Re: Acid epistemology - Eric Help!!!!

[thompnickson2]

Dave,

 

Oh, Damn.  I thought I had pretty much sorted this disagreement out, and now I am all confused again.  I am in doubt, and doubt is painful.  He that falls hardest, falls from his highest horse. Where do I stand (as a purported experience monist) EVER to deny your experience? OK. Calm down, Nick.  Let’s see where this comes out.

 

First, let’s go back to unicorns.  You say (let’s say) that during one of your sessions you have encountered a unicorn.  You describe that unicorn in great detail, including the golden horn, the flowing white mane and tail, the restless silver-shod hooves, and (if you like) the golden haired damsel on his back.  (Frank Wimberly is gearing up his Freudian interpretation of my fantasy here as you read.) And you say that this apparition is accompanied in you with a feeling of great joy and peace.  Where could I possibly stand to deny you any of this?

 

Now, feeling my way here, let’s divide what I propose to deny you into two parts.   Was the Unicorn real and was your feeling of well-being real?  As a dualist, I can deny you one without denying you the other.  The test of whether you really saw a UNICORN  is in the world outside of experience (w.e.t.f. that is) whereas the test of whether YOU SAW a unicorn is a matter entirely between you and your mind, a matter about which I could not possibly have any direct information.   Since dualists claim to have two sources of information about the world (their experience and ….God’s?) it’s possible for there to be a unicorn experience (I saw it, God, I saw it!) when in fact God knows there is no unicorn.  So a dualist can grant you your unicorn experience, with all its emotional glory, while not granting you the unicorn.  Not sure I have that out. 

 

Now, mind you, as an experience-monist, I am not tied to the notion that there can be no varieties of experience.  I am only tied to the notion that there is only one kind of stuff in the world, experience, and relations between experiences.  Glen, (I think) once pointed out to me that this is already TWO kinds of stuff, experiences and relations, and that I have already forsaken my monism.  Pressed on that point I would take the position that there are only relations among experiences, at which point perhaps Glen will ask me about the FIRST experience, and I will trot out my usual contempt for twisting our knickers about “first cases”.  I really REALLY don’t give a damn about when the first object was conscious of another object.  I won’t worry about that first case until we have worked out all the subsequent cases.  After all, given that there was, ex hypothesi, only one first case, why should I give a damn?  Why are extreme cases iconic?

 

One of the dimensions along which experiences differ is in the degree to which they prove out in future experience.  If what you saw really as a unicorn, then it should be possible to go to the equine biology section of your local library and read up on them.  They might, perhaps, be very rare, like Nessie or the Ivory Billed Woodpecker, but there are ways of working these disagreements out, and we monists assert only that what we MEAN by saying that unicorns, Loch Ness Monsters, and Ivory Billed Woodpeckers are real, is that, in the fullness of time, the community of inquiry, those who care about the matter, will agree that they exist.  And if the bulk of contemporaneous evidence suggests that they DON’T exist, then I will cheerfully deny you your experience of a unicorn in the limited sense that I confidently deny that what you saw actually was a unicorn. 

 

But can I also deny you your report that you SAW a unicorn.  Well, perhaps.  This is trickier.  What are the practicial consequences of saying that you have seen a unicorn?  Setting aside the non existence of unicorns, how could the community of inquiry come to a conclusion about whether you had, in fact, hallucinated one.  Is that solely between you and your “mind”?  Or do we have standing to deny even that you hallucinated one?   I think the answer is absolutely “Yes”.  Imagine that you’re the jury in a traffic accident case in which the accused driver claims to have swerved to avoid a unicorn.  Now, everybody in the courtroom has stipulated (ex hypothesi) that unicorns do not exist, so the only question before the court is whether I genuinely hallucinated one, or if I am claiming the hallucination in order to get a light sentence.  You can imagine the list of questions that the district attorney might ask me.  Am I in the habit of seeing mythical animals.  Interviewed at the scene, did I describe in detail (and with amazement) the animal? Did it run away, or did I try to approach it?  In short, did I do any or all of the things that an ordinary person might do if he encountered a large white horse, with silver hooves, and a golden horn, ridden by  a fair-haired damsel on a dark road in the middle of the night – other than swerve into my neighbors orchid conservatory?   If not, the community of inquiry would conclude that not only was a unicorn not what I say, but I was lying when I said I saw a unicorn. 

 

Can I also deny your feeling of joy and peace at the sight of your unicorn?  Well, maybe.  What are the practicial consequence of being in a state of joy and peace?  Etc.

 

All the best,

 

NIck

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Nicholas Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology

Clark University

[hidden email]

https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

 

 

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Prof David West
Sent: Monday, March 9, 2020 8:17 AM
To: [hidden email]
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Acid epistemology - restarting a previous conversation

 

But Nick,

 

I don't understand your unwillingness to acknowledge my experience(s).

