The search for knowledge is the act to more and more accurately understand and describe the natural world. A key process in this endeavor is in the associations we make between cause-and-effect over time to be able to navigate the world. Neurostoicism teaches that we must gain control of our neuro-associations to direct our thoughts, beliefs, and emotions in the most life enhancing way possible. In this practice, the Stoics showed that we must focus on our Wills to the exclusion of externals. We cannot be like spoiled children wishing to have everything that we wish to come true. We must be guided by the works of Nature. We are required to make use of the phenomena of existence. We need to change what we can, have patience to endure what we cannot, and build the insight to know the difference. Our contemporary materialist culture focuses on quick and easy fixes. It focuses on satisfying desires, and not on moderation. What is the irresponsible use of social media except the valuation of externals? What is centering one's life on anything other than principles except a valuation of externals? Neurostoicism focuses on living a principle centered life around the leading virtues of wisdom, love/justice, courage, and self-control. For more information on the techniques of Neurostoicism visit the site https://app.neurostoic.com/about/. A major theme in philosophical discourse, beginning with Rene Descartes, and continuing to the present, is the question of how it is that humans come to know something, and what is the nature of this understanding. The answer to this question is needed to live our lives. This question is critical to Neurostoicism, because the answer results from how we direct our minds, thoughts, actions, and emotions. Historically, there arose two camps of thought concerning this issue, the Continental rationalists, continuing in the spirit of Descartes, and the British empiricists.
The British empiricists include Locke, Berkeley, and Hume in the 17th and 18th centuries. They shared the conviction that our knowledge comes from acting in, and experiencing the world, through our senses as opposed to through pure reason. These thinkers supported an empirical approach to knowledge as against rationalism (using only pure reason). But this was just a rediscovery of the Stoic idea we have a duty to follow Nature, and understand the supremacy of the Will (judgements of experience). Empiricism is the recreation of Stoic thought in scientific terminology.
Descartes, Leibniz, and Spinoza are among the Continental rationalists, who were alive during approximately the same period as the empiricists. They believed pure reason is the most reliable source of knowledge about the world without reference to experience. In a strong sense, the rationalists believed that the mind has direct access to universal truths. This is like the Stoic idea of natural law as emerging from reason, but the Stoic emphasis was on the mind as a natural phenomenon, not as distinct from Nature. Whereas the rationalists considered the mind to be equivalent to God's mind as it is made in the image of the deity.
Given this context, David Hume makes an important contribution to this discussion and so does Neurostoical distinctions. To comprehend Humes contribution, it is important to clearly state Hume's goal in writing his philosophical discourses, particularly An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding. He wanted to methodically show how rationalism is false, and to delineate the capacities and sources of human knowledge. Specifically, he wished to show how our understanding is derived from experience of cause-and-effect. Neurostoicism further refines this idea in that experience of cause-and-effect is our chosen responses to stimuli and the subjective reality we create around these responses beyond any instinctual reaction.
According to Hume, when we examine the contents of the mind, we find it composed of impressions (mental experiences from sensation) and ideas (thoughts built upon impressions). The distinction he makes between these two are the degrees to which each is charged with force and vivacity. Following this same argument, impressions are seen as being more powerfully imbued with emotion. Ideas are considered as weaker copies of impressions. Hume's view is that our ideas originate as copies from our impressions, and impressions result directly from experience. Neurostoicism refutes that impressions come directly from experience but compresses impressions and ideas into mental and emotional responses to stimuli that are under our control.
There are two principle arguments Hume employs to prove that our impressions are the source of all our ideas. First, he asserts that if you analyze your thoughts, you will find that they simply boil down to strong impressions. Stated another way, behind every idea you will find an impression of which it is a copy. Second, he proposes that meaningful ideas are closer to the impressions which they represent. Nonsensical concepts have no impression to back them up. In other words, experience must precede any meaningful idea. For example, I could attempt to describe all the subtleties of smelling a rose to someone who had no olfactory sense, and this person could not ever come to an idea that matched the actual experience of this smell. Neurostoicism takes this a step further, and states that all thoughts, emotions, beliefs, and knowledge are created through the filter of the Will. Neurostoicism seeks to fine tune this filter in order to find the good in all experience.
By considering the qualities of force and vivacity, Hume proposes that we can always return to our primary impressions to get at the meaning of our thoughts. In this system, to test whether a thought is meaningful, you see if it comes from a defined impression. In the case that it does, that idea is meaningful. This test also establishes the usefulness of a given thought for understanding the world. The closer an idea is to its impression, the greater its relevance to our experience. Neurostoicism takes this a step further, and states the accuracy of any thought is directly proportional to the extent to which it accurately reflects Nature. This is exactly what the scientific method is testing and is the reason it is so powerful to advance knowledge.
