- FIML clears up communication problems in the moment (at the time they occur and just afterward) while establishing a valuable precedent for clearing up future problems, which are inevitable.
- FIML helps partners see their own neuroses (mistaken interpretations) and understand how those neuroses operate in their lives during a real moment of their lives. Each basic FIML discussion is based on a real problem identified by one or both partners.
- Being able to efficiently and effectively fix real problems as they occur gives partners a sense of confidence and joy.
- If only one partner had a problem with something, both partners still benefit because the second partner will come to understand how the first hears or speaks and why. Partners will increase their understandings of each other as well as of language, semiotics, communication, emotion, psychology, etc.
- Each FIML discussion can be extended into other fields (history, science, art, Buddhism, etc.) as much as partners want. This helps both partners increase their awareness of how the large “net” of cultural semiotics is put together and where they stand in relation to it.
- Each FIML discussion forms a basis, or can serve as an example, for the next discussion. After a single neurosis has been identified a few times, partners will learn to recognize it immediately and deal with it very quickly.
- Fixing one neurosis increases confidence and skill, making it easier to fix the next or to deepen discussions to include other kinds of psychological material.
- Once partners are reasonably skilled at FIML, they will find they are able to deal with a much broader range of subjects because they have communication techniques that allow them to quickly overcome misunderstandings.
- Once the skills are developed, FIML discussions are a lot of fun. In many ways, there is nothing more interesting.
- FIML practice greatly supports Buddhist practice and should serve to help Buddhists gain immediate and very personal experiential comprehension of the Dharma.
- Buddhist terms like delusion, suffering, liberation, wisdom, karma, compassion and more will take on new meaning as they become less an abstract code for behavior and more a personally understood aspect of our own behavior.
- FIML helps us see for ourselves in real time how our own particular delusions create suffering, and how we can attain liberation from those delusions.
- FIML works with very small instances of delusion so it is neither painful nor embarrassing. Indeed, it is a great pleasure to eliminate delusion.
Tag: psychology
Intrinsic motivation is important for sustained creative activity
A recent study shows that An insight-related neural reward signal exists and is more active in some people than in others.
This study also confirms the idea that “intrinsic motivation is important for sustained creative activity.”
Some other findings that may be of interest:
…our findings suggest that individuals who are high in reward sensitivity experience the sudden emergence of a solution into awareness as strongly rewarding whereas individuals who are low in reward sensitivity may still experience insight as sudden and attentionally salient but lacking in hedonic content.
As lifelong autodidact, I wonder if others with this marvelous “addiction” can relate to feeling almost not alive unless there is something to wonder about or figure out. I recently read a biography of Ludwig Wittgenstein. One standout was his strong tendency to seek out simple or humble environments that stimulated his mind.
…The fact that some people find insight experiences to be highly pleasurable reinforces the notion that insight can be an intrinsic reward for problem solving and comprehension that makes use of the same reward circuitry in the brain that processes rewards from addictive drugs, sugary foods, or love.
Getting lost in the woods or on a motorcycle ride, for me, is a highly enjoyable feeling. There have to be slight tremors of fear and agitation followed by finding my way again. I suppose others may experience similar feelings in social settings or as live performers.
…These findings shed light on people’s motivations for engaging in challenging, often time-consuming, activities that potentially yield insights, such as solving puzzles or mysteries, creating inventions, or doing research. It also reinforces the notion that intrinsic motivation is important for sustained creative activity. The expectation of intrinsic rewards from comprehending and creating, rather than from an extrinsic source such as payment, is thought to be the most effective type of workplace motivation…
A society with universal basic income in which no one has to work unless they want to may bring about the greatest flourishing of human talent ever.
Here’s an article about the study: Aha! + Aaaah: Creative Insight Triggers a Neural Reward Signal.
An example of a mistake in meso understanding
My partner and I discovered a significant meso mistake this morning.
