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An Interview with Christian Sorensen on Noetics or Gnoseology (Part Nine)

2023-03-21

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): In-Sight: Independent Interview-Based Journal

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2020/08/01

Abstract

Christian is a Philosopher that comes from Belgium. What identifies him the most and above all is simplicity, for everything is better with “vanilla flavour.” Perhaps, for this reason, his intellectual passion is criticism and irony, in the sense of trying to reveal what “hides behind the mask,” and give birth to the true. For him, ignorance and knowledge never “cross paths.” What he likes the most in his leisure time, is to go for a walk with his wife. He discusses: boxing; the greatest boxer of all time; what boxing gives him; psychology; does psychology qualify as a science in some ways; does psychology not qualify as a science in other ways; originally become interested in the question of psychology; mathematical codes in the Kabbalah; found anything so far; the original Kabbalah; looking for mathematical codes; the central purpose of looking for codes in the Kabbalah; the health risks in boxing; any definitive conclusions on psychology as a science or not; the beatings; Tyson; biological father; mother’s defence and/or reaction to the beatings by his stepfather; the boxing gloves and the pushing ball; Catholic school; years in the Catholic school; corporal punishment; the bullying; win:loss ratio; flesh of the ear; psychology; psychological constructs; apparent reflections of real knowledge about human psychology; Noetics; a legitimate form of inquiry and thinking; What would delegitimize it as a form of inquiry and thinking; the roots of Noetics, etymologically; the neologism; objects of study, relations orienting objects of study, and operations by which to perform studies on the objects and the relations in Noetics; siblings or extended family during the beatings; the rest of the family’s opinion; biological father and stepfather; to physical beatings or emotional-verbal berating; lifelong impacts; the psychology of the abuser; the Catholic hierarchs; parts has psychology mistaken for the whole; some of the more modern manifestations of this automatism in psychology; a Yeshiva; the Catholic school; Rabbi Akiva and Shimon bar Yorjai; (White) kabbalah and “black kabbalah”; Madonna; 14 years of familial, schoolmate, and educational authority beatings; “methodological reiteration” and “constant and indefinite process of trial and error tests”; biological father; divorce; a son of a divorced family and someone abused by a replacement male authority figure; forming the parts of a systemic structure; a systemic structure; evolution of homo sapiens tell us about such a hypothetical systemic structure via its biological substratum; zero connect between the conscious and the unconscious; “burst”; the difference in treatment of siblings; intelligence is carried via the mother; the sociocultural strictures on women in our societies; the cathectized energy; women “bear everything”; the two pure substrates and the mixed substrate; this mega-structure; mega-structure means something like a complex; the more intelligent tend to have fewer children; separated, disenfranchised, and left apart, estranged, from parents and siblings; the hypochondriatism; the existential humanistic theoretical models failed; why traditional religion failed; atheism and Humanism failed in current form; the differences one might find in the brain; fear of rejection and loneliness; the reckoning for high-IQ societies; others of high intelligence; common misconceptions of noetics; “logical principles”; “validity” and “truth”; confusing validity with truth; the unifying bases, premises in its field of inquiry; critical while friendly inquiry; mis-use or abuse as a system of inquiry via faith-based traditions or through purely empiric traditions; others who pioneered this field; current leaders in this field; frauds proposing to be part of this field; and the real and Truth.

Keywords: Christian Sorensen, Gnoseology, Noetics.

An Interview with Christian Sorensen on Noetics or Gnoseology (Part Nine)[1],[2]*

*Please see the footnotes, bibliography, and citation style listing after the interview.*

1. Scott Douglas Jacobsen: When did you get into boxing?

Christian Sorensen: That was when I was about eight years old, and my godmother gave me a pair of gloves and a pushing ball, that I hung on a tree in my house.

2. Jacobsen: Who was the greatest boxer of all time (to date)?

Sorensen: In my opinion Mike Tyson.

3. Jacobsen: What does boxing give you?

Sorensen: The chance of being able to relive, the constant beatings my stepfather gave me, and they gave me in a Catholic school of wealthy people, for being physically weak and different, but facing this time, from the opposite lane, bigger and stronger fighters than me.

4. Jacobsen: What is psychology?

Sorensen: It is a discipline, that studies the behaviour and the human mind, their conditioning factors, and the variables that can modify them.

5. Jacobsen: How does psychology qualify as a science in someways?

Sorensen: Currently, besides from presumptuously claiming to be a science, it does not qualify with anything else.

