[Edit: this comment starts off on a critical tone. After reading more comments which are very critical, I wanted to edit my comment to first at least indicate that I think you are communicating about it as best you can and am somewhat annoyed with those suggesting otherwise. Nonetheless, my comment focuses on a single paragraph in which you make a decision about how to communicate which I disagree with. This is neither a criticism of the central point of the essay, nor a criticism of the overall way in which you try to make your point here.]
Another way I could try to say the “it’s okay” thing is something like, “The world is real in your immediate experience before you think about it. Set aside your interpretations and just look.” The trouble is, most people’s thinking system can grab statements like this and try to interpret them: if you think something like “Oh, that’s the map/territory distinction”, then all I can say is you are still looking at your phone.
There’s something very frustrating about this. Explaining in-parable: if you’re trying to tell me to look up, and I send a diagram of person-phone-gaze theory with anatomical markings indicating what I think you mean by “look up”, I know that understanding the graphic is not the same as “looking up”. What I want from you is any corrections you might have to the graphic. This may not actually help me to look up, but it may help—and more likely, it’ll help me know roughly the sort of thing I’m missing even if I can’t move my eyes as a result.
If someone doesn’t yet get the map-territory relation, you wouldn’t keep trying to show them the territory. It would help to make a map of the way the map-territory relation works, even though the ultimate goal is to help them look past maps in a sense. It could also help to show them some places where reality doesn’t work the way they think it does, to remind them that there’s a difference between what they think and what’s real. But if they don’t yet see an alternative they’ll just think you’re being mean, and say things like “just because I’m wrong sometimes doesn’t mean I should stop trying”.
Out-of-parable: my understanding is that there are two different things you’re getting at: the Kenshō itself, and the epistemic operation of Looking. The paragraph quoted above makes me think that the two are closely related, though.
My texting-you-a-diagram-of-phone-and-eyes-with-arrows-indicating-what-looking-up-would-mean:
It seems to me (based on this and other posts / interaction with you) like Looking has to do with the idea that we normally parse the world in pre-set ontologies, but there has to be a thing which builds the ontologies in the first place. Here, “ontology” does not mean the build-in framework of the hardware we run on (like telling a computer to look past bits and bytes to the thing which created bits and bytes in the first place—something it can’t physically do). Rather, “ontology” refers to provisional frameworks developed through experience. “Looking” intentionally engages the facilities which are involved in ontology-building-and-shifting.
For example, it used to be that when I would hear arguments for intuitionistic logic, I would interpret them in the framework of classical logic. This felt like using the best tools I had to evaluate proposed alternatives. Similarly, I still evaluate alternative ethical frameworks with a basically utilitarian lense. However, at some point, I gained the ability to evaluate arguments for intuitionism on their own. I think this was both an example of Looking and an insight which had to do with the nature of Looking (because it had to do with refactoring the map-territory relation). This instance of “Looking” seemed to basically require a lot of time with the subject—if there’s something earlier-me could have done to stop evaluating things through a purely classical-logic lense, I don’t know what it would be.
You’re claiming, as I understand it, that there’s a skill of Looking which can be immediate—not necessarily coming to the right conclusions immediately, I suppose, but immediately getting out of the evaluate-through-current-ontology trap. I mostly of believe you, and I can guess at mental motions which you might mean, but they are things like “use your inner sim rather than your inner narrative machine” or “try to look at a chair without seeing a chair, only splotches of light; then generalize this” or “turn your thoughts to what put the current ontology there in the first place” or “seperate your thinking about whether things ‘make sense’ from your thinking about whether they connect with evidence, so that you can notice when something has explanatory power even if it doesn’t fit with your preconceptions”. I don’t know which of these things you mean, if any.
Now, more speculatively, the Kenshō itself:
I have an intuition that whereas Looking is epistemic, the Kenshō is instrumental. Just as we can set up an ontology which becomes so familiar that we forget our basic ability to look, we can set up a way of doing and being which becomes so familiar that we forget the place it comes from. (So far, this is essentially your CFAR-level-two class, The Machine of You.) The connection between “It’s okay” and “The world is real in your immediate experience before you think about it. Set aside your interpretations and just look” is, on this understanding: once you engage your core rather than existing in your constructed way of being, there’s something supremely silly about worrying all the time or using guilt-driven motivation.