(See: Micro, meso, and macro levels of human understanding for more on this.)
The mistake was not “psychological” so much as it was simply a mistake—significant over time but having little or no emotional valence of its own.
The mistake concerned how we understand our evening walks. I had mistakenly thought that my partner preferred a brisk pace with few if any pauses. Consequently, I had for a number of years been walking faster and pausing less often to look around than I would have liked.
For me, that mistake in my thinking took a bit of fun out of our walks.
Recently, the weather has been very hot where we live and I found myself insisting on walking slower and stopping more because I was becoming uncomfortable. After several days of feeling apologetic about this and actually speaking about it apologetically, my partner insisted back that it did not bother her at all to walk more slowly and to pause more often.
In fact, she said that it never had bothered her to go at a slower pace in warm weather and that she always had enjoyed stopping to look at things as we rambled along.
This was news to me, so we talked about it for a while. I came to understand that I had formed a wrong idea, a wrong meso-thought/belief, about my partner.
It had slipped into my mind over the years. I am sure it started somewhere as a micro-mistake that I did not catch (maybe due to pride) and had then persisted for a long time.
This is an example of a kind of mistake that FIML practice may not discover. Fortunately, this mistake had little or no psychological valence. I was delighted to find that I had been wrong and am looking froward to our walks more than ever.
At the same time, I am aware that my partner and I probably have at least four or five other meso mistakes of roughly the same amplitude as our walking mistake. They may be similarly “benign” but some of them may also have significant psychological valence.
Though both of us are experienced FIML practitioners and though we do FIML queries regularly, we can’t be sure what our other meso-mistakes are, assuming there are some. All we can do is continue to look closely at our impressions and beliefs about one another and do our best to confirm them or correct them as needed.
Once discovered, the walking mistake—and any other meso mistake no matter how emotional—will be analyzable and amenable to elimination through FIML practice. It just has to be seen for what it is first.
Error correction in interpersonal relations
While reading David Deutsch’s The Beginning of Infinity, I came across the following sentence:
What is needed is a system that takes for granted that errors will occur, but corrects them once they do—a case of ‘problems are inevitable, but they are soluble’ at the lowest level of information-processing emergence. (p. 141)
This statement comes from the chapter “The Jump to Universality,” in which Deutsch argues that “error correction is essential in processes of potentially unlimited length.”
Error correction is fundamental to FIML practice. In fact, the nuts-and-bolts of FIML practice could be described as being little more than a method for correcting errors “at the lowest level of information-processing” during interpersonal communication. This level is “the lowest” because FIML deals primarily with very short segments of speech/communication. In many posts, we have called these segments “psychological morphemes” or the “smallest speech/communication error” we can reliably identify and agree upon with our partner.
If you try to tackle bigger errors—though this can be done sometimes—you frequently run into the problem of your subject becoming too vague or ill-defined to be rationally discussable.
I haven’t read enough of Deutsch’s book to be sure of what he means by “universality,” but I do think (at this point) that FIML is universal in the sense that it will clear up interpersonal communication errors between any two qualified partners. “Qualified” here means that partners care about each other, want to optimize their relationship, and have enough time to do FIML practice.
We all demand that our computers be error-free, that buildings and bridges be constructed without error, that science work with error-free data as much as possible. But when it comes to communication with the person we care about most, do we even talk about wanting a method of error correction, let alone actually using one?
You can’t correct big errors if you have no method for correcting errors that occur “at the lowest level of information-processing,” to use Deutsch’s phrase. Once you can correct errors at this level, you will find that you and your partner are much better able to tackle bigger questions/errors/complexes. This happens because having the ability to reliably do small error-correcting gives you the capacity to discuss bigger issues without getting lost in a thicket of small mistakes.
Your ability to talk to each other becomes “universal” in the sense that you can tackle any subject together and are not tethered to static ideas and assumptions about what either of you really “means.”
