REFER TO GREY: Contemplations by Robert Greigos © 2007-2026

Had an interesting conversation with a friend the other day. He’d never heard the term “empiricism”. We’d been talking about differences in point of view, whether one understanding of how the world works is intrinsically “better” than all others.

Likely you’ve heard that argument before. It isn’t new. All fundamentalists and authoritarians take that position, from Trump to the Taliban to the Nazis to the Inquisition. They begin with a set of ideas and nothing shakes their faith in instituting those ideas within everything they do and touch. This is good. That isn’t. Down with the bad. Up with the good. I’d call that position “Simple Think” because it discounts and ignores interrelationships and subtleties of process, and quite often consequence.

“Tell me something,” I said to my friend. “Do you believe that chair over their actually exists? Or, is it a delusion we both share?”

He, of course, was immediately confused. “No,” he finally said. “It actually exists.”

To which I said, “Then you are an empiricist?”

“A what?” he said.

I tried to explain that an empiricist accepts that a world of things exists outside of our own thoughts and beliefs and that knowledge about who we are and how the world works can be gained from exploring that world. He then looked the word up on his phone to find that what I explained was correct. And then he got to thinking about what that meant relative to his own beliefs, which tended toward a Christian fundamentalist point of view wherein his overwhelming concern was to religiously follow all biblically born “rules” so that he might find his way to an afterlife in “heaven”.

It wasn’t my intent, but our discussion may have totally disrupted his feelings of wellbeing for the day. Rather, it was more my intent to offer a bit of what amounted to my point of view on how the world works and what our place in it is.

I added to my explanation of “empiricism” that “rationalism” is often considered to be its opposite. But, at that point, my attempted elaboration as to what constituted “rationalism” sort of got both of us into a bit of a fluster. Always good to be crystal clear in your own mind what you know and think before attempting to explain that supposed knowledge and thinking to others. And then, of course, there are always other considerations to take into account, like how best to formulate an explanation and whether or not the other person is even open to hearing and trying to understand your thoughts. To the case in point, my friend was not ready to accept the possibility that what was written in the Bible was in any way different from knowledge the phenomenal could offer. And so, with that bit of impasse, our discussion came to a halt.

But continuing here, by dictionary definition, “rationalism” is to be thought of as a “reasoned source of knowledge superior to and independent of sense perceptions.” That “independent of sense perceptions” part was what I was getting at by asking him if he believed that chair actually existed. And for me, reasoned understandings of what a chair is and isn’t are certainly “useful”, but are never actually comprehensively complete, especially across different person’s minds. We all have sometimes slight and sometimes major differences in our understandings of even what is right in front of us and how those things actually work. Hence, both the value and frustration of recognizing and acknowledging that points of view can differ.

Hard science and some serious thinkers consider reasoned “theory” to be a good starting point for discovery of what is and isn’t actually true. But they do not consider the matter closed just because “theory” seems emotionally satisfying or even apparently lends itself to powerful practical use. For them, “theory” must be tested against the actual unadulterated workings of the phenomenal world of things. And unfortunately for dedicated rationalists, those who rigorously adhere to a fixed set of notions or beliefs, what hard scientists consistently find when testing their theories is that nearly always they are either completely false or only partially valid. There is always always always more to learn, from both each other and from the actual workings of the phenomenal world of things. Not the imagined, nor even the hoped for workings of the world, but the actual workings.

The above images offer a view of external “things” to consider, including the adage, if you look closely, that “obstacles are a part of the journey.” Annoying they may be, but obstacles and how we think about them are always opportunities to improve our understandings of how the world works and what our place within its processes currently is and perhaps could be. And that includes comparing and discussing differences in point of view.

May you always always take advantage of opportunities to learn, and may you more often than not thoughtfully and intentionally contribute to the general wellbeing of everyone and everything everywhere.