There may be myriad ports, but all leading to the sea of beauty, Plato’s term for the most intense of self-actualizing experiences.[iv]

The sense of completeness may be related to the transcendent experience.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophy_of_self [xiv]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychology_of_self [xv]

 

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IS “BEING YOURSELF” the same as “KNOWING YOUR SELF” ?? 

connected to INDIVIDUATION versus SOCIALIZATION:  How much of you is YOU, and how much OTHER PEOPLE (real or idealized):  These apparent alternatives are (or should be) in DYNAMIC BALANCE (“essential tension”).

Have you ever imagined what somewhat might say to you if only they were available for you to ask their opinion? Look also into “listening angels.”   An “essential tension” was originally described by Thomas Kuhn as a state that connects tradition and innovation … it involves CHANGE – sometimes perceived as an inexorable drift toward a different state of being, but also often perceived as a “maelstrom of perpetual disintegration and renewal.” (Berman).

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WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU FIND YOUR SELF    (and recalling Goethe)

“Caribbean poet and playwright Derek Walcott (d. 2017) — a writer of such extraordinary poetic prowess that his 1992 Nobel Prize in Literature appears a wholly inadequate measure of his mastery and mesmerism — addresses with a luminous sidewise gleam in a poem titled “Love After Love,” found in his Collected Poems: 1948–1984 (public library).”  On an archival On Being episode titled “Opening to Our Lives,” mindfulness pioneer Jon Kabat-Zinn reads Walcott’s masterpiece — undoubtedly one of the greatest, most soul-stretching poems ever written. Please enjoy:

 

  LOVE AFTER LOVE
by Derek Walcott

The time will come
when, with elation,
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror,
and each will smile at the other’s welcome,
and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you

all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,

the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.

“This reading is part of On Being’s altogether wonderful poetry archive. Complement it with other poetry-lovers’ readings of favorite poems: Amanda Palmer reads Wislawa Szymborska, David Whyte reads Mary Oliver, Joanna Macy reads Rainer Maria Rilke, and my reading of Mark Strand.”   From themarginalian.org/

 

ASPIRING to NORMALCY?  “Nothing in Excess” is a venerable guide.  (might that also apply to knowing one’s self?)   A&O notes on the Golden Mean

“These are among the Delphic maxims inscribed at Delphi.   These are 147 aphorisms said to have been given by the Greek god Apollo.  At the Temple of Apollo at Delphi, the priestess [Pythia]  (more at Wikipedia); More detail at Carlos Parada’s website on Delphi)

DELPHI.  Delphi was since ancient times a place of worship for Gaia, the mother goddess connected with fertility. The town started to gain pan-Hellenic relevance as both a shrine and an oracle in the 7th century BC. Initially under the control of Phocaean settlers based in nearby Kirra (currently Itea), Delphi was reclaimed by the Athenians during the First Sacred War (597–585 BC).  …. The temple survived until AD 390, when the Roman emperor Theodosius I silenced the oracle by destroying the temple and most of the statues and works of art in the name of Christianity.[40] The site was completely destroyed by zealous Christians in an attempt to remove all traces of Paganism.[40]   (Wikipedia)

 [A philosopher of phenomenology said that “to understand phenomenology, one must be a phenomenologist” … if so, does that imply that “to understand myself, I have to be myself” ??] 

WHY SHOULD ONE KNOW ONE’S SELF?.   “In the culmination of the philosophic path as discussed in Plato’s Symposium, one comes to the Sea of Beauty or to the sight of “the beautiful itself” (211C); only then can one become wise. (In the Symposium, Socrates credits his speech on the philosophic path to his teacher, the priestess Diotima, who is not even sure if Socrates is capable of reaching the highest mysteries.) In the Meno, he refers to the Eleusinian Mysteries, telling Meno he would understand Socrates’ answers better if only he could stay for the initiations next week.“ 

The result is that he will see the beauty of knowledge… the lover is turned to the great sea of beauty, and gazing upon this, he gives birth to many gloriously beautiful ideas and theories, in unstinting love of wisdom, until, having grown and been strengthened there, he catches sight of such knowledge, and it is the knowledge of such beauty… The man … who has beheld beautiful things in the right order and correctly, is now coming to the goal of Loving: all of a sudden he will catch sight of something wonderfully beautiful in its nature; that, Socrates, is the reason for all his earlier labors.”

