On Experience Occluding Structures

1. Let me begin this article with the ideas of a most unlikely thinker:
Imre Lakatos. He was Hungarian born, a naturalised British citizen, a
philosopher of science and, for some time, an ardent champion of Sir
Karl Poppers theory about the nature of scientific growth. In his postPopperian phase, he developed a methodology of scientific research
programmes. Larry Laudan transformed the theses of Lakatos and
gave them the form familiar to most of us today. Lakatos speaks about
the growth of science in terms of competing research programmes.
His notion of a research programme included, besides a succession of
theories, a common metaphysical core surrounded by a protective
belt. This protective belt immunised the programme against
falsification; it encouraged the formulation of ad hoc hypotheses as
immunising strategy. He never went further than these initial
formulations: he died too early for that. If Lakatos is right, as I am
now inclined to think he is, several intriguing problems arise: why is
there a protective belt? What is its nature? Where does it come from?
How does it continue to persist? I shall be partially answering some of
these questions in this article. As a run-up to outlining the
problematic though, some illustrations of the problem involved.
1.1How did the proponents of the flat-earth hypothesis react
to the claim that the earth was spherical? By suggesting
that, if the earth were to be round, at some point in a sea or
land travel one would have to fall off the surface of the
earth. Because such an incident never occurred, they
reasoned, it was preposterous to entertain the idea that
earth was spherical.
1.2 When Galileo argued the helio-centric theory in his
Dialogues on the Two World Systems, his opponents refuted
it by putting across the following consideration: if earth
revolved round its axis, how does it come about that we do
not fly off the surface of the earth? Or feel dizzy? Or why
does an object thrown up during a boat travel fall inside the
boat and not miss it entirely? Such experiences, they
suggested, goes to show that Galileos theory was absurd.
1.3When the motion of the planet Mercury threatened to
become an anomaly to Newtons theory, the scientists did
not think that Newtons theory got refuted by the
observations. Instead, they postulated an ad hoc hypothesis:
there must be another planet (Pluto, if my memory serves
me right) in the vicinity causing Mercury to deviate from its
predicted path. They could not believe that Newtons theory,
which so elegantly accounted not only for planetary motions
but also the ebb and flow of the tides, was wrong.

1.4These are but three of many such stories told by

philosophers of science, while discussing the adequacy of
theories of scientific growth. What is of interest to me in
such anecdotes is the nature and role of experience. It
plays a very important role in each of the above examples: in
the first two, there is an appeal to experience in order not
to accept accounts which appear contra-experiential; in the
third case, an ad hoc hypothesis is proposed in order to
save the experience. Despite their dissimilarity, there is a
cognitive attitude common to all three: threats to experience
are rejected. (In philosophy of science, this attitude is called
as saving the phenomena. My reason for not choosing the
accepted terminology will become evident later on.)
2. What is the nature of experience in the above examples? If we use
the Kantian notion of phenomena (in the phrase save the
phenomena), it is self explanatory: it is a structured experience. What
has lent structure to these experiences? In the third case, it is
obvious: the theory of Newton. How about the first two? Even though
it is not immediately obvious, I suggest that the answer is the same
there as well: some account (I am not making any distinction between
an account, a theory and a hypothesis) or another has structured the
experience in the first two cases too. In each of the three cases,
experience is structured by cognitive schemes be they theories,
accounts, implicit beliefs, or whatever else. What is the structure in
this structured experience? It is the structure of the cognitive scheme
itself. An additional example might render the last sentence more
perspicuous.
3. Common to most theories of morality and to the commonsense in the
west is the following assumption: moral rules constrain human
strivings. (It is of no concern to us whether these strivings are
conceptualised as urges, passions, inclinations, desires, or whatever
else.) Moral rules appear to be in need of justification because of the
constraints they place on human behaviour, and hence the question Is
it rational to be moral? Notice that the relation between rationality
and morality is asymmetric: it does not make sense to ask, Is it
moral to be rational? Of course, there are many moral criticisms of
local rationalities: a critique of capitalist rationality, technical
rationality, instrumental rationality etc. But they do not appear to
have quite the scope of the earlier question about the relation
between rationality and morality.
The constraining notion of moral rule appears to appeal to another,
more deeply rooted idea from the Christian religions: man is an
immoral creature. Thus, it follows, in the absence of moral rules there
would be no end to immoral behaviour. Perhaps, human civilisation
itself would be impossible in the absence of prescriptive rules for
human actions. (This cluster of ideas is not as explicitly present as I
have just formulated it.) I have been puzzled by these claims for some

