IDEONOMY: Division "Illusions":

   Illusions are a major concern of any serious scientist, and they also form
a topic in my own specialty of ideonomy, the pure and applied science of
ideas.  I have created the present thread to offer for thought an excerpt from
the chapter, of my book "IDEONOMY", which treats the subject at length (much
more thoroughly than here, I'm afraid).
   There are several lists here, but the most important is not the list of
examples of illusions, which I have appended at the end, but rather the table
of the causes, sources, and bases of illusions.
 
 

"THE STUDY OF ILLUSIONS"

    ILLUSION:  (1) Something that deceives or deludes or misleads
intellectually in such a way as to produce false impressons or ideas that
exaggerate or minimize reality or that attribute existence to what does
not exist or nonexistence to what does exist; (2) Perception of something
objectively existing in such a way as to cause or permit
misinterpretation of its actual nature either because of the ambiguous
qualities of the thing perceived or because of the personal
characteristics of the one perceiving or because of both factors.

                                          --- WEBSTER'S THIRD.

   The study and treatment of illusions represents one of the more important
of the more than two-hundred formal subdivisions of ideonomy, the pure and
applied science of ideas.
   Illusions pervade the world and, in order for the revelation of truth to
continue, it is essential that they be discovered, investigated, removed, or
transcended wheresoever they lurk in nature, the human mind, society, or the
machinery of civilization.
   The discovery of major illusions has often represented a milestone in the
history of science, and no doubt many future scientific milestones will be of
the same type.  Actually no one has any idea how great, diverse, and many the
illusions that endure in our picture of reality are apt to be, or even whether
they are--in SOME sense--finite.  Might all illusions be overlain, or
overtopped, by others?
   Let it be emphasized, however, that the world may contain not only an
infinite amount of illusion but of coinfinite non-illusion.  The two concepts,
and quantities, actually go hand in hand.  One who postulates the
illimitability of illusion, and the illusoriness of all things, need not at
the same time abandon the assumption that aback or accompanying the illusion
there is also that which approximates or corresponds to some form of absolute
reality.  In fact, logical paradoxes plague both the illusionists' and the
absolutists' perspectives.  Evidently the world is SUBTLER.
   If, for example, in the future we are predestined to discover that beneath
anything that is momentarily considered to be fundamental there will always be
that which is MORE fundamental, so that whatever appears to be fundamental
must only give the illusion of being such, then there will also be the more
positive implication that within the heart of reality there exists an infinite
series or hierarchy of things of an ever more basic nature that are all
successively discoverable by ourselves.
   Surely, just as there are modes of illusion unknown and unimagined at the
present time, there must also be modes of reality and knowledge of a similar
and no less surprising nature.
   My own view is that the <number, profundity, diversity, and complexity; the
essentiality, ubiquity, and density; and the generality, inevitability, and
deceptive powers> of illusions (in general, and in specific areas or cases)
will ultimately turn out to be flabbergasting and revolutionary.
   Research into the nature of thought, and the bases of perception,
experience, and knowledge, will prove to be inseparable from all other forms
of research, or essentially dualistic.  Today by contrast the two types of
inquiry are pursued independently of and almost indifferently to one another.

   The all-pervasiveness of illusions may have various implications or
corollaries, give rise to questions, or furnish opportunities:
   1. What has hitherto been the source of confidence in a field?
   2. What is the nature of cognition, logic, evidence, proof, perception,
long-term 'progress' in science, ideas, intuitions, paradigm shifts,
achievement, choice, the physical world, reality, etc?
   3. The many illusions that are found prove (unexpectedly and suggestively)
connected and interconnected.
   4. Are illusion and reality coessential, complementary, and coinfinite, or
does their mutual proximity imply the need for an adjustment of our way of
seeing and interpreting the world, of doing science, and of formulating
philosophies, as I've hinted?  Might the study of their finitely or infinitely
intricate compresence provide an almost ideal route for improving and
accelerating scientific progress or the future history of ideas?
   5. What does it really mean to speak of something as MORE or as LESS
illusory?
   6. Perhaps studying illusion, or illusion-cum-reality, will lead to new
mathematics, physics, logics, psychologies, philosophies, biologies, arts,
technologies, materials, instruments, cosmologies, disciplines, etc?

