Part One: Faith

Chapter One: Elementary My Dear

1.7 Epistemology: More on The Word

With the advent of language, came the ability to communicate our ideas of spirit and our feelings of Faith. Indeed, if there were no sound or gesture that would identify God, would he exist?  This is the same notion as the forest and the falling tree, and whether or not it makes a sound if no ears are there to hear it. That there is a human, with brains and eardrums vocal chords,  with which to speak the words "spirit" or "God", gives us our first clue about the nature of nature.  A nature of which, no matter how much we may wish to the contrary, we are inextricably a part.  Se we find a clue about our own nature as a creation of nature.

It stands to reason then, that nature (or existence), following it’s process forward in time, came to a point where men with vocal chords would invariably arise who, with an ethereal thing that we have yet to clearly define called mind, could communicate ideas about a controlling energy or energies. Where it will go, we can’t know.  But we can know that nature is friendly to the existence of vocal cords and minds, and therefore friendly to man.

We work so hard and on so many levels to separate ourselves from our environment that we have fallen for our own imagery.  We have created our own reality, which similar to the Platonic notion of "pure" geometry, or of pure ideas, separate from the physical world as neutrons are to the rest of 'solid' matter, and we live our lives less with less and less in tune to the rhythms of of the material world, but dive ever deeper into a 'virtual' reality of our own pure ideas.  Pure meaning selectively separate, not pure as in innocent.

Whether God, or Gods, or even the idea of spirit itself will survive, or fall aside to perhaps even greater concepts we have yet to conceive, is an unknown.  Again we are blocked by the apparent flow of time that is immutably verified to be a non-stop, exclusively forward progression.  And perhaps in that we feel safe.  The horror of the idea that we might somehow be able to see the moment of our own death.  How could we live with such knowledge?  How could we play our parts with gusto and surprise?  The joy of discovery muted by the knowledge of our certain mortality, and the terror that our faith might be misplaced.

Having reached that point where all the conditions were right, nature, communicates. Nature speaks through the mouths of the newly developed humans.  Existence, it seems, loves to talk!  Mother nature has found her voice.  The Brahman expresses his delight. Whatever symbols you want to use.  We are now an existence which is able to communicate like never before (at least on this world - as far as we know).  No mere warnings of danger, or calls to signal the time to procreate, or any of the more primate means of communication between any two beings that existed up until the time of man would ever again be doubted as an actual and living expression of nature, or existence, or even God's (if I may say without offence to Deity), delight in a nice little chat.

When nature reached that point of development when self aware creatures spoke, it forever changed the "playing field" of existence. And the purely abstract, for example the Platonic viewpoint, becomes reality; as real as gold or diamonds. In his discussions of Mind, Roger Penrose states:

"If, as I believe, the Godel argument is consequently forcing us into an acceptance of some form of viewpoint C¹, then we shall also have to come to terms with some of its other implications. We shall find ourselves driven towards a Platonic viewpoint of things. According to Plato, mathematical concepts and mathematical truths inhabit an actual world of their own that is timeless and without physical location. Plato's world is an ideal world of perfect forms, distinct from the physical world, but in terms of which the physical world must be understood. It also lies beyond our imperfect mental constructions; yet, our minds do have some direct access to this Platonic realm though an 'awareness' of mathematical forms, and our ability to reason about them. We shall find that whilst our Platonic perceptions can be aided on occasion by computation, they are not limited by computation. It is this potential for the 'awareness' of mathematical concepts involved in this Platonic access that give the mind a power beyond what can ever be achieved by a device dependent solely upon computation for its action."

You have no doubt noticed by now that I frequently use footnotes to easily access the meanings of particular words who's correct meaning needs an appropriate refreshing in order to be hopeful of clarity in  the idea I am conveying. We all know that the English language has multiple meanings to most of its words. I use footnotes to assure that of many possible meanings, we are (hopefully) using the same one. To keep us on the same “wave link”, so to speak. In discussing such difficult issues as Faith and Physics, it is vital that language work as effectively as possible and that our meanings are clear.  Nations have been rent asunder for nothing more than a few careless words.

Since the name of this chapter is Epistemology: More on The Word, it seems appropriate to breifly discuss epistemology.

Epistemology is in essence: How do you know what you know?

There are two ways in which we “know":

1. Through direct sensory perception, or

2. Through communication. Everything that we can know, other than through our senses, is through the words (or body language) of another person. Parents, teachers (secular and religious), co-works, and friends, throughout our life, communicate to us what the world is. And we establish from that our world view - our internal 'map' of the world both physical, mental, and spiritual. 

