The Epistemic Odyssey: All Onboard

It remains unclear whether one can force these things. What some might refer to as brainstorming, contemplation, ideation, thinking, and so on. The issue is not that this undertaking is different, inasmuch as I am neither able to locate it precisely with respect to the aforementioned terms nor am I am able to remark on its particular divergence, yet. Furthermore, the process of deciphering the foremost problem continues and will continue.

A familiar fear resurfaces. What if, following the first piece, I find that I have depleted my “creative” reserves? It is certainly the case that I must entertain the possibility that all my efforts and time poured into this activity could yield nothing. Moreover, I hate to admit this but I remain hopeful. Having recognised the iterative nature of my process, or better yet having observed a persistent inclination to turn to a process seemingly iterative, a diminutive optimism persists. Indeed, the hatred, conflicting as it may be, has been a function of desiring a particular kind of output, product, or result.

I was about to remark that my thoughts are fleeting. Doubt emerges right away, for how could I be certain that these thoughts are mine. Alternatively, what does it mean to presuppose thoughts as possessions? It seems to me that thoughts are almost always assumed to originate from one’s mind. 

Under the presumption that one remains a constant, thoughts are contingent on the external, be it an other, as well as some combination of culture, social, economic, and political, as well as temporal, with past as retained history, present as fleeting moments, future as an imagined possibility. It is perhaps not difficult to second Klein’s insight that these determinants lie beyond the scope of the individual. It is not, however, the case that that should suggest that the possession of a thought remains beyond us. Lest we forget, this would require one to be a constant as well as achieve uniformity with and across the other. This is undoubtedly not so. Indeed, the question of ‘who’ one seems ever contingent and situated within the material body. In other words, the question of one’s self-hood remains unanswerable without reference to one’s appearance, capacities, and even limitations. The scope of these aspects, however, begin beyond the individual. 

The concept of limitation, presented here, demands some explication. For by limitation, what is truly meant is the utmost potential within some combination of the biological and psychological limit. In some ways, this resonates with Kierkegaardian conception of possibility rather than his conception of necessity. Put it differently, our world is such that seldom does one achieve the potential of their limitations. 

Indeed, it remains unclear whether one can force these things. The aforementioned is at the very least an attempt of an epistemic kind; it is at the very least an attempt. As a function of this attempt, it seems that a propositional architecture now stands erect. It has been implied elsewhere that to be a philosopher is to have particularly ethical relationship with one’s thought (Tesar, 2021). It has also been suggested that understanding, instead of truth convergence, be one’s primary epistemic aim (Hannon & Nguyen, 2022). And that this aim is achievable by grasping the network of relations between things. It seems to me, then, that understanding is the phenomenon wherein (a) one becomes acutely conscious of a particular aspect or element within a “singular” phenomenon, (b) holds multiple aspects and elements such kind, and (c) is able to perceive the myriad of discursive and potential relations between these aspects. Thus, it follows that to have an ethical relationship with one’s thought, at an epistemic level, is to trace back, as it were, one’s grasping of the act of being conscious, various and disparate aspects and elements, and the subsequent relationships.

This undertaking could solely exist within one’s mind. Perhaps, for the most part and by most, it is relegated to one’s mind. Writing, or more specifically, the construction of propositional architecture of the epistemic variety, seems an extension of this. This architecture, in principle and potentially, serves me as a visual component towards this grasping of understanding. On reflection, there were other components as well, such as a mind-map. However, my mind-maps were hitherto in the service of writing, for the most part and mostly, for my YouTube videos. In some sense, this latter component was subordinate to the former i.e., writing. This value assessment is not without recourse. In recent months, a particular idea continues to stir within. At a first glance it would appear as a mind-map albeit a large one. It would but be a network, more precisely. It would, in principle, serve not any piece of writing directly but rather as a daily cue, given that it would be placed somewhere within, in Heideggerian terms, my average everydayness. Assuredly, there would be both other visual components as well as other components. As I remain without their knowledge, they remain without a remark.

The question, of digital tools within this, remains unanswered. I can certainly attest to the convenience of the digital over the analog or the manual. Admittedly, it is the case that this textual staging is facilitated by a digital device. My dilemma, in some sense, has been contingent on this particular dichotomy. Within, then, friction flourishes. It is felt that writing should continue by hand guiding a pen. In contrast, the implications emerge such as the infeasible nature given the facticity of my life i.e., using available time during my commute to work. Implication such as this one impede my desire to nest this philosophical activity within the average everydayness. In certain sense, I solemnly believe that a nested philosophical activity such as this to be different, and perhaps, if not better than, closer in its orientation to the problem. 

