Knowing, Yet Not Really 'Knowing' - Internal and External Wisdom

in #philosophy7 years ago (edited)

“To know and not to do, is not to know.”
- Wang Yangming

What does that mean?

One can have internal initial wisdom, but there is also external proper wisdom. I say initial and proper, because the proper wisdom has to do with executing right-actions (physical or verbal), while the initial wisdom is the understanding of how to act, but not acting yet.

There is a difference between having internal knowledge and understanding, and properly applying that knowledge and understand to externally act upon it. If we don't act upon our understanding of what's right to do, then we're missing out on engaging in right-action, and will likely keep engaging in either a suboptimal action, a wrong-action, or inaction that prevents change for the better.

If we want to change our behavior to engage in better actions, then we need to have the inner-vision first before executing that vision into the world. We need to think of what's right before we can be right. First comes the initial internal wisdom, then comes the proper external wisdom.

Understanding must be unified with action at some point in order for something to result from that understanding. This is the basis of the Trivium Methodology (knowledge, understanding and wisdom). Otherwise, understanding without action leads to nothing being done in the end. Nothing will end up changing or being healed in the world.

Action through conscious will-power is required for things to change around us. Having accurate understanding of what ‘is’ in reality is the first step. We need to gain knowledge first, then process it to understand it better.

Once we know, what are we going to do with what we know?

That is how you can know something but not truly know it because you're not acting on that knowledge. Knowledge provides understanding so that we can act wisely. The knowledge/understanding is what brings us the potential to act. If we don't bring that knowing into being/doing, then we don't really know the value of the knowledge or understanding that can bring us to act, and that means we don't really know.

The quote ("to know and not to do, is not to know") is one of those "cleverly" worded phrases that wants to mystify you with a paradox; that doesn't make sense unless you dig deeper into it's meaning. It's like an encoded message that needs to be deciphered. It's short and confusing, so not the best for conveying direct meaning.

Knowledge and understanding is not power in itself. Right-action developed through accurate understanding imbues knowledge with power. Knowledge alone has no power. Our will-power makes knowledge powerful because we act upon it. Knowledge and understanding have no power in the world without the wisdom to act on it rightly.

We can remake the falser conditioned versions of ourselves into truer selves. Remove the conditioning into falsity, and recondition ourselves in truth instead. Unlearn what we have learned automatically and involuntarily. And instead, voluntarily choose to learn more accurate knowledge about the world and ourselves (self-knowledge).

Right-action is knowing and understanding properly, and then acting upon it. We can act from a position of lack of knowledge and understanding and hope to get the results we want. But since we don't know enough about the situation to produce the results we want, acting from a position of ignorance is not likely to produce the results we really want. Only by understanding the core foundational root causal factors of the situation/problem we are in (why something is as it is), can we come to a position of accurate understanding in order to apply proper solutions. The knowledge and understanding is one level of empowerment, but our willpower is required to empower us to greater levels of being through the wisdom of right-action.

It's true that sometimes we can have the wisdom to act, but we are limited and unable to act in that fullest potential wisdom due to the limits of our ability to influence change upon the world (we can't control everyone else). We can know what needs to be done, but getting everyone to do it is something else entirely.

Sometimes the only action to take is to output knowledge and understanding through words to write, speak, share, and preach about it for others to learn. Then when we are on the same page, we can make things happen together. That's how we can change the human world we live in, by co-creating through common knowledge and understanding of what matters. Being on the same page is important, and requires unified knowledge as well as unified moral action.


Thank you for your time and attention. Peace.


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It sort of reminds me of when you see something happening to someone like a fight for example , you see them getting Beat , you want to act , a lot of people do, but don't , why does that happen ? @krnel

Fear. And that makes us less united, integrated and consistent within ourselves. We become conflicted because we don't do what we know we should do :(

I wish there was a way to conquer that fear , make us more united with humanity .

There is: Care for truth and moral truth above all.

We can act from a position of lack of knowledge and understanding and hope to get the results we want. But since we don't know enough about the situation to produce the results we want, acting from a position of ignorance is not likely to produce the results we really want.

But sometimes we do get the results we wanted despite having the wrong assumptions about the world. In this way we get a false-positive feedback that allows us to keep a chunk of flawed knowledge and to even feel that it has been confirmed. This is why being sure of knowledge gained only through personal experience is not always prudent and this is why we should always be open to changing the positions we hold thinking they are knowledge.

I personally think that we should probe into reality as much as we can and should question all assumptions as much as possible, so we can continue to adjust our internal model of reality to something that is slowly creeping closer and closer to correctly describing reality (both individually and as a species as a whole). But we should also keep in mind that it's extremely likely that at least a part of the model that we have established so far might not really correspond to reality.

In a broader sense, I honestly don't know how to approach the term knowledge as I have a very hard time establishing any absolute claim with absolute certainty. As we are limited in our understanding, our internal model of reality is always going to be incomplete and imperfect, so keeping that in mind what it knowledge really?

To a certain extent, the way you approach it here in this post is quite practical if I'm reading your points correctly - knowledge is the beliefs we hold about reality that allow us to achieve the desired results through our actions. In this way, even if we are basing ourselves on false positives or misplacing the causal link, we still have an internal approximation of reality that allows us to get the results we want more often than not through our actions. Am I close to what you meant or am dragging your point out of context here?

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Its interesting to read this from you Krnel.

I just heard yesterday in a TV series which I thought was profound - "Sometimes the wisdom is in knowing that you CANNOT change it"...

Like you refer to right action, sometimes, right action is to NOT act...

Thank you for the share!

"Though I have all knowledge and have not will power, I am nothing." I paraphrase but I think another great writer agrees with you, although yours maybe a little easier to understand. Keep up the great work.