It is significant that, unlike the rationalists, Hume refuses to call in the existence of God to guarantee the reliability of the mind. In the Humean picture, the proposed existence of God is irrelevant. And he believes that the rationalists are wrong to presume that our thoughts are accurate because supposedly God made us that way. Hume takes a closer look at the mind and finds it composed of impressions and ideas, all derived from experience. Implicit in Hume's ideas so far is a direct argument against the rationalist's position. That argument can be stated as follows: the more distant we move from primary experiences, increasingly our thoughts become more and more removed from reality. Essentially, he is exposing the epistemological weakness of pure reason, as moving away from experience, and therefore undermining itself from truth. Pure reason gets less and less meaningful as it moves away from the impressions which support it.
In his Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, Hume identifies a system of relationships between ideas. They are the principles of resemblance, contiguity, cause-and-effect. Hume is at the same time further weakening the rationalist position by here refuting their contention that the relations of thoughts are self-evident. The rationalists conceive of the mind as being able to determine whether something is true just by presenting it to their awareness, without relating it to anything else. Hume shows that the rationalists have it all wrong, in that as we think, we associate one idea with another to form our sense of truth. In this view, thinking is closely allied with considerations of cause-and-effect. Neurstoicism shows that this is a subjective and intersubjective process that we can and must control.
Although Hume has, using the arguments given up to this point, been disproving the rationalists and affirming the empiricists’ arguments, the following points he hopes will result in the clear invalidation of a rationalist basis of knowledge. David Hume begins by making a distinction between relations of ideas (a priori truths) and matters of fact (specific statements about the world).
Relations of ideas are a class of intellectual inquiry that do not depend directly on physical phenomena. This is knowledge acquired by the mind through reasoning alone. An example is mathematical thinking; for instance, 2 + 2 = 4. Likewise, a mathematician could imagine a thousand-sided object, without ever having seen any such object. Physicists can create models of higher dimensions of which they cannot experience externally. Even as these thoughts don't necessarily have any reference in the world, you can still test their truth by using logic. For example the following sentence can be determined to be true or not without referring to anything in the world:
All working-class adults primarily get their money from earned wages.
In this example the truth of this statement is a matter of its relationship of ideas. Its accuracy is implicit in the definition of the term working-class, the part of society whose income is mainly from wages in exchange for labor. This statement would be true whether any such class existed in the world. A given thought can be determined to be true or not by looking at its relationship with other ideas. Specifically, to test a sentence such as the above, you evaluate if the sentence can be denied without creating a self-contradiction. For example, what if I say the following sentence instead:
Some working-class adults primarily get their money from earned wages.
Using the test previously stated, this sentence is contradictory in that we already know that to be of the working-class it necessarily means that you get your money primarily from earned wages. Therefore, this sentence is not true, because it can be denied without creating a contradiction. Whereas the first sentence cannot be denied without creating a contradiction. Hume makes a clear dividing line between arguing about the relation of ideas (terms, definitions, and logical models), and materials or events physically experienced in the world. Neurostoicism elaborates on this by pointing out that in many of our thoughts about the relationship of ideas, we are making value judgments that are a matter of interpretation and perception that we must guard against externals. Ironically, we must also conform our minds to Nature.
Matters of fact, on the other hand, directly refer to things experienced in the world. As an example, using the sentence format once again, consider the following statement:
The United States spends much more money on the military than on all forms of education combined.
I could just as easily turn this statement around and say more money is spent on education without creating a logical contradiction. In addition, the merit of truth accorded to this statement is judged by whether it describes the way the world is. The fact that the above sentence is true now, does not mean that it will continue to be true in the future. It is conditional. The opposite statement could be true at some stage in history. In other words, denying a statement of fact does not create a self-contradiction. Again, Neurostoicism elaborates on this by pointing out that in many of our thoughts about facts, we are adding value judgments that are a matter of interpretation. We must also merge our Will with Nature's will. You may factually say that you grew up with minimal finances, but to say this is "good" or "bad," you are adding an interpretation to the fact. These interpretations are inevitable, so lets make them work for us. We may as a community agree to congruent intersubjective ideas about "objective" reality, but these may never escape the gravitational pull of subjective point of view. It is like the idea of limits in calculus, you may approach actual "truth," but can never reach it completely.
It should be clarified that many thoughts are hybrids of matters of fact and relations of ideas. The reason Hume is making a sharp contrast between the two is to show that the rationalists have for the most part, through their arguments, removed themselves from talking about how the world actually is experienced. The rationalists propose that the correspondence of their thoughts to the world is guaranteed by God's decree. David Hume argues that this is not enough. By making a separation between these two forms of inquiry, Hume wishes to first place rationalists square inside the relations of ideas category of inquiry, and then to show how knowledge of the world doesn't involve arguing over the relation of ideas, or indeed using reason alone, as I will explain shortly.