time now, and each time I have had discussion with my students on
this, my puzzlement has only increased and not decreased. What is
the puzzle?
3.1Let me recount the structure of the discussions I have with
my students. The discussions begin with their belief that
moral rules constrain the immoral strivings present in each
one of us. They think that they do not steal, murder, or rape
the female students because of their moral education. In its
absence, they feel, they would have been very immoral
creatures. Why do they think so? Look at all the wars,
genocides, murders, thefts, and sundry criminal activities,
they say. Let us grant the assumption. How often, I ask the
male students, have they had to struggle against the urge to
rape their female student-colleagues? Hardly, if ever. The
idea does not even occur to them, leave alone that they
struggle with this urge. How many female students have
been raped by the male members of the university? They are
not aware of any such incidence, which means that, even if it
has happened, it is not a frequent occurrence. Surely, if
moral rules are constraints on our urges, more would have
lost the struggle against these urges than now. A halfconvinced, half-sceptical assent follows. How many times did
they have to restrain themselves from stealing in a shop,
murdering a fellow human being? Apart from a very
occasional desire to steal from a super-market, it
transpires, they are remarkably free of any awareness of
such struggles. However, if moral rules constrain us, surely,
we must chafe against them more often than we are aware
of doing it? Again a half-convinced, half-sceptical assent
follows.
Which is easier? Stealing from a super-market, or paying for
the merchandise? Remarkably enough, the first answer is,
invariably, stealing. Why, then, do they not do it often? Our
moral upbringing or the fear of punishment. The
subsequent step is to draw their attention to the fact that it
is not easy, but very difficult to steal: thumping hearts,
sweaty palms, dizzy heads, meaningless and repetitive
loitering in the shopping mall, continuous fearful looks, etc.
are the prerequisites, surely. The whole experience is
basically so unpleasant that, even if followed by an
exhilaration of success, it leaves one feeling week-kneed for
hours after the experience. If this is the case, how could
they say that it is easier to steal than pay for the
merchandise? It could not be the case that their appeal to
moral upbringing accounts for the difficulty in stealing. As
children, most of them have hardly been instructed not to
steal, any more than not to kill or rape. Even if they have
been, they were also instructed, more often and without a

great deal of success, to tidy up their rooms, clean up the

toys after playing, etc. Why should a simple instruction do
not steal make it so difficult for them to steal, when no
amount of nagging helps them keep their rooms clean?
Well, if you look at it that way Which other way could
one look at it? There does not seem to be an answer to this
question.
If one were to add up all their immoral acts and compare it
to the moral (or the neutral), what would their relative
weights be? Immoral acts (of the petty sort) seem to form a
small percentage. Were we to do the same with respect to
human history? Well, if you look at it your way, the number
of immoral acts must be pretty insignificant when compared
to the number of moral or neutral acts Is it not the case
that we would expect to find more such acts if moral rules
constrained us? Yes. How then can one say that human
beings are immoral and moral rules constrain us?
It is no part of my argument to say that man is basically
moral. But what does puzzle me is this: how could they
entertain a belief that is belied almost everyday? May be,
they have not reflected on this issue before. In that case,
what about the philosophers? Why do they maintain a belief
that is perhaps the most refuted claim in the world? In this
article, I hope to seek at least the fragment of an answer.
3.2What is of interest in these discussions is their unwillingness
to let go of their belief in the nature of moral rules or their
constraining role. They desperately seek arguments to
refute me and when they fall silent and appear to grant me
my claim, it is not because they are convinced but because
they have no further arguments to offer. It has rarely
happened that a student shares my puzzlement.
Consequently, I am even more puzzled: what exactly is going
on here? Why the resistance or even the downright hostility
that gets expressed occasionally?
4. People do not normally steal, or murder or indulge in rape because
they obey moral rules. This experience appears to confirm their
beliefs about morality. Their beliefs about the nature and role of
moral rules appear to structure their experience of daily encounters
with fellow human beings. However, this is not the best way to
formulate what is going on in all the four cases.
4.1Let us look at these cases not in terms of their (implicit)
beliefs, but in terms of how they learn what they have
learnt. It is their experience that people do not go around
murdering, stealing, and raping each other. This experience
gets structured in terms of the explanation about the nature

