"The moment of truth, the sudden emergence of a new insight, is an act of intuition. Such intuitions give the appearace of miraculous flashes, or short-circuits of reasoning. In fact they may be likened to an immersed chain, of which only the beginning and the end are visable above the surface of consciousness. The diver vanishes at one end of the chain and comes up at the other end, guided by invisible links." - Arthur Koestler


I have become distinctly comfortable in trusting my 'instincts.'
When I was in elementary school I was told by a classmate that my heart was black. All of my friends were having their First Holy Communion, but I didn't even know what it was. My parents never took me to church or preached any form of religion onto my sister and I, so I was terrified when my friends at school told me that I was going to hell. I expressed this fear to my parents so my father and I went to the bookstore where he bought me the Reader's Digest Bible for Children and a kid's book on world religions. I read the Bible often with honest hope that I would make it to heaven. Eventually I lost interest and began to realize that it doesn't matter, there is no God, no one is going to heaven.
And this I trust.

My thoughts and views are mainly cohesive with what I understand of Clark's "naturalism." I rely on experiences and scientific evidence to shape my understanding of the world and therefore I do not hold in my beliefs any notions of the supernatural.

"Faith is believing what you know ain't so." (Anonymous)

I tend to live by the sentiment that I need solid and substantial proof in order to commit what I believe as truths. Consequently, I do not posses faith in supernatural entities, such as god or any other high power that transends the physical world. This type of existence cannot be proven and is simply incohesive with the rest of the world as I see it.
I have struggled to understand the logic in devoting oneself to a relationship with something that's existence is fabricated upon blind belief. In the past I have tried & achieved no satisfaction in attempting such a relationship. I contest, however, that whether or not a supernatural entity such as God exists is unimportant. It can be seen that such devotion to faith truly enriches peoples' lives by instilling a sense of purpose and vibrance to the way people live.

Query: How contrive not to waste one's time?
Answer: By being fully aware of it all the while.
Albert Camus

To be aware of time it's important to understand your own subjective definition of what time is. I agree strongly with the concept of a physical time and psychological time. I see physical time as an organizational method to standardize our subjective psychological times. There are some personal instincts and patterns that all individuals have, but they may not necessarily coinside directly with everyone elses. I see physical time as a way to understand the relationship of your actions and perception of time with those of society around you. Everyone has an internal biological clock that knows when the body needs to do things like eat and sleep and these needs turn into patterns distinct to every individual. Physical time allows people to recognize the moments that they fufill these needs as well as how the people around them are functioning. With this universal map of time people are then able to correspond their actions.

In my opinion, there is no greater investment than time. Anything else that you use or invest can be relinquished. Time is the only thing that you cannot get back once you have spent it. You can't stop or slow the spending but you are in control of how you spend it. Whether or not time is 'real' I believe that it's important to recognize that our lives are moving forward, towards their end and once a moment has passed it is over.


The theif to be most wary of is the one who steals your time.

I waste a substantial amount of my time whether it's doing things I don't like to do, or allowing other people to control or use my time. I've really only recently begun to realize the severity of time, but I don't want to regret because lingering only further decreases the amount that I have.

During today's discussion in class I was intrigued by the notion of "trivial constructivism." I certaintly do not see myself as a radical constructivist because I cannot logically agree with the idea that there is no reality beyond an individual's personal perception. I do, however, find myself in agreeance with other constructivist characteristics. As I mentioned in a previous blog, I feel that individuals are responsible for their own point of view and are in control of defining and creating the world in which they live.

As far as apples are concerned, they exist whether or not we perceive them, at least in the dynamics of my reality. Someone asked today, "What caused the apple to get into the mind?" I see the apple as proof that there is a world independent of human perception. Otherwise, how would there be anything for us to perceive and experience for our personal realities?

According to radical constructivism reality is a product of experience. When individuals have the same experiences a shared reality is formed for society. The possibility of an object having properties that humans cannot perceive is enough for Von Glaserfeld to say that we cannot understand what constitutes "real" objects. I feel that the possibility for objects to have more properties than we can potentially imagine does not hinder humans to fully understand them. Since all humans are incapable of perceiving such characteristics then no one has an advantage over anyone else and our shared reality is not threatened. If everyone as a society is faced with the same limits of knowledge then why can't we view our realities and the objects that construct them as "real." After all, they are as "real" as we will ever understand them to be.