6. Jacobsen: How does psychology not qualify as a science in other ways?

Sorensen: I think that psychology throughout its history, has constantly placed the wagon before placing the oxen, since it has been quite proliferating from the point of view of its models and theoretical systems developments, but at the same time, has done it as if building a house of cards, because ultimately these are almost completely devoid of any scientific basis. In this sense, unlike the empirical-experimental sciences, basic stages that are necessary and are fulfilled by any one of them, have been skipped, due to the fact, that psychology has ignored what should always precede as a must, any type of theoretical construction. The aforementioned is evident enough since this discipline has not even been able, to adequately define until now the most basic issues, such as occurs for example with the object of study, and with the adaptation of the scientific method, in relation to its characteristics and nature. Consequently neither has been capable, to define the research hypotheses associated in turn with the independent and dependent variables, which aren’t really empirically refutable, nor has it had the scope to propose no kind of scientific law, as a logically unavoidable preamble for any further progress.

7. Jacobsen: When did you originally become interested in the question of psychology as a science or not? It is an inherently interesting question, especially when I was working in three psychology labs at once. It was a tacit assumption in the affirmation, in some, and in the negation, in others.

Sorensen: I was interested in that problem during my doctorate in Philosophy, because I was struck, by the presumption through which it was as an undeniable fact, that psychology is a science. I think that by doing so, psychology runs the risk of taking the parts for the whole, in other words to fall into an automatism, when imagining that because there are theoretical models with a clear experimental inclination, such as occurs with the radical behaviourism of B.F. Skinner, and with cognitive-behavioural and systemic approaches, that then wrongly it could be assumed as something necessarily, its scientific status. Therefore according with the above, what actually happens, is that the attempts to flirt with science, can only be accepted as nothing more than mere manifestations of a sort of scientific mimic, similar to what occurs when it is said, that a swallow does not make Summer.

8. Jacobsen: When did you become interested in mathematical codes in the Kabbalah?

Sorensen: It was a process, some years ago that coincided when I lived with my family in the orthodox city of Bnei-Brak in Israel. There I was studying in a Yeshiva, and after visiting the tombs of Rabbi Akiva and Shimon bar Yorjai in Meron, although in that environment it was generally not considered correct to do so, I was motivated to study deeply the Zohar, since I had the hypothesis that there were mathematical codes, which are susceptible to be deciphered.

9. Jacobsen: Have you found anything so far?

Sorensen: I think that at least, I have the certainty of what it is not. In my opinion, the Kabbalah has different levels of depth or elevations, and from that point of view, its highest level would have to do with mathematical codes, but not in the form of numerology and gematria, which is how it is usually conceived, when assigning a numerical value to each of the twenty-two characters of the Hebrew alphabet, from which different combinations and interpretations are made afterwards. Rather, I believe that these mathematical codes, need to be found in what I will denominate as Black Kabbalah, which would be the opposite of the aforementioned, since they should be deciphered along and between the unwritten spaces, of the rows or lines that form the Torah texts.

10. Jacobsen: When did the original Kabbalah begin?

Sorensen: I believe that the origin of the Kabbalah, coincides with Abraham’s life as a patriarch. What is relevant about this historical landmark, is that it corresponds to the change in the nature of the Kabbalah, since at that time, it was a popular knowledge to which everyone had access. It was a little after that, that took a radical turn by becoming a hidden and secret wisdom, regarding which only a few had access, in concrete those that were expert in Torah and who lived strictly according to the Halacha. This last, was until about twenty years ago, indeed after that it was opened again, in order to spread its wisdom among those who were interested in acknowledging this path and put it into practice.

11. Jacobsen: How does looking for mathematical codes in the Kabbalah differ from looking for mathematical codes in other things?

Sorensen: The mathematical codes in other things, allow to reach some result, while in the codes of Kabbalah no results are reached, since their codes as such are an end in itself.

12. Jacobsen: What would be the central purpose of looking for codes in the Kabbalah?

Sorensen: The purpose is to take the reason beyond its own limits, that is to say, to be able to cross this dimension of which we’re aware in order to enter another, without knowing what we are going to find out, or what are the laws that will act on it, but at the same time by pre-sensing it as existing, since in certain way the latest implies no matter what plane is alluded, some degree of effective reality. Somehow it is similar, to expect to have an encounter with a loved one, after having only seen its silhouette, nevertheless with the intuition that once the veil is removed, it will be possible to contemplate the truth of its figure through the eyes of the soul.

13. Jacobsen: What are the health risks in boxing?

Sorensen: All the conceivable risks, including death. I somehow think, boxing is a way to get in touch with one’s own thanatian drive, and lastly to dance with death.

14. Jacobsen: Have you come to any definitive conclusions on psychology as a science or not, or, at least, on sub-disciplines within the remit of psychology?