and role of moral rules. Experience has the structure it has

because of the structure of the explanation. In other words,
there is no difference between the (structure of the)
cognitive scheme and the structure of experience itself.
4.2If such is the case, the resistance in each of the above four
cases becomes understandable. The theory of flat earth
structured the experience of not falling off the earth; geocentric theory structured the experiences of not flying off,
not feeling dizzy, etc.; Newtons theory structured the
experience of the ebb and flow of the tides; the moral theory
structured the experience of people going about their
shopping, greeting each other in a normal way. That is,
experience is an absolutely structure-hugging fabric. The
structure of the cognitive scheme is the structure (or the
figure) in this case. To challenge the structure of the
cognitive scheme is to challenge the structure of the
experience itself. The structured experience threatens to
lose its structure, if the cognitive scheme gets discarded.
Unless, of course, an alternative cognitive scheme is present
that reduces this disorientation.
4.3There is a dangerous drift to this argument. It seems to be
heading in the direction of the following claim: all structured
experiences derive their structure from the structure of
cognitive schemes (or theories). Therefore, either no pure
experience is possible or the way to have it is by discarding
all theories. In this recognizable route, there is an inevitable
consequence: knowledge becomes hindrance to experience.
Scientific theories end up masking our experience, and all
theories entail dogmatism on our part. Of course, such
mysticism is no part of what I want to say.
4.4Therefore, let me demystify what I have said so far by
reformulating it as an error: people confuse an
explanation of an experience with the experience itself.
Consequently, when they meet a criticism of their
explanation of a given experience, they mistakenly see it as
a criticism of the experience itself. Hence their resistance to
criticisms. They are, in other words, ignorant of the
distinction between having an experience and having an
explanation for the experience. This formulation might
appear more perspicuous. Let me, therefore, stick with this
for some time.
4.5Ordinary folk might be oblivious to this distinction; how
about the extra-ordinary folk like scientists and
philosophers? Why do they commit the same mistake with
almost the same frequency? What makes it difficult even for
them to keep this distinction in mind? Or, more generally

put: where does this error come from? Why does it persist?
What is the nature of this particular ignorance (of the
distinction) that makes us forget the distinction? Why does
not learning about this distinction eliminate it once and
forever from the republic of knowledge?
5. In the western tradition, we are familiar with the dominant notion of
ignorance: it is the absence of information (or knowledge, or whatever
else). Knowledge is possible because of our ignorance; with respect to
some aspect of the same thing, both predicates (knowledge and
ignorance) cannot be true at the same time in the same way. Of
course, this notion of ignorance is not an exclusive property of the
western intellectual tradition. Every culture that speaks of the activity
of describing the world as knowledge has to have a notion of
ignorance as the absence of such knowledge.
In the Indian traditions, there is another equally dominant notion of
ignorance present: it is a positive force of some sort. From the Buddha
through the Advaita of Shankara to the Bhakti traditions, one refrain
can be heard over and over again: ignorance causes suffering. It is
very easy to think that ignorance refers to the absence of
information as well: one has to merely learn this or that doctrine, and
one becomes knowledgeable as well. This is how Indian traditions
have been looked at in the course of the last few hundred years at
least. But this interpretation is not acceptable: how can an absence
(of information) cause anything? In fact, one of the widely accepted
criteria to speak of existence is the ability to act as a cause: only an
existing something (object, event, or whatever else) can cause
something else. How can ignorance cause anything (let alone some
such thing as suffering), if it is merely the absence of information?
6. Consider a stranger in a strange land committing an illegal act.
Whether or not the argument is legally admissible, we accept the
statement that he was ignorant of the laws of the country he was in.
This, however, does not make ignorance into a positive force: he is
merely saying that he did not know what was permissible and what
was forbidden. That is to say, he had a false idea of what was
permitted and hence his illegal act. He wrongly believed that some
action was permitted, when it was actually forbidden. This kind of
gloss on his statement shows that ignorance was not the cause of any
event but his belief was (even though he wrongly thought that his
belief was right).
At first sight, Indian traditions seem to be saying something
analogous. The Sanskrit words literally mean knowledge and notknowledge. Not-knowledge appears to refer to false beliefs: that the
agent exists, the agent acts, etc. Often, it is called illusion as well. But
the most compelling reason for not accepting this prima facie
appearance is the following consideration: without exception, almost
all these traditions identify non-knowledge as the biggest obstacle to