 

 

Enlightenment, in reality, “is something quite ordinary. The enlightened person is simply the person who isn’t selfish, who sees things as they really are, loves them, and acts out of that love” (Norman Fischer, introduction to Zen Master Dogon (2004) Beyond Thinking: A Guide to Zen Meditation. Boston, Shambhala. (p. xxix))  (copied to KNOW THY SELF / nothing in excess)

connect to “A man doesn’t learn to understand anything unless he loves it” – Goethe (Man lernt nichts kennen als was man Liebt)[i]  and

“We love only what we do not wholly possess.” (On n’aime que ce qu’on ne possède pas tout entier.”—Marcel Proust)

 

 

[i]. Man lernt nichts kennen als was man Liebt‑‑ Goethe. [complete:  “Man lernt nichts kennen, als was man liebt, und je tiefer und vollständiger die Kenntnis werden soll, desto kräftiger und lebendiger muß die Liebe, ja Leidenschaft sein.”  (Goethe in einem Brief an Jacobi, 1812)] 

One learns to know nothing but what one loves, and the deeper and more complete the knowledge is to become, the stronger, stronger and more alive must be love, even passion.  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe  (1749 – 1832), source: Goethe, letters. To Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi, May 10, 1812

 

WHY SHOULD ONE NOT ENGAGE IN EXCESS?.   “The maxim, “NOTHING IN EXCESS”  represents the virtue of temperance (Greek = sophrosyne), which Aristotle defines in the Nicomachean Ethics as having appetites “for the right things, in the right ways, at the right times.” The temperate person’s appetites are under the control of his reason.”  (http://www.intellectualtakeout.org/ )

“Temperance is one of the “four cardinal virtues” along with prudence, justice, and fortitude. Similar to fortitude, temperance helps one conquer obstacles to doing what is prudent and just, i.e., what is good. Whereas fortitude helps one conquer fear of bodily harm, the virtue of temperance helps one conquer attachments to bodily pleasure. In particular, Aristotle held that temperance deals with those pleasures that result from the senses of touch and taste.  

Of the four virtues, temperance is the one most focused on self, though it is a focus on self for the sake of being more just toward others. When we’re consumed with our bodily needs, we’re less able to “give each his due,” which is the definition of justice.  //  The temperate person is one who consistently exercises the “mean“—the right path between opposite extremes.”  (http://www.intellectualtakeout.org/ )

 


Read more at: http://www.intellectualtakeout.org/blog/nothing-excess © IntellectualTakeout.org

 

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note 1. Are the immunological self and the mental self related to each other? Antonio Damasio believes so: Read on: mental-self-the-person-within (antonio-damasio-2003)   

[i] Really anyone manifest as “the more knowledgeable other” (Vygotsky)

[ii] Patterns in Transformative Pedagogy: Ethological Perspective Neil Greenberg, Deepa Deshpande, Kathy Greenberg, Karen Franklin, Brenda Murphy, Kristina Plaas, Howard Pollio, Brian Sohn, & Sandra Thomas, The University of Tennessee, Knoxville

Transformative learning, in which students experience a paradigm shift from merely knowing course content to realizing its relevance in their personal and professional lives, is the recent focus of The University of Tennessee’s Phenomenology in Education Research Team (PERT). A tenet of the phenomenological approach is that course content is most easily mastered when allied with a student’s personal views, thus harnessing their intrinsic motivational and affective qualities. To more deeply explore this pedagogical approach, we identified a specific course as exemplary in evoking transformative learning by means of post-class written reflections, individual audiotaped interviews, and focus groups conducted at end of the semester. ETHOLOGY identifies and describes the many specific “units of behavior” that can be configured and manifest in countless patterns of behavior seen in closely observed research participants. These units, rendered as objectively as possible to avoid misleading assumptions about their function, provide a reliable basis for our exploration of the causes and consequences of Conference on Higher Education Pedagogy 68 specific patterns that are associated with outcomes of interest.

A graduate course was identified, and class sessions of two sections were recorded. Units of behavior were extracted from the transcripts, enabling us to determine their frequency, circumstances of expression, and patterns. Patterns were then analyzed to determine specific actions and transactions that might reasonably be considered components of the student experience. For example, preliminary analysis reveals that a specific pattern of real world student experiences elicited by the instructor and questions asked of students is reliably associated with spontaneous recognition of the application of course content to their personal and professional lives. This study will provide clues about how phenomenologically-informed pedagogy works to enhance student experience. After comparable analysis of other classes necessary and sufficient elements and patterns revealed will indicate which patterns might be intentionally facilitated to evoke an enduring student experience

[iii] the Zone of Proximal Development is integrally related to the concept of the More Knowledgeable Other,  the second important principle of Vygotsky’s work …  This is an important concept that relates to the difference between what a child can achieve independently and what a child can achieve with guidance and encouragement from a skilled partner.

  For example, the child could not solve the jigsaw puzzle (in the example above) by itself and would have taken a long time to do so (if at all), but was able to solve it following interaction with the father, and has developed competence at this skill that will be applied to future jigsaws.