                  The Causes and Origins of Illusions

   Whence illusions--in theory or fact, in general or in specific cases?
   First let us consider some of the reasons why one might want to know the
answer to this question:

          "WHY KNOWING THE ORIGINS OF ILLUSIONS MAY BE IMPORTANT"

   1. From knowledge of possible origins of illusions it may be possible to
derive criteria and tests for the existence of categories of illusions in
arbitrary or particular cases, or for evaluating their joint or conjoint
contribution in situations or their absolute strengths.
   2. Where an illusion is traced to a given type of origin this may point to
the coexistence of other illusions that have a tendency to share such an
origin.
   3. Knowledge of origin may suggest a particularly powerful way to
eradicate an illusion.
   4. Great understanding of an illusion can follow from knowledge of its
cause.
   5. Even where illusions are not initially known or suspected to exist,
general causes or mechanisms of illusions perceived as being especially
applicable to certain situations may imply the existence of
corresponding illusions or helpfully narrow the range of possibilities.
   6. Particularly chronic, common, or massive causes of particularly
chronic, common, or massive illusions--or illusions in general--may be
determinable or indicable.
   7. Generic origins of illusions may suggest specific origins of same (and
vice versa).
   8. Known can suggest unknown origins of illusions, and enlarge our
typology or taxonomy of such origins.
   9. Knowledge of the various possible discrete sources of illusions can
promote the theory of their cooperative mechanisms.

   Keep such things in mind as you now inspect this synoptic table of the most
common, important, or distinct bases, sources, causes, mechanisms, and
promoters of illusions (of illusions in general).

                 "76 CAUSES, SOURCES, AND BASES OF ILLUSIONS"

 1. Absence of a touchstone
 2. Ambiguity, indeterminacy, or myriontology
 3. Anomalousness
 4. Arbitrary decisions
 5. Camouflage, hiding, or 'environmental mimicry or assimilation'
 6. Carelessness
 7. Complexity
 8. Conceptual poverty
 9. Confusion
10. Confusion of form and content
11. Continuity
12. Cooperative phenomena or interdependences
13. Cultural conditioning
14. Deception or fraud
15. Deficiencies of fundamental knowledge--e.g., <imprecise or undefined>
       <mathematics, geometry, physics, ethics, etc>
16. Discontinuity
17. Equivalence
18. Erroneous substitution of part for whole
19. Excessive abstraction, theoretical fictions, or neglect of concrete facts
20. Expectation
21. Fallacious equation of [parvitude, rarity, singularity, etc] with
       insignificance [e.g., discounting of what is small, exaggeration of
       the importance of what is large; erroneous proportionation of size to
       importance]
22. False gestalten or syntheses
23. False or inadequate world view
24. Hierarchy (multiplicity of confusing and interfering levels)
25. Homology of perceptual categories
26. Ignorance (lack of information)
27. Ignorance about illusion in general: its diversity, categories, taxa,
       omnipresence, signs, causes, genesis, laws, <instances and spectrum>
       of exemplifications, transformations, transcendences, degrees, related
       phenomena, etc
28. [Imperfections or costs] of common sense
29. Inexperience or naivete
30. Information overload, <mental or perceptual> fatigue, or 'environmentall
       burial'
31. Insufficient criteria of illusoriness
32. Interference
33. Lack of a transcendent [to suggest <imperfection, finitude, etc>] or a
       companion
34. Lack of self-criticism, self-ignorance, or lack of criticism in general
35. Logical fallacies or misapplication of general principles
36. Man's [perceptual or intellectual] limitations
37. Mass delusion or other related idola
38. 'Mental excuses'
39. Mis-remembrance or paramnesias
40. Misattribution
41. Misclassification or misidentification
42. Misconstrual of function from appearance or mis-supposition of appearance
       from function
43. Misdescription, under-description, or under-perception
44. Misestimation (poor quantification)
45. Misinformation
46. Misrepresentation or mistreatment
47. Missubstitution of whole for part
48. Monoideism (excessive preoccupation with a single, fixed idea)
49. Multidimensionality
50. Neglect of scientific procedures: testing, experimentation, prediction,
       validation, reproduction, statistical evaluation, induction,
       deduction, rich hypothecation, etc
51. Neuropsychological heredity: e.g., inherited <modes, gestalten, or
       elements> of <perception, thought, feeling, or action>
52. Neurosis, psychosis, or other forms of irrationality
53. Overgeneralization, exaggeration, infinitization, absolutization,
       non-qualification, eternalization, idealization, etc
54. "Pan-Truth" (misapplication of the doctrine so-named) or "pan-paradoxy"
55. Panintertransformability
56. Perceptual or mental expedience
57. Persistence despite (or actually via) transformation (i.e.,
       meta-continuity)
58. Personification or self-projection
59. Perspective [e.g., limited, fixed, specialized or local]; or defective
       [coordinate systems or coordinates]
60. [Poor or defective] correlation of data, or mis-combined [sensa or
       percepts].
61. Prejudices
62. Pseudo-averaging (attempted averaging of what cannot be averaged)
63. 'Pseudo-convergences' (e.g., in data series) or regressional fallacies
64. Psychophysical boundary values, objective similarity, non-discrimination,
       under-differentiation, or mis-analogy
65. Random patterns, coincidences, juxtapositions, or 'background noise'
66. Reification or hypostatization
67. Reliance on a single system
68. Simplism
69. Static or dynamic configurations
70. Superficiality
71. Unconstrained imagination or 'pseudo-perception' (spurious acts of
       perception that are assumed to have occurred but that in fact did not
       occur).
72. Unfamiliarity or novelty that confuses
73. Unthinking or perseverative habit
74. Untrained or undisciplined perception
75. Unwillingness to doubt or to consider the possibility of illusion; or
       complacency
76. Wanton desire
 