Sorensen: Nothing is definitive, since nothing is more definitive than change. I think that it may still take about two or three centuries for psychology, to reach a scientific status, because in some way, it is similar to a chain that still lacks links, therefore can’t be recognizable as something delimited and distinguishable. For now, in my opinion, it is only a discipline that doesn’t own a respectable body of knowledge. Therefore, practically nothing can be said about its validity or not, due to the fact that occurs with it almost the same which happens with arts. Indeed both are legitimate knowledge, in an aesthetic sense, but are not valuable regarding their theoretical structure, from a measurable perspective. In other words strictly speaking, basically in the case of psychology, is not possible to determine if it is or it is not, a reflection of a given object in reality, in consequence can be concluded, from a scientific prism, that its theoretical models and systems, actually aren’t knowledge.

15. Jacobsen: What age did the beatings start? What age did the beatings stop?

Sorensen: They started when I was about two years old, when they forced me to walk with a belt pulling my stomach, because I didn’t want to do so, and they ended up at school when I was sixteen years old.

16. Jacobsen: Have you seen that clip of him ducking and dodging in latter middle age with incredible adeptness and speed, Tyson?

Sorensen: I did see him training for his fight with Evander Holyfield. He is in very good shape, and despite his age, Tyson has maintained his power and speed.

17. Jacobsen: Where was your biological father?

Sorensen: A few blocks from where I lived. I think, he never realized what was going on with the abuses. I believe that even though this topic, regarding the episodes of abuses and my adulterous origin, were an open secret, around it there also was a sort of very good compartment of information. Until his death, he was a partner in businesses with my stepfather. When I was a kid, I used to go to his house to play with my two half brothers, however when I had to do my preparations for the Bar-Mitzva, which we were going to do with one of them, since we had the same age, my stepfather suddenly objected it, and prevented me, from having contact with him and my half brothers again.

18. Jacobsen: What was your mother’s defense and/or reaction to the beatings by you stepfather?

Sorensen: Actually apart from praying, I think that nothing else.

19. Jacobsen: Do you still have the boxing gloves and the pushing ball?

Sorensen: They were kept in my parents’ house until not long ago, but I think that after they moved; they got rid of those things.

20. Jacobsen: Why attend Catholic school?

Sorensen: Because apart from the fact, that this school was socially very well seen, since it was frequented by wealthy families, my mother despite being of Jewish origin from her mother, and coming from a family that for generations, was secular and freemasonic, suddenly decided in life, while being married, to deny her origins and family traditions, by becoming an extremist Catholic, and by convincing my stepfather, to convert from Lutheranism to Catholicism.

21. Jacobsen: How many years in the Catholic school?

Sorensen: Six years.

22. Jacobsen: Was corporal punishment part of the school system?

Sorensen: In my particular case, I think so, since it was evident that the teachers and authorities endorse it, despite this situation, was not a generalized fact seen with other students. The way it was channelled, was through my classmates, and higher-level students.

23. Jacobsen: Why the bullying in the school? I recall Professor Noam Chomsky describing anti-Semitism so ‘thick that you could cut it with a knife’ back in his day.

Sorensen: As with all the actually unopened secrets, this case was not the exception, since everyone knew my story, but cynically nobody spoke openly and straightly about it. Here there was a lethal mixture, because on the one hand there was a strong anti-Semitism, due to the fact that my mother and I were considered pigs marranos, and also because she was seen as a whore, who was called to atone for her sins. I remember that several times, while my mother was seen passing by the large window of the classroom, the teacher and my classmates began to make anti-Semitic comments, and to say insults treating her as a prostitute, which right away triggered me to come to her defense, by being indeed openly sarcastic and scathing. Every time this occurred, I confronted them as usual, except on one occasion when the pan turned. That time as usual, they were laughing at my mother, but instead of having several fronts opened, I focused exclusively on the teacher, and like a belldog I did not loosen him, until he had no choice but to remain silent, and withdraw flushed with shame and rage from the classroom. Afterwards the priests wanted me to apologize, but since I refused to do so, they punished me suspending me from classes. Anyhow it was useful what I did, because even though the insults towards her continued as hallway rumors, at least they stopped uttering them in public.

24. Jacobsen: What is the win:loss ratio for the boxing bigger and stronger fighters in general for you?

Sorensen: 0:1 respectively, since regardless of the record of battles won, I don’t know any of them, that either for health reasons or for leading a life dissipated and wild, hasn’t lost everything in their existence.

25. Jacobsen: Any thoughts, or emotions really, onTyson’sappetite for flesh of the ear?

Sorensen: It was a desperate cry of helplessness, for not tolerating the frustration of being defeated in that match, and on his return to boxing, when he was already old, and after having an undefeated career.

