mills:

“The elasticity of what Homo sapiens will believe in an effort to convince themselves that they’re gaining an understanding of themselves or of the universe is fascinating.”

—

Topherchris. I agree, and without any condescension implied for that effort, which I consider to be one of the finer aspects of the human mind. The fact that some patently fabricated systems of belief retain resonance for us demonstrates how naturally we seek meaning, despite much despair-inducing evidence that it is not to be found.

Topherchris’ comment reminded me, too, of the various modes of belief available to us, and the various types of knowledge we use to sustain them. Just as many of us both believe and discount superstition (quietly avoiding cracks in the sidewalk as we parade our rationalism), so do many of us have competing types of knowledge.

I find the tension between two types most interesting; these names might not be optimal, but they serve this purpose:

1. Cognitive knowledge is the sort we acquire in school or from media or peers, which we examine it and incorporate into our minds through cognition, and are critical of and selective about. It is transmissible, replicable, and external.
2. Experiential knowledge is what we gather through sense perceptions and mental impressions as we live; it is harder to be critical and selective with it as its immediacy seems to overrule interrogation, and it is transmissible only by transforming it -usually with language- into knowledge for others to treat as type (1), meaning they may reject it or accept it or recontextualize it.

It is immediately evident that the second type is irrational and impressionistic, but what is notable is how totally it overpowers the first type in our deliberations. Perhaps as it is likely the older of the forms of knowledge, it has nearly total supremacy in the mind, whatever our evolved protestations to the contrary.

Examples abound: residents of Louisiana casually cite “global warming,” a phenomenon in which they didn’t believe prior to Katrina, as the cause of any erratic weather at all, as what Ph.D.s and Al Gore couldn’t do some hurricanes and some snow have (although no experts claim a correlation). Some victims of crime perpetrated by a given race abandon all understanding of statistics or proportion and become racists. Fiercely logical people who deride religion hear bumps in the night and assert that ghosts exist.

And so on. It is not a question solely of intelligence but also of priority: that which we experience seems incontrovertible, while in a world increasingly defined by unintelligibility, by the outsourcing of comprehension to “experts” and the simultaneous unmasking of experts and debunking of expertise, cognitive knowledge does not.

Propaganda and media tactics which succeed in creating experiential impressions are more effective, for example, than cogent and sober essays. Even though experiential knowledge is largely incoherent, unexamined, emotionally-colored dreck, we trust it more.

(Note: you might think of art as the taking of type (2), the elaboration of it into type (1) in the mind of the artist, and the creation of something which can then provoke type (2) in the audience’s mind for the achievement of some type (1) end [though some would dispute the last element strenuously, arguing for non-didactic art]. You also might not).

This got me thinking; You could say scientists try to bridge the gap (or; know no difference between the two kinds of knowledge) when they proof their theories by experiencing the outcome, in experiments. Reversely artsists try to document an experience or ‘experiential knowledge’ in a way that everybody understands/ can learn to understand, without losing the meaning or power of the experience (which, after rereading might be what you are saying in the last line).