This is http://www.essayz.com/a8606132.htm Previous-Essay <== This-Essay ==> Following-Essay Click HERE on this line to find essays via Your-Key-Words. {Most frequent wordstarts of each essay will be put here.} ========================================================== %REFLECTING ON DECISIONS' CONSEQUENCES 860613 To learn from our decisions and actions we often reflect upon the consequences of our decisions and actions. By observing the consequences of our past decisions and actions we seek to decide what kinds of decisions and actions will be wise for us to make and take in the future. Thus we make present decisions regarding past decisions by engaging in reflecting/reflexive behavior. The focus of our attention is our own past and our own future---resulting in our own present decisions regarding past decisions and regarding hoped for future consequences for us; all being intimately reflexive. The process of learning from the consequences of our past decisions and actions is inherently reflexive, self- referential; therefore learning and education is not an objective process. Part of the learning process is learning how to improve one's own learning process; learning about learning to improve future learning for one's own self. If one wishes to be a successful student it is foolish to continue behavior patterns which have led to academic failure in the past. To make wise self referential decisions one must work within a paradigm which promotes wise reflexive considerations; i.e., within an effective non-objective paradigm, because objective paradigms require that the knower be as uninvolved in the process of being the known as is possible. The guidelines for effective objective behavior can not be the same as the guidelines for effective reflexive behavior which leads to wise decisions reflecting upon self's past, present and future. Thus scientists can not be scientific in the process of making decisions about how to be scientific. It is impossible to be scientific about improving the learning process about how to be a better scientist. To be a better scientist, student, educator, or professor requires engaging in reflexive considerations, decisions and actions which fall outside the purview of objective guidelines. We may thus conclude that for scientists to become more wise they must learn to transcend the objective paradigm to reflect upon past successes and failures of the paradigm, in order to make better decisions about when to operate within the objective paradigm in the future. (c) 2005 by Paul A. Smith in (On Being Yourself, Whole and Healthy) ==========================================================