Favorite droll turn on cogito ergo sum*: I think therefore I think I am. Possibly better: I think therefore I think I am thinking.
Best:
You are your epistemology. (Gregory Bateson)
I’ve always stuck with John Lilly’s:
My beliefs are unbelievable.
In this context, why not: “My thoughts are unthinkable.”
???
* But I have convinced myself that there is absolutely nothing […]
Read Full Post »
This ideological approach is needed to legitimate predominant relations of domination (obtaining primarily among a ruling elite of experts, professionals, politicians, etc., and a well-administered citizenry) as being neutral and natural. Not only does this framework require automatic dismissal of all other modes of political organization, but also discrediting ideas perceived to be their ideological […]
Read Full Post »
The following could serve as the subject of an assignment: What’s wrong at the level of assumptions found in the following argument?
I’ve provided some helpful italicizing.
At the second gathering of the teachers of Integral Spiritual Center, Patrick Sweeney famously asked Ken Wilber, “what can we do to stay out of Appendix III of Integral Spirituality?” […]
Read Full Post »
If both natural law and ceaseless creativity partially beyond natural law are necessary for understanding our world, and if we as whole human beings live in this real world of law and unknowable creativity, these two ancient strands of Western civilization can reunite in ways we cannot foresee. Out of this union can arise a […]
Read Full Post »
“With univocity, however, it is not the differences which are and must be: it is being which is Difference, in the sense that it is said of difference. Moreover, it is not we who are univocal in a Being which is not; it is we and our individuality which remains equivocal in and for a […]
Read Full Post »
I’ve added Three-Toed Sloth to the blogroll. It’s written by Cosma Shalizi, a professor at Carnegie Mellon. His research interests don’t at all dovetail with my own; to whit: “Information theory; nonparametric prediction of time series; learning theory and nonlinear dynamics; stochastic automata, state space and hidden Markov models; causation and prediction; large deviations and […]
Read Full Post »
Post-creationist Michael Behe has a new book, The Edge of Evolution: The Search for the Limits of Darwinism, and I’ll be adding to my comments here over the next few days. I am not in any way qualified to evaluate the book’s technical argument and ty\he arguments of Behe’s critics unless all such arguments are […]
Read Full Post »
After borrowing Ken Wilber’s latest book,Integral Spirituality from the library, I was moved to purchase it because I had dipped into it and read the following on page 176:
The myth of the given or monological consciousness is essentially another name for phenomenology and mere empiricism in any of a hundred guises–whether regular empiricism, radical empiricism, […]
Read Full Post »
(I’m data hopping.} From a December 20 post at Matt Murrah’s Leadership blog.
We are moving towards a dictatorship of relativism which does not recognize anything as for certain and which has as its highest goal one’s own ego and one’s own desires. - Joseph Ratzinger (Benedict, XVI)
Later, Murrah admits,
If relativism is to be ‘enforced’, then […]
Read Full Post »
Posted in humor, philosophy on Dec 18th, 2006 No Comments »
From The Philosopher’s Magazine, by way of Dassh:A Day in the Integral Life
12 surefire techniques - I’ve excerpted the note at the end.
Tips for the Top; How to Be a Philosopher
Note
Naturally, these techniques are not recommended for amateur use and should not be attempted without the supervision of a full professor. These philosophical techniques are […]
Read Full Post »
Richard Dawkins. The God Delusion. Harrumph.
Dawkins is aggravated at magical precepts and objects of belief. Moreover, as many are, he finds the religious game of king of the hill destructive. But, Dawkins is somehow prevented by the mote in his eye from realizing that faith, belief, are completely normal features of the consciousness the most […]
Read Full Post »
Arthur M. Young wrote two little read albeit influential and (to me) essential books, both published in 1976: The Geometry of Meaning and The Reflexive Universe. Along with the alchemical writings of C.G.Jung, they are the most important contemporary books about quaternity and ‘anthropo’ process. Young/Jung’s research inform SQ1’s model of exploratory learning; this is […]
Read Full Post »
Yeah, What Bateson said.
From a Batesonian perspective, it is the way we classify, make distinctions, and make sense of things that is fundamental. If it is the distinctions we ourselves make that are causes, then it is how we process information and map the territory that explains. Within this framework, any explanation or scientific activity […]
Read Full Post »
“Now this is called the “quantum measurement paradox.” It is a paradox because who are we to do this conversion? Because after all, in the materialist paradigm we don’t have any causal efficacy. We are nothing but the brain, which is made up of atoms and elementary particles. So how can a brain which is […]
Read Full Post »
II.
The turn from 19th century hydraulic, “linear,” propulsive-impulsive, dramaturgical, ‘protagonistic’ (i.e. heroic) depth psychology, is a “turning into” the unframeable frame: so the move is surely post-Jungian, it develops a new order, is meta-psychological, resolves to living dynamic valences, allows a creative (sometimes dialectic,) interplay of psychological knowledge.
In this last sense, the interplay is something […]
Read Full Post »
In the other direction, the foundationalism implicit in Intelligent Design is easy to identify. Although the ID cabal tries to ‘fuzzify’ and fudge this issue and insulate themselves from this obvious implication by severing a tie made by association, the tie follows from the very clear and direct association to a specific religious belief system.
The […]
Read Full Post »
Another goldmine hiding out on the web. This time oriented around phenomenological-constructive psychology and coming out of The Virtual Faculty in New Zealand. The VF has a modest facade behind which lies enormous resources; for example: The Vysgotsky Project.
I haven’t read all the papers, (not hardly!) but could point to a thinker worth curling up […]
Read Full Post »
The essential humorous take on the evolution non-controversy has quickly passed into legendary status on the internet. Of course I’m speaking of the Flying Spaghetti Monster and its infinite creative unraveling as both parody and pastadigm. The Verganza site is worthy of any and all attention the reader with a sense of humor can deploy. […]
Read Full Post »
I’ve been tracking the instigation of the Intelligent Design crowd in their play for attention in Dover v. Kitzmiller. The battle for the hearts and minds of impressionable high school science students seems to me to be no more than this given how etched the so-called “Wedge Strategy” is at the leading edge of the […]
Read Full Post »