26. Jacobsen: Does psychology qualify as a “discipline” on this level or merely as one on paper and not in practice?

Sorensen: I think that psychology, is similar to a paper tiger, since without even judging it, feels itself as if it was a science, when actually it is not in any sense. Nevertheless, it could be treated as a discipline, but not as an art, because unlike the latter, and although possesses a theoretical body, that strictly speaking, and due to the reason that is not validatable, from an empirical-experimental perspective, is neither knowledge, has from the other side, the intention of constituting scientific theoretical systems, through its work. In other words, while it is holding a deficiency in this context, on the other hand guides its intentionality, towards a last end. Therefore it is deducible to infer, that the scientific status for psychology, in a perfeasibility sense, which in turn, I would denominate as methodological reiteration, is associated with a constant and indefinite process of trial and error tests, based on a temporary asymptote, where the goal searched, should be reached at a certain indeterminate point, although this must be identified with a theoretical infinity.

27. Jacobsen: What psychological constructs seem to be delving into some level of deeper truths about the human condition and the human being?

Sorensen: I think that psychoanalytic models, as they deepen the understanding of the functioning of the unconscious and of conscious mechanisms, and the systematic procedural cognitive models as well, because they manage to study and integrate cognitions and feelings, with behaviours and inter-individual relationships, as forming parts of a systemic structure.

28. Jacobsen: What parts of psychology as currently practiced, in doctoral research and after, seem to hint at some roots – maybe using the aforementioned psychological constructs? Not necessarily “knowledge” as previously defined, but, rather, partial images or apparent reflections of real knowledge about human psychology.

Sorensen: I think that fundamentally it is circumscribed to neuro-psychology, since through it, the psychological functioning, that is to say the behaviour, cognitions and affections, are landed to a biological base or substratum, which means that between the psychological and the biological factors, one of them tends to be automatically scientized.

29. Jacobsen: What is Noetics?

Sorensen: It is the critical study of knowledge, that seeks to value it, in relation to its formal logical validity, and to the ontological reality.

30. Jacobsen: What demarcates this as a legitimate form of inquiry and thinking?

Sorensen: The logical principles.

31. Jacobsen: What would delegitimize it as a form of inquiry and thinking?

Sorensen: To confuse validity with truth.

32. Jacobsen: What are the roots of Noetics, etymologically?

Sorensen: It comes from the Greek word noetikos, which means, what is related to the nous, that strictly speaking signifies the capacity to intellegy immediately an idea, that is to say without the need, as occurs with logos, of the intermediation of discursive reasonings.

33. Jacobsen: Why the neologism?

Sorensen: Because a man is like a planet, since it doesn’t have holes. Therefore needs neologisms, to emphasize the fact of having its own world, and for leaving spaces in language, due to the reason that metaphor cannot give it.

34. Jacobsen: What are its objects of study, relations of orienting the objects of study, and operations by which to perform studies on the objects and the relations in Noetics?

Sorensen: Noetics is equivalent to gnoseology, therefore encompasses all the objects of thought, including those that regard intuition, in the sense of intus legere, and of the epistemic ones as well, which are related to science.

35. Jacobsen: Where were your siblings or extended family during the beatings or the talk within the family, if any, about the beatings?

Sorensen: I was the oldest one. I had a godmother, who was Jewish and a psychologist. She was always very concerned about me, and several times confronted my stepfather, when he found out that I was beaten or mistreated. Every year, in my birthdays, we spent the whole day together. Once, she gave me a pair of sneakers, that I loved very much, and I had wanted them for a long time. When I got home, my stepfather forced me to return them, threatening me not to tell her the real reason, because he had warned me not to ask those sneakers, since as a Jew I had to get used to receiving only second-hand gifts. When I went to her, I was very scared, but even though I tried to find justifications, she realized what was going on, and immediately went to confront him. The short story of it, was that I managed to keep the sneakers, and my stepfather had to resign himself and could not reprimand me.

36. Jacobsen: What was the rest of the family’s opinion of your stepfather?

Sorensen: My stepfather, as father, was absolutely different with all my half brothers. He has always been very loving and concerned, and has never beaten or mistreated them. In turn, they love him very much, and have always seen his parental figure as a good role model. My mother, for her part, has suffered a lot with being married in every way, but has never done something, because she has always preferred her comforts above anything else. The rest of the family, has always been clear about the abysmal differences he made with me in relation to my half brothers. Even it could be said, that they were scandalized by these abusing behaviours, and in fact many times they teared their clothes for this reason, but in summary, they preferred never to get too much involved into it, as a manner of avoiding any kind of conflicts.

37. Jacobsen: How many times did your mother marry or remarry? What about your biological father and stepfather?

Sorensen: My mother has been married only once. What happened to me, was a slip within the marriage, that has been kept with seven locks in order to maintain social appearances and a good reputation. When my mother was dating my stepfather, she introduced him with my biological father, who was, in turn, the boyfriend of her best friend since they were girls, so that they could do business with each other. With the passage of time, my mother lost her best friend, because this last never forgave what she did being friends. After a while they got divorced, and they both continued to have businesses in common, although with a tense and distant relationship, until he died almost thirty years ago.