FIML does not tell you how to think or what to believe. In this sense, it is a universal system that allows you and your partner to explore existence in any way you choose.
To use Deutsch’s words again, “error correction is essential in processes of potentially unlimited length.” Your relationship with your partner can and should be a “processes of potentially unlimited” growth, and error correction is essential to that process.
Some good things about AI
changes and improves how ppl talk and listen
provides dynamic models for conversation on almost any topic
removes conceit for what you know and shame for what you don’t know
shifts sense of human context from whatever tradition to a massive accessible source of information
highlights fullness of existence and emptiness of ego
‘Something approaching 100% of the population has gone completely insane’ — Eric Weinstein
From my (FIML) POV, people are primed to accept absurd (macro) cultural states because we have all been raised in absurd meso and micro states of interpersonal communication. And we all live in those states all the time (except a few of us). For different reasons, I talk like Eric all the time because I can see the root cause when few others can. If you do not do FIML and cannot even see the reason for doing it, at best you will be like Eric — sort of in kindergarten just starting out fathoming how weird (‘insane’) human cultures and psychologies really are. ABN
Catching small mistakes leads to big payoffs
A good way to think about FIML practice is to think of yourself as looking for the smallest communication errors you can find. These tiny errors might be called morphemes of error. A morpheme is the smallest semantic unit (meaningful unit) of a language. Thinking in terms of very small mistakes can help partners because these tiny morphemes of error are where larger errors originate. If we are able to observe a tiny error the moment it happens and fully discuss it with our partner, we will prevent a larger error from coming into being. If we fail to catch the small error as it arises, it will be much harder to correct the larger error later on because by then we will never remember when and where it started.
In the early days of doing FIML, I used to call the practice of looking for small errors “catching mice”. I took great delight in finding the next little mouse/error because I knew that the benefit of catching it would be quite large compared to the little thing I had caught. (Note: I was and am involved mostly in catching mistakes in my own mind. It is my partner’s responsibility to catch the mistakes made in her mind. It is usually the person who initiates a FIML query who is the one concerned that a mistake may have arisen in their own mind. And this is why it is so important to ask as much as you are asked.)
Thinking of yourself as catching small errors and discussing them with your partner may add a level of interest to your FIML practice. This approach also allows us to be very detail-oriented without feeling petty. I guarantee that after you have caught a few of these little mice and fully discussed them with your partner, you will see the benefits for yourself. Small communication errors are the basic units of FIML practice. FIML partners can work with larger units (generalities, psychologies, philosophies, etc.), but it is best to spend most of your time just catching the small errors that inevitably arise in all communications.
An interesting example of this happened this morning. The mouse I caught was not involved directly in my communication with my partner, though I told her about it right afterward and we discussed it extensively. What happened is this:
I have been trying to follow a low-carbohydrate diet, but somehow gradually always start eating more of them till I am back to where I began. Well, I started being more strict a week or so ago. Today I went into the refrigerator to get something to eat and saw some boiled potatoes in one bowl and some vegetables in another. In my head a small tug-o-war ensued. I chose the vegetables, but as I turned away from the refrigerator and put them on the counter, I noticed that I felt slightly guilty. What was interesting is I was feeling guilty for doing the right thing. But some part of my mind was telling me, almost subconsciously, that I was actually being selfish because the potatoes should be eaten, they are cheaper, and maybe my partner would want the vegetables.
I could go on about this but to keep it short, let me just say that none of it was true. I had nothing to feel guilty about. Just to be sure, I asked my partner if she wanted the vegetables and she said no, she had already eaten. So that little piece of false-guilt was a mouse. It was a mistake, an error that was occurring in my own mind, probably to satisfy that part of me that still craves carbohydrates. In catching it, I had caught the smallest unit of eating-too-many-carbohydrates that I had ever seen. This first success will likely lead to my catching this same mistake (or something similar to it) again fairly soon. (These small mistakes almost always occur more than once or twice.) After a few more successes at catching my own mind while it is making a small mistake about my diet, I may succeed in fully defeating that part of myself that reaches for carbohydrates when I know I should not.
