Elaboration on Bottom-Up and Top-Down thought?

I wanted some clarification as to the nature of these organizations of thought. I'll start by explaining my understanding of these concepts.

Bottom-Up
In this type of thinking, one starts with small 'facts' of life and extrapolates from there to build a larger (even if incomplete) picture of their environment. This kind of thinking becomes a problem for someone who cannot handle the clarity (about themselves) and absence that comes with it.

Top-Down
This type of thinking, one assumes a 'larger' fact and then tries to find whether or not it is valid by extrapolating from it and attempting to find inconsistencies. For instance, one would assume that God exists and then later find inconsistencies in smaller aspects taught about God.

From what I can tell, I am usually a Top-Down thinker. I rationalize (consciously justify, upon an unconscious feeling of inconsistency/shame) the difficulty I have thinking Bottom-Up by telling myself that by assuming a criteria for a 'fact' I have therefor assumed an [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] which goes against the intuitive idea that there is no such thing. I suppose this is simply the nature of human thought itself though (one, zero) and so cannot be helped. Right...

It appears that Bottom-Up thinking is clearly the superior form to grasp the nature of what someone is experiencing. Top-Down thinking appears to have its origins in the very reason I use it, to rationalize away negative (to the person) unconscious thoughts.

Any other thoughts or elaborations to deepen my understanding of these would be appreciated.

Bottom-Up - begins with sensual stimuli, the apparent, the perceived, finds patterns in it and with this extrapolates larger rules and predicts future occurrences.


Top-Down - begins with a conclusion, the invisible, the unperceived, and then tries to incorporate the perceived within its premises....or tries to justify the projected with the perceived .
If and when it fails it does not discard the presumed, it simply dismisses the perceived as illusions or as too complex or too inconclusive to be taken into consideration, postponing judgment indefinitely.

Does bottom-up involve a stripping away? A refinement? A discrimination.

Where laterality involves reconciliation. Lateral thinking. Fitting precut pieces together from bottom-up. Fitting together patterns. The attempt to bridge one idea with another and rejecting the connection if it fails, but not the pieces themselves of they are correct.

Top-down rejects the piece which fails to connect to its want and resents the lack of connection - it becomes a sore subject.

Slaughtz wrote:

Does bottom-up involve a stripping away? A refinement? A discrimination.

Yes...this is what it means to begin from the base, the earthly and then advance upwards towards the more airy, towards the mind, consciousness.
A refinement of consciousness.
Increasing discrimination - perception of divergence, of differences.  
This is what is meant by "bringing it down to earth" = connecting the mind, through symbols/words to the empirically, experienced phenomenon.
Using language to connect the noumenon with the phenomenon - with behaviour, in organic life, or with interactivity.  

The earth is not abandoned, for it grounds us.
Feet on the earth, connected with symbols/words, and then advancing upwards, towards the future, the yet to be, the idea(l).
Self becomes a conduit, a link in this connection of earth and heaven, metaphorically speaking.
The idea(l) is based on the earthly.
Nihilistic detachment is the floating up into the heavens, the idealistic universe of mind, where everything and anything goes, because there is no reality, no grounding to limit options.
The idea(l) no longer refers, relates to the real.

Slaughtz wrote:

Where laterality involves reconciliation. Lateral thinking. Fitting precut pieces together from bottom-up. Fitting together patterns. The attempt to bridge one idea with another and rejecting the connection if it fails, but not the pieces themselves of they are correct.