 

When I return from Amsterdam and provide you with a detailed trip report detailing all things bicycle (rules of the road, rider attitudes, bicycle culture, multi-level bicycle garages, exotic bikes, electro-bikes, utility bikes, bikes with bins on the front for small children and groceries, "deep inner peace" from riding many kilometers, feelings of being one with Nature in a way impossible inside a car, enhanced perception of body language nuances [essential for safety reasons] ... ) will you discount those stories the same way you discount a "Trip" report?

 

Or, suppose I attend my next FriAM while under the influence; do you believe I will be less cogent and more stupid than I normally appear?

 

How about an experiment where I play a poker tournament while under the influence of mescaline and another "sober." Want to bet in which one I will do better? If mescaline increases sensitivity and reduces the 'importance" of time, then its influence would increase my ability to detect "tells" and eliminate the, sometimes, crushing boredom I normally experience.

 

When I post all kinds of notes (glen asked for some) and reports of findings from the ICPR conference showing both "no harm" and "measurable benefits" from hallucinogen use — will that be "evidence" or still, in some fashion, "faith?"

 

Two caveats:

 

1) individual experience may vary. My brother, for instance, cannot stand, cannot deal with, any sense of lacking "control" whether that is induced by alcohol, or the one time he tried drugs;

 

and, 2) it is quite possible that some drugs, like large doses of DMT, are pretty much sledgehammers. The experience is so pronounced — very much like being in a different Reality andnot  just an altered state of consciousness — that it may very well be a case of scrambled circuits. I am certain that "glue sniffing," for example, and similar means of "getting high" are exactly what you fear — John Henry size sledgehammers.  There is all kinds of physiological evidence of the harm.

 

Time is something we all experience. Mescaline-Time-Experience is very different than Straight-Time-Experience. Is there value in comparing/contrasting/discussing those differences in order to enhance our common understanding of Time? I don't think it possible to truly understand Time if the only experience we allow into the discussion is either Straight-Time-Experience or Mescaline-Time-Experience.

 

Mayhap your fear is "irrational" and my "faith" is rational?

 

davew

 

 

On Sun, Mar 8, 2020, at 5:41 PM, [hidden email] wrote:

But Dave, I don’t understand your faith that drugs are a Tao-ist butcher, rather than a sledgehammer.   Do you stipulate that feelings of well-being, wisdom, insight, etc. can be neurologically divorced from the facts thereof?  So, the presence of such feelings does not constitute sufficient evidence of the facts, right?  Now remember, I have stipulated to the value of the sledgehammer, and admitted that the position I am taking in this argument arises from in part an from a fear of having my brain sledged.  So “potential benefits of sledgehammering” are irrelevant to our PRESENT argument, unless, of course we want this whole vast, tortured, philosophical argument to boil down to the fact that you like being sledge-hammered and I don’t.  Apart from the fact that you LIKE taking drugs, what is the EVIDENCE that it constitutes a method of gathering knowledge less chaotic than electro-shock therapy.  How does sledging your clock with drugs systematically reveal something about time?   Or are you ready to try ECT? 

 

I apologize for all the typos in my previous messages.  My macular pucker makes it hard sometimes to see the words as they are, but Bill Gates does not have macular pucker, so there is really no excuse.

 

Nick

 

Nicholas Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology

Clark University

[hidden email]

https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

 

 

 

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Prof David West

Sent: Sunday, March 8, 2020 3:10 AM

To: [hidden email]

Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Acid epistemology - restarting a previous conversation

 

Ignore the software thing — an example of cross-talk between two unrelated conversations that happens because so much of my neural network is still twisted-pair copper instead of LSD-Fiber.

 

I clearly missed your sledgehammer metaphor. I think, however, it might reveal a fundamental difference in perspective. You seem to see the taking of a drug (and drugs are not the only or even the most important means available) as destructive of an orderly experience processor (an experience-randomizer); and I see such taking as "oiling the machinery to make it run more efficiently."

 

But the key metaphor — one you admit is different in kind — from the others, is the Taoist butcher and you are correct that I am suggesting drugs (other means available) augment perception/awareness in very roughly a manner akin to the way that telescopes and microscopes augment our perception/awareness capabilities.

 

The self-referential feedback loop you allude to is very real. But it takes us, not to Castenada-land, but to Buddha-land or to Wheeler(et.al. combining information and quantum theories)-land where the Universe is Experiencing Itself as experiencing itself (faith); or the Universe Computing Itself computing (supposedly, science).

 

What you see as paradox, I see as confirmation. A metaphor that provides a perspective that facilitates bringing together fibers from multiple sources and finding the consistencies among them, so as to create threads, from which my tapestry.

 

davew

 

 

On Sat, Mar 7, 2020, at 6:35 PM, [hidden email] wrote:

Ok, so we need to get our metaphor’s straight, here.

