The Life Foundations Nexus
I’M DOING WHAT’S RIGHT. WHY DON’T I HAVE CERTAINTY?
By Dr. Michael
J. Bisconti
I’m doing what’s right. Why don't I have certainty? The answer is simple. Certainty is not something you “have.” Certainty is something you "know
about."
People often think of certainty
in the wrong way. This thinking is
referred to as “reification” (called also “entification”). What is reification? Reification is the process of reifying. What is “reifying”? Reifying is believing that a nonphysical
thing is a physical thing. This is
similar, for example, to believing that “Superman” is a real person or that the
“Death Star” in the first Star Wars movie is a real physical object. People often think that certainty is
“something physical” and that, therefore, they can experience it.
Of course, certainty is not a
physical thing and it is not something that we can experience. However, we do experience something. What we do experience is something
that most people mistakenly believe is certainty. This “something” is referred to as “the certainty cognos-datum.” The certainty cognos-datum is one of several
cognos-datums experienced by people.
What is a “cognos-datum”? A cognos-datum is, in effect, a
mental “sense-datum.” What is a
sense-datum? A sense-datum is an
unexaminable bodily sensation. You
cannot examine a sense-datum; you can only have it. Similarly, you cannot examine a cognos-datum;
you can only have it. The
difference between a sense-datum and a cognos-datum is that a sense-datum
occurs in the body and a cognos-datum occurs in the mind. Please note that a cognos-datum is not a
bodily sensation but is “something like a bodily sensation.”
We see then that what most
people call certainty is actually the cognos-datum that accompanies
certainty. To put it more simply,
what most people call certainty is actually an unexaminable mental
experience that accompanies certainty.
Well, if what we experience is
not certainty, then what is? As we said
above, certainty is something that we “know about.” IT IS NOT SOMETHING THAT WE EXPERIENCE. If we don’t experience certainty, then how can we know we have
it? Again, you don’t have it;
you “know about” it. Well, then, how
can we know that we “know about” it?
The “knowing about” certainty is a product of intuition. In plain English, you “just know” that you
have certainty when you have certainty.
Finally, someone might ask: “why don’t I know about certainty what I want to know about certainty? They need the answer to the question Why does God leave us in the dark?