Tentative
I would take a different approach. I would ask what we genuinely know. Whatever we don’t genuinely know, we know only vaguely
Hi JT,
In reality, such thoughts are just trying to prove to us that we have not fathomed out existence at all, but are still trying to figure out how long the line will have to be.
Shalom
Bob
Those things we know vaguely are are merely concepts. It is those things that we know absolutely that we should be concerned with.
A
Well, I’m sure that Whithead would agree with you, but the problem still remains; As Bill Clinton would say, “define genuine” 
JT
Hi Bob,
I’m reminded of Asimov’s sci-fi trilogy, “Foundation” All the answers are at the “end of the universe” All the searchers spread far and wide only to find that the end of the universe is at the very beginning point.
JT
Hi LA,
Well you may be right, and I’m sure concerned about some things. Tell me(us), what are the things we know absolutely, and how would we know our knowing?
JT
Having fun JT? I see you’re at it again!
I can tell you absolutely (without a doubt) that I’m in love. Irrationally in love. None of it makes sense - outside of me that is - everything is happening on the inside and makes perfect ‘sense’. Ask me to prove it and I’ll ask you to show me the love you have for your children. These things can only be experienced to know them.
Any external seeking can only lead to frustration. Turning inward is what is required.
(L)A
Hi A,
“at it again!” Huh? My, my, it almost sound’s as if you think I have an ulterior motive, instead of my (obviously) innocent questioning. 
Wonderful! I have no problem understanding the knowing of the heart. It is common to us all and is both experiential and common sensing. A wonderful faculty, absolutely. Wouldn’t want to do without it.
BUT, please tell us, 'O liquid of liquids, how does this explain my ‘knowing’ of the great wall in China, that the flowers of South Africa are as bright as the flowers in my garden, and that the universe appears to be expanding? How do I know that the sub-atomic particles produced at Cern are real?
Is there no knowing beyond our direct experiencing?
JT
JT
I guess to genuinely know something is to know its construction and be able to reproduce it in its many forms.
I know tic tac toe for example. I understand its construction and for some silly reason years ago, I worked out the variations so I can only win or draw but never lose.
I know chess but not genuinely since I can lose.
Sometimes it is not so easy to determine what genuine is. I know how to make a beef stew but genuinely knowing would require not only the ideal ingredients but how they are best blended including subtle spices. Yet great chefs could argue for days on whose beef stew is genuinely the best.
Maybe the ideal beef stew is truly in the ineffable. 
I don’t think the things we can’t know are about any subject matter, or describe anything distinct. I think it’s a matter of directions we haven’t gone. Even a single issue can be explored forever, as answers always raise more questions.
JT, um well…I think you have just exposed yourself as having ulterior motives…Mine was innocent…I meant you are at the knowing/not knowing questions again! (where is that angel emoticon when you need it?)
I use love as an example (as uccisore mentioned it could be anything) because love is but a small part of Great Love. Interpret that as you will - I’m gonna call it Divine Love - Truth. Take the example of a man who has never been in love. He has a concept of love based on what he has heard from his friends, family, seen in movies etc. He’s more than likely witnessed other people in love but never quiet grasped the intensity of it. His concept may even be accurate but he does not know love and love’s ways. He cannot. One day he meets the love of his life and wham - all his perceptions about love have changed. He’s in LOVE. In fact, not only is he in love but somehow, beyond all reason, he realises that he has always known love. For him, he had to meet the other person in order to awaken love in himself. Afterall, the experience of love is inside of us no?
It is difficult to speak of things that are understood on a heart level. Only if you and I have a similar experience can we discuss such matters.
As for the flowers in my garden being as bright as the flowers in your garden, we know the truth of it because we know the essence of flowers.
…oh and to remind you of one of your own posts…
Without going outside, you may know the whole world.
Without looking through the window, you may see the ways of heaven.
The farther you go, the less you know.
Thus the sage knows without travelling;
He sees without looking;
He works without doing.
- Tao Te Ching, Chapter 47
A
Uccisore
But how many directions have we really gone in? If everything does move in cycles what direction is this?
If we go to a piano teacher, we follow a system of teaching to be able to learn how to intellectually read music and know technique. Then we have to teach the body how to do what the mind wants. While all this is going on we have to develop our capacity to feel music and transmit this feeling in our technique. The process is our direction
This doesn’t exist in life as a whole. We are thrown into it and just live it in sections without awareness of the whole of it. Everything sort of happens.
