Hierarchy of Understanding

I am intensely interested in how we, as humans, understand the world around us. This has led me to investigations of the brain, philosophy, story telling, and (to get to the point of this essay) the nature of wisdom. It seems to me that wisdom is one of the most important aspects of a strong individual and a healthy society while, unfortunately, seeming to be in short supply in our modern culture. The concept is difficult to pin down so I have attempted to take a bottom up approach to describe what I see as the Hierarchy of Understanding where wisdom reigns supreme.

DATA

In terms of understanding, data is the level of pure input. From a human perspective, we call this sensory data. Data are the pressure waves vibrating our eardrum or the photons of light striking our retina. From the perspective of our nervous system, it is an action potential or no action potential. From the perspective of our technologies, it is a number, a letter, a 1, or a 0. By its very nature it is unmoored from anything real in the world - unintelligible, useless, non-functional. Data must be paired with context in order to get…

INFORMATION

Context allows data to transcend its limitations in order to become information. In other words, information is data that can be viewed through an interpretive structure. Information is produced when our brain processes its sensory inputs. It is the book, the file, or the thought. Information is something that can be understood, cataloged, and categorized. Our interpretive structure is what endows data with meaning, giving rise to information. And though it has meaning, information is still fundamentally useless. It is only when information has utility that it becomes…

KNOWLEDGE

Knowledge is information that has utility in producing a predictable result. Knowledge is power. If information has no use (i.e if it cannot manifest or manipulate reality), it is not knowledge. Knowledge is still highly context dependent of course. This is the whole point of the integrative structure which forms the basis of this essay. Knowledge is a type of understanding which takes into consideration both utility and context. Having information about the weather is in Dallas, Texas doesn't help you decide what to wear when you go outside in Portland. In turn, we are also dependent on the context of which Portland we speak of in order to to act in the world. That is, in order to produce knowledge.

Now we get to the question I am most interested in: How does knowledge transcend itself and become wisdom?

WISDOM

I find wisdom to be a very slippery concept and one that does not lend itself to easy explanation. So before trying to slot wisdom into the aforementioned structure, it is probably best to express some of my intimations about wisdom’s core characteristics.

Embodiment

Wisdom is a type of understanding which is fully embodied. It is not as simple as a belief or a statement of fact but is like something that lives inside of us. Something which doesn't have its cash value in words but instead, fundamentally, in action. It is more like a function of choice. Knowledge can help one lay out the options to a given matter but all the knowledge in the world cannot make the decision for us. At some point we must make a choice. That choice doesn't seem to be the simple product of knowledge but instead is the product of our wisdom.

“Of all the words yet spoken, none comes quite as far as wisdom, which is the action of the mind beyond all things that may be said.” - Heraclitus

'That there is a difference between what we see with our eyes and what we know through our spirit is a wisdom from long ago.’ - The Book of Chuang Tzu

Integration

Another hallmark of wisdom is an integral viewpoint of the world. That is to say, a holistic and comprehensive view of the world, one which takes all things into account. When faced with a decision that is positioned as “either / or”, it is wisdom that can see the “both / and” solution.  Wisdom is comfortable in the face of paradox. Wisdom revels in ambiguity. The ability to hold two seemingly conflicting ideas at the same time, that is wisdom.

In other words, wisdom seems to be more about understanding the relationship between things rather the things in themselves. It is the ability to see the "betweenness" of the world. It is a recognition that all things are interconnected, flowing, and perpetually in a state of transition. Rather than the dissecting nature of knowledge which breaks the world down to understand the constituent parts, wisdom puts things back together to understand the world as a whole. Wisdom reads between the lines. Wisdom sees all. 

“For wisdom, listen not to me but to the Word, and know that all is one.” - Heraclitus

‘The perfect way knows no difficulties

Except that it refuses to make preferences;

Only when freed from hate and love

It reveals itself fully and without disguise;

A tenth of an inch’s difference,

And heaven and earth are set apart.

If you wish to see it before your own eyes

Have no fixed thoughts either for or against it.’

-Seng-ts’an, On Believing in Mind (Buddhist scripture on Wisdom)

With all this in mind, let us look at how wisdom might relate to the principles of context and utility discussed earlier.

First…context. Wisdom could be viewed as completely independent of context. That is, understanding that goes beyond any single circumstance. It is understanding that is so fundamental that it applies in all places, at all times. Alternatively, wisdom can be viewed as the epitome of context dependent understanding, a sort of hyper-contextualization of understanding. In this frame, wisdom is bound to the intricacies of the here and now. It is the type of understanding that can only play out in real time. One that cannot be written down or distilled into a set of simple facts or axioms.

I’m inclined to see it as both: wisdom is both completely free of context while also being utterly dependent upon context.

Now…utility. Wisdom is bound to the choices that we make as embodied agents in the world. How does one utilize the power provided to him by knowledge? In this answer lies wisdom. Wisdom goes beyond the simple decision between A and B. Wisdom is able to see option C. Wisdom sees that which cannot be seen, cannot be quantified, and cannot be spoken. Wisdom understands that the best action may in fact be non-action. Wisdom is an insight into the Truth. Not a truth but the Truth.

