Does one ever really know other people?

[Kyriakos]

It has often occupied me, the general thought that it seems impossible to actually know anyone else.

By this i do not mean that it is impossible to form an opinion of others; obviously such a view would have been wrong, or pathological.
However it seems to me that the variables that construct the phenomenon of consciousness in each individual number in the billions, and therefore cannot really be calculated by anyone else; most of the time they are being blissfully ignored by the person having the consciousness too.

Here is my reasoning for reaching that conclusion:

-Another person is not linked to myself somatically.
He or she are not part of me. They are distinct beings, of the same species, but not of a common consciousness. This leads to there being many differences, and by this i do not only mean that they exhibit obviously different traits than i; for these traits of theirs i am acknowledging are possibly only shadows of the actual traits, merely a facade of calculations in my own mental world.

-Another person is not linked to me mentally.
He or she are not of the same mental construction, no matter that the fact we belong to the same species quite obviously limits us and unites us in some aspects. But it seems to me to be as if two possibilities were linked by the truth that there is a maximum of X variables in them, it would not be a really restricting likeness, since other parts of the possibilities would remain random and different, for example X variables could be located X in place A, X-1 in B, X-2 in C etc, but in the two possibilities there could be entirely different progressions of variables.
This is not to say that i liken people to variables in probability theory, but i do think one can make the axiom that if even relatively simple things like variables in that theory can lead to infinite (or very large) numbers of different cases, so much more one is to assume that people have an infinite, or nearly infinite amount of perplexity and difference from each other.

-Another person's consciousness is never part of my consciousness.
He or she are not of the same type of mental object as i am, in my consciousness. For in my consciousness i am first of all my Ego, and then everything revolving around it, from the closest mental objects, to the most distant spheres of my unconscious life. But another person's consciousness is not an ego inside me; another person's consciousness is just a collection of calculations and emulations, and not of the same core of mental matter as my Ego. The Ego differs from the conception of the other person possibly as much as you differ from a piece of paper that happens to also exist in your room; both you and the paper are objects in the room, both you and the paper take space, and you can react to the paper.

Anyway, i could go on with this little treatise, but

-Another person's posting habits are not the same as my own.

TL;DR: Do you think that you can ever actually know other people? In any way other than a synthesis of personal projections of yours onto them? For it seems to me it is not really possible.

 

[Oruc]

Going from the TL;DR: question. No you can never know someone else, we cant read minds and know what another person is thinking what their motivations are or their beliefs, you can only go on what they tell or you observe.
Both of which can easily be lies.

 

[Kyriakos]

Yes, but not only they can be often lies, for even if they are true you are again re-creating the various impressions you have of the other person in your own mind, which means you have something distanced from their actual mental life/consiousness.

 

[Silurian]

Maybe with Alastair Reynolds "wedding gun".

Not sure which book it was in.

 

[Narz]

You can know other people well enough ideally to form symbiotic relationships with them. That's all that really matters. All that romantic goobledeegook of "two people as one" is just going to make you miserable. Be content to know people as well as you reasonable can & gain satisfaction from that.

 

[Syterion]

Well, yes of course. All you're doing is changing your definition of "know" to being arbitrarily extreme.

 

[Kyriakos]

Well, yes of course. All you're doing is changing your definition of "know" to being arbitrarily extreme.

Hm, i think i know ( ) what you mean. But in my view it is not really anything extreme, but all too basic. It seems that we always have a view of the other person which is to some extent a projection of analogous or similar to our own mental states. But what if each such state is only the tip of a colossal mental iceberg? (as it appears to me to be). Then it would follow that you arbitrarily connected the dots, and came up with a design which is not the one on the toy pack- ie you created your own impression, which is different from that which is the state of the other person.

I am not saying that this should make one not try to know others. For i know enough of human relations to be of the view that they function in a more basic level, at least consciously. Communication, after all, is not only done with thoughts and impressions, but with feelings, senses etc.

 

[kochman]

-Another person is not linked to myself somatically.
He or she are not part of me. They are distinct beings, of the same species, but not of a common consciousness. This leads to there being many differences, and by this i do not only mean that they exhibit obviously different traits than i; for these traits of theirs i am acknowledging are possibly only shadows of the actual traits, merely a facade of calculations in my own mental world.