Like building a house, with stones, or trees.
One has to fit them perfectly, otherwise the structure will fall.
The breadth of the structure is determined by the breadth of your mind - your intelligence, motives, desires.
But the necessity to build in harmony with the world, like the house must be placed on the earth, as it is.
The geography determining the structure.  
Metaphysics is a digging a foundation to solidify the building that will rise from the earth, upwards.
Patterns must fit together, like bricks/stones have to be fit together. But the stones will not be chiselled, but found in the world, in the environment.
Reforming data to fit into a desired shape, is what moderns do.
Pagans find the materials already made by the environment, and fit them together. It's a more difficult, painstaking process.
Much easier to find a stone and then break it into whatever piece suits your needs.
Pagan process is more organic.
Bottom<>Up thinking, paganism, tries not to shape the stones, or trees, but only harvest them as they were made by nature.
If some human intervention is necessary one does not forget that it has occurred, to later believe that the perfect stone, or the perfect tree was found to fit perfectly.
One keeps a mental ledger of his actions, so that he never forgets what and how he intervened.
we live in an age where we've forgotten (lethe) what words referred to, or how they were used metaphorically. Most believe the metaphor is literal.
Like how moderns forget what was there when they build cities, paved the ground over, created these manmade structures. they forget nature before man's intervention.  

Slaughtz wrote:

Top-down rejects the piece which fails to connect to its want and resents the lack of connection - it becomes a sore subject.

Top<>Down begins with the conclusion and works backwards trying to find in the real validations of its already-made objective.
If it fails it fabricates an alternate reality, insisting that it is more 'real' than the experienced, or it projects into reality the fabrications that are missing, lacking.
It starts with the idea(l), up in the air, the mind....it only exists in the mind.
Then it tries to place it on the earth - to ground it.
So, it selectively chooses data, breaks apart reality until something in agreement with the already made conclusion is shaped.
It selectively, and partially samples reality.

In more extreme cases of Nihilism, the idea(l) is contradicted by the real, or it contradicts the real...and yet it is not abandoned.
The ideal remains ideal, with no grounding, no references in the world.  
Such idealism needs followers, to substantiate a ideal that has no reality.
The more that share this mental fabrication the more it is 'real' in their minds.  
External references, in world, are replaced by references to other minds.
They always refer and defer to other mental constructs, like philosophy or religious books, or famous minds.
Lacking a earthly grounding they are forced to seek validation in other minds.
They usually choose an established popular text, like the bible, the Quran, the Torah....Abrahamism is most guilty of applying this method.
Then they find an icon.
Abrahamics have their Jesus and Mohamed...the mother Judaism, denounces images and idols remaining entirely abstract.

But other icons can be used, such as Marx, Lenin, Nietzsche is a big one among modern males.
It could also be Hitler, or a rock star, or a movie star.
Someone who is preferably dead, and so cannot contradict the worshipper's  idealization of them.
Someone who is thought to embody the idea(l). A dead man is an idea I the mind of those who recall him.
The more unreal the idea(l) the more supernatural, surreal, the embodiment.  
The icon becomes more than extraordinary. He or she becomes divine.
Divine = noumenon.
The mere mentioning of his name is validation of what is being presented.  

With no grounding in the real, no references to world to validate an opinion, the Top<>Down idealist compensates with mysticism.
In such nihilistic "philosophy" it's all psychological in orientation because it has no meaning outside the mind - psyche.
It is 'esoteric', as they call it.
You usually have specialized jargon, to lend it that credence of the magical....sometimes it is accompanied with specific wardrobes, or rituals.
It's all psychological manipulation, seduction, exploitation.
Nihilism can only be noetic - ideology, religion, and its philosophy can only be psychology, politics.

The more nihilistic an ideology is, the more Top<>Down, the more it seduces, promises, threatens, manipulates psychology; refers to mind, to psyche, because it only exists as a mental construct, an idea(l), that affect the physical, the body, via the brain.

Can top-down thinking exist in an individual if they do not have an inaccurate perception of themselves?

It seems to me that top-down is a result of one's failing to perceive themselves and their potential in an accurate manner.

