Hello Effective Altruism community,
I’ve been developing a philosophical framework I call Autognosis (from the Greek for self-knowledge). Its focus is on cultivating conscious responses to our archaic human instincts. Drives that were adaptive in the ancestral environment but often misfire in today’s complex world.
The core argument is that many modern dysfunctions — tribal polarization, status anxiety, scarcity thinking — stem from instincts that are obsolete in current contexts. Autognosis proposes a structured method for addressing this: recognition, separation, redirection, reflection, and design. It’s meant as both a personal practice and a civilizational lens.
I’ve written a thesis paper that lays out the framework in detail, and I would greatly value this community’s critique to help refine it. In particular, I’m seeking feedback on:
If you’re interested, you can read the thesis here:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/12RIxxL2YxyLiI-L3KuZcdl9Vk3uPfSMt/view?usp=sharing
https://www.harbingerholdingsllc.com/media/inner-compass/autognosis/
Thank you in advance for any engagement or critical perspectives — I want to make this work stronger, and outside critique is essential.
Robert
I have read the work on "autognosis" and find any reflection on instinct control, which is the essence of civilization, hopeful.
Certainly, in the West, the Stoic approach is insurmountable, as it implies individual self-control to allow for the common good. In my opinion, this is the basis of EA philosophy. And its greatest weakness.
The exposition of different strategies for instinct control is very interesting, but it reveals the same limitation of Stoicism: it views moral action as an individual isolated from social relations, which is inconsistent (we are social beings); It doesn't question cultural models; there is no ethical content inherent to examining the human condition (instincts of all kinds, and how to control them).
Methodologies can vary; they are selected through trial and error. The important thing is to establish the target to be achieved. For the Stoics, the State had to be served (a just State... as a consequence of it being governed by just men).
That is a mistake. Reading many of the instincts of Homo Sapiens (tribalism, the desire for dominance, for example) as "antisocial" should imply a "prosocial" model. This can only be the one that has, as an economic consequence, "effective altruism."
The text ignores the cultural mechanisms of instinct control, developed through "trial and error" over centuries and which allow for the internalization of moral values. A prosocial ideological model must be based on principles of internalizing behavioral patterns.
I'll give you a well-known example. The famous Anabaptist Amish community is made up of 400,000 people, small-scale farmers. They don't need government, judges, police, or prisons to govern themselves. How do they do it? Do they use Stoicism, behaviorism a la Skinner or Watson, do they use autognosis, do they rely on Jung, or on cognitive-behavioral therapy?
They certainly don't base themselves on Christianity or the Bible, because 99% of Christians—like them—do need judges, police, prisons, fines, and coercive governments...
Thank you for taking the time to read and comment on my work. I very much appreciate it.
You are correct that Autognosis is designed as an individual practice. The intention is to primarily educate the practitioner on instinct literacy to enable cognitive and intentional response to stimuli. This goal was developed from the observation that human beings largely operate on limbic autopilot- wholesale automatic reaction to instincts.
Autognosis does not prescribe predetermined prosocial models or behavioral expectations. It is left to the individual to author their own morality and ethics. These choices will inevitably be shaped by social forces, but the premise is that if enough individuals consciously engage with their instinctual signals, then society itself will shift. Structures would no longer rest on unexamined biological drives, but on thoughtful, self-aware, and ethically grounded principles.
I found the Amish example interesting, though I see it differently. Their culture seems to suppress instincts through external authority and fear of religious consequences, rather than through self-authorship. Autognosis takes the opposite approach: it emphasizes individual literacy and intentional choice. While social structures will always shape behavior, the goal is not conformity to inherited beliefs, but conscious authorship of values in dialogue with society.
Thank you again for your time and commentary.
I want to address two issues.
The first has to do with a model of instinct control devoid of ethical content.
If you have a more or less functional description of the human instincts that must be controlled by intelligently directed behavior, then you already have an ethical model.
Sigmund Freud also made it clear that civilization is the control of instinct; and Norbert Elias made it even clearer: civilization is the control of aggression.
If we have a description of the antisocial instincts that must be controlled (aggression, domination, tribalism, etc.), it is because such instincts (undoubtedly necessary for the life of the hunter-gatherer Homo sapiens) hinder the development of the prosocial instincts that must be fostered. We need a social system based on an altruistic economy. Only such a social system can guarantee the maximum possible cooperation among civilized Homo sapiens. And maximum cooperation is only possible if interpersonal relationships of extreme trust (virtue ethics or "saintliness") exist.
A supposedly rational system of instinct control that doesn't point in that direction is flawed and burdened by prejudice. Just as flawed and burdened by prejudice as Seneca and Marcus Aurelius were when they believed that Stoic virtue consisted of maintaining the political and economic system of the Roman Empire, which we now know was not the best. Nor is the current "Western" system the best.
The second issue has to do with the "Amish"... and with many other systems of instinct control that have developed through processes of "trial and error" within the context of certain cultural frameworks.
The Amish appear to use a "coaching" system with very behavioral ingredients.
Added to these behavioral references is a Christian religious indoctrination with some peculiarities apart from radical non-violent pacifism (for example: no theological discussion, the New Testament but not the Old Testament, and many stories of martyrdom).
"Amish" life, religious fanaticism aside, is no paradise. It seems that depression and suicide occur among them, and there are alarming reports of sexual abuse. But it is true that they can develop a large-scale social life without coercive government or political authority. Kropotkin and Bakunin should have studied them.
EA is a valuable opportunity, although its current leaders don't seem to know this. "Altruism" is a behavioral trait, and what they should do is develop the set of behavioral traits characteristic of rational prosociality in the sense of controlling aggressive and antisocial instincts in general. They are not doing this, and it seems that an opportunity is being missed.
If they really managed to turn their "ten thousand" signatories of the GWWC Pledge into millions, I would have no objection, but at the rate they are going, I fear they will not achieve this unless they offer society an alternative cultural model based on rationally internalized patterns of behavior that are completely prosocial (Christian "saintliness," more or less).
In any case, I was interested in your project about "autognosis", because any rationalization of human development as a control of antisocial instincts is on the right path.
Thank you very much for your work.