What, Why & How do we Know ?
And memes are self-reinforcing. Talk about blindingly obvious. It’s my Catch-22. How do you argue rationally against scientific fundamentalism / logical positivism ? I’ve read Dawkins, though I’ve still never read “The Meme Machine”, but now I’ve just read Susan Blackmore’s “Waking from the Meme Dream“. Stong Zen thread here – clearing the mind of … Continue reading “Logical Positivism is a Meme”
Where to start – I have 12 pages of notes from David Gurteen’s 3rd Knowledge Management Conference in London yesterday 3rd March 2004. (Matt Mower has blogged notes too.) The main speakers were David Snowden (IBM / Cynefin) and various advocates and users of the Cynefin framework – Martyn Laycock, Bruce Cronin, Les Johnson, Anabelle … Continue reading “Gurteen – Knowledge – Cynefin – Complexity”
Rational Ignorance [Jo Ito] [via McGee]. Interesting. On the balance between academic and detailed “rationale” in the language a 12 year old could understand (O-level theory as I call it) on the one hand, and inspired (and interesting, and involving, and rhetorical, and aesthetic) brevity on the other. The former is of course Pirsig’s death … Continue reading “Rational Ignorance”
Just started reading James Joyce’s Ulysses yesterday (it had to happen one day, Jorn). I’m about six chapters in (two chapters into the second part) and surprised to find it not too hard going. Plenty of unintelligible neologisms, but they don’t interrupt the already strange prose-poetry flow. Plenty of intriguing throwaways that presumably hint at … Continue reading “Ulysses and Nietzsche”
In Search of the Real University of Chicago. Andrew Chrucky runs this site dedicated to “preserving the Hutchins tradition of liberal education at Chicago Uni”, starting with glowing citations from Alfred North Whitehead and Bertrand Russell. I blogged Chrucky [and earlier] “Concepts of Persons and Morality” (a paper about the definition of life – from … Continue reading “In Search of the Real University of Chicago”
Mentioned a couple of posts ago that I was re-evaluating blog software going forward – basically I need something to organise my myriad of thoughts – one per index card, in Pirsigian fashion – into potential categories, in order to synthesise something from it. Think I’m going to go with MT TypePad. At the same … Continue reading “Major Re-Cap in Progress”
In a bar in Aotou. Douglas Adams on immortality and Robert Pirsig on, well, life the universe and everything else. What a combination. Stop trying to get there, you’re already there he says.
MoQ as Pragmatic Tool. Corresponding with Matt Kundert on the MoQ Discussion Board concerning Robert Pirsig’s Metaphysics of Quality, as a (the best I know) pragmatic framework for value-judgements / decision-making, despite not necessarily being worth thinking of as a “Metaphysics”, and despite not being entirely new or original – nothing new under the sun … Continue reading “MoQ as Pragmatic Tool”