Undated

  Memory-Storing Epistemology

  The “emotional” epistemology of the “perceptual” level [mentality] works as follows: instead of storing conceptual conclusions and evaluations in his subconscious, a man stores concrete memories plus an emotional estimate. Example: instead of conceptual conclusions in the form of political principles, he stores specific memories of concrete events of his own experience, with the memory that these things or events were “bad” (“painful”). Thereafter, when he has to consider any new political event, his epistemology works as follows: first, a strong negative emotion—then, the emotion, acting as selector, revives or brings out of his subconscious a lightning-like montage of memories of other political events, all of them painful—then his conclusion is that the new event is and/or will be painful, hopeless, and generally negative.

  Any specific judgment that he utters, in such cases, is completely accidental or irrelevant: it is dictated, not by a rational conclusion, but by random or chance association and is, in fact, intended by him only as an approximation (though not consciously). Any conceptual conclusions, principles, or sentences he may have accumulated through the years on that particular subject are stored as loose concretes along with his memories of events, almost as accidental, undifferentiated rubble or barnacles clinging to the events. In effect, the ideas are also stored as concrete facts, as memories of something he has heard, read, or thought, not as ideas or concepts. Therefore, he does not exercise any selectivity or discrimination when he utters a comment.

  His comment is approximate, because it is intended to stand for the total montage, the “gestalt,” that his emotion brings out of his subconscious. The only thing he really intends to communicate, his actual judgment, is: “This is painful.” Translated into words, his judgment would be: “This is painful, because of all the similar events I remember as painful.” Thus his memories serve as the proof or the validation of his judgment, performing, in his consciousness, the function performed by logical, conceptual evidence in a rational consciousness. This is the process by which emotion takes precedence over logic; in fact, it does not take precedence—it substitutes for logic. (Logic is a conceptual tool—it cannot operate by means of percepts, it cannot deal with unanalyzed, undifferentiated, “irreducible” concretes.)

  This method, of course, is as near to a perceptual level of epistemology as a conceptual, human consciousness can come. It consists of treating memories as percepts, as “package-deal” irreducible primaries, and of forming value judgments by a primitive, animal-like standard of “pleasurable” or “painful,” these two standing for “good” or “bad,” without any further analysis or understanding, without any knowledge of why something is good or bad, why something was pleasurable or painful. This is exactly what an animal’s “pleasure-pain mechanism” would do. In the case of an animal, this mechanism works as an immediate response to immediate concretes and is assisted by memory. An animal’s memory is purely associational, and thus an animal can be trained by a repetition of pleasurable or painful experiences, of rewards or punishments (the repetition makes the animal memorize or associate).

  In the case of a man, this method becomes the issue of “stale thinking.” When a man claims that he cannot separate his emotion from his perception of the event to which he is responding, that he feels as if the two come simultaneously (which means that he evaluates something before he has grasped what it is, yet he is epistemologically unable to take time to perceive the event fully), his consciousness, in fact, is reacting to past events, to memories called out of his subconscious by his first glimpse of some accidental resemblance or association between the present perception and the events of his past. (It is in this sense that he does not actually perceive the present event and cannot identify it or think about it; and it is somewhat inaccurate to call his memories “stale thinking”—they are not his old conclusions or conscious value-estimates, they are merely unanalyzed “gestalts” of concrete events and automatic emotional reactions.)

  A man whose epistemology functions in this manner, by accidental associations of “pleasure” or “pain,” has no way of knowing whether his judgment (his emotional response) is or is not relevant to the present event or the facts confronting him or the immediate reality with which he is dealing, but which he has not actually perceived. He has no way of knowing whether his judgment (his substitute for judgment) is right or wrong, true or false, nor why.

  The terrible consequence of this method for a human consciousness is the fact that it does make a full perception of reality impossible, that it does make a man epistemologically unable to take time to perceive. Since man needs a system of symbols to deal with the enormous complexity of his experiences, since he has to condense and simplify every new event by means of its essentials, since he cannot treat every new event as if it were an undifferentiated, unprecedented first in a baby’s blank consciousness, but must integrate (or at least relate) it to the context of his past knowledge, this method substitutes an emotion for the perception and selection of an essential.

  Thus, a rational man, considering a specific political event, will call on his conceptual knowledge to identify the event by means of its essence. He will observe, for instance, that a given law establishes government controls and he will estimate it as evil, by means of his previously reached conviction that government controls are evil. He will not need to examine every concrete detail of the law or ponder over all its future consequences; his conceptual grasp of the essential element involved will contain and cover all those concretes.