This is how we transcend simple knowledge and gain wisdom, through the embodiment and integration of Truth into our lives - by living in Truth.

What Separates Us From the Animals?

This is a perennial question that has dogged philosophers for ages. What makes us special?

Many answers have been floated: language, religion, music, economics, strong social bonds, use of tools, discovery of fire, and our ability to reason to name a few. Here I'll attempt to explain what I think is the most fundamental difference that separate us from other animals and in order to not dispense with valuable insight on the subject, I will also attempt to synthesize some of those traditional answers to the question with my answer.

But first, let us explore the usual answers a bit and look at why they seem to fall short of feeling satisfactory. The issue with most answers to the question is that they essentially lie at the end of a spectrum that we can observe in many other creatures. Take language for example. While we certainly have a unique mastery of language, there is abundant evidence that all sorts of intelligent animals use language to one extent or another. There is a growing body of research regarding whales, apes, dolphins, and birds showing they all have a sort of language - even including regional dialects. Or as another example, consider tools. Once again, we humans clearly reign supreme on this front but monkeys use sticks to retrieve bugs, octopuses use coconut shells as makeshift shelters, and elephants will scratch themselves with branches. I think most of the answers offered up for the question are subject to this sort of analysis. They typically come down to a difference of degree but not a difference of kind, thus feeling incomplete as an answer.

This brings us to my answer to the question, one that I consider a difference in kind rather than degree. Something which is manifest in humans but which is not easily identified in animals, even in a primitive form.

This difference is the concept of "Why?" It is our ability to ask why that has charted us on such a divergent, developmental path. It is easy to point to how animals utilize the concepts of who (crows are quite adapt at recognizing faces), what (primates can answer simple questions), when (dogs seem to use smell as a marker of time), and how (clearly creatures can conceive of a goal and make plans to move toward it). But I don’t see any straight forward examples of animals handling the concept of why.

This is where humans stand apart. Clearly the question of why is central to our lives and so much of our culture flows from that conception. Once we form the concept of why, the next natural development is that of reason. In other words, we are inclined to offer reasons in response to the question of why. This in turn leads to the development of a robust form of Reason itself. Along with the development of those reasons, you need a mechanism to articulate your reasons (i.e. language). So in response to these questions of why, humans needed the new tools of reason and language to grapple with such questions.

Let’s take this reasoning to its logical conclusion. Every answer to the questions of why begs another why in response, resulting in a sort of infinite regress. Spend any time chatting with a six-year-old child and you will see this infinite regress in action. There is always a deeper why to be asked - a more fundamental understanding to be had. So what happens when you ask deeper and deeper questions of why? At some point you dig so deep that you hit the whys of transcendent experience. In other words, you begin to ask the questions which fit squarely into the realm of religion. Why do we suffer? Why is there something rather than nothing? Why are we here?

Herein lies the synthesis that I mentioned earlier. A few of the common answers (reason, language, religion) to the question of “what separates us from the animals" can all trace their roots back to the question of why. It is a demarcation point that has allowed us to achieve wondrous (and terrible) things. It is a sort of positive feedback loop which has launched us off in a distinct trajectory and - in my opinion - any accounting of our meteoric rise through the animal kingdom must have a deeply embedded positive feedback mechanism to fuel such advancement.

To some, this may be an equally unsatisfactory answer because I cannot offer any mechanism as to how humans came to the point of asking why. That is a question for someone much smarter than myself - I'm sure. But one thing is for certain, we must first ask the right question, in order to find the right answer.

That question is, at root, Why?

We Are All Information Systems: Vol. I

Recently my mind has stumbled into some of the interesting similarities between humans and computers which have captured my attention. The first example of this (and possibly the most pragmatic) is the utility of a reboot.

Any tech support person worth a damn knows that the first step to troubleshooting a buggy system is to do a reboot (it never ceases to amaze me how often this actually works). That’s the nature of computers. They are very complex systems and after operating for a long period of time without a break, things just start getting unreliable, unpredictable...weird.

Seemingly this is precisely the same way that humans operate. We have limits to our operating capacity before we start being incapable of properly processing information. Have you ever struggled with a complex or stressful problem all day with not progress only to wake up the next morning with the solution staring you right in the face? Or maybe the more common case...a funk. Emotionally erratic. Physically off balance. Sluggish in thought. All seemingly irreversible until we just take time to shut down, power up, and come back for another day.

To take this analogy further, we can consider a soft reboot. With a silicon-based information system sometimes you don’t need to reboot the whole system, you can just restart the app, service, or daemon. With a human information system you can do the same. This comes in many forms. Close your eyes and take a deep breath. Take a long walk. Distract yourself with some mindless media. Unplug from media completely. Meditate.

So the next time you are ready to throw yourself against a wall or take yourself into a support specialist, maybe try some reboot first.

Disclaimer: As with computers, if reboots aren’t working, maybe a support specialist is your best choice.