I bet stuff like that happens frequently with people who are addicted to anything or who keep making bad or immoral choices when, for the most part, they know they should not. We can feel guilty without having good reason to do so. Some other examples of this might be soldiers who do what others are doing even though they know it is wrong; police who do the same; employees who do the same; Buddhists, psychologists, scientists, mechanics, carpenters, etc.–we are all susceptible to making moral mistakes because we will feel guilty if we don’t.
Hence the Buddha saying:
One is one’s own protector,
one is one’s own refuge.
Therefore, one should control oneself,
even as a trader controls a noble steed.
Dhammapada 25.380
Theory of mind and FIML
The following paragraphs are from a pretty good Wikipedia article on theory of mind.
Theory of mind is the ability to attribute mental states—beliefs, intents, desires, pretending, knowledge, etc.—to oneself and others and to understand that others have beliefs, desires and intentions that are different from one’s own.
Individuals who experience a theory of mind deficit have difficulty determining the intentions of others, lack understanding of how their behavior affects others, and have a difficult time with social reciprocity.
The term, theory of mind is generally used to assess autism spectrum disorders and behavioral problems that result from brain injuries, drug abuse, and alcoholism. I have no problem with that.
Here’s an interesting response to the theory from someone with Asperger’s Syndrome: Empathy, Mindblindness, and Theory of Mind. The author of this piece, Lynne Soraya, mainly objects to the characterization that she does not have empathy for others. She wonders if the problem is one not of a lack of empathy but of understanding.
I agree with her in more ways than one. Misapplied, theory of mind can become a high-sounding defense of conformity and the status quo. Beyond basic levels of reasonable manners and appropriateness, theory of mind can lead us to draw many false conclusions about the people we are with. If FIML has taught me one thing with great certainty it is that, while I may have some sense of what my partner is thinking or feeling, I am very often wrong in important ways and almost always sort of wrong in many subtle ways.
Look into your own mind. What do you see? Is there some solid state there? Are all of your intentions clear even to you? Why do you say what you say? What else are you thinking right now? As soon as you answer any one of these questions, the multifaceted dynamism of your mind will change again. Can you remember what was in your mind–remember with good, clear accuracy–one minute ago? I bet you can’t. How about two minutes ago? If even you cannot know what was in your own mind one minute ago and restate it clearly, how can you expect another person to really ever know what is in your mind unless you tell them while you are still able to remember yourself?
This is where real speech lives. In the moment. Speech often comes forth from us for mysterious reasons. And our partners hear our speech in their own mysterious ways. We can know these ways, but only by talking about them, only by asking. Theory of mind can help us form some general ideas, but only FIML can give us access to what our partners are truly thinking when they speak to us or listen to us.
If I say let’s go for a walk, I probably will be able to tell from your expression whether you want to go or not, and maybe even how much you want to go. But if as we leave the building you glance at a bush beside the walk, do I know why you looked there or what you are thinking? Very unlikely.
Similarly, if you speak a sentence to me, do I know the fullness of the state of your mind from which that sentence issued? No, I don’t. Hardly ever. If the sentence is at all ambiguous or even slightly emotionally charged, I may not have the slightest clue why you said it. I can guess, but the only way I can know for sure is to ask you.
Theory of mind is OK for making crude determinations about some people in some situations, but worthless for most speech or communicative acts between equal partners.
We do not know what is in other people’s minds. We are not mind readers. We can only know with certainty what they are thinking and feeling if they tell us. And that can be difficult even for them to do because even they may not know what is in their minds or why.
This is why I say that theory of mind can be sorely misapplied to become a defense of status quo conformity, status quo semiotics.
Humans are primitive beasts with poorly functioning speech capacities. If they are not attributing status quo interpretations of others to them, they will be making up their own and those will probably be neurotic (mistaken, as we have been defining that term).
