notes

## 0. Work in progress
Last updated 2015-05-03

1   knowledge
1.1 ignorance and learning
1.2 language, learning, meaning
1.3 meaning
2   being and living
2.1 being and feeling
2.2 being and knowing
2.3 being and doing

## 1. Knowledge
What we know -- that's what we know by means of our six senses (being
sight, sound, touch, smell, taste, and thought), consistently observe
(comprehend rationally), and can associate (categorize) or dissociate
(analyze) to assist in refining our knowledge of phenomena, the world.

Our thought is the realm of the mind. What we think and know is what we
think and know in our mind. What the mind can work with comes through
impressions left on it through the senses, which make contact with the
world directly. Impressions combine to give rise to states, or complex
forms of consciousness (contrasted with concentration, which unites a
divided mind).


The mind works to order and record what the body traces, both within
and without. Thought is a special medium which shapes what comes in
through the body, and is also notable, for it can be changed through
its own faculty -- beliefs, experiences, thoughts, perspectives, and
the like lack the substance of matter, as they are psychic phenomena.
The consciousness associated with my tongue cannot make food taste
better or worse, but it can make my eating of it better or worse.

### 1.1 Ignorance and learning
When there is no knowing of sight, there is no knowing of colors,
perspective, or light in its various forms. While analogs may be drawn
through touch, sight and touch must be linked for vision to result in
a person, for a lot more of what he knows than what he may believe
comes through learning via the senses and repetition.

When an impression comes in through the senses repeatedly, its
presence in the mind is strengthened. When an internal image of an
object can be reproduced, it is possible to be worked with; a thing is
said to be known when sufficient qualities are recognized to
correspond with an internal object met through past experience.

When an object or state cannot be recognized, namely, met with
appropriate knowing by means of reference and association, a person is
in the state of ignorance.

The key elements which give rise to knowing and recognition, or the
internal library one has of experience, is called one's memory, logic,
or language.

An ignorant fellow has an ill-formed record, whether from absence of
what is considered important, faulty rules in the process of taking in
information, the presence of information that does not correlate to the
external world, or faulty associations with what is present. Ignorance
is not knowing or knowing wrongly. Ignorance is believing wrong.

### 1.2 Language, learning, meaning
Much of our language has no rational basis, instead relying on
associations made through observation, memory, and a perception of some
worth in communication; much of our internal thought may be said to be
a language or logic in its own right, whether generally conscious or
not; a lack of conscious analysis or awareness of one's thoughts may
lead to sloppy psychological mistakes. By bringing light to one's
mental state, some stress may be relieved if an explanation is
provided to dispel the chaos of ignorance.

### 1.3 Meaning
Of what we perceive and how we relate to it -- much of it is
biological, meant towards our survival as individuals, family units,
societies, and a species. The will to life is said to be the common
strand among us, those being, and the most plausible philosophical
cause for life's continued presence and growth. This is not a secret.
All our farming, fishing, and logging, not to mention our singing,
dancing, small talk, and the rest serve one purpose, primarily:
answering the body's demands of survival. Understanding the world as
it is promotes survival, pleasure, and well-being.

## 2. Being and living
Being can be categorized under sensory experience (discussed prior),
emotion, recognition, mental states, volition, and consciousness.
Language is a means of experience, recognition, volition,
communication, and a sort of consciousness with each or in
combination. Aside from experience, recognition, and language, mental
states have a heavy influence on the life of man, in the present and
in what follows.

### 2.1 Being and feeling
What we feel -- that's pleasure or pain, through the senses mentioned
above. Not all states are clearly one or the other, but understanding
which qualities are associated with stimulation or depression can
provide a better picture of a situation than blindly acting on
instincts can. Sensory experience coupled with emotion informs our
volition, or impulses to act, provided motives (such as duties or
restrictions) do not interfere in the mental and physical decision for
one action or another to resut.

### 2.2 Being and knowing
In the way that consciousness directed one way, assisted by one
faculty or another is not a simple psychological activity in itself
(being an association of smaller parts), language, memory, or feeling
in some combination with experience and action compromises a conscious
mental state.

### 2.3 Being and doing
The body and its parts act by, through, and with the world. The mind
allows the body to work with knowledge. The body's parts have a
seperated consciousness of their own, defined by their range of motion
and the stimulus they receive. When the body or mind's will is exerted
in a certain way, a person is said to be doing something.

The mind is like the wilderness, and memory a map, a mess with details
filled in as one goes along by sense experience, contact with the
world. Reason, or one's internal rules and judgement, act as a compass,
guiding consciousness through the jungle of the soul; with memory of
mental states serving as the setting, volition acting to determine a
person's course with his logic to direct him, we see a simple image of
the human being.


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