Q: Let us get back to the ‘knower’ and its history. You said its sole function is to generate objective knowledge. How about other types of knowledge claims? Where does subjective knowledge come from?
A: ‘Knowledge’ is a word with many shades of meaning, ranging from precise as in ‘scientific knowledge’ to ambiguous as in ‘mystical knowledge’. This is not surprising because like everything else associated with life, ‘knower’ too has been continuously evolving. Every generation of humans attempted to comprehend reality with their own state-of-the-art ‘knower’. This process resulted in a spectrum of comprehension in the history of our species.
Q: The ‘knower’ keeps adding new layers of objective knowledge. I can see how it accounts for progress in science. How about subjective knowledge or spiritual knowledge? Is it too a product of the ‘knower’?
A: Instinctive being-knowledge of our remote ancestors and rational objective knowledge of modern science are two ends of the spectrum of comprehension.
Q: What do you mean by ‘being-knowledge’?
A: Being and Knowing as one. Think about instincts. We don’t brand instincts as knowledge because there is no meta-cognition involved. Instincts are supposed to be hardwired behavior evolved through natural selection. Was there knowledge before meta-cognition? How far back into our evolutionary history can we trace knowledge? Knowing becomes a property of all living things once we understand the ‘knower’ function as a product of evolution.
Q: You mean ‘knowing’ goes all the way back to the first living cell 3.4 billion years ago?
A: Let us think about it. Identifying the mental function responsible for objective knowledge as ‘knower’ was a deliberate attempt to keep elusive stuff such as minds out of the discussion. A skeptic could raise objections about reality of mind, but not the ‘knower’. Objective knowledge is real hence its source, ‘knower’, must be real too.
What exactly is the stuff of this ‘knower’? Where did it come from? It is logical to assume ‘knower’ did not appear out of nowhere as our ancestors were coming down from trees to settle in caves. It must have had an evolutionary history going back millions of years. Primitive light sensitive cells were the precursor of the eye. What can we say about the evolutionary history of ‘knower’?
Q: The ‘knower’ doesn’t leave any fossils so we are into the realm of speculation.
A: We accept evolution of life as a fundamental truth. Change alone is permanent. A variety of ‘tools of comprehension’ must have emerged in the course of evolution. Idea of ‘comprehension’ must be broadened to include the entire evolutionary history of ‘knower’.
Q: Why not consider all pre-human knowing as mere information processing, hard-wired genetic capabilities evolved through natural selection?
A: Processing information about continuously changing environment and reacting accordingly is crucial for survival. But comprehension is more than passive information processing. It includes an active ‘knower’ component.
Q: Why do you think pre-human knowing involved active agency?
A: That is the most logical explanation to avoid bringing in the supernatural. It might appear simpler to assume other organisms are automatons. Why assign active agency to plants and animals? Think about it – knowing is an active process for humans. Where did this active agency come from? We should avoid miracles in natural explanations. Accepting the reality of knower leads to accepting its evolutionary history all the way back to the first living cell. This is a tough choice and it is the reason why physicalist philosophers who hate miracles and value internal consistency of their explanatory models end up denying consciousness itself.
Q: What can we say about the pre-human ‘knower’?
A: Being and knowing were the same for almost the entire duration of life’s history. The capacity to comprehend complex environments expanded over millions of years into a spectrum of capabilities. Undifferentiated ‘experiential knowledge’ is one end of the spectrum and subject independent ‘objective knowledge’ is the other end.
Q: Why did earlier ways of knowing persist even after newer versions of ‘knower’ emerged? Humans don’t use light sensitive skin cells for seeing any more. Why do we still carry earlier modes of knowing?
A: Newer ways of knowing were meant to complement older ways. Unfortunately, things did not work out that way. Friction between meta-cognitive knower and its source resulted in a power struggle that transformed the history of human species into a bloodbath. The ‘knower’, terrified of the unknowable, began waging an all-out war to assert its dominance.
Q: I don’t understand. Why do you say newer modes of knowing were not meant to replace older ones? Why can’t we forget the past and live with more robust ways of knowing such as science?
A: It is not possible because we are a product of time and our roots go very deep. We cannot live as objective man by ignoring our past. Any attempt to eradicate the unknowable will result in our own destruction. We will come back to this point later.
Q: I am confused. What other knowledge can complement objective knowledge? Spiritual knowledge? I don’t like the way this discussion is heading.
A: Please be patient. I am not suggesting anything irrational. Let us analyze the role of objectivity and subjectivity in experience. Imagine looking at the night sky with a million stars. Stars are nothing but huge balls of burning gas located at unimaginable distances. Science can explain the origin and death of stars. Now, what do you experience looking at the night sky? An unexplainable sense of wonder or a numbness at the random arrangement of huge balls of fire?
Q: Looking at the starlit sky is a wonderful experience.
