Hi Jason,

  Since you asked about knowledge, and mentioned the knower/known relationship, let me post here a message I sent to John Vervaeke yesterday. Let me offer some background to help frame the narrative. The context is that we are working on doing another joint blog together. This blog is on the nature of knowledge. In taking John's course on Awakening from the Meaning Crisis, I have found much value in his analysis of participatory knowing and what he calls "transvective" knowledge, which can be thought of as skillful interaction with an object or environment.

  You may recall that a while ago, we discussed on the TOK list a paper that was absolutely slaughtered by reviewers. It was on my concept of "InterSubjective Mental Behaviorism." The paper uses the Unified Framework to try and draw an effective connection between objectivity, subjectivity, and intersubjectivity. I had submitted it to the journal Behavior and Philosophy and it elicited derision and contempt from all three reviewers in a way that I think any objective person would agree was a bit "over the top". Indeed, I never got the paper published. The last submission is attached if you are at all curious. I did end up blogging on the topic. Then I saw an article on the concept of bullshit that set the stage for me to introduce this conception, which I had shortened into the "S O IS Knowledge triangle". Here is the blog<https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/theory-knowledge/201810/bs-and-the-nature-knowledge>. I ended up doing a podcast on it at Unlatched Mind<https://unlatchedmind.com/is-truth-being-redefined>.

  What the letter below narrates is my understanding of how John V's concept of transvective knowledge could complete the triangle and afford a very interesting S O IS I-T knowledge diamond (attached). To connect it to your note, knowledge always involves knower-known relations. This "diamond" might help sort that out. I also think that there is interesting knowledge to be gained plumbing the object field relations. I certainly agree that the introverted individual is reflecting more on the phenomenological field, whereas the extraverted individual is focused on external, sensed object.

Best,
Gregg


>>

Hi John,

  I am still mulling over exactly how I want to frame/tackle the S O IS I-T Knowledge Diamond (Let me know if you prefer S O I-T IS).

In terms of the conceptual puzzle pieces, here is what I am thinking:

First, according to the ToK/JUST analysis of the evolution of human knowledge/Culture/onto-epistemological/justification systems, there is an important difference between pre-formal indigenous justification systems and the formal (but premodern) justification systems that emerged in the Axial Age. (see here<https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/theory-knowledge/201910/5-phases-in-the-evolution-human-cultural-sensibilities> for a brief synopsis, which you likely have seen before)

The difference is perhaps most clearly seen in the Greeks, and the Pythagorean-into-Socrates/Plato/Aristotle line of thought. It is the difference in the kind of epistemological justification for what constitutes real knowledge. Prior to the Greeks, knowledge was, I would argue, essentially justified via social and pragmatic reasons and effects. So, the Pharaoh was King and he had the power to build pyramids. The combination of the social construction of knowledge with the pragmatic power/capacity to effect impressive, difficult to achieve accomplishments was how people "knew" what was true. Then mathematics comes along and shows a form of knower independent logical truth and then Socratic Method advances that into human verbal justification and it is realized among those who could engage in formal analytic justification that maybe it was all BS and at the level of genuine epistemology humans "knew nothing". Then you get Plato coming out of the cave of appearances and advocating for a formist/idealism and Aristotle saying no, the ontologically real is substance and we make forms out of that via perception (or whatever-just being succinct). My point is that you get the emergence of formal synthetic philosophies that attempt to answer in systematic logically defensible ways what is true (and good).

Then you get the Enlightenment and the massive Kantian shift from primarily ontological concerns to a foundational (mental-empirical) epistemological view of truth. We simultaneously get modern science with its external empirical (as opposed to internal empirical) reference epistemology and the logical coherence/correspondence/inference to best plausible explanation theory of truth.

This gives us the subjective-objective epistemological split, with the idea that science is humanity's best "objective truth knowledge system/method/process" which works by factoring out the personal and social conventional knowledge traditions and giving the best possible knower independent view of the universe.

Then in the 20th Century, we get the intersubjective turn and the philosophy of language and the ideas about the social construction of reality, which enables a postmodern critique of Enlightenment subjective-objective rational idealism. The postmodern critique muddies the waters and at least temporarily kills the dream of a grand synthetic ontologically-epistemologically coherent philosophy. Indeed, philosophy fragments into analytic, continental, pragmatic and is marginalized relative to science, at least in the public eye and academic investment.

Ultimately, at the big picture level this gives us a Donald Davidson-type view of the Objective, Subjective, and Intersubjective or the Karl Popper Three World's view of the biophysical, subjective phenomenological, and cultural narrative/analytic. It was the integration of these views that I was after in my InterSubjective Mental Behaviorist formulation. However, I now realize it is not complete on several accounts.

First, it fails to address both informal social-pragmatism commonsense view of knowledge (although the larger Unified Framework readily manages this) and it fails to explicitly incorporate Jamesian/Pierce pragmatism, along with recent contact epistemologies. And, to be honest, I was not clear in my own head on the distinction and relation between ontology and epistemology at its deepest levels (this is something I have now gotten much clearer on in the last year-I was missing the key distinction between ontology and ontic reality).

Enter an Interactive-Tranvective Participatory Relevance Realization viewpoint. For me at least, this brings back into the picture (a) folk social/psychological pragmatism; (b) philosophical pragmatism; and (c) the proper dynamic interrelation between ontic reality of the known and the onto-epistemological frame of the knower.

That is the picture I have in my head and why I am psyched about it. I would like to see if that jives and jazzes with your sense of things. I would love to hear reflections, critiques, additions or concerns to add to it. If we are meshing well here, I can then think about how to turn this narrative into a fun-to-read 1000-1500 word blog.

Peace,
G


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