Das Epistemology is a framework I created for understanding reality which recognizes that we all live in the same reality, each of us experiences it differently based on our beliefs, emotions, and past experiences. Since no one can perceive reality perfectly, pursuing authoritatively correct beliefs is futile (the The Lost Cause Principle). Das Paradigm suggests that we can understand reality better by looking at it from many different perspectives and dynamically forming our own rather than simply determining which established one is "correct".
But in order for us to diversify our shared perspective, we must have a framework for perceiving and discussing differences in belief. Das Paradigm also seeks to provide a pragmatic and functional structure for identifying and communicating diversity of belief. Where other epistemologies suggest objective correctness is paramount, Das Epistemology prioritizes awareness of one's beliefs over their accuracy.
This is because the more we shift our views, the closer we get to a more complete and abstract understanding of the world, even if we can never fully grasp it or directly communicate our perception without expressive errors. When we let go of certainty and instead looks for the similarities and differences between different perspectives, we develop a dynamic perception of Liminal Reality.
Das Epistemology primarily exists within 3 axioms:
Understanding the true nature of reality is a lost cause.
We can't reasonably expect different humans experiencing different things to share a universal common sense and must develop a means of accommodating diverse beliefs.
Our best chance of understanding reality accurately is via persistence of perception- allowing ourselves to adopt different views iteratively to see what we perceive consistently across all viewpoints.
While this component is well-conceived philosophically, it will take some time to build out an adequate practical structure to facilitate it.
But given the Lost Cause Principle and the fact that we don't actually share a common sense, the only option we reliably have for establishing states of shared understanding is explicitly defining, sharing, and discussing our beliefs.
Since we don't have the right to expect others to just perceive reality the same we do, we need a system for determining and sharing our beliefs with others that's more focused on helping people share their perspective than establishing an objectively correct one.
Persistence of Perception is an attempt to explain how intuition functions and how we may best determine reality.
Instead of prioritizing certainty of information and building a holistic understanding using independently verified chunks, Persistence of Perception is what humans can achieve when they allow their views to sway from moment to moment.
It mandates iteration over incrementation, requiring a dynamic perception that can both determine the rubric to judge reality and execute judgments simultaneously.
When embraced and tuned properly, this dynamic perception leads to a perception of liminal reality, an abstract, extra-sensory perception of objective reality. While unique to us, if we each embrace and share our liminal reality as presented by persistence of perception and allow it to evolve as we authentically discuss with others, we get our best chance of holistically understanding reality.
The Lost Cause Principle is the core concept of Das Epistemology and frequently referenced in this blog. The axiom asserts that it's impossible for humans to holistically perceive reality with authoritative certainty. Stated paradoxically, the only belief we can be certain of is that we can never be certain of beliefs.
This idea draws on classical epistemological skepticism, particularly the works of David Hume and Immanuel Kant. Hume argued that human knowledge is limited to what we can experience through our senses, and since sensory perception is inherently flawed, absolute certainty about the world is unattainable. Kant expanded on this by distinguishing between the phenomenal world (what we experience) and the noumenal world (reality as it is in itself), arguing that we can never access the latter directly due to the structure of our minds.
The Lost Cause Principle builds on these ideas by recognizing that while we strive to understand reality, our perspectives will always be incomplete and imperfect. Instead of pursuing "correct" beliefs, which will inevitably fail to capture the full complexity of reality, the principle encourages epistemic humility and a shift in focus toward constantly refining our understanding through iterative perspectives.
If we acknowledge an objective understanding of reality as a lost cause, then we must also recognize that an inherent, universal understanding of reality cannot exist. The only thing that could provide a common sense is a directly perceivable objective reality.
However, shared understanding is still paramount for social cohesion. When it comes to enabling social intimacy and genuine connection, unanimous beliefs are more important than accurate ones.
Das Epistemology aims to establish a universal belief paradox- that's to say universal beliefs about the inability of beliefs to be universal. And as a result of accepting that any sort of universal common sense is nonsense, we are presented with the need to explicitly communicate beliefs in a way that these different beliefs can coexist and the same level of social cohesion can be maintained even amongst individual ideological disagreements.
