What, Why & How do we Know ?
Kevin Mitchell (2018) “Innate – How the Wiring of Our Brains Shapes Who We Are” [This repeats and adds to relevant content from an earlier partial review.] Several of the more important books I’ve read recently have felt mostly like syntheses and restatements of things I already felt I knew one way or another – … Continue reading “Innate by Kevin Mitchell – Review”
[Work in Progress – Draft will be edited without notification.] [Feedback appreciated on the “See / Refs” – where more are needed? Meantime all those indicated will be elaborated and worked into the text. And obviously on the intelligibility of the text so far. Drafting arose out of the “Three Essays” post, particularly “Algorithms for … Continue reading “Information Ontology of Mind and Body”
Just a brief note – to recommend this edition of BBCR4 Positive Thinking. Citizens’ Assemblies and a rolling Citizens’ Convention are an idea I bought into over a decade ago. My logic is this: Democracy appears broken. Democracy of some kind (after Churchill) is nevertheless the best – or least worst – system available. Therefore … Continue reading “Citizens’ Assemblies / Conventions”
Definition as a Coffin? “Hold your definition” is a plea by philosopher Daniel Dennett, often cited here on Psybertron, when dealing patiently with his scientific friends. Any discourse that starts with apparently clear definitions, manipulated solely by logic, is inherently limited by the fit between the history of those definitions and future of reality. At … Continue reading ““Definition as a Coffin” – Cybernetics to Systems Thinking”
Never actually attempted Kant yet, despite lots of secondary references. I happen to be reading “Prince of Princes – The Life of Potemkin” by Simon Sebag Montefiore. A bit of Russian history – after a little Russian literary fiction – given today’s interest in historical borders of Ukraine, Poland et al. Not to mention Austro-Hungary, … Continue reading “Kantian Enlightenment”
“Follow the science” has become one of the woke mantras I feel the need to rail against. Quite simply, unless you’re a scientist doing science, scientific advice is there to be taken into account, not followed. It doesn’t help that we have a particularly crap crop of politicians in governance at the moment, but it … Continue reading “Scientific Advice?”
I have Otto Neurath as the larger-than-life overly positive member of the logically positivist Vienna Circle – a great communicator on its behalf but probably unaware of its limitations. Someone who never understood Wittgenstein’s objections. The “International Encyclopedia of Unified Science” (here Vol 1 Part 1 Entries 1 to 5 of the unfinished project) came … Continue reading “Neurath and Bohr”
I’ve now read the whole of Part 1 of “The Matter With Things”, including but not just the summaries. As advertised it is a thorough collection and organisation of scientific and empirical evidence and argument for left and right hemisphere dysfunctions and their interconnections, genetic and physical, indicating their quite distinct “normal” roles, hemispherically deficient … Continue reading “Is McGilchrist Getting Ahead of Himself?”