knowledge. If ignorance were to be merely the absence of

information, or the absence of knowledge, how could it be an obstacle
to gaining knowledge? It is, of course, contingently possible that some
kinds of false information prevent you from having knowledge. But the
Indian traditions do not speak of these kinds of contingencies. They
appear to suggest that inherent in ignorance is its capacity to actively
prevent you from attaining knowledge.
7. Most Indian traditions have spent a considerable bit of effort in
understanding the nature of this ignorance, where it comes from,
what its necessity is, etc. However, these explanatory avenues are not
really open to us any more than our resources were theirs. Stories of
rebirth, tendencies inherited from previous lives, and such like belong
in a world long gone: I do not think that they make sense to us; there
is no point to rote learning and its repetition. Consequently, let me
outline the problem in our terms: ignorance is both a precondition for
information and actively prevents knowledge acquisition; ignorance is
both the absence of information and its presence (reading Buddhas
teaching does not enlighten you, does it?). How can we conceptualise
ignorance in such a way that these two apparently contradictory
demands are satisfied? Are we, perhaps, talking about two kinds of
ignorance?
8. Let me return to Lakatos in an attempt to formulate my hypothesis.
Let us first read his claim literally: the protective belt immunises the
research programme. What does a biological immunisation consist of?
Two things actually. The immunised entity becomes impervious to
attack; secondly, it actively repulses any attack on itself. Let us see
what this means with respect to our case examples.
8.1In the first two examples, it is obvious how the protective
belt functions: experiential structures are rendered immune
to criticisms. Any consideration, whether factual or
theoretical, is repulsed from damaging the structured
experience. The only hope of change here is the presence of
an alternate cognitive scheme that structures the experience
differently. In the fourth example, the story is pretty much
the same as in the first two cases.
8.2If we look at the results of the third example, two things
occur because of the protective belt. Newtons theory
becomes impervious to the factual observation regarding the
perturbation of the motion of Mercury. The protective belt
does something that is, at first sight, curious as well: it
enables the generation of a new piece of knowledge (at the
moment, it is irrelevant whether that piece of knowledge
was ad hoc or whatever).
8.3These illustrations are all I need to formulate my hypothesis.
The protective belt of Lakatos is actually a learning strategy.

He called it a protective belt; I call it ignorance. Ignorance

is a learning strategy which immunises. What does the
immunisation consist of? An identification of the structure of
the experience with the structure of the explanation (or the
cognitive scheme) itself. The protective belt or the learning
strategy (that ignorance is), then, immunises by inducing the
identification of the structure of the experience with the
structure of the explanation itself. It also enables an active
repulsion of theoretical and factual criticisms by deflecting
the criticisms. That is, the learning strategy relocates the
force and foci of such criticisms.
9. Otto Neurath, the logical positivist philosopher of science, uses the
imagery of a boat on the high seas to speak about human knowledge.
He compares our scientific theories to the boat, and suggests that any
and all repairs to the boat have to be carried on while travelling on
the high seas. If the boat springs a leak in some place, one moves to
another place on the boat and tries to patch up the leak. There is no
possibility to thoroughly overhaul the boat and build it anew because
we never make landfall. I personally find this a very powerful and
extremely accurate analogy. We patch knowledge as it springs leaks,
but our basic attitude is to retain what we have as long as it works.
Let me use this imagery to explicate my hypothesis further.
9.1What we learn as we grow up in our societies and cultures
are salient diversities. We not only learn to see the world in
terms of salient diversities, but we also learn the attitude of
working with them as long as they appear to work well. That
is, we are prone to retain the salient diversities we have
learnt; it is also not possible to enumerate them. Such an
exercise is not even necessary: we need not know every
plank in the boat; what we need is the ability to localise the
plank which has sprung a leak. If we have this ability, it
more than compensates for the lack of explicit knowledge of
each and every plank. This ability does not just compensate
without being positively useful: it is an enormous waste of
cognitive resources to learn each of the component part
individually. Furthermore, we do not have the time to do this
either. If the boat springs a leak while we are acquiring the
knowledge of some or another individual plank, we are well
and truly sunk. That is to say, it makes enormous
evolutionary sense to have the learning ability to localise
and repair the individual planks instead of having to learn
each one of them individually.
9.2The second aspect of this learning ability is often called the
pragmatic presupposition for action. When we work in the
office, we pragmatically presuppose that everything else
continues to be what it is. When we write on a piece of
paper, we pragmatically presuppose that there is a causal

