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Ideology

Reality rendered intelligible. A doctrine, credo, tenet or Weltanschauung. Without ideologies we wouldn’t have opinions, convictions, attitudes or principles. They influence expectation and aspiration, shape how we interpret and react to situations, and define our relationships. Ideologies guide us with an understanding of the world and how we fit in it.

In it’s purest form, an ideology is a deep foundational belief within a person. It’s the characteristics of an individual’s thoughts on life. They’re also shared between people in groups, societies and nations. Where a paradigm is more a science based belief, an ideology is more a creation of culture and its evolution. Nurture or the manner in how we’re raised, has a huge impact on our ideologies. We could take it one step further with nature, which involve the genes we inherit from our parents, but this would be more related to personality traits influencing how we interpret, choose and invent ideologies. This is a modified concept of ideology because originally influences were based on the information that come in from a persons senses.

Quite often ideologies are assumptions with little or no thought put into them, that may or may not have factual basis. These ideologies become coherent through repeated, subjective choices where further thoughts grow. People can be anywhere from dogmatic to passive when expressing them. It’s not only taken on multiple meanings throughout the years, there are many different kinds within each type. To be extreme for a moment, there are probably millions of ideologies. Hundreds of political ideologies alone exist. To name a few more; sexual orientation, economic theory, religion, myths and discrimination are all ideologies.

It’s so broadly used, it helps to know where it originated. Antoine Destutt de Tracy is the creator of its first meaning and he coined the term “ideology” in 1796. He got his inspiration for this during the French Revolution, when irrational mob impulses almost killed him. After this experience, Tracy’s goal was to create a system of ideas or ideology, to form a foundation for the moral and political sciences, by examining the sensations people experience as they interact with the material world, and the ideas that form in their minds due to those sensations. His concept of ideology was a liberal philosophy that provided a powerful defense of an individual’s liberty, property and free markets. It also put constitutional limits on state power.

After Tracy’s first view, Napoleon Bonaparte came to view ideology as a term he used against the liberals of Tracy’s Institut National. Napoleon described his opponents as the ideologues, meaning someone who is adherent of an ideology, especially one who is uncompromising and dogmatic. Through out history the term would move back and forth between positive and negative connotations.

David W. Minar describes six different ways in which the word ideology has been used.

  1. As a collection of certain ideas with certain kinds of content, usually normative.
  2. As the form or internal logical structure that ideas have within a set.
  3. By the role in which ideas play in human-social interaction.
  4. By the role that ideas play in the structure of an organization.
  5. As meaning, whose purpose is persuasion.
  6. As the locus of social interaction.

“Ideologies are patterned clusters of normatively imbued ideas and concepts, including particular representations of power relations. These conceptual maps help people navigate the complexity of their political universe and carry claims to social truth.”
Manfred Steger(1961-) and Paul James(1958-)

A great paradigm awakening should usher in an ideological shift as well. Adapting to this could be even more of a challenge because where a paradigm is a scientifically established belief, an ideology is a deeper belief that most people just react off of, apposed to thinking it out. The common theme that needs to be revisited over and over again is, don’t be so convicted in your beliefs that they can’t be changed. Remember humanity is a work in progress, not only because it’s always evolving, but because there is an overwhelming majority’s opinion that there has to be a better way for the world to live. When and if a shift happens, I believe it should start with individuals making their own personal decisions and then through mutual agreement, spread to the masses.

If a shift does actually begins to happen, let’s never forget, it is diversity that makes planet Earth such a beautiful place and any kind of change should try to preserve that.

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Knowledge

To know, experience, understand or be aware of something. Having scholarship, mastery, enlightenment or wisdom. Access to information, data, facts, statistics or case studies. Being sagacious. Proof, evidence or documentation. To have perception, memory, recognition, familiarity or realization. The ability to reason. Having intelligence, sensibility or insightfulness. To be a mentor, coach, guru or professor. Philosophical and scientific theories. All of these things touch on knowledge, but barely get the ball rolling.

If you’ve ever operated a vehicle, traveled somewhere new, driven by the rules of the road, found your way home and told someone about the events of your day, that was an exercise of many kinds of knowledge. Plato defined knowledge as justified true belief. Sir Francis Bacon said knowledge is Power. There are so many different types of knowledge, explained in so many different ways, with subtle differences and varying interpretations, that we have a treasure trove to work with when defining it. Although, the best understanding of it might just come from leaving it in the melting pot.

