I like to think I know my penis, but I have never been one. I have however known some dlcks.

What I mean by that is.. alot of our instinct is geneticly predispositioned through our creator, be it u believe the original parent.. or a higher power, not requireing acceptance from either.. just info reguarding the issue may be refrenced in checking with a parent, family history, history of humanity, or a higher power.

Going by percentages here again. Once again..

Instinct is innate, no matter what the source is believed to be from, one is born with it already intact.

Is there a clear line which can be drawn between instinctual behaviors and learned ones?

Im doubting that it can be to a science.. much instinct is drawn from genetics, hard to trace.

I am agreeing...



It is clear that the term know is used in unclear ways, depending upon what grounds the known...

A clear line?

I seriously doubt that there are any clear lines in any human knowledge.

There are also many stories of very young people having super fantastic abilities that strongly suggest either some sort of reincarnation (memories from past lives) or extremely strong psychic abilities (the ability to draw on some sort of conscious whole which seems to include knowledge of the past to some degree)

I dout very seriously that we could ever find a clear line in anything. In fact, that's precisely what we thought we had discovered with Newtonian physics - a clear line of the nature of how physical reality works. Look how wrong we were about that. Just when we thought we had the rat by it's tail it turns into a smokey dragon that's far weirder than we could have ever imagined.

The thing that has been bothering me as of late is the seemingly nasty nature of reality in general. Some religions would like to somehow pin this fact on the fall of man from grace but it seems to me that it goes far deeper than mankind. Nature herself and all of the animal kingdom appears to be a dog-eat-dog world. There is absolutely not sane reason to believe that mankind could have been responsible for the very nature of all creation.

Of all the things we seem to know this is the one thing that is so troubling to me. It surely seem to be an inescapable conclusion. For it to be wrong seems to required that my entire life's experiences have been a sham.

For it to be true, seems to make a statement that I'd rather not know.

What if the real truth is that all is chaos and happenstance, and what we call knowledge is merely our own futile attempt to pretend that there's something more than this?

Maybe all that knowledge is, is a recognition of fleeting patterns that have no innate eternal structure or meaning. All is smoke and what appears to be knowledge is nothing more than a pretentious observation of patterns in the smoke. Not unlike the constellations placed upon the sky. We know of them, but do they truly have any essence of their own?

Other than being momentary swirls of smoke in a unvierse of stars.

Fleeting truths that were never anything other than a mirage to begin with.

What's the difference between swirling atoms that make up the stars and swirling atoms that make up the humans?

All is dust in the void.

Just a little on moral grounds...

I want to say that the term 'knowledge' itself is a bi-product of language - as is all other terms - however what is being described should correlate with the world around us. I lean towards others' understandings that knowing something does not require language. That is clear, however having the ability to express that which one knows to another does. Names will create mental boundaries by which our understanding surely follows. It is an inherent danger of language, a necessary 'evil'. As long as one realizes that it(whichever term may be in use) is just a word that describes something else, then one can keep in mind the notion of language being a necessary tool.

There are inherent issues with humans trusting what they believe to be true upon moral grounds. Every man's conscience - being based upon personal truthes which provide the sense of ought - is untrustworthy. One cannot depend on it to be the only guide, because it is s/he who must keep it satisfied! It exists without grounds. That is why we must look outside of our own morality for confirmation, and why the direction in which we look be an appropriate one. Let us not look through the worldy fingerprint, let us look beyond it. We humans fight for that which we believe that we know and it is often indirectly based upon our sense of ought! It is the human condition. Applying rationale to that which exists without it leads to one to an unsubstantiated belief that equates to a dead end every time.

Knowledge itself is - or at least should be - grounded in what is believed to be an accurate representation of the world around us. The closer one holds to only that which can be clearly proven, through means outside of ourselves, the less we rely upon ourselves, the less we rely upon our own conscience. Morality has no place in knowledge.

On the practical side of knowing...

Not all tools work well for all applications. Language does not articulate genius-level anything very clearly.

For what is it that makes one able to replicate what one sees? There is no gene, nor set of them. What is it that produces innate talent, that of which is highly uncommon among wo/men? There is one common factor in artists... the love for the expression! Along with this love(in the most talented ones) is dedication and determination at an early age. An undeterrable unmatched focus...

What does it mean to be gifted? To be one gifted in speech/language, or to be gifted in musical, mathematics, writing, inventing, mechanics, etc?

Is it a predisposition towards a thing? Is the talent itself innate or could it be the bi-product of coincidental things in childhood added to innate potential? Coincidental meaning not necessarily intentional and deliberate with clear goals... those words, observations, experiences, mental engagements, that which we are subjected to at an early age. Could it be 'learned' unintentionally? Could those factors help to 'wire' the brain in such a way that it leans towards some things moreso than others, that the circumstances allowed for the potential to develop without clear intent or knowledge of it's(potential) existence?

Is one born knowing how to do a thing(anything) which is later termed to be a 'gift'? Is it reasonable to deny the possibility of such a thing? Child prodigies often become overwhelmed with the content within their own mind. It is as if they know certain things which are unable to be expressed through the current language and understanding of the time.

If they do, in fact, know these things...

Do they know them from birth, or do they develop an understanding for them through language, later changing it as necessary in order to more accurately express this knowledge which has not been adequately constructed in past because language could not allow it?

Without a language which enables the expression of a thing never before known by the masses, we cannot understand it, therfore we cannot know it.