connection between the pen moving on the paper, and the

appearances of marks on the paper. When Hume wrote his
ideas down, he pragmatically presupposed that moving his
hands on the paper this way, and not that way, had specific
effects; that the words did not disappear once they got
penned; etc. Of course, this is but a name, but does not
explain. However, it does tell us that this attitude is deeply
rooted in each one of us. When we are in some part of the
boat, we take it for granted that the rest of the planks
continue to be what they were and behave the way they are
supposed to. We cannot question all the salient diversities at
the same time. Not only because it is cognitively impossible,
but also because we do not explicitly know what they are.
We take the existence of other salient diversities for
granted, assume their correctness, while we interrogate
some salient diversity. This attitude is a precondition for
learning: we have to hold the rest of the salient diversities
stable, if we want to learn or alter some specific salient
diversity. That means to say that the learning ability creates
the pre-condition for learning as well.
9.3To summarise: the learning ability helps us localise the
plank that springs a leak; it also creates the pre-condition
for being able to do so by developing an attitude of holding
the rest of our experience steady and stable.
This learning ability, I now want to suggest, is an
evolutionary inheritance. Imagine the case of you taking
your dog for a walk. Neither the dog nor you think that the
house you live in disappears the moment you leave it. Yet,
you do not assume that it will be still there when you come
back; neither does the dog. In fact, you do not think about
this at all. Both of you take it for granted. This attitude is
what enables both you and the dog to learn. Suppose the
house you lived in disappears by the time you are back from
taking a walk. In that case, both the dog and you are
puzzled: as a human being, you fish around for probable
explanations; the dog simply circles around, smelling the
ground for clues.
9.4 As I see it, ignorance as a learning strategy springs from
this evolutionary inheritance. It holds experience stable by
inducing an identification of explanatory structures (or the
structure of the cognitive schemes) with the structure of
experience itself. It helps localise the leaking plank by
meeting criticisms through the generation of hypotheses.
The first entails that, at times, the hypothesis becomes ad
hoc and that criticisms are met by deflecting the force and
foci of such criticisms. But this is an inevitable side-effect of
any heuristic, any learning strategy. No heuristic is infallible.

Yet, this strategy is retained because it originates from an

enormously successful learning ability, which creates the
pre-condition of learning. This precondition for learning is
also generated by the learning strategy that ignorance is:
absence of knowledge. (Holding experience stable is simply
another description for absence of knowledge, as a moment
of reflection will make obvious.)
9.5Without ignorance, we cannot learn. It is our learning
strategy that generates ignorance; ignorance is the price we
pay for being able to learn. That is, we see how ignorance is
both a presupposition and product of the process of
learning. Learning does not only produce knowledge (about
some specific aspect) but it also reproduces ignorance (in
other aspects). They are not unrelated to each other, which
is not how they look prima facie. (Of course, learning about
black holes does not contribute to your understanding your
digestive processes.)
9.6It is important to note that the evolutionarily inherited
learning ability is itself not ignorance. (Human) ignorance is
a specific implementation (or translation) of this learning
ability. Ignorance (I speak only of human ignorance) is a
learning strategy that implements the evolutionary ability in
a particular way. This entails that there could be other ways
of implementing or translating this enormously successful
ability to learn. What other ways could there be? This
question has been identified, albeit in a slightly different
guise, as the frame problem in Artificial intelligence. Daniel
Dennett (1984: 129-130) tells a long but beautiful story
about this, which goes as follows:
Once upon a time there was a robot, named R 1 by his creators. Its
only task was to fend for itself. One day its designers arranged for
it to learn that its spare battery, its precious energy supply, was
locked in a room with a time bomb set to go off soon. R 1 located
the room, and the key to the door, and formulated a plan to rescue
its battery. There was a wagon in the room, and the battery was on
the wagon, and R1 hypothesized that a certain action which it
called PULLOUT (WAGON, ROOM) would result in the battery
being removed from the room. Straightaway it acted, and did
succeed in getting the battery out of the room before the bomb
went off. Unfortunately, however, the bomb was also on the wagon.
R1 knew that the bomb was on the wagon in the room, but did not
realize that pulling the wagon would bring the bomb out along
with the battery. Poor R1 had missed that obvious implication of its
planned act.
Back to the drawing board. The solution is obvious, said the
designers. Our next robot must be made to recognize not just the
intended implications of its acts, but also the implications about
their side effects, by deducing the implications from the
descriptions it uses in formulating its plans. They called their next