38. Jacobsen: What do beatings do to children? How do young men and adolescent boys, even quite young boys, react to physical beatings or emotional-verbal berating?

Sorensen: They harm them in every way, by leaving wounds, that although they can lick them alone, as dogs do to heal themselves, can never be erased, because they remain as indelible traces of suffering. I think that they react depending on each case, with a lot of frustration, anger and fear, for feeling powerless, of not being able to do anything to change that situation, and at the same time, they feel guilty and responsible for believing that they are the cause that ultimately provoked these abuses.

39. Jacobsen: Do you believe there are lifelong impacts from these things, these actions, on the young?

Sorensen: For this life and the other if there is any.

40. Jacobsen: What is the psychology of the abuser?

Sorensen: To joyfully take advantage of the weakest, and if suffering is showed and mercy is implored, then to continue until they burst.

41. Jacobsen: How did the Catholic hierarchs react within this context of the beatings?

Sorensen: By supporting them, and participating with psychological abuses.

42. Jacobsen: What parts has psychology mistaken for the whole?

Sorensen: I think that the existential-humanistic theoretical models, including the transpersonal and bio-energetic psychology.

43. Jacobsen: What are some of the more modern manifestations of this automatism in psychology?

Sorensen: Everything that has to do with the development, and sale of techniques and therapeutic approaches, that offer outcomes that in most cases only have placebo effects, and when they could have any results, these are not sufficiently objectified.

44. Jacobsen: Why were you studying in a Yeshiva at the time?

Sorensen: Because I wanted to accompany the son of my wife, who was living there, and because some rabbis who were considered Tzadikim, estimated that I was blessed by God for the intelligence I had, and they proposed to me to study for becoming a rabbi.

45. Jacobsen: Do you believe the Catholic school wealthy, elite, and anti-Semitic environment carved an independence of mind and a steadfastness in spite of the difficulties of life for you?

Sorensen: I think so. I also think, that it taught me to relativize things, to integrate the good and bad aspects of the objects, and to have a very sharp tongue as well. Sometimes though, paradoxical things happened, due to the fact that many times my mother caught my attention, when I was a child, because according to her, since I was five years old, I had done psychological bullying to my stepfather, who afterwards reacted with anger. I take advantage of mentioning this, because he was also involved in the mistreatment of the school, matter that was recognized by himself, since he had asked the authorities of the school, to do what was necessary, in order to teach me to be more humble. In this regard, I remember that when I was about eight years old, to some extent I liked to debate existential issues, since in this way I had the access key to place him at a crossroads. In concrete, I enjoyed to get to the point in the discussion, where I heard that his stomach was starting to make strange noises, and he had to interrupt abruptly the conversation, for going right away to the bathroom. The fact that he had indigestion, for listening to me, was the moment, in which without the need of using violence with aggressive words or blows, I felt the certainty of having achieved a victory, through a gesture that meant more than a thousand words, and that had a subtlety and cynicism that exceeded that of the priests.

46. Jacobsen: Why focus on Rabbi Akiva and Shimon bar Yorjai?

Sorensen: Because Rabbi Akiva, was one of the most memorable Tzadikim, and since he had been the teacher of Shimon bar Yojai. And regarding the latter, due to the fact that I consider that he is the father of the Kabbalah, because by was capable to put in written form, what represents its most important text, since until then this was only known by oral tradition, and which in turn has allowed to perpetuate the knowledge and study of this wisdom, throughout the centuries.

47. Jacobsen: Have you been juxtaposing and working on the relations between (white) kabbalah and “black kabbalah”? Why did Madonna get into it?

Sorensen: No, since I think that white Kabbalah takes the wrong path. Why Madonna got into Kabbalah? I think that for the same reason why she eats Sushi.

48. Jacobsen: 14 years of familial, schoolmate, and educational authority beatings. No doubt, this would leave an indelible impression. What is the symptomatology for you?

Sorensen: I think that I have gone through several symptomatologies during my life, some of which still persist today. When I was a child and adolescent, I tended to somatize my anguishes and fears in different physical ailments, which in adulthood have mutated and have led me to be a hypochondriac. And as horizontal symptomatology, historically speaking, the fear of rejection and loneliness.

49. Jacobsen: With this “methodological reiteration” and “constant and indefinite process of trial and error tests” aimed at an ‘infinite hypothetical point,’ where does this leave us in comprehension of the full human being, i.e., of the human “soul”? 

Sorensen: In the letter h of the word human.

