As species, our first contact with the world is interpersonal. The bond we form with our caregivers sets the context in which we develop our relationship with the world at large, our ability to foster an extrospective skills resulting in the acquisition of knowledge to promote our life. In time, the social aspect of interpersonal development and extrospective focus provides a library of introspective facility for contemplation and evaluation of our status as individuals integrated in a group of other individuals.
Historically, and within the context of my purpose here, there are two fields of human discoveries that represent, formulate, and influence the daily life of an individual regardless of geographic location and temporal existence. The two fields are philosophy and psychology.
Philosophy, translated from Greek is love of knowledge, and the etymological origin of love and knowledge terminates in the basic concepts of desire to see. Psychology, translated from Greek is soul knowledge, and the etymological origin of soul and knowledge terminates in the basic concepts of seeing life. If I were to link the desire to see with life, I’d end up studying my life in the context of my desire to see myself in the world I live.
Philosophically, virtues are the means of expressing the ideas of the underlying philosophy. Psychologically, values are the means of expressing the motivation to act on the virtues adopted by the individual. At every branch of the link between philosophy and psychology there is a correspondent link of virtues with values. In relating the most fundamental branch of philosophy - metaphysics, to the most fundamental branch in psychology - the self, I explore the intertwined processes of mind and body, by focusing on the virtue of reason and honesty and the value of inspiration and identification as fundamental and universal requirement for living on earth as a human being.
Virtue, translated from Latin “vir” is pertaining to man and value is that which is worth doing. Ayn Rand defines value as that which one acts to gain and or keep. Thus the desire to see is the desire to act to gain and or keep that which is worth your life by means of your nature, by means of your virtues.
At the beginning stages of developing our lives, through pain and pleasure we are guided to focus on the primary virtues of rationality and honesty.
When an infant gets hungry, he cries out for attention. He does not understand the biological state he is in, but his autonomic nervous system recognizes the pain in his tummy and to alleviate it triggers a response in the infant. Since speech is not yet a means of communication, he cries to delegate the problem.
When an infant is fed and satisfied he feels pleased with his body and environment. The encounter and interaction with his family and others bring pleasure that he expresses through laughter.
The successful relationship of the infant with his body and environment depends on his ability to identify pain and pleasure. The link between pain and cry for help is effortless. Yet, to understand that there is a link between how he feels, and what he does, requires mental effort. To the extend that there is no anatomical abnormality in his cognitive mechanism, there is a direct rational interaction with his environment through his perceptive mechanism, i.e., the five senses of vision, touch, hearing, smell, and taste.
The infant remains consistent in his interaction with his body and environment and indicates changes in the balance of his normal state with a lightning fast precision, without regard for exogenous circumstances.
The origin of the word inspiration comes from the Latin word inspirare “breathe or blow into” (Oxford Dictionary of English). By drawing his first breath the infant turns on the engine of his existence. The oxygen that runs through his nervous system ignites the neurons of his brain and in turn a sense- of-life moves his body. The infant is now inspired with life.
The breathing of air is autonomic, he is not required to identify or think about how to do it. By virtue of his existence he breathes. He will not realize the significance of breathing until much later in his life, but he will get inspired by the multitude of identifications in his environment that are inevitably to follow. Everything he sees and touches and smells and tastes and hears is exciting.
Unlike the autonomic function of breathing, identification requires of the infant to focus on the mind-state he experiences as result of the stimulation of the sensation his body signals. Further, he must differentiate between internal and external stimulation, as identified by his mind.
How complete and/or incomplete, how accurate and/or inaccurate his identifications become will determine, how rational, honest and inspired he lives. Before he engages in any activity, he will identify, implicitly and/or explicitly, the cause and effect in all of his existence.
Through the faculty of reason the child will realize the importance of cause and effect. When I feel pain in tummy, I cry, when I cry, I get food. When I eat, feel better, when I feel better, stop crying. Pain can be alleviated, pleasure can be augmented.
The tacit realization is: There is a causal relationship between how I feel, what I do, and who I interact with to get the desired effect. The explicit realization is: Food is good for me. Mommy is good to me.
Identifying the cause and effect relationship between body state and mental state, between self and environment is a function of rationality. Adhering to the facts in existence that give rise to our evaluation of reality is a function of honesty. The more explicit and accurate the account of the experience, the more truthful we are to the relationship between existence and ourselves.
It is the ability of the infant to judge his self-state as painful or pleasant that makes the cause and effect of his action honest. His fidelity to the endogenous state of his being have direct effect on his fidelity to the exogenous circumstances on his being.
To exist in a normal state, the infant’s demands for equilibrium must be identified and met accurately and timely by his primary caregivers.
There are two mechanisms at work in the effort to sustain a normal existence for the infant. He has to discover that there is something off-kilter, and that there is a way to fix it. There is a gradual intensity in the experience of hunger sensation. Autonomically, the intensity of the stimulus does not affect the outcome of the response. (Sherrington, 1906) Yet, the intensity of the call for food is proportionate to the degree of hunger evaluated by the person. The stronger and longer unattended the pain in the tummy, the louder the cry for attention. Implicitly, the infant’s mind realizes that something is going wrong and needs correcting, now.
The ability of the child to identify hunger pains as particular instances of body-state, and the ability to associate food with the relief of pain as an instance of mind-state, give rise to the universal understanding, “food is good for me, and I know it.”
This process of gradual data gathering blended in a realization of a solution to a problem underlies the natural for human beings method of knowledge acquisition in a cyclical progression from one of the many, to one in the many. We experience particulars, which we later identify in integrated universals.
To survive, we need to integrate our experiences in universal principles to guide our action. To thrive, we need to discover the One in the Many -- the principle of life.
In this episode I sketched in broad strokes the bond we form with parents and the world in the developing stages of our lives and how this bond necessitates the fundamental virtues of rationality and honesty and how these virtues help us find value in inspiration and the process of identification.
Stay tuned as I present the importance of conscious focus and the manifestation of volition in the next episode of the one in the many.