Mainly, my issue is that we all try to strive for basic human necessities: shelter, food, water, etc. In order to get to this state of being in the further off future, we have to reify that state of comfort and then re-arrange representations of reality in our own minds to achieve the state desired. That can only be achieved if we have an accurate perception of ourselves navigating the world and an accurate perception of the world, even in probabilistic terms (striving for more accuracy in degrees of probability). The representations of reality and of ourselves have to remain accurate for the process we come up with for the achievement of our goal to be salient and effective.

This is a process I imagine most people do. And, it isn't appropriate, it seems, to label such process as 'top-down' and it's the main criticism/difficult I have had between bottom-up and top-down distinction. I think the idea that one cannot have a top-down perception and at the same time an accurate perception of self, would resolve that dilemma - so that's why I asked the very specific question, logcally formulated such that if one is of the condition of having an accurate perception of self, then they cannot think in a 'top down' manner - unless they are somehow delusional only about the world and not themselves. Which would seem like a very peculiar sort of case to deal with.

Real creativity would be the ability to re-arrange representations of the world and find connections deeper within those representations with other representations, without ever actually disconnecting the original representations from their natural phenomenal origins - and then never accepting as any more as possibility these novel connections without first testing them to determine their probability.

Top<>Down thinking can exist in every mind that begins with a conclusion, and justifies it by selectively and partially referring to world.
It begins with an answer and then arranges his experiences to justify it.
It redefines words,
It interprets every event as a validation of what it already knows to be true.

The answer can be constructed or adopted from another mind - called an idea(l).

Self-awareness help in the perception of this prejudice.

Animals have no ability to think Top<>Down....they can only think Bottom<>Up.
There are automatic reaction to phenomena that are supported with every experience.
An animal has an objective and then it adjusts its way towards it with every experience - it learns.

The human manimal cannot give-up on the method, nor on the goal.
It repeats the same method, and explains failure by blaming everything but itself and the objective's validity./
Communist ideology is an example.
The goal is a coming future world - a communist utopia where there is no hunger, no poverty, and no conflict.
This is founded no an idealization of man.
But communists do not give-up on the ideology because it has never succeeded.
They blame the application, implying they would do a better job, and they never question the ideology itself, so they can never accept that it is based on a naive and erroneous understanding of man.

The ideal, Communism, is the Top.....and all they do is try to explain the world in reference to it.
They do not build an ideology on experiences of world...but the reverse.
Bottom<>Up is a process of gradations - a movement towards the superior.
Top<>Bottom thinking begins with an absolute, perfect, idea(l). One that has never and can never be experienced, because it only exits in pristine vague perfection in the mind, and nowhere else.

Christians place on the Top their Abrahamic version of god.
It does not matter to them if they cannot prove or find this concept, as they define it, in the world.
They find excuses....man is sinful, god is complex and mysterious.
The elusiveness of their version of absoluteness is a measure of their self-sacrifice - their sacrifice of reason. A measure of their 'faith'.
It's men who are weak, and not the definition and conception of the word 'god' remains unblemished.

Visualize it this way...

Top<>Down thinkers believe in a destination, a place, they have never seen, described in ways they have never experienced, and every time they fail to find this 'place' they do not adjust their definitions but blame themselves for not being worthy, or for being weak, or whatever.
The place may be a fabrication in their mind and may not exist...but this will not stop them from searching for it.
The place is usually given to them.....or it is constructed from synthesizing their own experiences or those of others, but in a way they have never and nobody has ever experienced.
This 'place' is usually perfect, complete, a final end. They conceptualize ti as a divine, separate, enclosed biosphere, with its own rules and its own reality.

Bottom<>Up thinkers have no destination. They explore and move through world, building up experiences of it which they then formulate into desirable destinations.
A bottom<>up thinker may turn back and return to a place he passed and he liked.
They seek something they've seen before, but only imagine it better, or imagine it in a way that suits them personally.
They seek nothing in particular, but enjoy the exploration, and with every experience they sharpen their idea(l) place.
These kinds of thinkers are able to settle anywhere and make it work, because they know there is no final, perfect, place, but only superior and inferior places, depending no what they want, or depending on what they are unable to do without.
They know that each traveller travels through the same world, and that whatever place they choose is not all the same, because each place is a separate environment where different kinds of minds flourish. Each has its own advantages and disadvantages and these are the same for everyone, because each place is not a separate biosphere.