50. Jacobsen: Why was your biological father so disconnected?

Sorensen: I actually do not know. I think that with my mother there was a kind of folie de deux, since she suffers from the same syndrome. An example that demonstrates the aforementioned, was when once, taking advantage of the fact that my stepfather was travelling, she invited him to the house, but instead of being both alone, she profited off the opportunity for making a blind date with a friend of hers, who was a top model of the time.

51. Jacobsen: Why did they divorce?

Sorensen: Because apparently, she never got over his infidelity, and all the farce that was created around this story, for trying to save social appearances. According to my mother, she never spoke to her again, and unlike him, who never remarried or had a partner again, she literally untied herself, to make her ex-husband suffer in the same way, and that’s why she first married a footballer from the low leagues, and after a while she kept jumping from one partner to another.

52. Jacobsen: As a son of a divorced family and someone abused by a replacement male authority figure, did you ever fear this manifestation in later life from you – in either case?

Sorensen: Before marriage yes, after being married no. I think, it is necessary to distinguish between being afraid of something, and being aware of the evil of it.

53. Jacobsen: Of the “forming parts of a systemic structure,” what seems like the true substructure here?

Sorensen: The black box.

54. Jacobsen: With the “biological base or substratum,” does this seem to hint closer to the “systemic structure”?

Sorensen: The psychological functioning, is mediated by neuro-biology, and the outcome from that intersection, is what I will denominate as neuro-psycho-biological substrate or biological base. Therefore, and strictly speaking, there would be three systematic structures, of which I am going to name respectively the two formers as pure, and the last one as mixed.

55. Jacobsen: Why should there be a systemic structure?

Sorensen: Because in each of them, there are parts that form a whole, nevertheless that whole is not equivalent to the mere sum of its parts, but rather to the different interactions that the parts maintain with each other.

56. Jacobsen: What can the evolution of homo sapiens tell us about such a hypothetical systemic structure via its biological substratum?

Sorensen: What it indicates, is that it evolves through the biological substratum, and that this last, is what makes the systemic structure increasingly complex.

57. Jacobsen: Could this be a systemic theoretical framework for understanding while the system itself lacks a true integration to such an extent so as to remove the possibility of a systemic structure – akin to the idea some time ago of zero connect between the conscious and the unconscious?

Sorensen: I think that in this context, the idea of system goes beyond itself as such, since more than one are interacting with each other, therefore it is reductive and simplistic to think univocally and singularly about it. In consequence rather than believing in one systemic structure, I would say that multiple systems form what I will denominate as mega-structure, due to the fact that all of them simultaneously belong to the same main system, which is not equivalent to be sub-systems, since they have in common an identical operational or functional sense, but on the other hand, each of them has an independent structure with its own and different properties.

58. Jacobsen: Did you “burst”?

Sorensen: I do not think so. In this sense, since I believe that energy is a constant, and then that it cannot be eliminated, but only transformed and channelled through something, is that I decided ultimately not to exploit. What I actually did, was to intentionally accumulate all the energy, and afterwards to focus it on a predetermined objective as a target. In other words, what I managed to do, was to drive it by cathectizing its force through alternating forms, in order to use them chameleonically depending on each circumstance, and of what I was needing according to them.

59. Jacobsen: Why the difference in treatment of siblings, at root?

Sorensen: Because I believe that when my stepfather, saw the intelligence difference that he and my siblings had with me, he realized that it was equivalent to what he and my siblings have with gorillas. And perhaps, he surely imagined, that this has happened because my mother, unlike to what occurred when they were making my brothers, touched the stars of pleasure when she was making me with my biological father… With these last words, I am only repeating what she herself has said.

60. Jacobsen: If intelligence is carried via the mother, what do the siblings do now? How is this intelligence manifested?

Sorensen: They are vile puppets handled and dominated by my stepfather. It should not be forgotten, that although the intelligence is inherited from the mother, this is a hereditary polygenic characteristic, therefore there is no guarantee, that they inherit the same intelligence, and in fact statistically speaking, it is highly improbable, not to say it’s pretty impossible, to repeat more than once, the same event of having a son with immeasurable intelligence.

61. Jacobsen: Even with the high heritability of intelligence from the mother, and even with the abusive environment never escaped, what does this state about the sociocultural strictures on women in our societies?

Sorensen: That unfortunately almost all women are like paper, since they bear everything.

62. Jacobsen: What have been some of the uses of the cathectized energy?

Sorensen: Generally, it has been for exercising what I denominate the right of reply, which translates in knowing how to wait for a space, that I will name as timing, and then to use the hidden meanings through what is said, but is not articulately expressed within the language, that ultimately I will objectify by utilizing the mechanism of the joke and its effect, as an empirical parameter, in order to evaluate its effectiveness.

63. Jacobsen: Why do women “bear everything”?

Sorensen: Because they seek a master and lord, over whom they can reign.

