Hi: I am looking for the title & author of a book which makes an
argument along the lines of, we can't understand things we have no
experience with, or everything we do understand is through the lens of
our past experience. I have never actually read or seen this book, it
was brought up by someone else in conversation.  I would also be
curious how you figured out which book this is.

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Request for Question Clarification by pinkfreud-ga on 12 Aug 2002 17:00 PDT

Any further information you can remember would be helpful. Is this a
recent book? Is it a textbook? A classic? Narrowing down the field
would make this question more answerable.

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Request for Question Clarification by sublime1-ga on 12 Aug 2002 17:45 PDT

Hi 484572...

I thought I'd bring up a book by Dr. Wayne Dyer to see what you think.
It is called "You'll See It When You Believe It".

Dr. Dyer begins with the commonly accepted premise that your
acquaintance
mentioned - the belief that we experience everything in the present
through
the lens of beliefs formed from past experiences. Another belief is
emerging
from a wide variety of sources these days, and Dr. Dyer was one of the
earliest proponents. It is the idea that although we experience what
we
believe to be true, and the default for these beliefs stems from our
past
experiences, we are capable of choosing to reject our past as the
automatic
author of our beliefs, and able to decide what beliefs will create our
current experiences. In effect, we can nurture beliefs which will
create
consistently joyful experiences.

A page on Dr. Wayne Dyer:
http://www.family-friendly-fun.com/spirit/teachers/wayne-dyer.htm

I realize the title, in effect, seems to contradict what your
acquaintance
proposed as the theme of the book for which you are looking. It
occurred
to me that they might have misinterpreted or misunderstood it. I was 
already familiar with this book, so I thought I'd invite your
feedback.

Searches, via Google:
"Wayne Dyer" + see + believe
://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=%22Wayne+Dyer%22+%2B+believe+%2B+see

sublime1-ga

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Clarification of Question by 484572-ga on 12 Aug 2002 18:33 PDT

Hi Again, and sorry for the confusion. 

sublime1: The acquaintance who mentioned the book was a Ivy
League-wannabe trying to justify a philosophical position, so I tend
to doubt he was referring to a popular self-help book - it might be in
the Bibliography, though.

pinkfreud: I'm guessing it lies somewhere in the middle ground between
textbook and mass-market pop-academia - not a classic per se, but the
standard expression of this position - something that would appear on
a syllabus for a course called Relative Philosophy 101. From the
subject matter I would guess 20th century, from the way it was
referenced possibly post-1960 (this is total speculation).

Hope this helps & thanks for your interest.

484572

You might peruse the links provided in attempts to answer this question --

https://answers.google.com/answers/main?cmd=threadview&id=5140

Sort of the same thread anyway.

--K~

Well 484572,

From your description of your acquaintance, and your
clarification of the type of book to pinkfreud, this
is certainly not the book you want, but it does contain
an almost exact quote: "We cannot understand what we
haven't experienced; we can only 'believe'."
So maybe your acquaintance would appreciate it... : )

Quoted from:
http://www.originalteaching.com/starpage8.html

Book: Cryptic Secrets of Star Trek
Author: Chris Huff


Searches, via Google:

"understand what we haven't experienced" + book
://www.google.com/search?num=50&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=%22understand+what+we+haven%27t+experienced%22+%2B+book

sublime1-ga

Oh wow, there are a LOT of books that fit that description.  It is one
of our most popular subjects in the world of literature.  However,
since you say that this is an "Ivy League-wannabe trying to justify a
philosophical position", I may wish to suggest that you read Plato's
"Allegory of the Cave", BOOK VII of Plato's "Five Great Diaglogues" in
"the Republic" (they are seperated into 10 books), which would fit
perfectly into his genre of philosophy.

I think that the complete text can be found here:
http://curie.pct.edu/courses/evavra/Enl121/Anthology/Plato_Cave.htm

and is the springboard for the movie "The Matrix" which tries to show
that man cannot see past the reality of his own life.  A man who has
been kept in a cave, seeing only shadows, will only be able to
comprehend life as containing those shadows.  Take him out of the cave
and into the sun, and he will be bewildered.  This is a classic
argument in inherited-religion.

Hope this helps,
dexterpexter-ga

HOW DID I COME UP WITH IT?
1) Experience in having read this piece.  It immediately popped into
mind.

HOW DID I FIND THIS ON THE INTERNET?
1) I have the book, so I knew the first line and so used it in my
search term.

SEARCH TERMS?
"Plato Allegory of the Cave And now I said how far our nature"
returned 1,780 results.  It was number 4.

oh, and one last note:

This would defintely be a book one would find in a course titled:
"Relative Philosophy 101"

A Philosophy class without Plato is... a waste of your parents' money. ;)

dexterpexter-ga

As dexter says, this is an idea which crops up in hundreds of works of
philosophy and literature, but its classic framing is, perhaps, John
Locke's 'An Essay Concerning Human Understanding' (1689).

Plenty of writers have developed his ideas, and your acquaintance
could be referring to one of them, I suppose.

You can read Locke's essay here:

John Locke: Essay
http://www.orst.edu/instruct/phl302/texts/locke/locke1/Essay_contents.html

You can find out more about Locke here:

Philosophy Pages: John Locke
http://www.philosophypages.com/ph/lock.htm

Given its date, I suppose this isn't the book you're looking for - but
read it and outsmart your Ivy-league wannabe!

It is also the central teaching of A Course In Miracles. Lesson 7 in
the year-long course is: ""I see only the past."