Any good koan that can’t be immediately decoded feels that way for a person who feels the desire to decode everything. It a basic effect of the teaching tool.
Telling koans is a time tested method for teaching these things and while it might be possible that there’s a better way to teach it, but that doesn’t mean that it’s bad to go with it if you don’t know of a better way.
I agree with what you are saying. I think I addressed. Again using map-territory as an analogy: It can help someone’s understanding of the map-territory distinction to show them places in the territory which don’t match their map. I’m saying there’s also a different thing you can do, which is to draw a map of the map-territory relationship. I read Val as objecting to this approach with “you are still looking at your phone”, which doesn’t seem like a right objection to me. If I ask “Is Kenshō the map-territory distinction?” It seems like the answer is “no, you can understand that without Kenshō; I can see why you thought what I said sounded like map-territory, and it isn’t irrelevant.… but for one thing, I’m talking about an aspect of moment-to-moment experience rather than an intellectual distinction...” etc etc
I think learning the map-territory relationship is about learning something new. Kenshō is in a fundamental sense not about learning something new.
When it comes to the person who looks at the phone and the person unlearns to focus on their phone they begin to see other things. The act of unlearning to look at the phone doesn’t add something new and is qualitatively different than learning a concept like the map-territory distinction.
I agree that the map-territory example is disanalogous with the phone example, since there aren’t a lot of people who respond to the map-territory distinction with “what would that even mean??? are you OK???”. I think maybe I understand what you mean about “not adding something new”—you’re saying it is more like you could have looked up from your phone all along, and you once did, but you’ve forgotten? But I also take it you mean to be pointing out something I’m missing. If so, I’m still not seeing it.
Are you saying there’s something fundamentally wrong with asking for a diagram of how the eyes point at the phone normally but can point away from it? The model I get from Val’s post (and from reading comment threads here!!) is that this will mostly get a response like “I don’t see where this gaze app is” (or worse). However, if someone is engaging with the question sincerely, it seems possible for it to be useful. With respect to enlightenment, this is like the method of direct instruction rather than meditation. (I don’t remember the name of the school of thought I’m referring to, but it is discussed in Sam Harris’ Waking Up.)
Granted, even that school has traditions against trying to explain directly to a general audience I think? So maybe there is a general case to be made aggainst the attempt.
[Edit: this comment starts off on a critical tone. After reading more comments which are very critical, I wanted to edit my comment to first at least indicate that I think you are communicating about it as best you can and am somewhat annoyed with those suggesting otherwise. Nonetheless, my comment focuses on a single paragraph in which you make a decision about how to communicate which I disagree with. This is neither a criticism of the central point of the essay, nor a criticism of the overall way in which you try to make your point here.]
[Edit 2: I think I get what Looking is now; see my reply to Moral Of Story’s comment.]
There’s something very frustrating about this. Explaining in-parable: if you’re trying to tell me to look up, and I send a diagram of person-phone-gaze theory with anatomical markings indicating what I think you mean by “look up”, I know that understanding the graphic is not the same as “looking up”. What I want from you is any corrections you might have to the graphic. This may not actually help me to look up, but it may help—and more likely, it’ll help me know roughly the sort of thing I’m missing even if I can’t move my eyes as a result.
If someone doesn’t yet get the map-territory relation, you wouldn’t keep trying to show them the territory. It would help to make a map of the way the map-territory relation works, even though the ultimate goal is to help them look past maps in a sense. It could also help to show them some places where reality doesn’t work the way they think it does, to remind them that there’s a difference between what they think and what’s real. But if they don’t yet see an alternative they’ll just think you’re being mean, and say things like “just because I’m wrong sometimes doesn’t mean I should stop trying”.
Out-of-parable: my understanding is that there are two different things you’re getting at: the Kenshō itself, and the epistemic operation of Looking. The paragraph quoted above makes me think that the two are closely related, though.
My texting-you-a-diagram-of-phone-and-eyes-with-arrows-indicating-what-looking-up-would-mean:
It seems to me (based on this and other posts / interaction with you) like Looking has to do with the idea that we normally parse the world in pre-set ontologies, but there has to be a thing which builds the ontologies in the first place. Here, “ontology” does not mean the build-in framework of the hardware we run on (like telling a computer to look past bits and bytes to the thing which created bits and bytes in the first place—something it can’t physically do). Rather, “ontology” refers to provisional frameworks developed through experience. “Looking” intentionally engages the facilities which are involved in ontology-building-and-shifting.