A: Why do you say so? What is wonderful about balls of fire at unimaginable distances? It is a fact and nothing more than a fact. Why do you look at the starlit sky and say it is beautiful? Where does beauty come from?
Q: Beauty is in the fact that we can fathom the mystery of distant stars. Isn’t it wonderful science help us understand what stars are?
A: I don’t agree. Firstly, experiencing the beauty of starlit sky has nothing to do with knowing the facts of cosmology. A person with no idea about the physics of stars can have the same experience. Secondly, I don’t see why knowing the facts about stars lead us to experience beauty. Facts are just facts, nothing more and nothing less. Where does beauty come in?
Q: What is your explanation?
A: What happens when I look at the sky and see its beauty? There is a reset action in the thought process. The knower-known separation disappears for a brief moment. I let go, taking a free fall- from the safety of ‘knowing’ into a slippery, knowledge-less experience.
Q: Wait…wait. You are saying we sort of ‘inactivate the knower function’ for a brief moment?
A: Yes. Anyone acknowledging the night sky as beautiful is temporarily giving up objectivity. Please look at your experience carefully if you believe otherwise. There is nothing beautiful about the sky as long as it remains a random arrangement of fireballs. It is a fact and just that. One must go beyond definitions to open up another aspect of the same experience. This is what happens when you look at the sky and say “Ah!”.
Q: How can I inactivate the ‘knower’? You said earlier ‘I’ am the ‘knower’ and hence I have no control over it?
A: I said self-control is difficult. It takes practice. A lot practice if you are strongly identified with ‘knower’, your rational self.
Q: What is beauty? What exactly we mean by acknowledging the starlit sky as beautiful?
A: There is something in the starlit sky that is not captured in its definition. Names, definitions, mathematical models or any other kind of representations are tools of convenience. Nature has ungraspable qualities invisible to the scientific eye. Anyone looking at the night sky and claim to experience beauty is acknowledging this fact.
Q: What is that ‘something’ not captured in definitions?
A: It is incorrect to refer to it as a ‘thing’ because it is the reality beyond words and definitions. We could say it is ‘nature-as-it-is’, raw nature without names and definitions.
Q: Well, you said earlier the ‘knower’ is terrified of ‘nature-in-itself’. How can we experience beauty if that is the case?
A: The ‘knower’, at its infancy, was terrified of nature-in-itself. We have travelled far from that stage. Starlit sky is no more a mysterious dome waiting to fall on me. It is still the ‘other’ to be conquered, but the gulf of otherness is no more an existential threat.
Q: Does the beauty of the starlit sky disappear as we know more and more about its mechanism?
A: Knowledge doesn’t kill our ability to experience beauty. Rainbow is un-weaved only when we confuse the majestic arc stretched across the evening sky for its objective description. True, the first man who looked at a rainbow and saw its beauty had an easier job. The ‘thing’ didn’t even have a name! It was there, shockingly beautiful. Modern man is shielded from such powerful experiences by many layers of knowledge, but the capacity to look beyond and experience the original nature of things is still within us.
Q: I see what you mean. The ‘knower’ has matured and taken up the controller role of the conglomeration that I am. Our species has accumulated vast amounts of (reliable) knowledge in the past 300 years. But then why should ‘knower’ give up the controller role when I look at the starlit sky? Isn’t it in my best interest that ‘knower’ be in charge all the time?
A: We talked about two aspects of the knower-nature relationship. Fear/estrangement is only one of the aspects. There is also connection and dependency. ‘Knower’ is an offshoot of nature. It has gained dominance but still need to acknowledge its roots and maintain harmony with nature.
Q: Sometimes we should give up reason and blindly accept the mystery?
A: We should use reason to recognize and acknowledge its limits. There is no competition between ‘objective knowing’ and ‘direct experience’. The outcome of direct experience should never be confused with reliable knowledge. One cannot know the distance to the moon through direct experience.
Q: Well, then why do you insist it is important?
A: Binocular vision enables us see the world in three dimensions. Single eye vision will be flat, two dimensional. We will not be able to navigate the world effectively. Comprehension is no different. We evolved to experience reality as a whole, including its qualitative aspects. Stereoscopic comprehension requires the use of the entire spectrum of knowing.
The ear cannot hear all frequencies and eye cannot see all wavelengths. ‘Knower’ too is an evolutionary adaptation with its own scope and limit. The knower’s representations don’t capture everything in nature.
Q: Doesn’t that lead to chaos with conflicting truth claims?
A: No. It leads to harmony and meaning. A part of our experience of ‘nature-as-it-is’ is translated into representational knowledge. Ungraspable qualia are left out. We should find a way to incorporate the qualitative into our representations. Our ancestors did that through stories and myths. The ungraspable will appear as metaphors when translated into language. Combining the objective and subjective enables us to know and experience reality as it really is.