How then could we know the ineffable if we really do not know ourselves? If we are prone to suggestion from lack of direction, maybe we exagerate what we do know. I was involved with a project once where we examined the elements of stage magic and how we are so prone to these illusions. It was very revealing. I learned how much I assume to be there which is just illusion.
My guess is that if we knew how to live in the sense of human direction as we can know of the methods one takes in learning the piano, this idea of the ineffable would be seen differently.
Seem’s like everyone is suggesting that our ‘knowing’ may be a bit less than what we purport it to be. One the one hand, we divide all our experience into things, or qualities because it seems the most commonsense way of coping with life. On the other hand, we have found and are still finding that a ‘thing’, such as rocks, brains, nerve endings can be divided into ever smaller things until they are abstract patterns of activity. The universe and all in it seem to be regressive patterns stretching into infinity. Whitehead, on observing this suggested that process, and not substance, was the ultimate reality. If he is correct, then reality is always conditional and in constant flux. How, then, does this affect our ‘knowing’?
what we know tomorrow is the dreams of today.
unless you believe what you know in which case the wisdom of yesterday is the folly of today.
What we know today is the wisdom of tomorrow.
Hi JT,
A process is “a natural progressively continuing operation or development marked by a series of gradual changes that succeed one another in a relatively fixed way and lead toward a particular result or end†and although we don’t know the result or end that the universal process is leading us to, it may be acceptable to say that our knowledge is also in a process, progressively developing as time goes by.
In this way I find it perfectly acceptable to find that mankind has used stories to develop ideas of various kinds and also to spread these ideas. Each of these stories represents the development of ‘knowledge’ at a particular point in time, and for that reason must undergo further development – new generations must ‘pick up the thread’ as I have said before.
This would also explain A.N.Whitehead’s statement “In its advance, philosophy must involve obscurity of expression, and novel phrases. In human experience, the philosophic question can receive no final answer. Human knowledge is a process of approximation. There are always questions left over. The problem is to discriminate exactly those things which we know only vaguely.â€
On either side of the argument for or against Religion, there are people demonstrating a requirement for final answers. Whether for or against, the answer will only be final when the curtain falls. In the meanwhile, we judge by the past and approximate for the future. Experience tells us that more questions arise from the answers we are offered, leaving us often worse off for having an answer, if we desire final answers.
If were to understand this, we would have to come to terms with the insecurity that often leads people to militancy against dissenters. We would have to accept that each of us is on his own journey of approximation, nobody has found a final answer, although several may feel good about the path they are journeying down.
Shalom
Bob
Hi Bob,
Indeed, Whitehead goes further in postulating that ultimate reality is composed of creativity, the many, and the one. Creativity is the field, or potential of becoming. The many is the temporary ‘things’, and the one is the totality of all that is. (God) Interestingly, Whitehead find’s God not as creator, creatio ex nihilo, but as that which is maker, or that which brings being from the potential of creativity. In this, God is intrinsic and necessary. There is no form or function without God.
This is quite different than our traditional western religion concepts. In fact, coming from a British born and educated mathemetician and philosopher, his construct is almost Taoist in its’ perspective.
That knowledge is subject to constant change and renewal flies in the face of typical western thinking that, for the most part, holds a ‘static’ perspective of knowing. Still, Whitehead does see that as knowledge is constantly changing, it is building on, or adding to, even in its’ difference to what has passed.
Whether Whitehead, the leading edge of quantum physics, or any of a dozen other sources, we “know” or have accepted the perspective of a universe as a pattern of activity, and not the fixed static collection of things controlled by an omniscient, paternalistic creator. If western religions are to be a force for helping the individual find their way in life, they must begin to reform, not only their ways, but their thinking as well. They must find a way to account for our changing ‘knowing’.
I see much destruction in the name of religion. What I don’t see is the understanding that the western religions are also destroying themselves.
It should be little wonder that much of today’s interest in eastern philosophy, isn’t just a ‘fad’, but an attempt by those with spiritual awareness to find both a path, and a path that takes into account our constantly growing and changing knowledge.
Whithead’s writings are over 50 years old. They join a body of similar works that should have been a wake up call to traditional religions, but it hasn’t had much effect.