For example, it used to be that when I would hear arguments for intuitionistic logic, I would interpret them in the framework of classical logic. This felt like using the best tools I had to evaluate proposed alternatives. Similarly, I still evaluate alternative ethical frameworks with a basically utilitarian lense. However, at some point, I gained the ability to evaluate arguments for intuitionism on their own. I think this was both an example of Looking and an insight which had to do with the nature of Looking (because it had to do with refactoring the map-territory relation). This instance of “Looking” seemed to basically require a lot of time with the subject—if there’s something earlier-me could have done to stop evaluating things through a purely classical-logic lense, I don’t know what it would be.
You’re claiming, as I understand it, that there’s a skill of Looking which can be immediate—not necessarily coming to the right conclusions immediately, I suppose, but immediately getting out of the evaluate-through-current-ontology trap. I mostly of believe you, and I can guess at mental motions which you might mean, but they are things like “use your inner sim rather than your inner narrative machine” or “try to look at a chair without seeing a chair, only splotches of light; then generalize this” or “turn your thoughts to what put the current ontology there in the first place” or “seperate your thinking about whether things ‘make sense’ from your thinking about whether they connect with evidence, so that you can notice when something has explanatory power even if it doesn’t fit with your preconceptions”. I don’t know which of these things you mean, if any.
Now, more speculatively, the Kenshō itself:
I have an intuition that whereas Looking is epistemic, the Kenshō is instrumental. Just as we can set up an ontology which becomes so familiar that we forget our basic ability to look, we can set up a way of doing and being which becomes so familiar that we forget the place it comes from. (So far, this is essentially your CFAR-level-two class, The Machine of You.) The connection between “It’s okay” and “The world is real in your immediate experience before you think about it. Set aside your interpretations and just look” is, on this understanding: once you engage your core rather than existing in your constructed way of being, there’s something supremely silly about worrying all the time or using guilt-driven motivation.
Any good koan that can’t be immediately decoded feels that way for a person who feels the desire to decode everything. It a basic effect of the teaching tool.
Telling koans is a time tested method for teaching these things and while it might be possible that there’s a better way to teach it, but that doesn’t mean that it’s bad to go with it if you don’t know of a better way.
I agree with what you are saying. I think I addressed. Again using map-territory as an analogy: It can help someone’s understanding of the map-territory distinction to show them places in the territory which don’t match their map. I’m saying there’s also a different thing you can do, which is to draw a map of the map-territory relationship. I read Val as objecting to this approach with “you are still looking at your phone”, which doesn’t seem like a right objection to me. If I ask “Is Kenshō the map-territory distinction?” It seems like the answer is “no, you can understand that without Kenshō; I can see why you thought what I said sounded like map-territory, and it isn’t irrelevant.… but for one thing, I’m talking about an aspect of moment-to-moment experience rather than an intellectual distinction...” etc etc
I think learning the map-territory relationship is about learning something new. Kenshō is in a fundamental sense not about learning something new.
When it comes to the person who looks at the phone and the person unlearns to focus on their phone they begin to see other things. The act of unlearning to look at the phone doesn’t add something new and is qualitatively different than learning a concept like the map-territory distinction.
I agree that the map-territory example is disanalogous with the phone example, since there aren’t a lot of people who respond to the map-territory distinction with “what would that even mean??? are you OK???”. I think maybe I understand what you mean about “not adding something new”—you’re saying it is more like you could have looked up from your phone all along, and you once did, but you’ve forgotten? But I also take it you mean to be pointing out something I’m missing. If so, I’m still not seeing it.
Are you saying there’s something fundamentally wrong with asking for a diagram of how the eyes point at the phone normally but can point away from it? The model I get from Val’s post (and from reading comment threads here!!) is that this will mostly get a response like “I don’t see where this gaze app is” (or worse). However, if someone is engaging with the question sincerely, it seems possible for it to be useful. With respect to enlightenment, this is like the method of direct instruction rather than meditation. (I don’t remember the name of the school of thought I’m referring to, but it is discussed in Sam Harris’ Waking Up.)
Granted, even that school has traditions against trying to explain directly to a general audience I think? So maybe there is a general case to be made aggainst the attempt.