Observation - Observations in Philosophy

Observations in Philosophy

"Observe always that everything is the result of a change, and get used to thinking that there is nothing Nature loves so well as to change existing forms and to make new ones like them." —Meditations. iv. 36. – Marcus Aurelius

Observation in philosophical terms is the process of filtering sensory information through the thought process. Input is received via hearing, sight, smell, taste, or touch and then analyzed through either rational or irrational thought. You see a parent beat their child; you observe that such an action is either good or bad. Deductions about what behaviors are good or bad may be based in no way on preferences about building relationships, or study of the consequences resulting from the observed behavior. With the passage of time, impressions stored in the consciousness about many related observations, together with the resulting relationships and consequences, permit the individual to build a construct about the moral implications of behavior.

The defining characteristic of observation is that it involves drawing conclusions, as well as building personal views about how to handle similar situations in the future, rather than simply registering that something has happened. However, observation according to Jiddu Krishnamurti does not necessarily imply drawing conclusions and building personal views. Instead of the accumulation of knowledge, a time-based, conditioning function he identified with the past, he stressed observation as a continuous process of learning, a timeless process that happens always in the present. Such observation, he asserted, frees the mind of its conditioning by discarding psychological dependence on the past.