Vygotsky (1978) sees the Zone of Proximal Development as the area where the most sensitive instruction or guidance should be given – allowing the child to develop skills they will then use on their own – developing higher mental functions.

Vygotsky also views interaction with peers as an effective way of developing skills and strategies.  He suggests that teachers use cooperative learning exercises where less competent children develop with help from more skillful peers – within the zone of proximal development.

Evidence for Vygotsky and the ZPD.  Freund (1990) conducted a study in which children had to decide which items of furniture should be placed in particular areas of a dolls house.  Some children were allowed to play with their mother in a similar situation before they attempted it alone (zone of proximal development) whilst others were allowed to work on this by themselves (Piaget’s discovery learning).   Freund found that those who had previously worked with their mother (ZPD) showed greatest improvement compared with their first attempt at the task.  The conclusion being that guided learning within the ZPD led to greater understanding/performance than working alone (discovery learning).

[iv] “Plato, in his Plato’s Symposium (210d–e) writes (in the character of the priestess Diotima):  “The result is that he will see the beauty of knowledge… the lover is turned to the great sea of beauty, and gazing upon this, he gives birth to many gloriously beautiful ideas and theories, in unstinting love of wisdom, until, having grown and been strengthened there, he catches sight of such knowledge, and it is the knowledge of such beauty… The man … who has beheld beautiful things in the right order and correctly, is now coming to the goal of Loving: all of a sudden he will catch sight of something wonderfully beautiful in its nature; that, Socrates, is the reason for all his earlier labors.”  

The Sea of Beauty  “is described variously as the Beatific vision, Vision, enlightenment, nirvana, satori, Kensho, Bodhi, awareness, true knowledge, etc.”

[v] The Ancient Greek aphorism “know thyself” or “gnothi seauton” (Greek: γνῶθι σεαυτόν, transliterated: gnōthi seauton; also … σαυτόν… sauton with the ε contracted), is one of the Delphic maxims and was inscribed in the pronaos (forecourt) of the Temple of Apollo at Delphi according to the Greek writer Pausanias (10.24.1).[1] The aphorism may have originated in Luxor in Ancient Egypt.

[vi] In the Tao, (knowing others is wisdom.)  “Mastering others requires force. Mastering the self requires strength.”[2]  Adi Shankaracharya, in his commentary on Bhagavad Gita says “Self-knowledge alone eradicates misery”.[3] “Self-knowledge alone is the means to the highest bliss.”.[4]“Absolute perfection is the consummation of Self-knowledge.”[5] (Wikipedia)

[vii] Self-actualization.  Self actualization for Goldstein is to manifest one’s inherent possibilities in the moment.  Maslow built on this, and a condensed view would be for one “to be all one could be,” to manifest as much as possible their personal, unique potential.   For Carl Rogers, self-actualization begins with the infant differentiating itself from the field in which it is born and subsequently “maintaining and enhancing the individual’s self-concept through reflection, reinterpretation of experience”

[vii] Self-actualization.  Self actualization for Goldstein is to manifest one’s inherent possibilities in the moment.  Maslow built on this, and a condensed view would be for one “to be all one could be,” to manifest as much as possible their personal, unique potential.   For Carl Rogers, self-actualization begins with the infant differentiating itself from the field in which it is born and subsequently “maintaining and enhancing the individual’s self-concept through reflection, reinterpretation of experience”

[viii] Carl Rogers used the term self-actualization as a process, not an end-point accomplishment.   It describes …  “the actualization of the individual’s sense of ‘self’.[38] In person-centred theory self-actualization is the ongoing process of maintaining and enhancing the individual’s self-concept through reflection, reinterpretation of experience, allowing the individual to recover, develop, change and grow. Self-actualization is a subset of the overall organismic actualizing tendency and begins with the infant learning to differentiate what is ‘self’ and what is ‘other’ within its ‘total perceptual field’,[39] as their full self-awareness gradually crystalizes. Interactions with significant others are key to the process of self-actualization: ‘As a result of interaction with the environment, and particularly as a result of evaluational interaction with others, the structure of the self is formed – an organized, fluid but consistent conceptual pattern of perceptions of characteristics and relationships of the ‘I’ or the ‘me’, together with the values attached to these concepts’.[38]

The process of self-actualization is continuous as the individual matures into a socially competent, interdepedent autonomy, and is ongoing throughout the life-cycle. When there is sufficient tension between the individual’s sense of self and their experience, a psychopathological state of incongruence can arise: ‘…I believe that individuals are culturally conditioned, rewarded, reinforced, for behaviors which are in fact perversions of the natural directions of the unitary actualizing tendency’.[40] In Rogers’ theory self-actualization is not the end-point, it is the process that can, in conducive circumstances (in particular the presence of positive self-regard and the empathic understanding of others), lead to the individual becoming more ‘fully-functioning‘.   (Wikipedia)

