Reading, seeming and being, and perspectivism

I can't emphasize the importance of reading and learning critical thinking skills enough. If one is really taking their critical thinking skills seriously and legitimately wants to improve their ability to think critically and deeply about political, religious, and philosophical issues, one must read and learn to be a good reader. I watch a lot of news and watch a lot of videos about philosophical issues, and you can learn this way, but I don't think that is enough. Listening to podcasts is important also but reading is what really helps you learn to "think." 84 percent of Americans read for less than 5 minutes a day, for pleasure, yet this doesn't seem to stop most people from being very opinionated about a whole host of philosophical issues. It's not just reading anything either, it's choosing your books wisely. Reading Heidegger, reading Nietzsche, and reading Isaiah Berlin are musts if one wants to learn to think critically. When only 10 percent of the population reads for more than 45 minutes day, critical thinking skills are not being taken very seriously by the majority of the population.

In phenomenology there is the distinction between "seeming," and "being." Seeming is how something appears to consciousness, while being is how something actually is in itself. On first glance most of our assumptions about the world are ontologically seeming. They are loaded with our own religious, political, cultural, linguistic, and personal naive biases. Being though shows the thing you are studying as they are in themselves. I believe that there is a problem with this viewpoint in phenomenology though. As a huge lover of Nietzsche I am not sure it is possible to get to an eternal "being," of the thing you are studying as phenomenology believes. We are are, in a sense, trapped within a milieu that has a certain political, religious, cultural, and linguistic background that can't be escaped. In fact most of what people believe, is really just blind allegiance to their preferred in-groups. As Nietzsche thought, eternal knowledge of the item that is being studied is not possible, and everything is a perspective. I think Husserlian phenomenology was a last ditch effort to find capital T truth, but this really was never possible.

The Dunning-Kruger effect is a cognitive bias in which people with low ability, and low knowledge overestimate their competence on a specific subject, while people with high competence underestimate their own skills. People are very opinionated in our society about nearly every subject yet only 10 percent of the population reads for more than 45 minutes a day. I think this is a prime example of the Dunning-Kruger effect. What deep reading in a subject can do, is show you just how complicated a given subject can be. Political, religious, and philosophical issues are so complicated that epistemic eternal capital T truth seems to be out of our reach for species such as humans that is so cognitively limited. Reading deeply into a subject not only can teach critically thinking skills but it can teach epistemologically humility. Understanding someone as difficult as Heidegger not only is philosophically rewarding, but an exercise in humility. Reading ironically teaches us, just how little we often know.

The difference between "seeming" and "being" in phenomenology was a last ditch effort for finding a capital T truth. Knowledge as Nietzsche notes is a perspective, because none of us have a God's eye view of the world. The lost art of reading can teach us as humans just how little we know. In a world saturated with distractions such as television, and the internet taking the time to read and learn critical thinking, can actually give us more humility. Thank you.