"View"

post by herschel (hrs) · 2023-07-08T23:19:22.014Z · LW · GW · 0 comments

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The term view is used fairly often among meditators in a subtle but distinct way. View refers to the embodied, intuitive perspective that a person holds in a given moment. (Note there can sometimes be multiple views functioning at once, which I mostly don't describe here.)

Colloquially, ‘view’ and ‘perspective’ are used synonymously. I’m trying to distinguish ‘view’ as phenomenological (and sometimes metaphysical), as opposed to a common usage of ‘perspective’ which is generally cognitive and especially verbal. (For now I’ll call the latter sense a perspective, for lack of a better word.) 

A verbal expression of a belief is straightforwardly of a different type from the experience which inspires that verbal explanation. Furthermore, ‘view’ encompasses a much greater phenomenological breadth. We often discuss differing perspectives, 

Perspectives often end up being expressed as relatively simple endorsed claims about politics or science, eg “the COVID vaccine is safe and everyone should take it”, or “this market is going to be overtaken by AI in the next few years”. Sometimes ‘perspective’ refers to network of priors that a person has, which are hard to reduce to distinct claims. This sense leaves out the full breadth of human apprehension of meaning that a person normally experiences.

Some examples:

A mathematician reflects on the beauty of a proof. To them, the proof is profound and elegant, it pulls on an extensive body of knowledge that they’re familiar with, as well as a long history of great minds who have been working on the problem. 

Another person with much of the same knowledge might be able to follow the steps and say “yup that seems right”, but the view in which they experience it is quite different (as well as less intense, pleasant, etc.) from that of the the first person.

A meditator meditates on the Koan “who am I?” and realizes there is no boundary between him and the world. He finds the walls laughing. 

The objective circumstances are basically ordinary: a person sitting in a room. Countless people tried without much luck to meditate and have profound experiences like this. What separates the meditator in this case is that they have encountered a highly unusual view, with different (or in this case, absent) boundaries between self and world, which is basic to most ordinary human experience.

A group of people sit at a party and sing songs. They know the songs pretty well, and everyone is left in good spirits. Afterwards, a few people comment on how connected they all are, while one of the people in the group privately still feels quite separate, or not a part of the group.

The disconnected person may have enjoyed themself, sang well enough in tune, and swayed with the beat, but didn’t feel really “included”. The perception of includedness is not just a matter of physical motions and behaviors, but is part of the view. 

A good part of the trouble in talking about views is that they’re generally quite blended [? · GW]. Pointing out a view, more so than a perspective, is especially like pointing out the water to a fish. A view is what some of the most basic or profound human perceptions feel like from the inside [LW · GW].

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