[ix] “Parts and wholes evolve in consequence of their relationship, and the relationship itself evolves. These are the properties of things that we call dialectical: that one thing cannot exist without the other, that one acquires its properties from its relation to the other, that the properties of both evolve as a consequence of their interpenetration.” (Levins and Lewontin 1985:3)​​​​​​​ 

[x] Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein’s monster (rather than Boris Karloff’s) became a beast because he was deprived of sociality: “My heart was fashioned to be susceptible of love and sympathy= and, when wrenched by misery to vice and hatred, it did not endure the violence of the change without torture, such as you cannot even imagine. . . . I was nourished with high thoughts of honor and devotion.  But now vice has degraded me beneath the meanest animal. . . . ” And his vice?  His appearance invited fear and unjust rejection, shunned and unbearably lonely, the nineteen year old Shelley’s monster was born. (See Steve Gould’s “The Monster’s Human Nature” in Dinosaur in a Haystack).

[xi] Science is a way of giving unity and intelligibility to the facts of nature so that nature may be controlled and new facts predicted. (Beck, Modern Science and the Nature of Life, p 20)

[xii] “I not been aware of the beauty of some thought or expression until after I had composed and written it down” (Keats cited by Tyrrell, 1946).  “Flannery O’Conner, like E.M. Forster, said “I write because I don’t know what I think until I read what I say,” (cited by Lederman 1983).  Indeed, writers are often unaware of precisely what they will write until it is actually written (Sekular, 1985).   [There is often a remarkable compulsiveness, if not automaticity in the unfolding of the thought‑experiments one performs in the laboratory of the mind that often leads creative personalities to feel they are possessed ‑‑ Recalling the self‑generated subvocalized “voices” of schizophrenics the artist becomes “inspired” or “enthused” ‑‑filled with compelling impulses which appear to originate from outside one’s awareness, impulses to explore one’s mental model which, like play, are “autotelic.”  Kurt Vonnegut might sit at his typewriter and let other parts of consciousness take over, and be amazed at what comes out.  The remarkable comedian Robin Williams commented on his gift: “When it works it’s like . . . freedom!  Suddenly these things are coming out of you.  You’re in control, but you’re not.  The characters are coming through you.  Even when I’m going “Whoa!”  It’s that Zen lock.  It’s channeling with Call Waiting.” (Richard Corliss 1987)[ii]]  “There are a thousand thoughts lying within a man that he does not know till he takes up a pen to write.” -William Makepeace Thackeray, novelist (1811-1863) [and see Mozart & Guston]

[xiii]  Jaeger, Gregg (2011). “Individuation in Quantum Mechanics”. Foundations of Physics. 41 (3): 299–304. doi:10.1007/s10701-009-9382-x. (cited in Wikipedia)

[xiv] The philosophy of self defines, among other things, the conditions of identity that make one subject of experience distinct from all others. Contemporary discussions on the nature of the self are not thereby discussions on the nature of personhood, or personal identity. The self is sometimes understood as a unified being essentially connected to consciousness, awareness, and agency (or, at least, with the faculty of rational choice). Various theories on the metaphysical nature of the self have been proposed. Among them, the metaphysical nature of the self has been proposed to be that of an immaterial substance.

Most philosophical definitions of self—per Descartes, Locke, Hume, and William James—are expressed in the first person.[1] A third person definition does not refer to specific mental qualia but instead strives for objectivity and operationalism.

To another person, the self of one individual is exhibited in the conduct and discourse of that individual. Therefore, the intentions of another individual can only be inferred from something that emanates from that individual. The particular characteristics of the self determine its identity.

[xv] The psychology of self is the study of either the cognitive, conative or affective representation of one’s identity or the subject of experience. The earliest formulation of the self in modern psychology derived from the distinction between the self as I, the subjective knower, and the self as Me, the object that is known.[1]

Current views of the self in psychology position the self as playing an integral part in human motivation, cognition, affect, and social identity.[2] It may be the case that we can now usefully attempt to ground experience of self in a neural process with cognitive consequences, which will give us insight into the elements of which the complex multiply situated selves of modern identity are composed.

The self has many facets that help make up integral parts of it, such as self-awareness, self-esteem, self-knowledge, and self-perception. All parts of the self enable people to alter, change, add, and modify aspects of themselves in order to gain social acceptance in society. “Probably, the best account of the origins of selfhood is that the self comes into being at the interface between the inner biological processes of the human body and the sociocultural network to which the person belongs.”[3]

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NEXUS  Connecting self-knowledge to



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