Our options as people who speak and interact are not either we are autistic or we are “normal” (have good theory of mind). There is a huge other area of human speech and interaction (and this area includes both autistic and “normal” people)–no matter what you do or say, you cannot speak to another person without employing unfounded assumptions about them unless you ask and they answer honestly.
For most exchanges with strangers and acquaintances, we don’t need to know what they are thinking and feeling. We just follow the basic rules–professional or otherwise–that govern the exchange. For intimate partners and friends, however, those rules will not work. If you want real communication with your partner, you will have to do FIML or something like it. I can’t think of any other way to deeply know their feelings and intentions.
first posted December 14, 2011
Watch the eyes
UPDATE: The comment below contains a relevant link. I showed this video—which was recorded at the White House while she is standing next to Trump—to my partner. She thinks it’s ridiculous to consider the possibility we are looking at an alien or a hybrid human-alien. IF Trump wanted to reveal that aliens are living among us, this would be a probable way to do it. In the next few days, this incident will blow over or be denied. Either way, the public has been exposed to an alien/ hybrid living among us. This will prepare people for a much larger revelation. I hope they are way smarter and kinder than us and will soon save us from ourselves. That said, this is Susan Dell, wife of Michael Dell. ABN
the ill-directed mind
Whatever an enemy might do to an enemy,
or a foe to a foe,
the ill-directed mind
can do to you even worse.
Udana 4.33
Muddled intentions, specific intentions
One important thing FIML practice has showed me is that people very often—more often than they realize—attribute specific, clear intentionality to the speech of others when that speech actually originated out of a muddled state and was not clear or specific at all to the speaker.
I think we do this because as speakers we have better knowledge of the rich ambiguity that is our mind, while as listeners we know, for the most part, only what the speaker has said, or rather what we think we heard them say.
In many other posts we have discussed hearing words incorrectly and the consequences that can follow from that. In this post, let’s confine ourselves to a listener’s attributing a more specific intentionality to the speaker than the speaker intended.
A crude example might be a drunk at a bar mumbling to himself. Another drunk walks by with his girl on his arm. Hearing the mumbling, he asks, “Did you say that to her?” In saying that, he is attributing intentionality where there was none.
Sometimes, the drunk at the bar will explain that he was just mumbling. And sometimes he will own the intentionality being attributed to him.
In that case, he might say, “Yes, I did. What are you going to do about it?”
Misconstrued intentionality surely leads to many fights.
But those of us who don’t get drunk in bars never do anything similar, right?
Not so. We do it all the time. We frequently hear the speech of others as having more specific intent than they meant.
Whenever we listen, we do so with the network of semiotics and language that subsumes our perceptions. Thus, whatever we hear will tend to confirm or be contextualized by that part of our subjective network that is most active at the time or that seems to apply best to what we are hearing.
Our use of that network for understanding the speech of others is hurried, quick, and often wrong. Our listening makes sense to us, but is almost never in full accord with what the speaker said, especially as so much speech initiates in vague or muddled states of mind. Speech is often groping while listening often is less so.
For example, if someone expresses a political view that we have recently been thinking about and that irritates us, our listening will very likely attribute a more specific or pointed intentionality to the speaker than is justified.
If we agree with what the speaker said under the circumstances described above, much the same thing will happen though our attribution of specific intentionality will be favorable rather than unfavorable.
These examples are the polite forms of the barroom brawl versus barroom camaraderie.
Notice also, the tendency we humans have to frame these sorts of errors as dichotomies. Either you are insulting my girl or we are all best friends.
Furthermore, notice that we also have a strong tendency to own the more specific intentionality being attributed to us by the listener. In the bar, you might decline the fight, but in another location you might lock horns with someone who attributed a specific intention to your muddled or idle expression of a vague political “view.”
