[Neurons] 2025 Neurons #36 EPISTEMOLOGICAL CLARITY

[Michael Hall]

From: L. Michael Hall

2025 Neurons #36

September 1, 2025

NLP as Epistemology #5

 

EPISTEMOLOGICAL CLARITY

 

Given all that I've written about epistemology as the way we think about our
thinking which then creates how we know what we know, it's time to speak
about cleaning up our epistemological errors.  It's time we identify how to
think effectively so that we can be ecological and productive in our
knowing.  To do that, the bottom line is this: Where there is
epistemological error-let there be epistemological clarity.

 

How do we create epistemological clarity for ourselves and others?
Obviously, first of all learn to detect epistemological errors.  Plant the
question in your mind, "Is this way of thinking, this way of knowing what I
know, legitimate?"  "Have I used any cognitive biases, distortions, or
biases in coming to my conclusions?"  As you ask yourself these questions,
take a little bit of time to linger on the epistemological twists and/or
symptoms. 

 

Next, take time to consider possible thinking/ knowing symptoms that you
might be experiencing.  "Of the symptoms that I repeatedly experience in
everyday life, could any of these symptoms be the result of some
epistemological error?"  "Could what I think or know (or think I know)
actually be the source of these symptoms?"  

 

With the detection and considering, do some critical analysis of your
thinking/ knowing.  Run your experience through the essential critical
thinking skills (considering, questioning, doubting, detailing, and
distinguishing).  As skills for critical thinking, these will enable you to
test your thinking for its quality and credibility.  So also the
Meta-Model-a model that focuses on words and language and how the way you
language something can create all sorts of problems if the languaging is not
well-formed.

 

Seeking to clarify your thinking so it is more precise and accurate involves
making sure that you are using the right kind of thinking for the knowledge
domain you are working in.  Thinking like a physicist works great when you
are working in the domain of the hard sciences.  This domain  is all about
quantity, dimensions, time, space, energy, forces, impacts, etc.  If however
you a working in the domain of consciousness (mind, emotions, beliefs,
memories, imaginations, etc.), you need to shift to think like a
psychologist.

 

What domain of knowledge are you thinking about?  Biology, mathematics,
archeology, sociology, chemistry, etc.?  Each requires a different
epistemology.  It's when we mix these that we create epistemological errors.
That's what the field of Behaviorism did in the early to middle part of the
20th century.  They thought that the hard-science world should be a part of
the mental world and so they eliminated 'mind' altogether and tried to build
a psychology based entirely on physics thinking.  In the long-run, it did
not work.

 

Similarly Freud and psychoanalysis used archeological thinking and
causational thinking in trying to understand human psychology.  Thinking in
terms of etiology, they asked, "Why are you this way?  Or, how did you get
this way?"  That way of thinking implies that the past is deterministic.  By
way of contrast, in Neuro-Semantics (a cognitive psychology approach) we
ask, "What ideas and patterns of ideas have you learned or adopted that has
led you to experience what you're experiencing?"  "Are you ready for some
new ideas?"

 

Finally, as you learn to recognize your basic epistemology, question it and
then move to create a meta-epistemology.  Bateson noted that "you cannot
claim to have no epistemology" (Ibid, p. 178).   To think is to come to
'know' whatever it is that you know and that's your epistemology.  Then he
encouraged that we move to the next level up.

"You have an epistemology and I have one, but they are not necessarily the
same. A study of the difference between them moves up another level to the
science of meta-epistemology."  (Bateson, 1990 pp. 155-6)

 

Why this?  Because as Bateson noted, your epistemology will be enormously
increased when you realize that ideas occur in layers, that you inevitably
generate ideas about ideas, knowledge about knowledge.  Bateson realized
this through reading Russell and Whitehead's work on logical types in
mathematics.  He translated that to 'mind' and came up with the levels of
learning and with the understanding of the hierarchy of ideas-how we
generate ideas about ideas.  These meta-levels which make up your Meta Place
(or 'mind') establish multiple levels of thoughts and define your personal
epistemology.

 

You can clean up your epistemological errors.  When you do you learn to
think with greater clarity and accuracy.  And that changes everything-from
how you experience your emotions, to your effectiveness in what you do and
how you relate, to the quality of your life.

 

 

 

 

 

 



L. Michael Hall, Ph.D.

Executive Director, ISNS

738 Beaver Lodge

Grand Jct., CO. 81505 USA

meta at acsol.net

 

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