I find it unthinkable that one can be born with such a complete understanding that they re-write the books. Language is a tool by which one conveys thoughts. I am a firm believer that thought is but unspoken language. If one is not or cannot organize their own thoughts in such a way as to be able to express them coherently to another through the use of language, then they - themselves - do not understand what it is that they think they know.

The only practical measure regarding the existence of knowledge, is the ability to express it to another in coherent form. Without the ability to express it, it cannot be known be anyone else, and is highly doubtful to be known at all.

All else goes unknown.

...

The real insight of Maya, is spiral recursion in time or spin measure.

Doorway to implosion, the ultimate connectivity device.....
EKG Spectrum Analysis Shows Onset Fractal Recursion of Harmonics at The Moment of Compassion/Love. Fractal Attractive Embeddedness bends light, creates gravity, dilates time.PHI Based Recursive Braidednes which measureably increases in DNA in the presence of coherent EKG, launches wave lengths and velocities by PHI heterodyne thru light and time barriers.

This soul wormhole connection based on love is the only surviving memory as this galactic sector passes thru nexus/black hole event horizon, which is why ET's want our DNA.

Oh my...

Mirror, Mirror, Mirror...

I recently had a discussion in which there was a type of knowledge which had been developed through words that added an element to my own kind of thinking...

I know that a glass of water will quench thirst. This, in no way, depends upon anything other than having drank water in the past.

I wonder what other kinds of things we can know such as this?

Is it knowledge without the language to describe it and therefore understand that this is so? Without understanding that that is the case, is it merely instinct and not knowledge, or both?

I think more examples would illuminate more of how knowledge is acquired.

Things we all come to know . . .

Detail each characteristic that would be considered fundamental to the thing being known.

A Red Rose:

A rose is a flowering plant, this entails its own characteristics. You could call this a shell of information where the basics of all flowering plants come to mind, or if this is the first interaction with flowering plants, then this image becomes the basis for this knowledge.

So we have a stem.

We have leaves.

We have petals.

We have a smell.

We have 2 shades of green, and one shade of Red.

We find that this flower grows from a bush which grows from the ground. The rose bush is a plant which needs water, soil, and light to grow.

Anything else fundamental to a rose that I have missed?

Then you must ask, are each of these characteristics known? If not then we must descend the ladder another rung and ask what characteristics make up a stem, a leaf, a petal, a smell, a shade of color, a bush, the ground, water, soil, light . . .

Jeremy,

I am actually attempting to show that one must not necessarily possess a spoken or written language in order to 'know' things about water.

Do I have to know that the thing which we both call 'water' is called that to have a rudimentary knowledge of it, or is just some form of representational understanding adequate enough?

Do I have to know that it is called 'water' in order to know that it can quench my thirst?

That it can put out 'fire'?

Did you ever see the movie "Quest for Fire?"

It was about some cave men who went out in search for fire because they did not know how to make fire. The movie was very interesting because I went to see it with an Italian man who did not speak one word of English. He spoke Italian only. We could not communicate via language.

That was not a problem in watching this movie because there were no words ever spoken in the entire movie as the cave people did not really have a language, just a bunch of gestures and grunts.

Anyway, in their quest for fire they found a group of cannibals who had a fire going and they waited until they could steal some coals from them for their fire. In the process they saved a girl who was about to be eaten.

Long story short this girl they saved knew how to make fire. Of course she could not tell them how as they did not understand her gibberish. She had some sort of language and was more evolved.

Eventually in the story, she shared her knowledge of how to make fire with this guy simply by realizing that was what he wanted and she showed him how they did it by twirling a stick on a log to cause heat and friction and then fire. Later, he brought that knowledge back to his tribe.

The knowledge of how to make fire was shared without a common language. There was not even sign language involved.

Also, I spent the evening with a man I could not speak with. We had dinner, saw a movie etc. all with no common language. It was the most wonderful and perfect date I can remember. We "communicated" without language.

That's so adorable JB

This thread on knowing has actually brought to conscious light(in my mind at least) the fact that the concept of 'language' has at least two separate and distinct modes. The first being of personal representational understanding which consititutes(most likely) the totality of one's own mental knowledge 'structure' absent of the need for communication, and one of a shared representational understanding(used for communicative purposes) which constitutes the need for invoking a common language between two or more individuals.

As my world-view continues to develop based upon new exposure to others' perspectives, I am forced - due to the nature of my own curiosity and what it entails - to consciously revisit the elements contained within my own personal truth(that which I believe). The goal is consistency in thought. I am not beyond, in terms of certainty, the idea that there are things which exist that cannot be known.

As Spinoza has so eloquently described in the past regarding our knowledge of 'God', if we are an integral part of a whole, then from that place our perspective can only recognize that which exists within our own frame of reference. I think that that holds true in general as well. Perhaps those Spinozan writings inspired Einstein's relativity theory. It seems likely to me.

Remove Spinoza and perhaps some of the very things which constituted the grounding of inference from Einstein's mind would not have been able to exist. Perhaps.

I don't usually comment on these Enigma discussions but i must congratulate you on your wide experience with ***** and encourage you to spend more time with your penis so you can nurture it and help it to grow

Wouldn't that mean that learned behavior is behavior with knowledge and instinctual behavior is behavior without knowledge?

That could go an insteresting direction.

Instinctual behavior is a program or a memory. But at one time it was probably something that was learned very deeply. So deeply learned and repeated that it became ingrained into the foundation of the life form and stored as memory.