ORIGINALLY WRITTEN IN 2012 but not posted till 2025.
This life is not just physics and biology.
It is also experiential and social. Any reduction or contempt for this meta-reality (metaphysics) prevents us studying how we are creative and ethical. When we create or make a moral choice it feels real because it is real. Being real, it has real-world effects apart from neuronal firing. Ignoring these effects is dangerous, really dangerous—just as ignoring a safe falling onto your head is dangerous. On the other hand, you can ignore your neurons entirely: there will not be the tiniest difference to what happens.
If you have a scientific bent, as I do, then you will believe that anything that is real can and should be studied. I call this meta-reality: psychosocial reality.
Grasping personal psychosocial reality is tricky because it naturally interacts with material impersonal reality i.e. whatever exists independently of our own will. This impersonal reality is more than physical reality, because it includes psychosocial realities (other existential universes) that are outside our control, interest or even knowledge. I often refer to it as empirical reality, but of course (as I explained in a recent blog) psychosocial phenomena have an empirical existence: i.e. they can be observed and manipulated.
I think these two realities, empirical-impersonal and psychosocial, probably correspond to Schopenhauer’s conceptions of will and representation. I think it parallels the divide identified by those philosophers who see consciousness as unredeemedly distinct from materiality. In classical times, Aristotle distinguished physics and metaphysics. In modern times, philosophers have noted the gap between The «Ought» and The «Is» (David Hume) or what is ethical and what is scientific (Immanuel Kant).
Religions, for their part, often assimilate what is physical to what is psycho-social and then make distinctions within that: e.g. Buddha’s Reality v Illusion/Maya/Samsara/Appearances, or Western spirituality v temporality.
Having devoted my life to clarifying its nature, I naturally believe that «psychosocial reality» deserves public recognition and serious study. It is non-physical—but don’t let your mind drift to esoterica like telepathy, reincarnation or near-death experiences. Instead think of language or planning.
Meanings are not physical: they do not occupy space, use up time, become subject to gravity. A sentence may be unequivocal, but its meaning rarely is. Different people may assign the same sentence numerous diverse meanings. Despite being non-physical, the elements and properties of language are studied scientifically without embarrassment.
Nor does a plan occupy space or get affected by time independently of its schedules. Different people will create different plans to reach the same goal. They will pursue the same plan over different time spans. And how any plan turns out depends on how it was developed as much as what it says. And of course when and where it is implemented and by whom may determine the outcome. But none of that undermines the reality of plans and planning.
I've often used purpose as an example, so let's use communication this time. My inquiries don’t entail detailed linguistic analyses because my concern is the role of language in endeavour. I want to see what our will can and does achieve via communication, not how a child becomes a fluent speaker or how different languages handle syntax or represent time.
Language is a feature of communication, and it is necessary for operationalizing thoughts. You can and do think without language, but until you say what you think, you cannot share your thoughts with others; and until you write down what you think, you do not have a record, and neither you nor anyone else can reflect and improve on your arguments.
So I want to get the picture of you-in-action clear: and this means not just addressing communicating and thinking, but also doing and inquiring and more. All these things combine to generate the unique psychosocial reality within which each of us lives. After many years of work, I believe that my Taxonomy of Human Elements in Endeavour provides a substantial, if largely unknown, foundation for further inquiries.
I realize that there will be little new for anyone within the taxonomy, even if some elements evoke negative attitudes or even revulsion. The Taxonomy explains why this is liable to happen. If you view differences as natural and not a basis for automatic hostility or avoidance, then you will welcome THEE.)
Because we create psychosocial reality as part of life, it is worth knowing something about its underlying nature and structures. In materialist science, the physical and informational objects are created, but the notion of «creating reality» makes no sense.
Studying experiences that constitute psychosocial reality is felt to be hard. Experience seems mysterious. I don't think it is, or at least not any more than materialist mysteries like gravity: for centuries gravity was a force, then it became a distortion of space, but nobody really knows what gravity is.
I am constantly surprised that experience is so hazy and problematical, and that highly intelligent people, who are in no way captured by materialism, find experiential life puzzling. Here is a quote from the English philosopher Mary Midgely:
The central puzzle [and] worry is … “How can we rationally speak of our inner experience at all? How can we regain our inner world - the world of our everyday experiences - as somehow forming part of the larger, public world which is now described in terms that seem to leave no room for it? On what map can both these areas be shown and intelligibly related?”
Mary: Be comforted. Don't worry. It is easy to speak of inner experience. Just avoid concepts and definitions, and instead look around you and describe what you see and feel. People generate experience all the time. They talk about it and spontaneously relate their experiences to the larger public world. Everyone, including you, handles this relationship all the time in whatever you do. And you do so without actually knowing the map or rules that unconsciously guide you. It is much like speaking, where we do not become aware of the grammar that ensures our speech and writing make sense.
I have discovered Mary's desired map after a lot of hard work, many blind alleys, thousands of errors, and much listening to people so as to help them at the moment of commitment.
If you think this taxonomy is valuable, then spread the word, explain it to a friend. If it intrigues you, then get more involved.
WK
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Warren Kinston