model, the robot-deducer, R1D1. They placed R1D1 in much the

same predicament that R1 had succumbed to, and as it too hit upon
the idea of PULLOUT (WAGON, ROOM) it began, as designed, to
consider the implications of such a course of action. It had just
finished deducing that pulling the wagon out of the room would
not change the colour of the rooms walls, and was embarking on a
proof of the further implications that pulling the wagon out would
cause its wheels to turn more revolutions than there were wheels
on the wagon when the bomb exploded.
Back to the drawing board. We must teach it the difference
between relevant implications and irrelevant ones, said the
designers, and teach it to ignore the irrelevant ones. So they
developed a method of tagging implications as either relevant or
irrelevant to the project at hand, and installed the method in the
next model, the robot-relevant-deducer, or R2D1 for short. When
they subjected R2D1 to the test that had so unequivocally selected
its ancestors for extinction, they were surprised to see it sitting,
Hamlet like, outside the room containing the ticking bomb, the
native hue of its resolution sicklied oer with the pale cast of
thought, as Shakespeare (and more recently Fodor) has aptly put
it. Do something! they yelled at it. I am, it retorted. I am busily
ignoring some thousands of implications I have determined to be
irrelevant. Just as soon as I find an irrelevant implication, I put it
on the list of those I must ignore and the bomb went off.
All these robots suffer from the frame problem. (Cognitive
Wheels: the Frame Problem of AI. In Christopher Hookway, ed.,
Minds, Machines and Evolution, Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1984, pp. 129-151.)

9.7It must be clear what R2D1s problem is. It must first actively
consider (or focus upon) an implication before ignoring (or
neglecting) it. Human ignorance does both simultaneously:
while focussing on some specific thing, it neglects
everything else. These two facets of ignorance, directed
towards two different things, are difficult to implement in a
system, where everything requires to be represented
explicitly. In my frame work, the question of AI becomes:
how do you explicitly represent ignorance, when it consists
precisely of not being explicitly represented? One way of
doing it is to try and develop different types of nonmonotonic logics, logics for jumping to conclusions,
scripts, etc. The other way would involve taking (human)
learning strategies more seriously and study them. As a
learning strategy, ignorance appears to presuppose human
abilities and capacities explicitly. Not only that. Human
ignorance appears also to rely upon other learning
strategies for it to work well: strategies that help you, for
example, to zero-in on something at some specific level of
abstraction. Ignorance might help you zoom-in on
something, while holding the rest stable. Some other
learning strategy, I think, helps you in directing the focus,
instructing you where and how to zoom in. In either case, it