Using the aforementioned dichotomy sheds light onto the problem. At this point, I’m inclined to say that the average everydayness is, to quote T.S. Elliot, likely to be the distraction that distracts us from the distractions. Implicit within this assertion is the idea that the access to the problem is contingent by the distance from the average everydayness. One would be accepting that to do away with one’s average everydayness is to have some perfect access to the problem. And yet, the cessation of one type of average everydayness would result in another. Perhaps, average everydayness possesses, at once, elements of facticity i.e., that which is, lived and experienced (Sparkes, 1996) independent of opinion and elements of fiction i.e., the narrative  established in the service of facts and facticities (ibid). Average everydayness, then, is less social than it is particular. It is a particular life of a particular individual as a function of a particular world. 

Earlier I said that average everydayness is less social.  Imagine a subject tasked with commandeering a generation ship, relegated solely to the sections of the ship pivotal to the journey, away from sections of irrelevance to his post; including all the cryogenic pods. These pods, tasks with holding human society in a limbo, exist as tangential knowledge to our subject. Indeed, the social implicates and continues to implicate him through his imagination, real but far out of reach or directly. Alternatively, imagine a subject taking birth in a generation ship, which through some fault has eliminated every other life but hers. The ship sustains the baby, but without an education. Indeed, it is difficult for me to imagine the nature of such life. But, under the presumption that, seldom does language developed without the other, thought process as we know it, would cease to exist. I’m inclined to believe that the thought process, as a function of this generation ship, wherein our subject is devoid of any physically or practical danger, with limitless supply of sustenance, would remain something more primal. This lonely subject would, indeed, have a particular average everydayness. Whilst the concept of days and months would collapse, the subject would have periods of time cycling through, punctuated by sleep and other bodily sub-routines. I would imagine that this subject would have no access to the problem. Indeed, perhaps not at all. However, these ideas seem strongly and forever contingent on each other. It is perhaps the accessibility towards the problem, itself, that necessitate the problem. Seemingly, it is not because one has a problem that one ends up accessing it, but rather it is precisely the potential and actual accessibility and capacity for a problem that establishes the problem.

Lest this detail is lost, average everydayness is not not social. In the aforementioned predicament, the subject finds themselves surrounded by an implicit social. A social deeply imbedded within the machinery of our generation ship and the historic, both cognitive and manual, contributions leading up to the production of such machinery. A contribution made possible and mediated through language, cultural, and experience. However, my earlier argument stands; inasmuch as social might be implicit, average everydayness is indeed more idiographic than it is social. This declaration indeed privileges the immediate rather than the historic. And I’d have to be at peace with it, for now. This particularity seems crucial, in other words, the temporal aspects of our subject remain inescapable.

Indeed, I remain uncertain. The attempt, of constructing this epistemic architecture, discursively, leaving behind fragments of thought, continues. Certainly, I can and I could, and I do and I have. Doubt emerges fleetingly. As things currently stand, the relationship between average everydayness and the Kierkegaardian synthesis seemingly warrants exploration.

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Bibliography

Denzin, N. K. (1989).  Interpretive biography. SAGE Publications Inc. https://doi.org/10.4135/9781412984584

Hannon, M., & Nguyen, J. (2022). Understanding philosophy. Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy, 1–37. https://doi.org/10.1080/0020174X.2022.2146186

Heidegger, M. (2019). Being and Time (Paperback ed.). London: Harper Perennial Modern Classics. Available at: https://amzn.to/4hlIJMS

Kierkegaard, Søren. The Sickness Unto Death: A Christian Psychological Exposition for Edification and Awakening. (2021 Edition). Translated by Alastair Hannay. Penguin Classics. A seminal existential work examining despair and selfhood. Available at: The Sickness Unto Death on Amazon.

Sparkes, A. C. (1996). The Fatal Flaw: A Narrative of the Fragile Body-Self. Qualitative Inquiry, 2(4), 463-494. https://doi.org/10.1177/107780049600200405

Tesar, M. (2021). “Philosophy as a Method”: Tracing the Histories of Intersections of “Philosophy,” “Methodology,” and “Education”. Qualitative Inquiry, 27(5), 544-553. https://doi.org/10.1177/1077800420934144