Dynamic Perception is a fundamental concept in Das Epistemology that involves relinquishing absolute certainty in individual beliefs to achieve a more abstract understanding of reality. Rather than rigidly and incrementally integrating new information into a fixed belief structure, Dynamic Perception emphasizes the continuous cross-referencing of all known beliefs with all perceivable information.
It shifts the epistemological question from “is this statement accurate?” to “how could it be accurate?” This allows for the development of temporary paradigms to explore connections between ideas, leading to the repositioning, rejection, or reintroduction of beliefs based on evolving insights and evidence. This rapidly iterating approach enables us to remain flexible, adapting our understanding as we encounter new perspectives.
By embracing this fluid process, we access our best chance of understanding objective reality—Liminal Reality. Liminal Reality is a holistic perception that emerges intuitively as we allow our Perceptive Attributes—such as beliefs, social environment, and motives—to change rapidly. It represents the intuitive connections that arise as individual pieces of information align, offering a more comprehensive understanding of reality than any single belief system can provide.
There are these cool clocks that use persistence of vision to display the time on an LED wand that's oscillating back and forth. Check out an example here.
Liminal Reality is a lot like these clocks. The perception we hold for the moment is the wand, and the LEDs are the individual beliefs and other perceptive attributes that we are attempting to perceive reality with.
When we experience reality while rapidly iterating through different perspectives, persistence of perception presents us Liminal Reality. Liminal reality is just an illusion, something that we infer based on the space between the facts we know.
But this illusion represents reality better than any one direct perception.
Since we know that all static beliefs are fundamentally inaccurate, Liminal Reality helps us determine how real individual perceptions are by judging their impact on the persistence of vision we perceive when cycling through other beliefs.
This can provide for interesting situations where an isolated viewpoint doesn't seem realistic without any supporting context, but it's inclusion in the dynamic perspective offers greater clarity to the perceived liminal reality.
It provides validity to our "gut" feeling and intuition. Our understanding of reality should be expected to be abstract and difficult to communicate directly, which explains and validates expressions of gut feelings as opposed to direct senses.
Given the fact that epistemological frameworks like science don't even attempt to provide function holistic understandings of reality
Liminal Perception involves consciously adjusting our perspective attributes to understand their impact on how we perceive reality. By comparing this process to the scrolling LED clock, we can better grasp how shifting our attributes influences our perception.
Our perspective attributes are the LEDs on the wand. When the wand oscillates, it creates a persistence of vision that reveals a coherent time display. Similarly, when we consciously adjust and cycle through different perspective attributes, we begin to see a more nuanced and comprehensive view of reality—this is Liminal Perception.
Perceptive attributes include our personal ontology & ideologies, motives, social status, language, skills & education, personal history, conditioning, and identity. As we adjust these things and attempt to re-perceive reality, liminal perception emerges.
More happens in every moment than can be perceived in the same amount of time, especially with any amount of proven certainty.
This means that attempts to develop a holistic perspective based on the reassembly of these individual facts will be slow and incomplete. While the pursuit of accuracy is noble, it is more important that our perspective is useful for the present moment than for it to meet some idealistic standards of accuracy.
Most of our existing beliefs are based on what we experienced so far- both as individual humans and collective societies.
But reality is constantly changing. Sure, some core components are consistent, but the holistic experience is in a constant state of flux. The beliefs we have may have been accurate for a reality that humanity experienced previously, but that doesn't mean those beliefs are accurate for the reality we are experiencing now.
We must develop a dynamic perception to match the dynamic nature of reality.
Faced with a lost cause, we're faced with two options: delusion or abandonment. If we can reasonably agree that it's impossible to have absolute authority of information, then we should also be able to agree that it's a fool's errand, and anyone who claims objective certainty is either dishonest or deluded.
If we don't wish to be dishonest or deluded ourselves, the only hope we have of meaningfully understanding reality and discussing it with others is to allow our perspectives to be more dynamic. If we cling to dogma in all situations, we're bound to run into conflict caused by our dissonance.
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