Thanks, good quote too ;)

"understanding without action leads to nothing being done in the end". Sounds like "Shoot first and ask questions later" (a philosophy I ascribe to myself)

This all sounds very much like Kant's Transcendental Aesthetic... another attempt at the great epistemological question.

Well not really shoot first, you missed the part of understanding being about WHY, and the knwoeldge being about WHO, WHAT, WHERE, WHEN. Questions first :P

But from what I gathered, it talked about understanding being intuitive... an a priori understanding... shoot first and... was just a sort of crude generalization of that.

There is "emotional knowledge" and "intellectual knowledge".

The emotional knowledge is if I really understood something in my inner core. Lived knowledge if you like. I can get taught that crypto markets are very volatile for example and on an intellectual knowledge standpoint I might understand why and how to act accordingly.

But to really understand it I have to experience it myself and then how I react and if I really understood it.

As Tony Robbins said "Knowledge is not power…it’s potential power. Execution will trump knowledge any day."

very good read.

Be - Do - Have

That is the proper order of things.
Because without proper knowing, you actions will be folly.
But when you change your thoughts to proper thinking, then you actions will be in harmony with the universe, and good will flow from your doing.

In general, I can agree with that :) Be, Do, Have is a good model, as opposed to what some use as Have, Do, Be (wrong order). "I need to have something, before I do something, then I'll be something" "Get this, to do that, to be 'happy'" for instance.

A well written article indeed.Good point. Knowledge is power, upped.

"Our will-power makes knowledge powerful because we act upon it." OR does accruing knowledge about our own will-power help our will-power become more powerful since we know more about it than we used to?

Knowledge of self, self-knowledge, is empowering to help understand how willpower is important.

Wow.... another good philosophy post from you! It is very practical and enriching for me personally.

Whenever the topic of 'knowing' comes up I am always reminded of a quote by one of my favorite philosophers, Socrates: "I know one thing; that I know nothing"

Socrates was really smart, especially for his day

"I know one thing; that I know nothing"

Do you want to explain it? It's a contradiction on it's own terms. And it's not true that one knows nothing. I don't like convoluted "clever" rhetoric because it can provide false interpretations that confuse people and gives them a misunderstanding about how things operate.

Hah, you ask a good question, I knew I should have prepared before commenting !! It's not so easy to explain what he means by this without going deeper into Plato/Socrates. Socrates was known for his inquisitive style of teaching philosophy. Oftentimes it would start with somebody making a claim, and Socrates asking questions which slowly uncover the errors in thinking of the one who said it. Socrates often 'acted the fool' and was thus the wiser man.

I found this excellent summary of Socrates' 'lack of knowledge' online which I will copy/paste here:

[quote]
"You need the full quote/ story to begin to understand this quote. Plato gives a version of the story from the mouth of his Socrates, in his ‘Apology for Socrates’.

Socrates had a friend named Chaerephon who went to the Oracle at Delphi and asked if any man was wiser than Socrates. The Oracle replied that no-one was wiser than Socrates.

Socrate heard about this and was confused and troubled by the answer. Socrates says that he is very conscious of the fact that he is not wise at all. Yet he knows the Oracle to be the voice of the Gods and spoke the truth, he must therefore be the wisest. This seemed paradoxical to him.

So Socrates went out and sought wise men and he questioned them. When he challenged their wisdom through questions, the wise would become angry and avoid him.

Socrates decides that he is in fact wiser than these men. For the ‘wise’ believe that they are wise and many around them believe in their wisdom. Socrates finds that neither of them knows anything worthwhile but the wise believe they know something and yet they do not anything worthwhile. Socrates at least realises that he does not know anything worthwhile. Socrates paraphrases the Oracle to have meant ‘human wisdom is worthless, the wisest are those who like Socrates know that their wisdom is worthless’.

The story is subversive (which is ironic as Socrates tells this story in his defence when accused of subversion). The first people that he said that he challenged were the politicians who led Athens. Socrates asserts the right of the philosopher to challenge authority and the right of the fool to be a philosopher.

For Socrates perhaps, wisdom is to be found in questions and not in answers.
[/endquote]

I think that does a decent job at explaining.

This takes me to the scriptures, when the Apostle James says; 22 But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves. 23 For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man observing his natural face in a mirror; 24 for he observes himself, goes away, and immediately forgets what kind of man he was. 25 But he who looks into the perfect law of liberty and continues in it, and is not a forgetful hearer but a doer of the work, this one will be blessed in what he does.

This means knowledge without action is dead.

Yeah you can have all the knowledge in the world but without action it's practically useless.

I have heard that their is a connection to the growth of the brain and wisdom. At some point as an adult the brain is 'ready' to understand and grows wisdom. At about 48 I noted I was starting to gain this wisdom factor. I could not have had it at 42 or 36 even if I tried. I was not ready. My brain was not ready. It is different ages for different people from what I see. Don''t know if there is any science on this, however it is my understanding. Good article. Thanks for the wisdom today. - Troy

I don't there is truth to that. Wisdom is psychological. Psychological development occurs with age of course, as a 1 year old isn't as experienced with the world or themselves. But you don't need to be 30, 40 or 50 to gain wisdom of what is right to do ;) It's base don information from our environment that allows us to learn. Reality teaches, but are we paying attention or looking to learn actively? Time is required. Put in the time early and you can become wiser earlier.

Thanks for explaining it that way. It makes more sense. I must have been a late bloomer LOL - Troy

we should use the informations we know, we have to take action!

Yes, thanks for this very good motivation @krnel.

i think it incrasing our knowledge and i try it.

this post is really inspiring