                          "68 EXAMPLES OF ILLUSIONS"

NOTE:  This illustrative table includes 56 'known illusions' and 12
'speculative illusions'.  The latter end with a question mark.

 1. A greatest class of numbers
 2. Absolute (self-independent) objectivity
 3. Absolute [beauty and ugliness]
 4. Absolute [good and evil]
 5. Absolute nothingness?
 6. Absolute oblivion?
 7. Absolute physical laws?
 8. Absolute time
 9. Absolute tragedy
10. Absolutely smooth surfaces (e.g., metal)
11. Aristotelian 2-valued logic?
12. "Bigness" of the planet Earth
13. Daily revolution of Sun around Earth
14. Disorder
15. Effectlessness
16. "Enough"
17. "Essences"
18. Eternal (transcendental) ideas?
19. Euclidean space
20. Feasibility of ideonomy?
21. Finite beauty (noninfinite)?
22. Finite consequences
23. Finite responsibility
24. Flatness of Earth's surface
25. Human equality
26. Human perfection
27. Human redundancy
28. Human simplicity
29. Impossibility of time travel (to past and future)?
30. Instantaneous light transmission
31. Intrinsic color
32. Mathematical points
33. Measurable I.Q.?
34. Mechanomorphic cosmos (scientific mechanism)
35. Most of cosmos visible
36. Natural anomalies rare
37. Necessity of one's own existence
38. Non-peculiarity of oneself
39. Omnipercipience (all-visibility of nature)
40. Omniscience
41. Perfection in nature
42. Placidity of matter
43. Political power
44. Prosaic nature of existence
45. "Prosotemporal" time (merely or truly forward-running)?
46. Public opinion polls reliable
47. Purely macroscopic world
48. Reality [unique and indivisible]?
49. Reliability of "proofs"
50. Reliability of orthodoxy
51. Resources finite
52. Resources infinite
53. Science nearly complete (most things known)
54. Self-sufficiency of the individual
55. Single answers to questions
56. Single causes
57. Solar constancy
58. Stable, static macrocosm
59. Stereotypes
60. That energy is lost
61. Transcendence of history
62. Unambiguous statements
63. Understanding of one's real motives
64. Unidirectionality of learning
65. Unique things
66. Universal [yardsticks and measures]?
67. Validity of habits
68. Word - thing  (or concept - thing)  identity