Epistemology points out that both of those means are error prone, and can often leave an individual with an image of the world that was imprecise or unintended.

Errors in the communication of vital information, most of the time, occur with minimal damage to one's daily life or relationships. At other times it can be deadly (read: The Stranger by Albert Camus). In the section on Clay Figurines, for example, I referred to our forefathers as moving towards a more agrarian culture rather than caveman which would separate our connection to them. One simple choice of words, but internally it paints an entirely different picture. These were not just a bunch of animals scurrying to and fro, they were our actual genetic parents! We would not exist but for them. They are just as assuredly our parents as our mother and father. But the word "caveman" takes that away, sets them apart. Objectifies you might say. Another of the many ways science has taught us to reduce into compartmentalized objects of ever reducing size.  Caveman is them, not us.

There has always been a problem with language translations from one period to another. Whether we are considering the Bible or the Vedas, sometimes the meanings of phrases become distorted, or the idea simply cannot be conveyed in the new language accurately, or with the same subtle intimations that the original language could.

In modern times, this "bias" of language is rampant. It can have a persuasive influence on everyone. It can demonize (a revealing new political term), or it can de-vilify. For example, consider the tattoo. Many people today have them, both men and women, and find tattoos a stylish new form of artistic expression. Body art, I've heard it called.  Or perhaps an even better, and more current analogy, might be body piercing. Now, if you were to ask them why they got the tattoo, they will undoubtedly narrate an interesting story for you. But if you were to inquire why they engage in self-mutilation, you will probably get either an angry glare or a confounded expression. Like the scatological example above, the situation is identical and both terms are equally correct, but can convey entirely different messages.  While they do not like the image the term "self-mutilation" conjures of a psychotic individual, whereas the expression of "body art" assures them that they have the right attitude.  But that does not in any way negate the definition of self-mutilation, which it is, like it or not.

Language, in it’s many forms, arose in our kind a very long time ago - oddly enough, however, it was hundreds of generations before the physical structure of the physical apparatus of speech appeared and man first started using it to communicate in anything more than that which most other animals are capable.  It also required an area of the brain to control it, and recent evidence suggests that this area was only recently 'commandeered' for this purpose from an area of the brain that was formerly in charge of other duties (close though, it appeared, if my memory serves me, that the area was formerly in charge of movement - this is close because it now controls the movement of the vocal cords instead of skeletal muscles).

The Word was the culmination of many changes that occurred within the Mind of our earliest predecessors. These changes, according to the archeologists, were the direct result of physiological changes in the “design” of the human body.  We will delve into some of the current thinking on the physical development of language (the “hardware” if you will) in Part 2, and more on epistemology in Part 3 when we will discuss Mental (or semantic) Holism.

So you can see that understanding language requires more than an extended vocabulary. It requires a continuous recognition of the world-view favored by the use of certain words over others. Men of power know this. Shysters know it. And, I believe, the earliest generations of priests also knew it. While his brother shaped the earth and it's bounty, the religious leaders of old began shaping minds. Communicated through language both verbal and visual.

Voices of The Gods: The Human Interpreters

From the earliest shaman or "different one", these special people have stood beside our tribal and national leaders as equals to their political counterparts until recent times.  The separation of church and state is a genuine milestone in the thinking of man, in terms of parting ways with an established relationship that pre-dates the written word. 

What these earliest of spiritual leaders might have been like, and what kinds of thoughts they had about themselves, can never really be know without time travel.  But the methodological studies of ancient artifacts can shed some light on what they did, and hopefully be able to extract, or extrapolate, what kinds of thoughts might be going on in their minds, and what and how they communicated those thoughts to the other members of the group

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#1:  In his discussions of the mind as a product of algorithmic processes, he questions whether the same process could be simulated with modern computers to produce "consciousness" by artificial means. There are essentially four positions that can be taken on the subject. He represents those viewpoints as A, B, C, and D. A proponents assert that all thinking is computational and that feeling of conscious awareness are evoked merely by the carrying out of appropriate computations. B proponents insist that awareness is a feature of the brain's physical action; and whereas any physical action can be simulated computationally, such simulation cannot by itself evoke awareness. Proponents of C argue that appropriate physical action of the brain evokes awareness, but this physical action cannot even be properly simulated computationally. Finally, D advocates regard awareness as unexplainable by physical, computational, or any other scientific terms.   [Back to Text]