Around the world throughout history, the concepts of knowledge are immense. Some of the earliest thoughts on this were probably projected through knowledge deities, which existed by the dozens. Ancient Egyptian Seshat, goddess of wisdom, knowledge, and writing. West African Orunmila, god of wisdom, knowledge, and divination. Chinese Laozi, God of wisdom. Greek Metis, the Titan goddess of wisdom. Hindu Hayagriva, god of knowledge and wisdom. Japanese Fukurokuju, god of wisdom and longevity. Middle Eastern Al-Kutbay, Nabataean god of knowledge and writing. Persian Ahura Mazda, Zoroastrian god of light, benevolence, creation, truth, and perfect wisdom.

Ancient history shows us an impressive intellect did exist. Greek episteme, the domain of true knowledge. Mathema, that which is learnt. Philosophia, love of wisdom; the intellectual and erotic path which leads to virtue and knowledge. Polymath, having learned much. Polymath was later used in Europe and interchangeable with the expression Renaissance man, meaning a person with many talents or areas of knowledge. Latin Sapere aude, dare to know. Scire, to know, understand. Homo universalis or universal man, a person who is known to draw on complex bodies of knowledge to solve specific problems.

There are some cultures that have more than one word for knowledge in their language. Some examples are, Spanish saber and conocer, French savoir and connaitre, and German kennen, wissen and konnen. I’ll leave it up to you to educate on their differences. The English language combines all different kinds of words with knowledge when describing the endless concepts.

A priori knowledge is based on pure reason. A posteriori knowledge is deduced from evidence. Knowledge by acquaintance is experience-based and obtained through interaction. Descriptive knowledge is expressed in declarative sentences or indicative propositions. Information that is readily available in forms such as newspapers, manuals, textbooks and encyclopedias, is referred to as explicit knowledge. Tacit knowledge is knowledge that is difficult or impossible to convey explicitly, like how to ride a bike or play a musical instrument. With implicit knowledge a person isn’t necessarily aware they have learned something, like when someone is working with there hands and they have gotten better at something they know how to do. General knowledge covers topics like, current affairs, fashion, family, health, sports, arts and science. World knowledge is information a person accumulates throughout life. When we’re cognitively recalling knowledge of facts, ideas, meaning and concepts, they come from our semantic memory and autobiographical events come from our episodic memory. 

Traditional Knowledge, explained by the International Council for Science is “a cumulative body of knowledge, know-how, practices and representations maintained and developed by peoples with extended histories of interaction with the natural environment. These sophisticated sets of understandings, interpretations and meanings are part and parcel of a cultural complex that encompasses language, naming and classification systems, resource use practices, ritual, spirituality and worldview.”

Without the desire to learn, the human race would be among the animals on the planet with no real differences in life style. I wouldn’t be surprised if developing our strong ability to imitate each other is when our path began to diverge. At any extent, the big changes came with the formation of language and writing. When humanity developed the ability to pass on information, our knowledge became an entity of its own, separate from the individuals that contribute to it, growing almost as if it’s a being in itself. This body of knowledge is also a timeline that provides a detailed, understandable look into our history.

If we can acknowledge a spectrum spanning from knowing nothing to a (TOE), then it should be easy enough to see our current knowledge is somewhere in the middle. From this point of view we’re all learning and it’s really about being less false. The important idea here is that we’re moving towards an ultimate knowledge. In the past, true knowledge has been an expression used in a religious context. I would like to add, that in science, knowledge is truth waiting to be discovered.

“The essence of knowledge is, having it, to apply it; not having it, to confess your ignorance.”
Confucius

A fixed mind-set is when someone believes intelligence is something you can’t change very much, even if you learn something new. An open mind-set is when someone believes you can always change how intelligent you are, no matter how much you start out with. A person’s experiences filter through a frame of mind based on their knowledge. This profoundly influences our actions and reactions to the world. Naturally, a good filter is valuable for navigating through life. If you can live life with an open mind-set, the possibilities will be endless.

“Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.”
Nelson Mandala

This book is about asking big questions and getting big answers, which means there is an emphasis not only on the importance of accurate information, but also on how to correctly interpret it and use respectfully. With knowledge comes a great responsibility to use it properly.

Whether we’re studying it, contributing to it or just reaping the benefits from it, we’re all connected by knowledge.