  But a man with an “emotional-perceptual” epistemology is helpless and lost before the complexity of the same law. His only method of condensing the meaning of that law is his emotion, backed by the context of his memories, which are loosely stored by resemblance, similarity, or chance association. He has no way of determining what is essential in that law, and thus his emotion becomes the essential—and, without examining or analyzing that law (which he cannot begin to do and would not know how), he concludes that the law is “bad” or “good” according to whatever aspect of it has the strongest emotional meaning for him, the strongest emotional associations or connotations. This is the reason why such men jump to conclusions rashly, on the mere hint of some isolated aspect of an issue, and miss the most important, essential, or relevant points, regardless of their intelligence and perceptiveness. This is why such men are always context-dropping; this is why they see the whole issue only when some advocate of reason points it out, and then they wonder: “Why didn’t I think of this before? Why didn’t I see it by myself?” This is how that epistemology can paralyze and negate the best mind.

  Notes for cure: The difficulty in correcting this epistemology is the fact that a man’s emotion has become his only selector. Without it, he would feel totally lost in a maze of incomprehensible complexities (which no mind could hold), he wouldn’t know where to begin, he would literally feel something resembling the disintegration of his consciousness. (His emotional “yes” or “no” is the only integrator of his consciousness, that is: of his memories.) Therefore, one cannot simply forbid him to use his emotion as selector, one cannot remove it without providing him with a substitute. So the first step to take is as follows: while building up his conceptual files by a constant process of verbalizing and defining, teach him to analyze his emotional selector when he catches it in action. Thus, if he feels that politics is “bad,” make him ask himself: “Why do I feel this?” and name as many reasons as he can find. The reasons do not have to be exhaustive immediately; the purpose is to train him to the process of identifying the causes of his emotions—and, gradually, he will learn to discover deeper and deeper reasons, to remove more “onion skins,” and ultimately to reduce his emotional premises down to their philosophical, primary base. (Do not rush this process—let him do it—don’t let him memorize formulas and dogmas which he does not fully understand.)

  [AR’s notes on psychology end here.]

  1959

  [Several years later, AR noted some ideas for short stories.]

  A “horror story” about mechanics in charge of an H-bomb. The crime of the concrete-bound people—or of those who think only “down to a certain point.”

  A savage with a computer, who perishes because he does not know how to operate it. This is the relationship of man to the automatic integrations of his consciousness, i.e., to his emotions. (Add the fact that the computer is operating constantly and that the savage thinks it’s a deity he must obey.)

  “The Inside Story.” A dramatization of an inner conflict, with different actors presenting different, clashing premises—and the existential result.

  May 27, 1959

  The Inside Story

  Tom.

  The well-groomed man (social metaphysics). (“What would people say?”) [“Social metaphysics ” refers to the neurosis resulting from automatized second-handedness, i.e., the type of psycho-epistemology that is focused primarily on the views of others, not on reality.]

  The shabby man (malevolent universe). (“It’s too dangerous!”)

  The temperamental man (whim-worship). (“But I want it!”)

  The fat man (anti-effort). (“Why bother?”)

  The joker (death premise). (Laughter at values.)

  The wife: Edna.

  The doctor: Dr. Clark.

  The temperamental man on the phone—screaming irrational denials. (“She knows, but can’t prove it.”)

  Tom on the phone—assuring her of his love. (Her advice to him.)

  The well-groomed man on the phone—“What would people say?” (Her ultimatum.)

  The shabby man on the phone—the slap in the face—Edna walks out.

  The panic over Dr. Clark.

  Fight—the joker dominating—the knife—the windows are closed—the scream—the phone ringing.

  Last scene—(three pages).

  Undated

  [This series of philosophic notes was paper-clipped together.]

  Values set the psycho-epistemological rhythm (or tempo) of cognition. They make one hold a given percept or concept in mind long enough to integrate; integration is what makes a thing or issue “real.”

  Thus non-attention or non-retention is a matter of lack of values. And values have to be connected to action.

  An “out of focus” state may be a state of rushing past everything (psycho-epistemologically), while focus requires slowness. (?)

  Think this over; it has many implications. (Such as the relationship of mental action to existential action.)

  The reification of “forces” of nature is the rebellion against (or ignorance of) the law of identity: it separates entities from actions, implying that actions are not caused by the nature of the entities that act, but are caused by some outside power. For example: “Death takes a holiday” implies that death is not inherent in the nature of living entities. Or: “Spring brings flowers”—implying that the growth of flowers is not inherent in nature. This is an example of the inability to grasp that existence exists.

  The process of reifying abstractions is proper only in the moral realm, i.e., only in regard to human character. Here, it is not a metaphor, a fantasy, or contradiction of reality—it is possible in fact, it is a model.

