1. Other persons, despite some similarities, are not like me. I am unlikely to make proper sense of a person’s understanding of the world (unexpressed or otherwise), her intentions, or her behavior, if I assume it is always like or identical to my own. It is possible to make sense of another person’s understanding of the world, her intentions, or her behavior but I must do so on terms which make sense to her and those terms may change over time and in different circumstances.
2. If a person acts in an unexpected fashion, given the circumstances as I understand and experience them, I should not immediately assume she has reasoned poorly, has false beliefs, or is being duplicitous. Instead, I should try to understand the circumstances as she understands and experiences them and assess her behavior from that perspective. If, from this light, her behavior is still unexpected, I can then assess whether or not she has reasoned poorly, employed false beliefs, or is being duplicitous.
3. Few other people have made this important discovery or they fail to apply it in day to day life.
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Wayne C
December 18, 2008
Agreed
Julie
March 29, 2009
First, it may not be fair to state that few people have realized (this). I think that it seems to be popular to assume that other people don’t think about things like this, life, behaviour, thought, etc. It may be true that most of the population are indifferent, comfortable, or lazy and may not think about why things are the way they are or how our behaviour contribute to various ‘undesirable’ conditions: everything from global warming and pollution, family dynamics and (lack of) personal success, the current economic situation, the list could go on forever. It is troubling to me when ‘we’ assume others aren’t thinking. Perhaps I just happen to know a lot of thoughtful people, but I think it’s more likely that we jump to conclusions when we don’t see “good” behaviour. I think a more important discovery is to understand that we are thoughtful but that maybe we just don’t know how to act, or are uninspired. So, I believe the problem in general is that we either don’t know how to behave or we fail to apply our knowledge. Now, having said that, perhaps I have projected my own thoughts onto the population in general and have violated the idea that I cannot “know” what others thoughts/behaviours are without ‘being’ them….
In terms of our self-awareness and our understanding of others’ perceptions, I look at things from an evolutionary perspective. Obviously, the “thought police” don’t exist and we are ultimately alone in the universe, but there are countless evolutionary mechanisms we use to exist in the world and make connections with other human beings. Evolution has shaped our species to be social to ensure reproductive success (see The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins). Our culture, music, food, language, dance, clothing, etc. that connect us and we create families and have friends and search for answers to explain our existence. Our brains seem to be wired to understand by association and we have several ways in which we edit the sensory world. In vision, for example, the idea of completion suggests that if we look at a partial image, our mind will try to interpret it as something we have experienced before. The McGurk effect is another example where our perception of multiple sensory stimuli (visual and auditory) can be faulty (see Wiki for full description).
I understand this may not be exactly where you were going with your points, but I feel it may be something to think about when trying to evaluate how well we really know each other, and how we humans understand the world in which we live.
sterlinglynch
March 30, 2009
Julie, thanks for the great reply! Lots to think about.
I agree there is no reason to assume people don’t get the point I am driving at because the aren’t thinking enough. I for one am probably one of the most thoughtful people I know (not as in “considerate” but as in “full of thoughts / shit”) and it took me this long to figure it out. I am even willing to entertain that I am the only person who hadn’t figured it out yet because I’ve lived a life with my head so firmly up bottom. And yet, a day doesn’t go by where I don’t watch / see / hear people making the mistake I’ve identified and it happens to people from all walks of life, education, etc… It’s a tough lesson to figure out and a hard one to apply simply because it is easy to ignore and rarely instrumental to our day to survival and happiness. Even so, I believe we can make sense of another person’s behavior on his or her own terms, but it takes effort and practice.