Expansion of the Self

Bertrand Russell has been quoted saying, “All acquisition of knowledge is an enlargement of the self.” What Sir Russell means by this statement? The act of seeking after knowledge expands what the self is capable of doing. For this to make sense let’s consider what it means to know something, what it means to acquire knowledge and, finally, what it means for the self to enlarge and how that pertains to Socrates’ statement “Wisdom is knowing that you know nothing”.

In order to know that something is true there must be a balance between estimations and opinions. What I mean by estimations would be based upon what would be considered temporal laws of science or mathematics. When our estimations coincide with our opinions we could say that is knowledge. Acquiring this knowledge means moving through contradiction or admitting that our estimations or our opinions must be wrong. Russell understood that our opinions can have an effect on our findings such that our estimations fall subservient to opinions. He refers to this trap of subservience as prejudice. Prejudice occurs when an opinion is used as a starting point and is subsequently backed up by estimations supporting that opinion. This can be referred to as an ontological perspective.

An important word to pay attention to in Sir Russell's statement is “acquisition”. He isn’t saying that all knowledge enlarges the self. On the contrary, the majority of what we would call knowledge today would have no relevance elsewhere. That is to say, without context, most of this knowledge is useless.

The problem confronted by the seeker, when applying new knowledge, arises when new strong estimations are found but there is no context in which to relate the information. These estimations (even if the doubter would be hard pressed to counter-balance the validity of these estimations) fail to aid in the acquisition of knowledge as there is no clear grounds by which the opinion of the receiver can relate to the new estimations.

For example, “There are more stars in the universe than grains of sand making up all the beaches of the world. And yet, there are more atoms in a single grain of sand than stars in the universe.” Although this statement is relatively true and seems to enlarge the self, it provides no avenue in which would allow the receiver of this knowledge to apply it to their own lives.

So let’s say that knowledge alone isn’t enough for the enlargement of self to occur. But, instead, through the act of acquiring knowledge, the enlargement can take place. Enlargement of the self is dependent upon the knowledge with respect to context and its acquisition helps us form an opinion as to it’s use.

    The enlargement of self could  be correlated to intelligence. The more knowledge that is acquired, the more intelligent the self becomes. The expansion of the self could be described in terms of how intelligence can be applied to both the internal and external world. A possible way to measure this would be the rate by which current possible freedom of action correlates to future freedom of action. In other words, the more knowledge I acquire, the more possible futures are available to me. Without acquiring knowledge my actions are limited to common knowledge or tradition.

    With this in mind let us consider the example of Socrates. He is known for professing that he himself knows nothing. But I don’t think that this means he would have a small self. I think he fully understands that knowledge alone isn’t enough for the enlargement of the self to occur. His ultimate goal, knowing that he knows nothing, is an attempt to remove any prejudice he might possess for the value of the knowledge he seeks after. In his case he has shown by his actions that acquiring knowledge from a multitude of different sources is highly beneficial in the expansion of the self. This also means he is not afraid to be wrong and, as we have discussed earlier, this aids in formulating new estimations and opinions. Thus expanding his ideas of what is possible and therefore enlarges the self in the process.