Cognition and sentience

‘However deep one’s knowledge of abstruse philosophy,

it is like a piece of hair flying in the vastness of space;

However important one’s experience in things worldly,

it is like a drop of water thrown into an unfathomable abyss’

                                       Zen saying 

Definition:

Knowledge          - an accumulation of data which provides effective action in a particular situation.

Wisdom             - ability to use knowledge in practical situations

Brain power is a human specialty. It is what is unique to as in much the same way that dog’s have greater sense of smell, a cheetah can run fast and eagles have superior vision. Our intellect is however a tool with unknown and often unpredictable consequences. Take the classic example of how Thomas Hobbes became interested in philosophy. In the library one day, Hobbes came across a copy of Euclid’s The Elements of Geometry, which lay open at the forty-seventh theorem. Hobbes read the conclusions and declared that it was impossible. He then read the entire theorem, and it referred him to a previous theorem, and so on, until he had read back to Euclid’s set of axioms which he had to admit were so self-evident that he could not deny them. Thus reasoning alone had led Hobbes to accept a conclusion that, at first sight, he had rejected. Hobbes later applied similar deductive methods of reasoning in his greatest work Leviathan. It is said that though it took only one amateur to build the Ark, it took a whole team of professionals to build the Titanic. Likewise, knowledge in itself has never guaranteed success in any endeavour unless it is knowledge based firmly on experience. It is the ability to use knowledge in a systematic and practical way that empowers the user. It pays to remember that; 

Ø         All knowledge has primary, secondary or tertiary value

Ø         All knowledge has emotional origins and destinations

Ø         All knowledge is temporal and regional

Ø         All knowledge which is in conflict contains deeper truths 

It is easy to understand how knowledge can be valued as either primary (one plus one equals two), secondary (there are two apples before me) and tertiary (these two apples can be used for an apple pie). Most undergraduates would have primary (theoretical) knowledge. Most practising veterinarians have tertiary value – most highly valued socially.

If a picture is worth a thousand words, the practise of a skill replaces a thousand words also. When you know how to spay a dog, it replaces months of studying how to do it. What you know now is not only forgotten if not constantly used, but is altered or made redundant with emerging scientific findings (i.e. it is temporal). Most of what we now know will be no longer taught with much emphasis to our children’s generation at university. Remember that the entirety of civilisations’ knowledge  up until the twentieth century is known by most children at year eight high school. Additionally, the knowledge we have may not be applicable in different geographical regions.

Perhaps the most important scientific discoveries occur where there is conflicting evidence. An overly simplified example of this is the two conflicting truths about milk feeding in neonates. Most people know that milk is an important source of calcium for all young animals as a source of calcium. Most people also know that many orphan kittens and puppies get sick when fed cow’s milk. From these two conflicting truths, most people surmise a third truth which links the first two, namely the importance of species-specific milk composition, especially lactose content.

As we shall see in later chapters, conflicting evidence which obstructs the definition of a theory results in the emergence of a new hypothesis. Such an approach, termed Cartesian dualism, is critical for all scientific disciplines in order to analyse data which conflicts which known paradigms for how any system works. If there are no conflicts, any theory would work and a myriad fictional hypotheses are possible, one more fanciful than the other. Any writer will tell you that the difference between fiction and reality is that fiction has to make sense.

Self-knowledge is also a highly valued commodity. Once you know why a certain type of person always manages to bring out the worst in you and push all those buttons you try so hard to hide, you can begin to deconstruct those buttons, rather than trying to hide them. When you know why it is you can’t face going to work any more, you can enact changes in your physical environment rather than spending the rest of your working life denying your inner needs, experiencing chronic dissatisfaction and paying for it with disease, disability, divorce, or even death.

That knowledge could arise from an emotional source, be emotionally-laden or able to evoke an emotional response is clearly obvious. Recent studies in neurology tell us that the files contain not only data/information, but emotions as well. In a manner that is still partially unknown, the brain has the ability to store not only memories but emotions as well - as they occurred at the time the memory was made. Memory files thus contain two parts, the information about the event and the feeling we had at the time of the event. Put more simply:

A memory is stored in long-term storage or ‘dumped’ depending on its emotional value. From a neurological standpoint, emotions or concentration releases a chemical called calpain that stores the memory - basically ‘memorising’ the experience, including the details (who, what, where, when, etc.) and the emotion present at the time[i]. This is why we can easily memorise information in an area of interest but have difficulty memorising dull or uninteresting topics. People with a ‘photographic memory’ are believed to have more of this brain chemical operating or have better control over the release of the chemical.

            Nothing we know, from why the sun revolves around the planet to why we eat the food we do, arises spontaneously. All knowledge emerges from a necessity to resolve an emotional conflict (problem) with an individual or at a social level. In later chapters, we shall see how curiosity or creativity is an emotional activity. Consider Galileo’s affirmation of the Copernican heliocentric universe. To say the earth revolved around the sun evoked strong emotional responses from the Catholic church, threatened as they were by Galileo’s assertion that humans were no longer the centre of the universe. We could also consider the innovations in electrical, mechanical and nuclear technology during WWII (radar, H-bomb, jet rockets, etc) as a consequence of European and American fears of annihilation by German and Japanese  forces. And it is not just socially-important knowledge that causes an emotional responses. To a long time suffer of an undiagnosed illness, finally knowing what is wrong (i.e. obtaining a diagnosis) can have emotionally-liberating effects. Even humble mathematics we learn at school is emotionally-laden. If you think that one plus one is not void of emotions, think again. Studies in ‘fuzzy’ mathematics (nonlinear chaotic systems) which use Fibonacci integers has shown that one plus one can equal three, four or infinity[ii].

            When what we know as fact is cast into doubt, emotions have found their destination, and what emerges is heightened curiosity to resolve this emotional conflict. And if you think that this threatens your faith in what you know, consider the question whether there is a ‘you’ that knows what you think you know. To arrive at something of certainty, let us begin with doubting knowledge. And to doubt knowledge, we must first throw into question what the mind is.

The mind machine

‘The superior person uses their mind like a mirror;

it accepts all, reflects all, it receives, but does not keep.’

Chuang Tzu