Know Thyself (or Not)

Know Thyself is the first of three maxims inscribed at the Greek Temple of Apollo at Delphi and the one everybody remembers. Fairly succinct at just two words, it’s loaded, nonetheless. It’s difficult, impossible even, to pin down who said what when or the specific meaning that was intended by the ancient Greeks. And Pythia, aka the Oracle at Delphi, was known to be cryptic, so no help there.

Looking at know thyself now, I’m reminded again of listening to a philosopher expound on the meaning of the word is for what seemed an inordinate amount of time. Know is similar in that regard.

It can mean, for example, that I fully grasp or understand something; that I am—or more likely, I feel—certain about something; that I have a working acquaintance with some process, thing, concept, etc.; that I’ve memorized something; that I recognize someone or something, or that I can make distinctions—among other things.

Thyself is a similar kettle of fish since it both assumes a sense of self and implies that each of us is a single self—which, in the latter case, is not the case.

So I don’t know what know thyself is supposed to mean or can mean. Once upon a time, I probably thought I knew. But as I’ve been reflecting recently, I understand more and more that I understand less and less. This seems to be a logical outcome of learning.

To know that one does not know is best; not to know but to believe that one knows is a disease. —Lao Tzu

It’s so Meta

Stephen Fleming has written a book titled Know Thyself: The Science of Self-Awareness. From the bits I’ve read, he appears to consider self-awareness and metacognition to be essentially the same thing.

Self-awareness could be defined as having knowledge of one’s own traits, feelings, motivations, behaviors, etc. (This ought to ring some bells.)

Metacognition could be defined as thinking about our own mental processes—or thinking about thinking.

Self-awareness is meta even without the prefix. Both terms describe System 2 (higher order) processes or functions. I haven’t determined whether there’s a significant distinction between them or the extent to which they overlap or converge.

At any rate, Fleming, who is a cognitive neuroscientist and a very good writer, penned a fascinating article on Theory of Mind. In the entire 4,200+ word article, there was not a single reference to the concept of empathy. That’s because he was writing about the possibility that we know our own minds (or don’t know them) in the same manner and to the same extent that we know other minds. And there’s plenty of room for improvement all around.

I Think, Therefore I Am

Rene Descartes thought that we humans have privileged access to information about ourselves and that we can’t be wrong about what we perceive.

I know clearly that there is nothing that can be perceived by me more easily or more clearly than my own mind.

This is still a pretty popular view of things, even though it is obviously incorrect. We most certainly can be wrong about ourselves, and we certainly can and do lack self-knowledge. (If that were not the case, there would be no need for the What Do You Want? course. Everyone would automatically know what they want.)

Another philosopher, Gilbert Ryle, had a different take:

The sorts of things that I can find out about myself are the same as the sorts of things that I can find out about other people, and the methods of finding them out are much the same.

So, from the perspective of what is known as the inferential view, we don’t need one explanation (privileged access) for how we know ourselves and another (Theory of Mind) for how we know others. Furthermore, the methods we employ to know—or not know—ourselves and others are the same methods we employ to know anything about anything else in the world. What are the implications? And what do you think some of those methods might be?

Another Threshold

I would like to be able to say (maybe) that I intended all along to get to this point, but I’ve simply been following the breadcrumb trail, and it has inexorably led to the threshold concept* that happens to be the focus of December’s Monthly Meeting of the Mind (& Brain):

The brain generates a mental model of the world, which determines what we pay attention to, how we interpret what we pay attention to, and the meaning we assign to it.

Our mental models of the world, which circumscribe every aspect of our present experience, as well as what is possible for us to do and be, are not simply abstract concepts; they are encoded in the brain.

More next time on the impact a handful of threshold concepts might have on how we know ourselves or others.

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*A threshold concept can be considered as akin to a portal, opening up a new and previously inaccessible way of thinking about something. It represents a transformed way of understanding, or interpreting, or viewing something without which the learner cannot progress. —Jan Meyer and Ray Land, 5/4/03