In this historical time when we are struggling to understand the truth and value of individuals by watching them in videos, whether fiction or fact, our most basic problem is discovering what a person "is" anyway. Some of them insist that their virtue comes from the dominating Christian assumptions (which are largely shared by Islam and Judaism) and therefore take "God as their witness." Others try to show that they are at least as smart as a college sophomore by expressing cynicism about whether any people anywhere are virtuous -- all is naturally selfish so it's okay for them to be selfish. We just heard this in impeachment hearings.
While we are trying to figure out politically how to leave "God" out of it and still arrive at something ultimate and unchanging, there have been people struggling along to use various tests in the interest of describing a truly "good" person. At least what qualities might be involved. This study looks pretty interesting as a place to start. It unfortunate that it's all so multi-syllabic. I've tried making their lists look like lists.
https://annals-general-psychiatry.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/healts12991-019-0247-1
"The results yielded two highest order factors
Self and
Self–Environment Interaction,
6 middle order factors
Emotional Self,
Cognitive Self,
Social Emotionality,
Emotional and Cognitive Control,
Ethical Emotionality and Behavior,
Social Emotionality and Behavior)
12 factors at the bottom
Ego Resiliency,
Ego Strength,
Intrapersonal Emotion,
Personal Space Cognition,
Interpersonal Cognition,
Emotional Creativity,
Externalized Interpersonal Emotion,
Internalized Interpersonal Emotion,
Emotional Motivation,
Self-Discipline,
Ethical Values
Ethical Behavior).
"Significant outcomes of the current study
- 1. The basic psychological structure in humans comprised two separate super-modules (self and its interaction with environmental representation).
- 2. The two super-modules are ‘bridged’ by social emotion.
- 3. Meta-cognition seems to be a significant element of temperament and this poses important conceptual questions.
- 4. A defining finding was the frequent admixture of emotional and cognitive processes in the same module and even in meta-cognition.
- 5. An important characteristic of the current model is that it does not accept the hierarchical separation of ‘temperament’ vs. ‘character’ and locates both of them across all hierarchical levels and modules."
What I get out of this is that the study accepts the idea I've been proposing that a human being is the self-contained "meat sack" -- as the young rudely call the "in-skin" -- acting against the surrounding environment that presses on it as "out-skin." I'm so pleased to be in agreement, though they don't talk about the necessity of fittingness in terms of the specific ecology: city/country, sparse/plenty, high population/low population and so on.
Then there is the useful list of personal qualities that are helpful without directly saying which is "good" and which is "bad" except noting that having values and behavior requires both cognition (thinking) and emotion (attachments and expression). I take it that's what they mean by a "frequent admixture of emotional and cognitive processes."
So what is "meta-cognition"? "Metacognition is, put simply, thinking about one's thinking. More precisely, it refers to the processes used to plan, monitor, and assess one's understanding and performance. Metacognition includes a critical awareness of a) one's thinking and learning and b) oneself as a thinker and learner." This definition is from Vanderbilt University.
"Aside from these three components, metacognition also has three different types of metacognitive knowledge – (1) Declarative knowledge, (2) Procedural knowledge, and (3) Conditional knowledge. Declarative knowledge refers to the factual information that one knows, and can both be spoken or written." This is from a psych website.
We have a living public example of a man who has no metacognition because of frontal temperal lobe deterioration. The part of the brain behind the forehead is crucial to this kind of thinking. It is not well-taught and is also absent from most of our media. We teach what will earn money, not what will aid metacognitive knowledge, self-monitoring to see how well one is acting in the world.
What a citizen needs to know (the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, voting law, courtroom procedure) has been dropped in high schools. The underlying principles of clear communication (intelligibility, vocabulary, context, sentence logic) have been dropped. Economic principles have never been clearly framed. The biological sciences are too scary and political to teach. So there go the three main components of metacognition. In my experience, kids know what they learned from television and computers. They have contempt for their teachers because the faculty doesn't know that metacognition even exists. They teach content, not reflection about it.
Instead we learn game strategies, what is popular, and how to "gas-light" to control someone. Unable to impact their environment, young people try to make themselves indelible and remarkable with tattoos, metal attachments, and radical behavior with no goal in mind. I'd say they have become like the ball in a pinball machine except that was a game of my childhood, not theirs.
it's always wise to check the sources of "instruments" and studies like these, because then one can judge whether or not to accept the conclusions. This study comes from a website called:
https://www.biomedcentral.com "A pioneer of open access publishing, BMC has an evolving portfolio of high quality peer-reviewed journals including broad interest titles such as BMC Biology".
"Open access" means that you don't have to pay hundreds of dollars to read the studies. "Peer-reviewed" means that the members of the cohort or discipline that read these articles have read the writing and evaluated them. "Broad interest" means that the articles are not just of interest to highly trained people, but have meaning for all of us. They pride themselves on being sustainable (not flash in the pan, like much pop journalism) and continually reforming as knowledge increases, thus escaping the academic trap of one's value being dependent on yesterday's ideas in the heads of aging professors.
What would it be like if our government were open access, peer reviewed, broad interest, sustainable, continually reforming and free of aging legislators?
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