should be interesting to wait and see whether and how they

will end up representing ignorance explicitly.
10.Let me return to the Indian traditions to see where I am. For
thousands of years, they have been raising and answering the
question about ignorance. They have found this a question of central
importance in the process of understanding the emergence and
growth of knowledge. (Remember: the literal translation of the
Sanskrit word for enlightenment is the arising of knowledge.)
Lakatos stumbles upon a crucial insight in his attempt to understand
the emergence and growth of scientific knowledge. This insight, I
hope to have shown, is non-trivially about the role of ignorance (the
nature and function of the protective belt) in the growth of
knowledge, scientific knowledge included. The Indian traditions are
convinced that ignorance is a positive force; I account for this by
showing that it is a learning strategy. They are convinced that
ignorance cuts across time and culture; I have suggested that it is a
human learning strategy. They explain it on the basis of an inherited
tendency from a previous birth; I retain their insight that this
learning strategy is not culturally specific, but that it is an
evolutionary inheritance. They suggest that it hinders the acquisition
of knowledge; I have accounted for it by specifying what its
immunising role consists of.
We have discovered that ignorance (as absence of knowledge) is a
precondition for the acquisition of knowledge; I have accounted for it
by showing how ignorance (as a learning strategy) creates the
preconditions for learning. These preconditions, at times, also hinder
the acquisition of knowledge: that is because inducing identification of
the two structures also entails the production of ad hoc hypothesis
now and then. In other words, it appears to me, my account captures
the insights from both traditions without trivialising either. Not only
that. By reformulating the problem in terms of a learning strategy,
research can now be carried out in a way it could not be before.
10.1 As I have noted before, ignorance is translatable as notknowledge (at times, also as not-learned, as avidya) in
Sanskrit. Let me take the Buddhist tradition as an
illustration to make one more point in this context. The basic
insight of meditative practices is that structures like self,
agency, etc. are not to be found in experience itself.
Rather, they are the structures provided by descriptions.
That is to say, the insight involves in dissociating experience
from its explanation. What ignorance does is to induce
identification between these two structures, something that
meditation pulls apart. However, the question here is: why
are structures like self, agency, etc. less easily
susceptible to criticisms than others? I will take up this
question soon.

10.2
Even though I have used Lakatos and Neurath in the
course of this article, it would be foolish to identify the
strategy of ignorance with the strategies used in scientific
problem-solving. Some general strategies inherited from
evolution, some cognitive strategies human beings use in
their cognitive activities will also be used in scientific
theorising. But it does not follow from these uses that
scientific theorising is the set of such strategies. I still think
that my characterisation of science and scientific knowledge
(as I formulate it in The Heathen ) is at an appropriate
level: it is a culturally specific knowledge. It will also have
evolved cognitive strategies specific to itself which are
learnable by any human being, but have emerged in a
specific configuration of learning. In that sense, what
Lakatos has identified is not specific to scientific research
programmes but applicable to all human learning. It is
important to keep this distinction firmly in mind.
11.Earlier on, (in #8.3), I said that ignorance is a learning strategy that
immunises by inducing an identification between the structure of
experience and the structure of the cognitive scheme. What does it
immunise? I think it immunises the precondition for experience. Any
experience presupposes constancy (and structure): of the experiencer,
the experienced and the relation between the two. In this sense,
ignorance is a learning strategy that makes experience possible by
inducing identification between the structure of experience and the
structure of the cognitive scheme. As I have said before, it holds the
world stable and thus enables experience.
11.1
What then is experience? In the most general terms, it
refers to a relational attitude in the world towards all
objects, events, actions and such like. (I am trying to
conceptualise the Sanskrit word Anubhava here.)
Ignorance enables such a relational attitude by holding
either the experiencer or the experienced steady and
constant. However, ignorance also does more: it masks the
relational attitude by inducing identification between one of
the relata (the experiencer and the experienced are the
relata in our case) and the relational attitude. That is to say,
ignorance masks experience. This seems to be a paradoxical
claim: a learning strategy immunises the precondition of
experience by masking experience. In other words, one
could have experience if and only if one does not have
experience! Or, one could have a relational attitude if and
only if one does not have a relational attitude. I think this
has only the appearance of a paradox. One speaks about
experience as though it is a property of either the
experiencer or the experienced. I experience something in
some way either because it has to do with me or with the
world. What disappears from the picture (in this way of