64. Jacobsen: With the two pure substrates and the mixed substrate, what can estate about each substrate?

Sorensen: That respectively the neuro-biological substrate, has a purely material nature, in the anatomical and physiological sense, that the psychological base has a purely immaterial nature, that it could be viewed as psycho-spirituality, and that the neuro-psycho biological order, has a mixed nature, which I will denominate as transitional, since constantly and dynamically flows through a continuum, that goes from the extreme of pure psycho-spirituality, towards the other that is purely anatomical and physiological.

65. Jacobsen: Will this mega-structure be forever opaque given the subjective nature of experience and the use of subjective experience to gather some approximations of the material phenomena correlated to experiences?

Sorensen: I am not sure of that, because the fact that the subject points out his experience, as something to which he can attributes a transcendence, in the sense of not giving to it any spatiality, and of presuming it with a sort of life of its own, does not imply necessarily that objectively speaking, this could not be found in any part of the mega-structure, and even more, that probably the root of its origin could not be limited to this last. Therefore, it’s plausible to deduce that further behind its origin within the mega-structure, nothing else would exist regarding the subjective experience. I think that perhaps what occurs, is the opposite, since actually this would be the mega-structure that makes opaque the latest.

66. Jacobsen: Does mega-structure mean something like a complex in this orientation?

Sorensen: The mega-structure, is a systemic body, that apart from being subject to feedback mechanisms, integrates material and immaterial natures, as relative entities, since rather than integrating them into a mixture, where each one would maintain their intrinsic properties despite the whole they form, what it does, is to hybridize both through states, that are in permanent dynamism, and that are constantly changing.

67. Jacobsen: Why do the more intelligent tend to have fewer children while the highly intelligent and beyond trend towards no children whatsoever?

Sorensen: I think that there is an evolutionary force, that interprets intelligence to the extent that it becomes more extreme, as if it was a genetic mutation, and therefore nature operates on it, in the same way as it generally does with malformations. Consequently, natural selection, would also act in order to limit its survival, which could be seen as an expression of pettiness or envy. Nevertheless in this context, instead of doing this with the weakest, does so with the intention to exclude the excessively intelligent as strong individuals, since these just occur with the weakest and the most defective ones, would lastly break the balance within nature.

68. Jacobsen: Have you largely been separated, disenfranchised, and left apart, estranged, from parents and siblings in adult life? In either case, do you have any wishes regarding it?

Sorensen: I think that all of the above, has happened to me in different measures, and everything has been magnified in my adulthood, since despite the consideration that my siblings and stepfather, as well as my mother with her accommodating attitudes, towards luxuries and her comfort zone, think of themselves, that is a model of a Catholic family, who preaches Christian charity permanently, and attends mass daily, they have completely excluded and excised me from their family, due to my origins and for being a free lay thinker, to the point that literally, I do not have the right to enter to the house of my parents, not even for using the bathroom in case of need. All of the aforementioned, is a story that I am just describing, nevertheless, I think that to forget, first it’s necessary to remember, and since I still remember, and I wish to continue remembering for a long time, I’m not in a hurry to forget. Besides, neither I am willing to milk cows that are dead. Anyhow, the positive matter about this tale, is that even though apparently anything belongs to me, materially speaking, due to the reason that they intend by all means to disinherit me, I am on the other hand fortunate, because regarding love, I have a certainty that few can have.

69. Jacobsen: How is the hypochondriatism directed?

Sorensen: Making my wife dizzy with it several times per day, and visiting the doctor often with the phantom of my imaginary diseases.

70. Jacobsen: Why have the existential-humanistic theoretical models failed?

Sorensen: Because they have become a sort of religion.

71. Jacobsen: In turn, with the elephant on the chopping block, why has traditional religion failed?

Sorensen: Because they are all totemic cults, that have idealized the murdered father, by turning this figure into a deity to venerate.

72. Jacobsen: Following the previous question, why have atheism and humanism failed in the current form?

Sorensen: More than humanism, it is the existentialism that has failed, at the same time that on the other hand, atheism is not equivalent in this context to atheistic existentialism, since I think that what has failed, is rather the latest, and not atheism as such. What’s been occurring, especially in the case of the french existential-humanism or existentialism, is that they have straightly become a light or soft vitalism or nihilism, that’s unable to explain enough, the notion of none-ness or existential emptiness, which leaves in my opinion, the concept of existing-being locked in a tautological circle.

73. Jacobsen: If I remember right, with a 185+ (S.D. 15) on the WAIS-R, then this means a highest score known to me on the most consistently legitimate tests with the WAIS, SB, and RAPM as the top three. Of individuals “known to me” with two tips of the hat to Kirk Kirkpatrick with 185 (S.D. 15) on the SB and Katsioulis 180+ (S.D. 15) on the WAIS-R, you’re the one. We have covered this ground. The stars appear to have aligned that time. Now, this leads to some interesting neuro-biological, neuro-anatomical speculation, Einstein had more glial cells. Any speculation as to the differences one might find in the brain for you?