Next time you think you heard a specific intent in the words of a friend, ask them if that was indeed their intent. Be careful when asking because if they are not experienced FIML practitioners, they may agree to own an intention they never had or that was far more muddled than it had seemed to you (or them in the moment of speaking).
My guess is a great deal of what we say is sloppier or more muddled than even we ourselves realize. This is simply how we are and how we really use language. You can’t make speech perfect.
Working memory is the fulcrum of psychology
Working memory is the hinge between inner speech and outer speech.
Yet working memory is elusive.
You hear something and speak to it but did your interlocutor mean that (or even say it at all)?
Define outer speech as speech spoken to another person. Inner speech spoken aloud is still inner speech.
Inner speech informs outer speech and often becomes it. Same thing for outer speech. It can be taken in and reshape inner speech in very deep ways.
During the dynamic of two people talking to each other, our working memories are tasked with listening and responding as best we can. We don’t do that very well.
Many mistakes happen during active speech exchanges.
If what is being exchanged has psychological import, to that degree mistakes can be serious or not.
What is weird to me is much of our sense of who we are is built on the unreliable fulcrum of our working memories as we speak and listen.
This happened between your mother and father and between them and you. It happens to everyone you have ever spoken with.
Our use of language and psychological development is replete with error and misunderstanding, often grave misunderstanding. This is almost never acknowledged or accounted for.
We rely on theories about ourselves because they are established forms of outer speech that we can take in and adapt to. This is a very weak way of understanding yourself.
Can’t see the trees for the forest
Examples of not seeing the trees for the forest are flyover assessments of sociological regions or general assessments of human psychology.
A more detailed example of this pertaining to psychology might be the following description of Borderline Personality Disorder:
People with borderline personality disorder are unstable in several areas, including interpersonal relationships, behavior, mood, and self-image. Abrupt and extreme mood changes, stormy interpersonal relationships, an unstable and fluctuating self-image, unpredictable and self-destructive actions characterize the person with borderline personality disorder. These individuals generally have great difficulty with their own sense of identity. They often experience the world in extremes, viewing others as either “all good” or “all bad.” A person with borderline personality may form an intense personal attachment with someone only to quickly dissolve it over a perceived slight. Fears of abandonment may lead to an excessive dependency on others. Self-multilation or recurrent suicidal gestures may be used to get attention or manipulate others. Impulsive actions, chronic feelings of boredom or emptiness, and bouts of intense inappropriate anger are other traits of this disorder, which is more common among females. (source)
I have no doubt that this general description of the “forest” of BPD is somewhat useful as a flyover take on a psychological region that seems to have its own reality within American culture. The same link concludes that “there is hope” for personality disorders if we come to “understand that they are illnesses.”
Thus, a general remedy is assigned to a general “illness”; a semiotic contortion is assigned to the category “hope.”
As a Buddhist I must say you really should “have difficulty with your own sense of identity” because there is no such thing. Sentience in all its guises is dynamic and ever-changing.
You actually do not need a “self-image” at all. So if the one(s) you keep trying for are “unstable and fluctuating,” you are probably seeing reality more clearly than people whose “self-images” are stable and not fluctuating.
The fundamental problem with BPD and Narcissistic Personality Disorder, two of the most difficult disorders to cure, is in the trees. It is good to see the forest and know where it lies within the terrain of the sufferer’s culture, but the problem of any individual suffering from either of these disorders is always going to be in their trees.
So what are the trees? They are the actual signals received by the person, sent out by the person, and used internally by the person.
Those are the units that best describe what a sentient being is and does. If you can’t fix the trees or treat the trees, the forest will never be healthy.
When is a FIML discussion finished?
A FIML discussion is initiated when one partner (or both) experiences an emotional jolt or an emotional something. It is finished when both partners experience a profound resolution.
