Lost Knowledge w/ help from John Vervaeke

How Ancient Wisdom Can Help Us Escape the Modern Meaning Crisis...and understand the ancient's "other ways of knowing"!

This week, I had a good laugh at myself as I delved into one of my passions—trying to grasp how the ancients knew what they did. I found myself watching a few videos by John Vervaeke, a cognitive scientist who dives deep into the nature of consciousness using the "4E" model (embodied, embedded, enacted, and extended cognition). If that sounds dense, you're not alone. I had to pause and look up nearly every word of this gem:

"But here's the phenomenology. If you give me that recursive relevance realization, you're giving me perspectival knowing. You're giving me participatory coupling so I can have a participatory knowing through my perspectival knowing. I'm doing salience landscaping. I'm foregrounding and backgrounding."

I couldn't help but laugh. Like, what??!

But buried beneath the jargon was a genuinely valuable insight: Vervaeke critiques how knowledge has been overly reduced to propositions—what he calls "propositional tyranny."

In essence, propositional knowledge refers to factual knowledge, the kind of knowing that involves stating "the sky is blue" or "water boils at 100°C." According to Vervaeke, our understanding of knowledge has become too narrowly defined by these facts, leading to intellectual impoverishment. This narrowing, he suggests, overshadows other forms of knowing that the ancient Greeks, and likely the Egyptians, considered just as valuable.

So, what were these other ways of knowing that have been marginalized? Let's break it down:

1. **Diánoia (Discursive Knowing)**: This is the logical, step-by-step reasoning that allows us to analyze and derive conclusions. Think of it as the kind of mental processing that leads from one idea to the next in a structured manner.

2. **Techne (Procedural Knowing)**: This refers to the practical, hands-on knowledge—the "how-to." It's the skill involved in playing an instrument, building a house, or cooking a meal, often intuitive and embodied.

3. **Noesis (Perspectival Knowing)**: This is a form of direct insight or intuition. It's immediate, bypassing discursive thought, and gets at deeper truths that can't always be explained in propositional terms. In Plato's world, this is how we come to understand eternal truths.

4. **Gnosis (Participatory Knowing)**: This is the kind of knowledge that transforms the knower. It's experiential, a direct engagement with reality that alters your understanding of the world. Think of it as the kind of spiritual knowledge one gains through deep, personal experiences—knowledge not just of the head, but of the heart and soul.

When I brought this up with Chance, he mentioned metanoesis as another way of knowing. I just love that word! Metanoesis is a term that refers to a profound transformation or change in one's way of thinking, particularly in relation to one's inner life or spiritual understanding. It comes from the Greek word metanoia, which literally means "change of mind" or "repentance." However, in a deeper philosophical or theological context, meta noesis goes beyond merely changing one's thoughts—it's about a fundamental shift in consciousness or perspective.

In religious traditions, particularly in Christianity, metanoia often refers to repentance or a complete turning away from sin and toward a life aligned with divine will. In a broader philosophical sense, it can be seen as an awakening or a realization that transforms one's approach to life, transcending old patterns of thought and behaviour.

Metanoesis can involve a deeper understanding of reality and a shift from a narrow, ego-driven perspective to a more expansive, interconnected view of the self and the world. Metanoesis is often linked to spiritual enlightenment or inner awakening, where the individual moves toward a more profound state of wisdom, self-awareness, and truth.

Oh if only we could all get there!

I wondered if metanoesis and gnosis were the same, but Chat said they were not. "Although they share some similarities, particularly in their emphasis on deep, transformative understanding.

• Metanoesis (from the Greek metanoia) refers to a fundamental change in one's way of thinking, often associated with a shift in consciousness or a profound transformation of perspective. It implies a change of heart or mind, often in a spiritual or existential context. Metanoesis suggests a complete reorientation of how one sees and interacts with the world, frequently connected to repentance or a spiritual awakening, but it can also involve intellectual and psychological shifts.

• Gnosis (from the Greek gnosis, meaning "knowledge") refers to direct, experiential knowledge, especially of spiritual or mystical truths. In Gnostic traditions, gnosis is often described as an intimate, participatory knowing of the divine or the nature of reality. Unlike propositional knowledge (knowing about something), gnosis is a transformative experience where the knower is changed through direct engagement with the subject of their knowledge. It is more about a deep, inner understanding that transcends intellectual analysis.

While both terms involve transformative understanding, metanoesis focuses on a shift in thinking or consciousness, often leading to new perspectives, whereas gnosis is more about direct, experiential knowledge, often with a spiritual or mystical dimension. Both can result in profound changes in how one relates to reality, but their processes and emphases differ."

`I do not know enough to know if this is accurate, so please feel free to correct Chat or me if we are wrong! Anyway, back to Vervaeke...

Vervaeke's critique is that, over time, these richer, more diverse ways of knowing have been suppressed in favor of propositional knowledge—where knowledge is judged solely on how well it fits with reality in a factual or logical sense.

This historical narrowing of knowledge isn't just a philosophical abstraction. According to Vervaeke, it's led to a deeper problem: a disconnect between us and the world. As propositional knowledge became dominant, especially with the rise of nominalism (the belief that only particular, individual objects exist, without deeper, universal truths), we started observing the world from a distance, categorizing and naming things rather than engaging with them. This distance, he argues, has led to what he calls the "meaning crisis."

In other words, by stripping away these non-propositional ways of knowing—ways that involved participation, perspective, and procedural skill—we've alienated ourselves from the world. Our scientific and rational worldview may explain everything, but it leaves us disconnected from the deeper meaning of existence. We know facts, but we've lost touch with how we, as meaning-makers, belong in the world. And that's where the crisis lies.

In a way, Vervaeke is pointing out that ancient forms of knowing weren't just about collecting facts. They were about cultivating a relationship with reality, understanding through participation, and finding meaning in more than just the observable world. The Greeks knew this, and I suspect the Egyptians did too. If we want to reclaim some of that lost knowledge, we might need to look beyond propositional statements and rediscover the more holistic ways of knowing that ancient traditions embodied.

So, while Vervaeke's jargon made me chuckle, it's clear that his ideas resonate with a deeper truth: knowledge isn't just about what's true—it's also about how we connect, experience, and engage with the world around us.

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More soon!