Next, Hume begins to formulate his strongest argument against the rationalists. He says that all knowledge about the world comes from suppositions of relations based on cause-and-effect. His position is to say, if you take a sharp look at your beliefs and impressions, they seem to arise for causal reasons. Along these lines, Hume believes that experience creates our impressions. If I hear footsteps in my hallway, I believe there is a person walking outside my door. Neurostoicism argues that this is too deterministic, because between stimuli and response is my Will making interpretations. Yes, the stimuli initiates a response, but that response is caused by my mind.
Simply examine your understanding of an object or event. Neither what caused it, nor its effects become apparent through pure reason, as Hume explains so well. We fantasize when we think that if we were brought, on a sudden, into this world, we could have inferred, that one billiard ball would communicate motion to another upon impulse; and that we need not to have waited for the event, to pronounce with certainty concerning it. Motion in the second billiard ball is a quite distinct event than the motion in the first; nor is there anything in the one to suggest the smallest hint of the other. In vain, therefore, should we pretend to determine any single event, or infer any cause or effect, without the assistance of observation and experience. Neurostoicism argues further that we can know nothing or make progress without the guidance of Nature. That our thoughts and actions are always the most powerful when they are aligned with natural phenomena. Likewise, contemporary culture has strayed from the truth just like the rationalists in the extent to which it is not attuned to the works of Nature and that it emphasizes materialism and instant gratification.
Knowledge of cause and effect then, as Hume conceives of it, results from discovering two events constantly cojoined in a certain set of circumstances. But we need to be careful with this process, otherwise we allow ourselves to have unhelpful neuro-associations. We may make connections that are sub-optimal. Our understanding comes from knowing cause and effect relationships. There is nothing in our processes of reasoning alone to suggest that what has happened in the past will happen in the present. Human understanding is nothing more than our intuitive custom of drawing inferences from past experience. Hume even continues by saying that animals seem capable of this type of understanding. Knowing is instinctual. Therefore, advanced reasoning abilities do not seem to be necessary for drawing inferences from experience of cause and effect. Hume proposes that we cannot explain why we gain experience from causes and effects, except to say that it seems to result simply from custom or habit. Due to advances in neuroscience, we now have a greater understanding of these processes. Though few of us seize control of them.
What does this mean? If there is no purely rational basis for knowledge, what are the ramifications for considering the power of our minds and the human position in the world? To the rationalists, man's position is one of an intellect observing God's creation, and at times even apprehending God's thoughts. In showing that we get our knowledge from understanding cause and effect relations, a method that seems to be simply an instinctual process of association, Hume is defining humans as biological entities trying to adapt to the conditions of the world. Therefore, knowledge apparently results from our very biological processes. Our means of understanding do not carry with them any guarantee of accuracy. Although this form of understanding, however not entirely rationally based, seems to be highly effective and essential in human life. There is a dialect between reason and experience. Moreover, we can use our minds to direct the associations we form. Neurostoicism dictates that we take power over our conditioning, use the dichotomy of control, and balance ourselves with Nature.
If pure reason is not the basis of inferring from cause-and-effect, what is? Hume's answer is custom or habit (though he does not claim to know what underlies these processes). Knowing is a combination of memory and experience. Neurostoicism teaches that it is conditioning, focusing on our Will, and merging our Will with Nature. The reason we feel such certainty over our expectations of a specific effect given a cause, is that each time we experience two events cojoined, the concept of this relationship assumes a stronger and stronger force in our nervous system, and we therefore feel an increasing sense of certainty. If this occurs many times, the belief becomes a conviction. This process of making neuro-associations is inherent in our biological equipment. Consider the simple diagram below,
Event 1. A occurs and B happens (sense of relation). Event 2. A occurs and B happens (stronger sense of causal relation) and so on over many events, until you are convinced of a causal relation.
More and more forceful sentiments are built up as you experience each new event, one after another. Our minds can be conceived of as a set of ideas and beliefs organized in a very specific way. In summary, Hume says that in human nature there appears to be a principle of custom (or association), which takes our experience, compiles and organizes it, and composes a network of ideas and beliefs to make sense of the past, present, and future.
What is the difference between fiction and belief? Hume's answer is that they feel different. We feel persuaded about our beliefs. There is a certain kind of feeling that surrounds our ideas which we feel describe reality. We have a sense that this belief is "true". In Hume's own words,
"...the difference between fiction and belief lies in some sentiment or feeling, which is annexed to the latter, not to the former, which depends not on the will, nor can be commanded at pleasure. It must be excited by nature, like all other sentiments; and must arise from the particular situation, in which the mind is placed at any particular juncture."