talking) is the relational attitude even though such an

attitude is present.
Is this way of speaking intrinsically wrong? This is an
empirical question that cannot be answered before
investigation. Why? In many cases, we can eliminate a
relationship between two objects by speaking of them as
dispositional properties of the objects in question. The facts
that sugar dissolves in water and a magnet attracts iron are
dispositional properties of sugar and magnet respectively:
one is solvable, whereas the other creates a magnetic field.
In other words, we can rightly conceptualise relations as
dispositional properties of organisms or as causal forces of
Nature. There is nothing intrinsically wrong with this.
Therefore, there cannot be anything intrinsically wrong with
what ignorance does. This shows that ignorance could
indeed be a result of our evolutionary inheritance.
11.2
Because transforming relations into dispositional
properties is a way of conceptualising a relationship, the
learning strategy that ignorance is ends up masking the
relational attitude that experience is. This masking is
possible because of the conceptual scheme we use. This
conceptual scheme identifies the nature of the relational
attitude with either the experiencer or the experienced. The
identification of experience with either of the two relata
makes not only conceptual but also evolutionary sense. In
doing so, ignorance as a learning strategy immunises the
precondition of experience.
Now we can try and make sense of some of the earlier
imageries and formulations. Experience is an absolutely
structure-hugging fabric was one such imagery. The
relational attitude can hug either the experiencer or the
experienced absolutely. An induced identification between
the structure of experience and the structure of the
cognitive scheme occurs was a second claim. This
identification is possible because the relation between two
objects could be conceptualised as the dispositional
properties of the objects in question. However, this
conceptualisation does not make the relation disappear; it is
only a way of understanding that relationship. The presence
of the experiencer and the experienced is the absolute
precondition for experience. Ignorance immunises them
both by masking the nature of experience. The constancy
and stability of the relational attitude is enabled by
identifying the attitude with either of the two relata. In
short, ignorance works. It is a precondition (in this sense as
well) for knowledge.

12.However, ignorance also masks experience. The Indian traditions

claim that this prevents emergence of knowledge about ourselves. I
have already made some partial sense of this statement. Let me
return to the question raised earlier on and tie up some of the loose
ends. The question was: why are structures like self, agency, etc.
less easily susceptible to criticisms than others? One possible way
of answering this question is to look at the role of human emotions in
our learning processes. (I thank this insight to Jochem.) What are the
mechanisms that allow an induction of identification between the
structure of experience and the structure of the cognitive scheme?
What holds this identification together? Human emotions. The
learning strategy (that ignorance is) mobilises our emotions and
invests the identification with the required energy that can sustain
itself. Because the cognitive scheme conceptualises the relational
attitude (i.e. experience) with the dispositional property of the
organism (the experiencer), the emotions are directed towards the
organism itself. Me, mine and so on are the linguistic expressions of
this emotion directed towards the organism. These very same
emotions deflect criticisms about this identification. Self and
agency are conceptual elements from a cognitive scheme; they are
identified with the organism. An agent is someone who has the
disposition to act; actions, in that sense, require an agent. The deeply
philosophical conceptions about agency have their roots in our daily
experiences. Better said, they have their roots in the masking of
experience. They prevent us from interrogating our experiences of the
world and thus hinder the emergence of self-knowledge. The
unreality of avidya as well as its reality (maya) are captured in the
current formulation.
How does our notion of enlightenment fit into this picture? Pretty
neatly, would be my first guess. (What follows is more speculative
than what has gone before.) The enlightened does not conceptualise
the experience as the dispositional property of the agent or as the
dispositional property of the object. His experience is not masked. He
has broken the shackles of ignorance by splitting the nature of his
experience from its conceptualisation. To do this, he has learnt to
dissociate the emotions that induce this identification. He is the
experiencer because he has a relation to the experienced. After all,
experience relates him to the world. What is the nature of this
relationship, if he does not conceptualise it? He has Anu- bhaava
and not merely Anu-bhava, ie., he has the appropriate (Anu) feeling
(bhaava) and not merely an appropriate (anu) existence (bhava). He
describes this attitude and reflects about them: these are the so-called
teachings from the enlightened. These teachings teach you to have
the same bhaava and that is how they can guide us. He is not one
with the experienced (this idea does not make sense outside the
religious mystics in the west); nor is he the other of the experienced.
The experiencer and the experienced are related to each other the
way the two poles of a magnet are connected to each other. They are

indivisible: they are one as a magnet; two as poles; united through the
relationship.
I do not know whether I have made much sense. But this should
indicate the direction I want to travel when understanding the Indian
traditions.