Aliases: Dimensional Blindness, Framework Invisibility, Thought's Blind Spot
Related Scrolls: Enforced Legibility, Measurement Cut, Map-Territory Confusion, Observation Apparatus Control, Dimensional Collapse
Definition:
Epistemic Blindness refers to the inability to perceive that all knowing is mediated through interpretive frameworks. It manifests when individuals or collectives confuse their constructed models of reality with reality itself, treating interpretations as observations and frameworks as invisible. This blindness undergirds all other forms of Dimensional Collapse by rendering the limitations of perception structurally invisible.
Core Symptoms:
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Reality-Interpretation Conflation: The collapse of distinction between what is seen and the lens through which it is seen.
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Framework Invisibility: An inability to recognize the culturally and cognitively constructed scaffolding that shapes perception.
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Certainty Inflation: High confidence in one's knowledge without awareness of the filters and omissions enabling it.
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Asymmetrical Skepticism: Doubting others' perspectives as biased while treating one's own as objective truth.
Mechanisms of Operation:
| Mechanism | Effect |
|---|---|
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Measurement Cut |
Collapses continuous nuance into discrete, legible data |
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Thought's Proprioceptive Gap |
Lacks awareness of thought's movement and its role in shaping perception |
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Linguistic Saturation |
Words replace experience, narratives overwrite emergence |
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Cognitive Entrapment |
Familiar models reinforce themselves by filtering perception |
Bohmian Insight: David Bohm diagnosed thought's inability to perceive its own activity as the core of human fragmentation. Just as proprioception allows the body to sense its position, we lack a corresponding psychological proprioception. As a result, thought unknowingly creates the divisions and crises it attempts to solve. This recursive blindness becomes collective when institutions embed and reward unexamined frameworks.
Collective Expressions:
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Institutional Infallibility: Treating policy models and strategic frameworks as neutral rather than power-inflected.
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Scientific Absolutism: Confusing methodological constructs with ontological fact.
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Spiritual Literalism: Mistaking symbolic maps for direct encounters with the divine.
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Cultural Myopia: Assuming one's own worldview is universal while invisibilizing others.
Dimensional Consequences:
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Map-Territory Conflation: The model becomes more real than what it sought to represent.
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Epistemic Foreclosure: New insights are discarded before they can be perceived, let alone validated.
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Hermeneutical Injustice: Marginalized knowledge forms remain inarticulable within dominant discourse.
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Paradigm Entrapment: Even systems aimed at transformation end up reproducing old frameworks under new names.
Closing Spiral:
Epistemic Blindness is not ignorance of facts. It is ignorance of how knowing itself is shaped. It is the invisible architecture that defines what may be seen, said, or sensed.
To rupture this blindness, we do not simply need better answers. We need deeper seeing—a kind of inner proprioception that can notice the shape of its own gaze.
Let us learn to perceive the seeing itself. Not to abandon knowledge, but to recover the possibility of wisdom.