The Emperor’s New Markov-Blankets?

I mentioned in my review of Anatoly Levenchuk’s “Systems Thinking 2020” having some subsequent dialogue about common ground in other areas of the Psybertron agenda. A significant overlap is the work of Karl Friston (Free Energy Principle / Markov Blankets / Emergent Organism / Active Inference) in my reading of Mark Solms, and in Levenchuk’s … Continue reading “The Emperor’s New Markov-Blankets?”

The Hidden Spring – Round-Up

The night before last, I completed Mark Solms (2021) “The Hidden Spring – A Journey to the Source of Consciousness“. ===== The Preamble / Previously on Psybertron April 2021 – I first mentioned receiving The Hidden Spring, but maybe not having enough bandwidth to read it. It didn’t stop me recommending it on the strength … Continue reading “The Hidden Spring – Round-Up”

Before Returning to the Cortex

Just completed Chapters 7, 8 & 9 of the Hidden Spring, having been looking forward to 7 when I finished 6, here. Wow, this is good stuff from Solms. The contents / subjects … Free Energy Principle – Homeostasis, “self-evidencing” in self-organising systems, statistical thermodynamics, entropy and information, efficiency. Markov-blankets between self-organised layers, two-way / … Continue reading “Before Returning to the Cortex”

The Hidden Spring of Mark Solms

I’ve had Mark Solms (2021) book “The Hidden Spring – A Journey to the Source of Consciousness” since April last year. [Post Note: Final round-up of reading “The Hidden Spring” here. Many more references to Solms since.] Finding lots of content I recognised (eg. a major dependence on Jaak Panksepp and life as “homeostasis” – … Continue reading “The Hidden Spring of Mark Solms”

The Discovery of Heaven

The 2001 Jeroen Krabbé film of the 1992 Harry Mulisch (Dutch) novel. I just watched it at the suggestion of Eddo that it had some value to our recent Pirsig / McGilchrist dialogues – the  divine or sacred right-brain view of reality obscured by the dominance of the received-wisdom “science-led” left-brain model of reality: (Freedom … Continue reading “The Discovery of Heaven”

A Hopeful Way to Flourish

I’ve been reading John Ehrenfeld’s “The Right Way to Flourish: Reconnecting to the Real World” (2020). John is a participant in the Channel McGilchrist forum which I joined alongside my reading Iain McGilchrist’s latest “The Matter With Things” (2021). John’s book was largely written before he had read Iain’s previous “The Master and His Emissary” … Continue reading “A Hopeful Way to Flourish”

Spinoza, Melville and Identity Politics

“The structure of reality demands a rethinking of the reality of the self.” Still not managed to get myself a copy of Rebecca Goldstein’s essay on “Literary Spinoza” that forms the Coda to The Oxford Handbook of Spinoza by Michael Della Rocca. [It’s very expensive to buy, even in Kindle form, there are precious few … Continue reading “Spinoza, Melville and Identity Politics”

Meta Communication of Things

[Latest updates re The Matter With Things: Preview in preparation for its arrival Initial impressions on receiving the book. Thoughts on completing Part 1 Thoughts on completing Part 2 (this post) Review on completing Part 3 & the whole (tba). ] I’m in a bit of a quandary. I have now, actually since the middle … Continue reading “Meta Communication of Things”