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Psybertron blog action has retreated to book / thesis drafting behind the scenes, as most of my life is taken over by planning for two summer events – the International Society for Systems Sciences (ISS) and the American Society for Cybernetics (ASC) conferences in Washington DC in early June, and the Robert Pirsig 50th anniversary … Continue reading “A Mouthful of Unsalted Soup”

Anil Seth’s Faraday Lecture has generated a fair bit of chat. I was initially a bit too unimpressed, not enough originality – probably turned off previously by his use of “hallucination”. In fact he is synthesising many of the same sources I am. Nothing new under the sun again. ===== Mystery – zzz. Lost under … Continue reading “Seth is OK”

I have so many notes, I’m not quite sure how much I’m going to write up Charles Foster ‘s Annual Mike Jackson lecture at Hull University on Tuesday 19th March “What is a Human?”. Suffice to say its scope was unsettlingly beyond expectations for our systems studies context. Excellent none-the-less. So I will, as usual, … Continue reading “A Mouse is Edgier than a Musk Ox”

I mentioned in my first ever paper about my interest in Pirsig in 2005, that I owned the same Honda Superhawk model as Robert Pirsig did on his 1968 “Zen Ride” – mine was the CB72 his was the CB77, but they are mechanically identical in all respects other than the cylinder bore which made … Continue reading “A Badly Maintained Honda CB72/77”

Just a holding post to which I will add a few links. We already know Alan Watts, a Brit, was part of the 1960’s boom in Eastern / Zen interest, Hinduism too, particularly in the US, but I’d never really considered his scholarly value in this space. Having written “The Way of Zen” in 1957, … Continue reading “Alan Watts”

Dave Snowden, of who I’m a big fan as you know, very kindly linked to a post of mine commenting on last year’s Annual Mike Jackson Lecture given by him at Hull University. [This year 2024 Mike Jackson lecture also attended by Dave Snowden] Turns out some of the things he included in last years … Continue reading “The Holistic Mob”

Enough Material for a Much Better Essay / Paper / Book Chapter? Some of my more important posts are effectively becoming chapters in my thesis / book(s) although they often have much repetitive context and pre-amble. And, over the years they have gathered post notes and links by accretion, so that they have become more … Continue reading “#EMFAMBE”

Just a quickie. This is a quote from Alasdair MacIntyre’s 1977 Essay “Epistemological Crises, Dramatic Narrative, and the Philosophy of Science” (Offline PDF copy, original copyright acknowledged.) “Consider what it is to share a culture. It is to share schemata which are at one and the same time constitutive of and normative for intelligible action … Continue reading “Shared Cultural Values?”