Mind, Evolution and Meaning 
“Two Eyed Seeing” is a Mi’kmaw concept for combining Western and Indigenous ways of knowing, particularly in the study of nature. Given the history of appropriation already experienced by Indigenous peoples, I would not want to see the concept similarly misappropriated or misunderstood. I think it’s important to delineate the idea clearly, and give credit to its Mi’kmaw originator, Elder Albert Marshall.
The metaphor of combining two views to discover depth is a slightly different idea, in which the views highlight a tension or contradiction to be transcended. No particular definition of those views need dominate; it might be subjective/objective, yin/yang, or truth/beauty, for example. The point is indeed “stereoscopic comprehension,” and I appreciate your reference to it.
Thank you for commenting and pointing to the specific meaning attached to ‘two-eyed-seeing’ in indigenous thinking. This series of ‘dialogues’ is a revised version of something I wrote nearly 30 years ago. I was always interested in the big questions and wrote down my thoughts as a series of articles, foolishly calling it ‘The Book of Life’ at that time. Some of it was published later, as rather cryptic blog posts and also a book chapter in 2010. It went through several revisions over the years, ending up with these dialogues. This is how the analogy appeared in the original version from 1995:
“We use two eyes to see the world. What would happen if we try seeing with one eye? Our world picture will be flat, two-dimensional. We will only see length and width, not the depth of things. Two eyes are essential for stereoscopic vision. This is the case with perception too. Human cerebral cortex has two halves. Left hemisphere deals with rational ideas and logic. Right half manages feelings, artistic abilities and pattern recognition. When perception is limited to rational or ‘left-brain’ mode, resulting experiences will lack ‘meaning’ or the depth dimension. Both left and right brains are needed for stereoscopic perception. Evolution gave us two eyes and two brains. It is natural for us to see depth in what we observe. It is also natural to perceive meaning in what we experience”
I’m pleased to find someone else who sees the potential of the analogy. My own interest goes back to the 1970’s, when I began a playful exploration of “The Doctrine of the Two Eyes of the Divine.” It wasn’t until 2020 that I decided to post those loose-leaf scribbles in semi-organized form as a blog, and to supplement them with other reflections on duality (along with whatever subjects of the day took my interest). It was only recently, after starting the blog, that I learned about Two-Eyed Seeing, or for that matter the ideas of Iain McGilchrist.
I’m pleased to find someone else who sees the potential of the analogy. My own interest goes back to the 1970’s, when I began a playful exploration of “The Doctrine of the Two Eyes of the Divine.” It wasn’t until 2020 that I decided to post those loose-leaf scribbles in semi-organized form as a blog, and to supplement them with other reflections on duality (along with whatever subjects of the day took my interest). It was only recently, after starting the blog, that I learned about Two-Eyed Seeing, or for that matter the ideas of Iain McGilchrist.
(I’ve tried to post this comment a couple of times already, but without success.)
It is a powerful analogy, but as you might have realized from the comments it is hard for someone with an overwhelmingly physicalist outlook to appreciate, so the debate will continue!
(sorry you had difficulty posting comments. I too find wordpress sometimes behaving weird)
The point you make with the wonder felt looking at stars in the night sky, and the beauty of the rainbow- to me is the essence of this discussion.
It is like smelling the fragrance of a rose…doesn’t matter how many accurate details we know about the biology of its petals or the chemistry behind its molecules, the subjective experience of the fragrance cannot be captured within that objective knowledge. The two do not and cannot meet, although they both represent elements of the reality of that rose.
There is no competition between the two, as you say and I agree- as long as they are both aware of their respective limitations. The problem can only come from the ignorance, when one tries to override the other, or misunderstanding one for the other.
For me, the most striking and relevant difference between the two is this:
The ‘direct experience’ can only happen in this very moment, always here and now, in the immediate present- this wonder is fresh and new in each instant. The moment any ‘knowledge’ about it is accessed, it comes as a concept from the memory, from the already known (which is not a direct immediate perception). In the moment of the actual ‘looking’ there is an uncontaminated pure perception. Any another knowledge is only a concept that comes from the past stored in memory (regardless of whether it is a scientifically valid fact or not).
There is a gap, between the ‘real direct experience’ of reality and a ‘concept’ derived from memory. These two are obviously fundamentally and qualitatively different forms of knowing, there is no way to capture, express and communicate the ‘direct’ knowing of the present moment, into words, except as concepts- which again belong to the memory.
The ungraspable qualitative experience of ‘reality’ has a flavour that can only be known in the immediate moment of the ‘now’, while its memory may be stored and remembered later (which will then, only be a concept).
This ‘knowing’ can only happen in the present moment, and has a deep connection with the ‘alert, aware, presence’ of the knower. Perhaps pointing towards a shared reality between the two, which meet only in the ‘now’ of the present moment? Unlike the ‘objective’ details which have no connection whatsoever with the knower!
Thank you. You are right about the role played by memory. Both kinds of knowing are important, but we tend to prioritise ‘memory based’ knowing and explain other modes of knowing using concepts derived from memory, which is the real ignorance.