What, Why & How do we Know ?
Still reading Austin, [here below], [and here], [and again], [and earlier], [and originally], and finding new items all the time. More apparent how he is linking deliberately learned meditative states with other altered brain states achieved by other physical and chemical abnormalities. Two amazing items in one. Looking at the classic view of left- and … Continue reading “Amazing Brain”
Not blogged much recently. Been reading hard. James Austin’s “Zen And The Brain” (1998) Gerald Edelman’s “Wider Than The Sky” (2004) Adam Zeman’s “Consciousness, A User’s Guide” (2002) Completed the latter two, but still only 60% through Austin’s 840 page tome. All three are state-of-the-art brain-focussed, written by neuroscientists. All aim to get somewhere into … Continue reading “Consciousness Readings”
Some thoughts reading Herrigel, still mid Dr Austin. Nothing new, just recognisable significance. (Kingston on-line to the rescue.) Basic stuff – Koans – learning documented Koans, learning documented answers to documented Koans, learning aproaches / concepts applicable to documented Koans, are all irrelevant; this is a meta-meta-meta-meta- … -meta-problem. (I did say this year’s word … Continue reading “Zen Lessons”
Eeek, it’s a week since I’ve posted. Actually, I’ve had a cold, and found myself sleeping whenever I had the opportunity, so that might account for letting things slip. Been continuing to read Austin’s “Zen and the Brain”, which has ben getting a bit technical brain-physiology-biochemistry-wise, and a bit detailed on the teaching and practice … Continue reading “Is No News Good News ?”
And there’s more from Dr Austin. Taking emergent as high and fundamental as low, he talks of higher level emergent properties having causal effects on the underlying structures, such that the emergent properties are “causal realities”. As in Pirsig’s levels of static quality, the high can control the lower, but the lower must only ever … Continue reading “Levels of Causality”
Dr Austin again. “Sperry takes over where William James left off. Neurosciences have rejected reductionism and mechanistic determinism on the one hand, and dualisms on the other…. higher level interactions [of the] brain are presumed to be reducible [only in principle] in terms of fundamental physics. How does it help us to know about quarks, … Continue reading “Quirks Emerge Beyond Our Quarks”
The plot thickens further … I’m now reading Dr Austin’s “Zen and the Brain”. Not surprisngly for a real US medic he spends a fair amount of time apologising for his mystic tendencies and acknowledging christian religious sensibilities, before he dares launch us into his Zen treatise. (I suspect 2/3 of this 800 page tome … Continue reading “Greeley Tangles The Web”
Bought Kerouac some time ago; as the seminal beat-generation road story, it seemed de-rigoeur to have read it, since it forms part of the backdrop to Pirsig. Anyway I’m well into it at last. (Thinking out loud – Plenty of parallels with Pirsig’s mid-west already, though Pirsig’s timing does not overlap – his back-packing days … Continue reading “On The Road”