Top<>Down Thinker = begins from the one.
Begins from noumena - adopted and then constructed.
Essentially the idea(l) become absolute, because it cannot be proved nor disproved.
Phenomena are separated into those that validate and those that do not - either/or.
They either negate or validate. The ones that negate are yet to be integrated, or they are ignored.
For this type all that negates or contradicts the starting noumenon is 'negative' - a nihilist.
So, the fact that his noumenon negates the experience of reality and essentially is the idealistic negation of the realistic , is converted to its opposite-  inverted.Now all that contradicts the starting noumenon, the idealized abstraction, is 'negative', therefore the world is so, and the idea(l) remains the 'positive'.  

Bottom<>Up Thinker = begins from the nil.
Begins from phenomena.  Perceived and reacted to.
He deals in probabilities, not absolutes.
He gradually builds his idea(l)s based on probabilities based on experiences - precedent.
His idea(l)s are more or less probable - gradations reflecting fluidity of existence.
He is empirical, pragmatic.
Absolute conviction, absolute faith, is more than compensated by the strengths of his theories that are the product of years of experiences and testing = cost/benefit consequences adjusted to.

Like a man that spends years pushing weight builds muscle and strength. He begins from weakness, ignorance.
The other assumes his strength. It is theoretical, not a product of conflicting with reality, with the earth's mass - gravity.
He is, in theory, in his head, strong, and all he needs to do is project this conviction convincingly so that others believe him. He needs to be believed. He needs to impress using words.

The strong man does not need to declare himself strong. He shows it.
The feeble man repeats it so that he may convince others of his theoretical strength.
Replace 'strength' with any coveted trait - intelligence, beauty, wisdom etc.

It's the difference between realism and idealism.
Aryanism and Abrahamism.

The Top<>Down thinker has a bipolar potential.

It may produce the naive idealist as described above, or its opposite - the cynic.
He begins with the idea(l) of negating all.
He begins with the nil but places it as a given - an absolute.
Rather than building from there experienced based probabilities, he validates his idea(l) of nil with experiences, just as his polar opposite validates his 'positive' noumenon in the same manner.
He's a mirror opposite of his nihilistic soul-mate.
One begins with the idea as a singularity, a certainty, an absolute one.....and the other with a void, no less certain, and absolute, the nil.
Binary brain = 1/0....both being symbols, noetic construct that have no tangible, no experienced reference outside the brain.

I've also called them 'positive' nihilism & pure nihilism.

The Aryan may begin from nil, from a position of ignorance and build gnosis step by step...but not really because he begins with an affirmation of what he already carried with him as knowledge - genetic DNA knowledge of experiences (nurturing) that occurred before he was born.
He is proceeding inward, to know himself, and outward to apply this knowledge in the world - validating it by testing it within world.
He explores inward and outward, and the two are never misaligned, never one contradicting or negating the other.
So, the Aryan does not really start from nil, but on the grounds of his ancestors accumulated experiences of which he is a manifestation - his body is the appearance of this accumulated past, and he adds to it, wanting to pass it forward.

Fanaticism is always part of the top<>down psychology.
They have to compensate for their rejection of the real and of their past with passion - with obsessive mania, with addiction, which is the physical expression of psychological obsessiveness.
A realist does not have to display such passionate convictions because he is well-grounded. After a few years of maturation, and if he remains true to himself and his integrity, he will have built a pool of precedence and sharped his beliefs, ready and willing to abandon them if new experiences contradict them; willing to adjust and adapt his noumena his thinking, to phenomena, to what is experienced in the physical world.
But, because he his beliefs are tested, are testable, and verifiable by all, he shows a confidence based on performance and precedence.