A FIML discussion begins when one partner feels that something in what the other has said or done has caused them to begin to have an emotional reaction. Before that reaction becomes strong, we want to stop ourselves and observe its cause while asking our partner what was in their mind at the moment they said or did whatever it was that caused us to react. Ideally, we will be able to quickly stop ourselves, monitor our response, and calmly query our partner, who will answer our questions clearly and neutrally.
With practice this is fairly easy to do if the incident is small, if it is caught early. FIML works best with the first appearance or arising of an emotional reaction. The smallness of this datapoint prevents a full blown reaction, which may be habitual or otherwise seem warranted, from arising.
So then, when is a FIML discussion finished? How do we know when to stop?
A FIML discussion ends when both partners fully understand all relevant levels of meaning pertaining to the emotional jolt that initiated the discussion.
When this happens, partners will feel a sense of relief or resolution that is very similar to the feeling of relief we get when we figure something out or come to understand something that has perplexed us. Partners will feel a palpable sense of resolution, a calming and very pleasant sense of deep understanding when a FIML discussion has properly concluded.
This is because a FIML discussion involves meaning. Stuff means things to us. What our partner says to us means something to us. Often this meaning is far more complex than the surface levels of our words or gestures. When there is a mismatch of meaning or when one partner is making a mistake in their interpretation of the other, the shared meaning of both partners will become disjointed, confusing, and emotionally painful.
A successful FIML discussion will clear up all levels of confusion. That is the purpose of doing FIML. To clear up all pertinent levels of linguistic, emotional, and psychological meaning. When both partners fully understand the exchange that led to a FIML discussion, their understanding will be something they both will know and feel with great clarity.
When this point is reached, it is a good idea for partners to confirm that they both have experienced a full resolution and are completely satisfied with their discussion. There should be no loose ends. Partners will greatly benefit from reviewing what just happened and considering how it can serve as an example, or template, for future discussions. They might also reflect together on how the initial misunderstanding—had it not been dealt with—might have grown out of proportion and ruined the rest of their day, if not worse.
The resolution of a FIML discussion arrives with a clear and distinct feeling because that resolution has brought coherence to the shared reality of both partners. It has brought a deeper and truer meaning to their shared reality. When a FIML discussion has ended with a satisfactory resolution, partners will experience a deep appreciation of both themselves and the other.
An overview of the philosophy of Frank Ramsey
…Ramsey’s idea was that a given belief is to be understood in terms of its causes and effects, the ways in which it’s formed and the role it plays in behaviour, in conjunction with other beliefs, desires and mental states. This idea, now called functionalism in the philosophy of mind, is considered by many the most promising way to make sense of mental representation.
The Ramsey Effect
A philosophy of psychology must contend with similar problems as a philosophy of mind, and vice versa.
So how to understand any given belief pertaining to any psychological matter having to do with self or other?
In addition to what is stated in the quotation above, psychological “belief” (or, better, analysis) must contend with real-world, real-time events as they happen.
Understanding must be based on real-world, real-time events. That is precisely what FIML does or allows us to do. That is what FIML is for.
FIML can be understood as a philosophical process or method of thinking that is constant, continuous, and never stops. FIML situates the mind’s understanding of itself and other in an ongoing psycho-philosophical inquiry that is stabilized by being an agreed upon method that partners can use and refer to whenever they want.
In this, FIML reflects, embraces, and participates in the conscious development or evolution of thought, mind, spirit, belief, awareness. FIML is actively in the world while also providing a psychologically stable place from which to observe the world, self, and other.
In many respects for humans, there is nothing more basic or important than consciousness. Since FIML consciously works with consciousness as it shifts and adapts to another consciousness in real-time, it is arguably the most basic and objective thing there is.
Language cannot be divorced from communication with other. Theories of language and mind must account for this. Since communication with other is an activity (that always affects each), a philosophy of mind/belief/language must be based on an active method of ongoing communication analysis.
Just as you cannot learn to swim without getting into the water, you cannot have a philosophy of mind that does not actively analyze and influence communication in real-time.