-Another person is not linked to me mentally.
He or she are not of the same mental construction, no matter that the fact we belong to the same species quite obviously limits us and unites us in some aspects. But it seems to me to be as if two possibilities were linked by the truth that there is a maximum of X variables in them, it would not be a really restricting likeness, since other parts of the possibilities would remain random and different, for example X variables could be located X in place A, X-1 in B, X-2 in C etc, but in the two possibilities there could be entirely different progressions of variables.
This is not to say that i liken people to variables in probability theory, but i do think one can make the axiom that if even relatively simple things like variables in that theory can lead to infinite (or very large) numbers of different cases, so much more one is to assume that people have an infinite, or nearly infinite amount of perplexity and difference from each other.

-Another person's consciousness is never part of my consciousness.
He or she are not of the same type of mental object as i am, in my consciousness. For in my consciousness i am first of all my Ego, and then everything revolving around it, from the closest mental objects, to the most distant spheres of my unconscious life. But another person's consciousness is not an ego inside me; another person's consciousness is just a collection of calculations and emulations, and not of the same core of mental matter as my Ego. The Ego differs from the conception of the other person possibly as much as you differ from a piece of paper that happens to also exist in your room; both you and the paper are objects in the room, both you and the paper take space, and you can react to the paper.

Before in my life, I would have agreed with you. However, I had some recent experiences with someone that can only be described as sharing oneness.
It wasn't constant, certainly, but there are things beyond regular explanation.

Without contact with this person, I could feel what she was going through at particularly intense moments. This, again, was not constant, but sporadic.

I have literally shared the same dream with this person, on more than one occasion. Waking in the morning, speaking first thing of our dreams, and how the other was in it, we determined we had actually shared dreams.

Another example, I would pass through an area, notice something, and have a very specific thought about it... a few moments later, almost as if passing through remnants of my thought in that specific location, this lady said basically the exact same thing I was thinking. If it had been once or twice, I wouldn't put much to it, but it came to the point where it was almost beyond any circumstancial coincidence...

There are other examples, but the point is made I think...

Now, we are clearly two separate souls... but, we can, if only temporarily, come together with someone. You have to be open to this sort of thing for it to ever happen, but it can happen.

 

[Kyriakos]

Very interesting post, Kochman

I am sure there are many things we are not aware of.

In fact it appears that sometimes the circulation of knowledge stops, and then picks up again, before becoming part of our shared experience of the cosmos. For example from reading books of the 19th and early 20th centuries i saw that spirituality at the time in Europe was seemingly a lot more advanced than today. Hypnosis and Telepathy, in particular, seemed to have been a very focused upon subject in certain circles.

 

[warpus]

When you look around the Universe, you're not really seeing what is there. You're seeing the 3d model that your brain constructs when it receives all the data from your senses.. mostly your eyes. It also uses approximation algorithms to fill in blanks for you.. which results in creepy stuff like seeing things that aren't there.. for example.

Anyway, the same is true with people. When you interact with them, you aren't really interacting with them.. you are interacting with your brain's reconstruction of that person. So there are a couple abstract layers between you and the person, but I wouldn't say that it's impossible to know other people. It's simply impossible to BE another person.

 

[Kyriakos]

Yes, i agree with that. Problem is that it seems "life is the absence of thought" (as Pessoa used to say), so it appears that thinking too much of the alienation that exists won't lead to anything good.

There was another thread by me specifically on the anthropomorphism of the space we conceive

 

[Silurian]

When you look around the Universe, you're not really seeing what is there. You're seeing the 3d model that your brain constructs when it receives all the data from your senses.. mostly your eyes. It also uses approximation algorithms to fill in blanks for you.. which results in creepy stuff like seeing things that aren't there.. for example.

Anyway, the same is true with people. When you interact with them, you aren't really interacting with them.. you are interacting with your brain's reconstruction of that person. So there are a couple abstract layers between you and the person, but I wouldn't say that it's impossible to know other people. It's simply impossible to BE another person.

So does one ever really know oneself?

 

[Quintillus]

Anyway, the same is true with people. When you interact with them, you aren't really interacting with them.. you are interacting with your brain's reconstruction of that person. So there are a couple abstract layers between you and the person, but I wouldn't say that it's impossible to know other people. It's simply impossible to BE another person.

No, you are interacting with them, just through those abstract layers (both yours and theirs of you). Those abstract layers don't mean you aren't interacting with them. They'll influence how you interact with them, and what you think of them, but you will still be interacting with them.