The principles that you would wish to see handed down to the next generation are connected to an explanation that no longer fit’s the reality that generation will inherit. Western religions need to look within and begin the transformation that gives them credence in our rapidly changing world.
JT
Hi JT,
Yes, I noticed that when reading up on the subject. It seems to me to be comparable with the statement “God is love†or “God is righteousness†or whatever other statement you want to make. It isn’t the simple equation of Love with God, but rather a description of an attribute. Creativity can be observed in the universe, but can love or righteousness be observed? Perhaps it is in the eye of the beholder …
I sometimes ask myself whether the idea of collective knowledge, or a ‘plane’ of perception to which we every now and again gain access, could be reality. That is, things that can be perceived are there waiting to be perceived and only depend on our attempt to access. It is sometimes comparable to the idea of magic and spells which open doors into a new world or a reality that is hidden for the non-initiated.
It is interesting that from the beginning of civilisation we have this idea of a movement around us caused by emotion and creativity, rather than a mechanistic system of parts and elements, which came later. And in the twentieth century, when thought was given freedom again, this idea is taken up by brilliant minds once more – but under the opposition of those who believe to be heirs of the religious heritage. Continually we are faced with those who mean good, but do bad.
I agree. I am even driven to despair here in my own church on occasions because people continually fail to see the essence of the church in the redemptive spirit of Christ and consequently we have no such profile. Our community is made up of people looking for salvation; few of us live salvation by providing alternatives in a world that is caught in a stare. The preoccupation with technical playthings, glamour and glitter, the struggle against poverty and lack of education, the deficiency of maturity are just as much a part of the younger generations of the church as of other groups.
In that way the western religions are merely appeals made to society (perhaps with a bit of threatening done here and there – God’s extortionists), and are seldom attractive for the modern age. In fact, they hardly seem unconventional – we seem to be all far too adapted to the lifestyle around us to even look for alternatives. In addition, the lack of unity amongst those groups in society who are supposedly looking for real alternatives suggests that there is no real alternative to society as we know it. But then all of those people claiming there is can go home and keep quiet.
If there are real alternatives, then people want to see and experience them, not just be assured that they could work. But that requires real commitment. The fundamentalists are far more committed to their work than any other group, which is why they are gaining influence despite the fact that their message is so archaic and exclusive. They have many things against them, but it is their commitment that makes them relatively successful. After all, look at Bush’s victory – it was a clear result of an opposition which wasn’t really sure whether they opposed what he did. The lack of commitment couldn’t bring a change about.
Shalom
Bob
Hi Bob,
You’ve hit on a fundamental issue that carries over into your non-violence thread. We have reached a point where organized religion promotes violence, either in its’ silence (as an enabler) or in fundamentalist extremism. In either scenario, religion destroys itself, because its’ so-called beliefs, doctrine, and dogma are attached to a reality that no longer exists. The message of enlightment in any of the religions is lost because the symbols, the concepts, and the language that had so much power a thousand years ago have failed to renew themselves. Religion is spirituality caught up in the stoneworks of ancient times.
I began this thread with Whitehead because he was the poster child of the logical scientism/philosopher tradition. A brilliant man who, with Bertrand Russell, set out to prove that logic was the key to knowing and understanding all. Their tome Principia Mathematica was to establish once and for all, logos as the way to knowing creator. What they found was, that our old explanations, our old perspectives, simply failed.
One doesn’t have to accept the particulars of Whithead’s cosmological explanation to see that the foundations of current religious perspective is no longer relevant to our reality. Indeed, the perspective probably always has been skewed, we just didn’t ‘know’ it. The spiritual hunger that goes unfullfilled in our times can be laid at the feet of religions that are static, that refuse to reform themselves into relevancy.
JT
I think what he meant by this, was more along the lines of “We need to distinguish what we know from what we know only a little, because basing further learnings off of that which we do not fully know leads to unwisdom and folly”
At least that’s what i got out of it…
Hi Doc,
Agreed. The dilemma is in making the judgement in what it is we ‘know’ in contrast to that which we know only vaguely. If you couple that to a processual universe where even our knowing is conditional, it get’s to be interesting. I gathered from some of his later writing that ultimately, our knowing is always from a particular perspective, and even that vantage point is in constant evolution. If there is any importance to his ideas, any relevance, it is the understanding that the ‘static’ mechanistic view of the universe cannot be sustained.
JT