Sorensen: They will surely find many more neurons than the ones Langan & Co. have, and that the rest of the ones who are at the top of the loop have.

74. Jacobsen: How did this fear of rejection and loneliness play out in life, personal and professional?

Sorensen: When I have felt one of both, I have replaced the original feeling associated to it, with another that has opposite valence.

75. Jacobsen: With much defunct societal status, inflated IQs, and the like, in the high-IQ world, the falsehoods cannot last forever. When will the reckoning for high-IQ societies come down on them even more, as they have – given the graveyards and the personality controversies?

Sorensen: When it is found, that none of those gods of Olympus, of imaginary ego-inflating games, is capable of solving any important problem for humanity.

76. Jacobsen: Have others of high intelligence been demonized within the family? Who? Is it the same reasons over and over, or various reasons depending on context (or both)?

Sorensen: You, should respond yourself that dilemma. Next.

77. Jacobsen: What are common misconceptions of noetics?

Sorensen: The fact to believe that noetics is equivalent to the philosophy of science, that this last differs from epistemology, and to think that the latest would be an activity of science, which is supposed to be developed with respect to each of its particular fields of knowledge.

78. Jacobsen: What “logical principles”?

Sorensen: They would be respectively the principles of non-contradiction, identity, and excluded third party. Additionally would be the principle of sufficient reason, since although it is not logical, because it is ontological, it is nevertheless related to the previous ones. From my point of view, there is a fifth within them, that’s also ontological, and which I will denominate as the principle of necessary reason.

79. Jacobsen: What differentiates “validity” and “truth” in this context?

Sorensen: The fact that validity, refers to truth from the point of view of complex or logical discursive reasonings, while truth as such, has relation to the correspondence between the essence and existence of being.

80. Jacobsen: How would one confuse validity with truth?

Sorensen: To the extent that both can be part of a deductive affirmation, in the same or opposite senses, since they can be invalid and false, valid and true, invalid and true or valid and false.

81. Jacobsen: With noetics as gnoseology, what are its unifying bases, premises in its field of inquiry?

Sorensen: The concepts of logos apophantikos in relation to the ones of essence, existence, and being.

82. Jacobsen: As a critical while friendly inquiry, how does this add to the discussion now?

Sorensen: By adding the rest of the discussion, from the beginning and from the end, so that this looks like a sort of ham in the sandwich.

83. Jacobsen: How could this be misused or abused as a system of inquiry via faith-based traditions or through purely empiric traditions?

Sorensen: I think that by taking, what I consider to be the fundamental noetic concepts, as if they were sort of rocks, which would mean to interpret them unequivocally, as if they were pieces of reality, and without recognizing that their value is precisely the opposite, since they never reach to fully squeeze the reality, because noesis as an act of perceiving or intellectually conceiving the thing, would necessarily be imperfect, due to the fact that a part of the thing itself, is going to always be hidden or veiled in terms of gnosis.

84. Jacobsen: Who are others who pioneered this field?

Sorensen: Unless you consider that I pioneered this field, there can’t be others, since yet I have not named anyone.

85. Jacobsen: Who are the current leaders in this field?

Sorensen: There are no who, since nobody is.

86. Jacobsen: Who are frauds proposing to be part of this field?

Sorensen: Scientists, who intend to do epistemology of their own sciences.

87. Jacobsen: In this reality of the opacity of apprehension of the totality of the real, why are the search for, attempt to define, and efforts to encapsulate ultimate truth, penultimate truth, absolute truth, utter truth, undivided truth, perfect or pure truth, or non-relative or non-variable truth, or whatever other name one wants to use to grasp at the same idea of Truth, simply futile for thousands of years in the past to the present, even now, and forever into the future?

Sorensen: Fortunately this attempt is useless, since otherwise, the advance of knowledge would have already been stopped. The only thing that identifies with the truth, in terms of an absolute, is a nirvanal state, that actually would be identical to death, due to the fact that as such, is the only moment, in which what there is, undeniably is a forceful response, which does not need any questioning or completion by something. For this reason, if the aforementioned wants to be seeing from an existential point of view, then death, is a blind point in where a state of perfect equilibrium which equals zero, and a state of vacuum totality coincide.

Appendix I: Footnotes

[1] Independent Philosopher.

[2] Individual Publication Date: August 1, 2020: http://www.in-sightjournal.com/sorensen-nine; Full Issue Publication Date: September 1, 2020: https://in-sightjournal.com/insight-issues/.

License

In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.

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