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Epistemology

One of the problems with defining the word knowledge is that it needs to include a very broad scope of ideas. Higher levels of it are tacit. The challenge here is not only to convey what it is, but to create a vocabulary that can explain it and be universally accepted.

What makes justified belief justified and how do you know that you know? In philosophy, epistemology is the study that tries to understand what knowledge is. It’s basis, form, nature, validity and limits are widely debated. One of the things epistemologists do is to investigate the justifications supporting various beliefs of knowledge and then try to trace them to their origin. There are many different theories of knowledge and methods used to cross reference the findings, in hope of distinguishing true claims from false ones.

Epistemological knowledge foundations and structures are built from two opposing beliefs, empirical and rational. Empiricism is the view that experience and observation should be the means of gaining knowledge, a posteriori knowledge. Rationalism is the standpoint that knowledge can be discovered through pure reason and thought, a priori knowledge.

Skepticism is another issue and study in epistemology to deal with, because knowledge believed by one person isn’t necessarily believed by another, even when it’s widely excepted. There’s a whole spectrum of skepticism ranging from people that can eventually be convinced, to extreme skepticism that no matter how much evidence is presented, they won’t believe it. Skepticism has also been used constructively in epistemology.

Philosophical skepticism questions the possibility of certainty in knowledge. Methodological skepticism systematically scrutinizes knowledge claims by sorting out true from false claims. One form of methodological skepticism is Cartesian doubt, named after Rene Descartes. This is to doubt the truth of all beliefs at first, in order to determine which ones are true. This is the approach Descartes used to derive his statement, Cogito ergo sum. This translates to I think, therefore I am.

In spite of the many different opinions in epistemology, it still helps form strong ideas of what knowledge is. When answering the big questions, an epistemic criteria for what constitutes knowledge will be a prerequisite.

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Axiology

There are many dimensions to our sense of value. We have it for the physical objects we possess and desire to have, it’s in our self-esteem, our empathy, how we choose to live our lives and how we treat others. It is intrinsic to our quality of life. It’s the blend of different values that form our standards of behavior. The many different types of value are a multiplex that require balance and harmony. Without values, knowledge would be in vain.

In philosophy, axiology is the study of the nature of values. Investigations include examining the principles that support values as well as the judgements that come from them. Where epistemology is the concern of why a person thinks they know what they know, axiology is the concern of why a person has the values they have. In axiology it’s common practice to assess a researcher’s own values at every stage of their research process, because a person’s values will affect why and how they conduct their research as well as how they interpret the findings. While axiology is important in all fields of the academic, professional and personal world, it’s foundational in the branches of ethics and aesthetics.

Ethics is the philosophy that deals with moral principles. There are three major studies within ethics; meta-ethics, normative ethics and applied ethics. While these three studies have relations that form ethics as a whole, there are also many different theories within them and sometimes they conflict with each other.

Meta-ethics is the study of the fundamental properties of good and bad. Main concerns focus on the meaning of a person’s moral views and how to determine true values. Normative ethics is the study of right and wrong in a person’s actions. Some theories that can apply to normative ethics are virtue, teleological and deontological. Virtue ethics focus on the morality inherent in a person’s character. Teleological ethics base right and wrong on the consequences of actions. Deontological ethics use predefined sets of rules and if actions follow policy it’s right and if they don’t, it’s wrong, and consequences in this case don’t matter. Applied ethics are the practical application of moral considerations in real-world situations. Some examples are decisions that effect the environment, health care, education, law, professions and technologies.

Aesthetics are subjective and sensori-emotional values. These sentiments have the capacity to elicit pleasure. It refers to a quality in things like art work, music, movies, poetry, literature, architecture and landscapes. Sometimes people can feel a unity with the medium that is creating the aesthetic pleasure. When it happens through culture it can build a sense of social identity. The philosophy of aesthetics is the study of the properties, appreciation and over all nature of art, beauty, creativity, inventiveness and the emotional experiences involved.

In aesthetics, an axiological approach is to pursue answers to questions like, why do some people have a sense of beauty in things while others don’t and what are people actually feeling and why? Other studies look into the processes of an artist’s imagination, creation and performance. Aesthetic ethics is the idea that acceptable moral behavior should be beautiful and attractive.

Applying axiology is another requirement on this trip, because it will keep us morally in check while we are working towards answers and it will help us apply the knowledge properly when it is obtained.

“Let us realize the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” 
Martin Luther King Jr.