I will give an example, which I feel illustrates what Hume is referring to. Standing on the side of a cliff, looking down into a chasm of two thousand feet, I would find it difficult, if not impossible, to convince myself that I could simply jump and survive the fall. Instead, I would feel intensely compelled to believe that the fall would mean my death. I would feel this very strongly. Hume proposes that this feeling comes from our minds being organized around experiences of cause-and-effect relationships. I am sure that I have had innumerable encounters with the force of gravity. What moment have I been free from its pull? The point is that these repeated experiences of gravity have impressed upon my mind a sense of certainty. I am absolutely convinced that gravity will return me to the earth if I jump. This feeling is veritably burned into my mind by my will to live. In addition, there is a whole category of "reality" that is intersubjectively true only to the extent to which humans collectively agree to act as if they are real such as the idea of currencies. However, it is more nuanced than Hume allows. Neurostoicism argues that the Will does have a great amount of control over our thoughts and beliefs, and that we have a responsibility to exercise it.
If we look at events in life, in most situations we don't form an idea of a forceful connection between a cause-and-effect from a single instance. Given that our knowledge comes from relations of cause-and-effect, where do we get the idea that one event caused an effect? First, we have observed that this does not usually happen in a single situation. Second, we do seem to form beliefs when we experience events occurring together many times. We now know this is through a process of conditioning a given response with a stimuli. Then we can say that the conjunction of a cause with its effect must occur in several repetitions for us to form a neuro-association. After developing this association in our mind, we then have a habit of expecting the second event from the first. The feeling that two events are connected is the feeling of causation. Hume says that we never discover in our discrete experiences alone any necessary connection between these two events. We never experience causality itself, but feel that one event caused another after they have occurred together many times. In other words, individual knowledge is a process in our minds, and not an actual experience in the world. There is no necessary connection in our experiences, except those which we develop as a process of association. The significance of this for the course of Hume's discourse is that all experiences of certainty, are subjective states and feelings that we have in our minds of causation. It is a conviction that you have because of the way ideas are associated in your mind. Applying this to the rationalists, all of their feelings of certainty are simply subjective states, and not universal truths. People inevitably have different organizations of meaning, that carry with them different convictions of causal necessity. Causal connections that you feel are directly a result of the way your mind is organized, the contents, and meaningful relations of your experience. But we are not passive in this process. We can direct our neuro-associations. Because these are subjective states, we have a great amount of control over them. It is imperative that we do not allow ourselves to be "programmed" by the environment. Neurostoicism allows us to take control of our neuro-associations.
The conclusion Hume comes to is that we never find the element of connection between cause-and-effect directly from our experience itself. What we find is a constant combination of events. The conviction we have of connection is only in our minds associating ideas in a structured order. This is a crucial distinction in Neurostoicism, all of our good and health is in what we choose as our response to any given stimuli. It is the understanding that this response is entirely under our control. Therefore, our happiness is in our power.
What then is the mind for? Is the mind a divine instrument for discovering the thoughts of God? According to Hume, our minds are for enabling us to fulfill our needs. According to Neurostoicism, our minds are for attaining our greatest potential and happiness. To Hume, the pragmatic concerns of daily life will keep our understanding always moving forward. This knowledge comes from our associations based on cause-and-effect relationships. But these result from our judgements, as Hume recognized not from experience itself. Neurstoicism further refines this in to taking operational control of our subjective realities and directing the Will. It is conditioning our neuro-associations to grow ourselves and enhance our lives. But this must conform to the phenomenon of existence and the state of Nature. Beyond and initial spontaneous reaction, we choose our responses to cause-and-effect.
In contemporary thought, whether or not you believe in a God does not seem to influence what you consider to be true or not to a great extent other than about spiritual matters. Ethics can exist without the belief in a God. In this sense, Hume's way of thinking has permeated our society, and he stands as the first great secular philosopher to disprove the concept that God guarantees the reliability of the mind. He accomplished this by arguing that we derive our knowledge directly from experience of cause-and-effect. In this respect, he represents the major thrust of modern thought, with respect to the empirical approach, particularly in science. Great brains could dream of the most elaborate and complex "realities" that would be utterly worthless without the ability to correctly describe natural phenomena. Rationalism is divorced from an analysis of cause-and-effect and therefore is not able to self-correct. The Neurstoic guidance to conform to natural phenomena as much as possible is inherently self-correcting. Continually testing thoughts and beliefs according to cause-and-effects allows for error correction. The method that we use for understanding causation in science, and building our knowledge in other areas, is simply observing what is connected as accurately as possible, under controlled conditions, and over many events. It only is after an experiment has been replicated by original thinkers and peers, then that observation is added to the knowledge base. Neurostoicism is a practice that can take knowledge from just being true to being life enhancing.