  The “determinism” to look for in human psychology is logic. The logic of a man’s basic premises determines his motivation and actions. (This is in regard to [the view] that the science of psychology cannot exist unless man is subject to determinism.)

  Possible article: “The Vested Interest in Self-Abasement.”

  Fear of unearned flaws and/or the desire to indulge real flaws.

  The desire to be “safe” rather than happy.

  Fear of one’s own emotions—and lack of knowledge of their source and meaning.

  The “plausibility” of the notion of original sin.

  In algebra, the relation of x (the unknown) to the other (known) elements of an equation determines its nature because x is the only variable, while the other elements are fixed and stable. This is the relationship of consciousness to existence: the content of consciousness is variable; the facts of existence are constant. Only on this basis can consciousness determine the nature of any given fact or problem that it is investigating.

  February, 1960

  For Yale lecture (random philosophical notes)

  Religion is “canned philosophy”: you don’t have to know what’s in it or how it’s cooked, no effort is required of you, just swallow it—and if it poisons you, it was your own fault, the cooks will tell you, you didn’t have enough “faith.”

  The phenomenon of “wanting to have your cake and eat it, too”—the primacy of consciousness—is a luxury of a high civilization, of parasites who “feel safe.” There are no whim-worshippers on a desert island. (?) (The “primacy of consciousness” is the primacy of wishes.)

  The “stolen concept.”

  Attila and the Witch Doctor. [AR’s analysis of these two archetypes—the man of force and the man of faith—is presented in For the New Intellectual.]

  The contradiction of wanting “democracy,” “collective living and cooperation,” the “will of the people,” etc.—and the abolition of reason. Reason is the only means of collective communication.

  The worship of suffering. (Observe that the whim-worshippers are always malevolent universers.)

  The new obscurantism: if it’s knowledge, it’s untrue—if it’s an absolute, it’s wrong (if it’s indeterminate, it’s true).

  The meaning of the “anti-system-building premise”: anti-integration. (Philosophers as “garage mechanics.”) (Non-objective law.) (Treating symptoms and [attacking] anyone who looks for a cause.)

  Epistemological advice: do not take the blame for “failure to understand” [the stuff you are taught], the others do not understand it, either. Do not think: “It can’t mean what it seems to mean;” it does mean just that (the technique of the “Big Lie”).

  Reason as “perception of reality”—the “new intellectual.”

  The symptoms of today’s decadence: “I feel” and “It seems to me.”

  (The strangeness of my position in addressing a modem audience is the fact that I have to speak of what everybody knows, and be shocking and new, for that very reason—that I am not addressing ignorance, but evasion—that I am not answering a desire to know, but a desire not to know—that the prevalent premises are “don’t dare identify what I am struggling so hard not to admit” and “don’t dare say that anything you say can make a difference, which means: that knowledge matters.” Well, that is what I am going to say. I am here to identify what you all know by the modern method of knowledge: by feeling.) [This paragraph was crossed out.]

  Is the H-bomb to be [launched] by “faith”?

  Do you want to know the H-bomb as it “really is”?—as a “thing in itself”? Do you want to grasp it by “direct perception,” without the effort of the “cold hand of reason”? Or to grasp it “with your whole person”?

  1960

  [The following passages were cut from the title essay in For the New Intellectual.]

  The abdication of philosophy is all but complete. To understand the extent of the collapse, one must remember that the task of integrating abstractions into wider abstractions, of integrating knowledge into theories and principles, of integrating theories and principles to their practical applications, of maintaining a constant unifying process between broad concepts and their concrete, perceptual roots, thus achieving and preserving a non-contradictory sum and frame of reference—is not an automatic task nor an easy one; it requires the highest, most demanding level of conceptual psycho-epistemology. It is the specific task of philosophy, which cannot be performed by any other profession. Philosophers, by the proper requirement of their task, are the guardians of man’s knowledge and of his capacity to know.

  Every society of men—from the most primitive tribe of savages to present-day America—has a certain cultural atmosphere which is determined by the kind of ideas that underlie the actions, the mode of living, within that society. Whether the majority actually believes these ideas or merely accepts them by default, no society and no men can exist without certain basic ideas to direct their actions, so long as they do have to act, that is: to deal with reality, with physical nature and with one another. Most men accept their ideas, not because they have judged them to be true, but merely because they believe that these ideas seem to be accepted by others. The unstated premise behind such acceptance is the desire to escape the responsibility of independent judgment and to “play it safe” by means of the evader’s basic formula of: “Who am I to know? Others know best.”