Again, I use the metaphor of the weight-lifter.
After years of challenging gravity, and building muscle, he has the confidence of one who has suffered for his gains, and although he is not certain of his strength in relation to every single other, he is certain of it in relation to the majority of others.
He can also admire this in those who, like him, show this past experience, this accumulated strength - his homoioi.
The theoretical weight-lifter is always concocting excuses or tricks to appear strong when he has never actually lifted anything significant in his life. He's constantly reinforcing and building his image using words, or symbolic gestures - he is constantly repeating how strong he, theoretically, is; always cultivating the image of himself he desires others to have, so as to validate his pretenses.
It's codependent psychosis.
Unable to actually lift an impressive weight, he must create the myth of himself doing so. The image is the Top, in the top<>down metaphor.
The desirable, the already given, in his mind.
Now it becomes a matter of transmitting this image to other minds so that his presumed strength is establishes theoretically.
For those he can manipulate in this way he is not only strong but almost omnipotent - his strength becomes mythical. He can lift weights no man has ever lifted.
His inability to actually lift weight, to show his strength, is exaggerated in theory - overcompensation.

Top<>Down thinkers are prone to hyperbole.
Their god can have no competing other....and must be omnipotent and omniscient.

Because it's all theoretical, idealistic, he gradually builds up a idea(l) of extraordinary proportions.

You will recognize the type by the bombastic claims he makes to compensate for his inability to show what he wants to be thought of.
He will make extraordinary claims hoping some of it will stick in the minds of those he wishes to impress.
Unable to be strong, he builds a fake reputation of his feats of strength which he cannot replicate. They remain mythological, theoretical.
Unable to be a philosopher he repeats his status as a 'philosopher' hoping some few will believe him.

He starts with the Top, the answer to his pains and suffering, the solution to his problem....and then works backward to integrate world within this construct.
He starts with the answer to all, and then works to shape the questions so as to always lead to that answer.

A Nihilist can only be a Top<>Down thinker.
From noumenon to phenomenon...from the idea(l) towards the real.
Inversion.

Only in this ill mind can the world, the real, be considered 'negative' because the desired ideal is not present in it, or not validated by experiences of it.
The very idea of nihilism is inverted.
Those who annul world, life, existence, call the negation of their idealism a nullification.

How did the original nihilists define nihilism?
As that which denies or negates the existence of god, universal morality, universal meaning....in other words the absolute.
The phenomenal world is void of their preferred noetic constructs.
These are the 'positive' nihilists.
They are Abrahamics, Marxists, post-modernists, currently denying race, and gender, or all biologically based identifiers.
All that appears is, for them, illusion, or superficial.

But we have the pure Nihilists who place on the top, the 'nil' and then work to negate all that challenges this nil.
Where their 'positive' brethren place the one, the absolute, they place the idea(l) of the nil, the 0.
One/Nil...binary logic - Dualism.
The nihilistic bipolar paradigm.

The world either validates the one or it negates it.
There are no gradations of probability - no superior/inferior.
They know of the one; they have access to the mind of god; they have solved it all, or nobody knows anything.
There are no levels of more or less probable - no superior and inferior awareness, understanding, because this would place the standard outside their minds and hold them accountable, along with everyone else.

See them reject the idea of beauty being symmetry and proportionality?

When you build from the ground up, you build away from the nil, without losing contact with it.
You build upon it, without negating it.
You bury it under the construct, without forgetting its presence.

Nihilists invert the process.
They start with an imagined construct hovering in some fantasy space/time.
Some see the ground but refuse to come in contact with it.
Others refuse its existence, feeling liberated by the absence of gravity and become frivolous and infantile.
A few attempt to reconnect with the ground but building downwards and then adjusting the ground to accommodate the construct.

A realist begins with the terrain. Builds up, towards the sky, and down to anchor and stabilize the construct.
The higher he builds, in alignment with the foundations, the deeper he must dig, to balance the construct and make it durable.  