But I agree with your last sentence. I think, Kyriakos, in your first post you are more or less arguing that to know someone you have to either be them or be very close to being them mentally. I think there has to be a difference for "knowing someone" to have a useful meaning - it has to be achieveable. And there is import to "knowing someone" at a "really know" level, even if it can't be what you described in post 1.

I think of it as a continuum, that is ever-changing for each person you interact with. But "really knowing" of necessity does have to be limited to a small number of people who you interact with a lot and who are very open with you. The high amount of interaction required makes it a continuum - if you don't see them for long enough you won't really know the present them anymore - and the very open requirement does mean that there always has to be some element of trust that they are being honest and open with you. At some point I'd say you can be confident that you really know someone, but there's a lot of space where you know someone pretty well, but not to the degree of "really knowing" them you're thinking of.

Myself, I'd say there have been times when I've known some of my friends pretty well, whether "really well" I'm not sure. I don't think you have to know everything to "really know" someone - you have to know their character, what they'd do in a situation, and what they'd be likely to think in important situations. But not all the variables, no.

Silurian's question is also good, and I think it might be even more difficult. In part because you don't have to know what someone else wants in life to know them - if you know that they aren't sure what they want in life, and some of the factors weighing on that, I'd say that's sufficient for knowing them. To know yourself, I think it's more important to know what you want in life - or at least, to know where you're going, why you're happy with your life as it is, something like that. All things that you can't know for another person if they don't know themselves, but can try to figure out for yourself.

 

[Narz]

So does one ever really know oneself?

What is "oneself"? Like Walt Whitman we contain multitudes.

Psychological experiments are fascinating in large part because they show us how many mistakes we make when it comes to predicting our own behavior/emotions.

 

[Agent327]

-Another person is not linked to me mentally.

If you have ever been in a serious relationship with another person you know the absurdity of this statement. (For instance my mom literally wasn´t the same person anymore after my dad died.)

 

[Kyriakos]

If you have ever been in a serious relationship with another person you know the absurdity of this statement. (For instance my mom literally wasn´t the same person anymore after my dad died.)

Does not mean she was linked to the reality of the actual person; she just had to have had a very powerful mental image of her husband, for the loss to be detrimental, or at any rate observable.
You could have read the actual paragraph too

 

[warpus]

So does one ever really know oneself?

Most people never really do, I don't think.

No, you are interacting with them, just through those abstract layers (both yours and theirs of you). Those abstract layers don't mean you aren't interacting with them. They'll influence how you interact with them, and what you think of them, but you will still be interacting with them.

No disagreement there.

 

[Disgustipated]

If you have ever been in a serious relationship with another person you know the absurdity of this statement. (For instance my mom literally wasn´t the same person anymore after my dad died.)

I'd like to comment on your post, and also because the first thing I thought of when I read this thread title is something my ex-gf said to me. She said she didn't really know me, which I thought was total BS since I revealed all my inner thoughts to her. I was very open with her. In my case, she really did know me. But I'd say in most people's relationships where a person is dishonest, they don't really know each other. The evidence of this is how much people cheat and get away with it. That shows people don't really know each other.

 

[Synobun]

I know my best friend as well as he knows himself. Our friendship is on a level that we instinctively work together in sports or team work situations.

With that said, I will never know exactly what he is thinking, and that is good, because once that is achieved, it is no longer friendship or knowing them, you essentially become them.

 

[Agent327]

Maybe you can´t know what someone is thinking, but you can get to know how someone is thinking. But... the longer a relationship endures, the more you do become alike - which makes a final separation all the harder.

Does not mean she was linked to the reality of the actual person; she just had to have had a very powerful mental image of her husband, for the loss to be detrimental, or at any rate observable.

Simple answer: you think your mom and dad (assuming they are married) do not know one another thoroughly? I used this example because my mom and dad were married over 40 years.

But it appears to me you don´t take the subject very seriously...

I'd like to comment on your post, and also because the first thing I thought of when I read this thread title is something my ex-gf said to me. She said she didn't really know me, which I thought was total BS since I revealed all my inner thoughts to her. I was very open with her. In my case, she really did know me. But I'd say in most people's relationships where a person is dishonest, they don't really know each other. The evidence of this is how much people cheat and get away with it. That shows people don't really know each other.

I´d have to disagree: whether you tell the person you´re with the truth or not, there´s no avoiding getting to know the other person and vice versa.