Therefore, we begin with the physical, the empirical, and build upward, towards the ideal, and downward digging into the real, and build metaphysical foundations.
The higher the idea(l), the deeper the metaphysics must go to balance it.

Metaphysics (spirituality, mythology-past) <(interactions)> PHYSICS (body, genes - present/presence, appearance) < Nervous system (interpretation)> Idea(l) (mind, memes - future, objective)



The stability of the process is dependent on the harmony between the three.
Their supportive agreement - alignment.

Nihilism begins with the idea(l) (Top<>Down) and proceeds to the metaphysical only selectively integrating the physical, the present/presence.
The idea(l) can be 'positive' or 'negative' - two psychological poles of bipolar dualism.

Aryanism begins with the physical - its 'bottom' is the experienced - genetics are the inheritance of past experiences, sum of all previous nurturing (nature).
It then builds up and down - outward/inward, upward/downward.
It moves towards future, as it digs into past, for support.
Tree of life.

Build too high and the structure becomes top-heavy...easily toppling, uprooting, with a gust of wind.
Build too deep and the structure becomes bottom-heavy - weighed down by the past (rigid) and with no sunlight to nurture and grow.
Hellenic balance is spherical cultivation. Build up as you dig down. Symmetry of branches, feeding on sunlight, and roots, feeding in the earth, on dead organisms - idealism connected and limited by precedent.

Moderns build on the surfaces.
Their ideal is tumbleweed, rolling on the earth, swept away by wind currents - momentarily taking root but then uprooting.
They are all a ball of hungry tendrils seeking the depths but unable to dig deep enough , unable to take root.
They are all flighty idealism....mind in the sky.

I think it has become clear how Top<>Down thinking confuses its own abstractions as the starting premise.
Even our conception of a Uni-Verse is founded no projecting mind 'out'side' existence' (above, beyond) from where it can conceptualize a whole.
This noumenon then contradicts our experiences with existence itself, perceived directly as phenomena.

If we confuse this mental projection, mental fabrication, for the real, we become perplexed by paradoxes, or we revel in constructing our own private reality.

Bottom<>Up






Simplicity....
Reduce complexity to simplicity without losing any of the details.
Ockham's razor.

How do we build a house?
We begin with the earth, the ground.....we position it in an environment.
We clear a space....we orient it.....we may dig into the earth to stabilize it.
Then we build from the bottom up, maintaining a harmony - symmetry, proportionality - between the foundation,   and the structurer, elative to the environment.

First principles....what do I see, what do I hear, what do I feel, what do I smell....what do I perceive?
What is it in itself?
What is its nature?
Nature is the foundation.
Watch for behaviour - patterns of repeating consistency.
Actions....choices, revealing judgements.
Trace the act to the thought - the perceived to the imperceptible.

Postmodernism will have us believe that this is illusory,....but they are mad.
Insanity is the only way they can cope.

In bottom/up reasoning one does not begin with an absolute, nor an objective, it begins with the perceived, the experienced, working itself upward towards increasing levels of probability.

Beginning with an absolutely given, a finality, forces the subjective mind to adjust the perceived to the desired, or to deny the perceived relative to the expected, desired, final absolute.
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Once this concept of an absolute is taken for granted than one ought to affirm it, despite what is perceived and experienced, or one ought to reject it, despite what is perceived and experienced.
In both cases the perceived and experienced is to be negated so as to affirm a positive or negative final, absolute, conclusion.
Imagine a Neanderthal either explaining fire or the sun using his own absolutist affirmation of his projected fantasies, or absolutely rejecting the very experience of fire and the sun, and all theories attempting to explain it, based on the failure of the previous to prove itself absolutely and finally.
So, man perceives something incomprehensible, and he automatically constructs a complete total explanation, or he dismissed all explanatory attempts based on the fact that none can challenge the previous declarative final solutions given.