 

The sledge hammer is meant to be an experience-randomizer.  To the extent that sledge hammers do predictable things to clocks, it fails for me as a metaphor.  Once my Sledge Hammer has struck my clock, there should be no relation between the positions of the pieces of the clock before the blow and after.  But even granting its limitations, I don’t think my Sledge Hammer is an appropriate metaphor for your complaint about ordinary software.  I think you are talking about a bull-dozer.  Like a Sledge Hammer, a Bulldozer does not care for the structure of whatever it encounters; but unlike my Sledge Hammer, it imposes a highly predictable order of its own. Neither the Sledge Hammer nor the Bulldozer are like the Taoist Butcher, who clearly cares for .the structure of what he cuts. 

 

So, what we are arguing about can be construed as an argument about which metaphor is most aptly applied to taking drugs.  I am arguing for the Sledge Hammer.  Sledge Hammers have their uses.  I have always imagined that electroshock therapy is a kind of sledge hammer, although perhaps it is more like a bulldozer, returning the brain to factory settings. Bulldozers are very useful in that they create a structure on which other things can easily be built.  You might be arguing that drug-taking is a bull dozer.  Or you might be arguing that drug-taking is more like the Taoist butcher, in that it reveals the structure of what is already there.  It is like a microscopist’s stain.  But to make that metaphor work, you have to grant to the drug, or to the person who administers it, the wisdom and experience of the butcher who has become so familiar with meat that he can, without thinking about it, see where the meat isn’t.   Now you are in Castenada territory, the territory of faith. 

 

Thanks, as always, Dave, for your generosity of spirit.  By the way, some keen-eyed observer may detect something seriously awry in my metaphorical proceeding above.  Presumably we both agree that the brain is a device that tells us something about something else, not about itself.  Dubious as I am that a sledge hammer can tell us anything about the structure of clocks, I am even MORE dubious that it can tell us anything about the structure of time. The Taoist Butcher metaphor seems to work in a different way.  To make it consistent, we would have to have the Taoist Butcher dissect HIMSELF in order to discover the structure of meat. 

 

Nick

 

Nicholas Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology

Clark University

[hidden email]

https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

 

 

 

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Prof David West

Sent: Saturday, March 7, 2020 3:37 AM

To: [hidden email]

Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Acid epistemology - restarting a previous conversation

 

Oooh fun ...

 

I also stipulate that hitting an alarm clock with a sledge hammer MIGHT reveal robust and enduring information about alarm clocks.

 

Let me twist this example a bit to make what I think might be a valid way to assert a "benefit" of drug-epistemology over sledge-hammer.

 

I must start a bit afield with a quote from Plato and a Taoist koan:

 

[First,] perceiving and bringing together under one Idea the scattered particulars, so that one makes clear the thing which he wishes to do... [Second,] the separation of the Idea into classes, by dividing it where the natural joints are, and not trying to break any part, after the manner of as a bad carver... I love these processes of division and bringing together, and if I think any other man is able to see things that can naturally be collected into one and divided into many, him I will follow as if he were as a god.

- Plato

 

"A Taoist butcher used but one knife his entire career without the need to sharpen it. At his retirement party the Emperor asked him about this extraordinary feat, The butcher stated, "Oh, I simply cut where the meat wasn't."

 

Now this leads to a problem of decomposition - breaking up a large and complex problem into tractable sub-problems. Software engineering uses a sledgehammer epistemology of data structures and algorithms to accomplish this decomposition with results that are horrific. In contrast, a "vision" induced, daydreaming about biological cells and cellular organisms led to the insight that cells are differentiated from each other by what they do, not what they are. So software modularity might be based on behavior. Far superior results in myriad ways.

 

If we take C.D.Broad and Huxley seriously, mescaline reveals "more of reality" than typically available to our conscious minds. I would assert and be willing to defend that at least that sort of drug-epistemology could enhance our ability to actually see "where the meat wasn't" and therefore enhance our ability to decompose large complicated systems (maybe even complex systems) in tractable sub-problems.

 

* * * * * * *

 

My vision was not based on a stain, nor was it of cells dividing - it was an inter-cellular dissolving and recombining of inter-cellular elements, proteins etc., into other inter-cellular elements such that when the cell did eventually divide its internals were radically different. What I "saw" would more likely inform a genetic engineer than someone investigating cell division stuff.

 

* * * * * *

 

Sorry for making you ill, but it is your interpretation that is at fault.

 

You might remember the early days of Cinerama movies. They would start the movie showing a scene, like flying through the Grand canyon, then suddenly expand the displayed rectangle, the size of a traditional movie screen, into the full height and width of the Cinerama screen.

 

It was still just a movie, but the experience of the movie was enhanced? with sensations of vertigo, movement, detail, etc.

 

What Broad and Huxley suggest is that experience is "filtered" by the organism and that filtering reduces experience to the dimensions of a pre-Cinerama movie. Huxley then asserts that mescaline turns experience into Experience.

 

We are all experience monists here, but some of us are making the claim that there can be, at minimum, quantitative differences among experiences (something akin to the increase in pixel density and 8 versus 64 bit representation of the color of each pixel) and, at least the possibility of qualitative differences, e.g. the vertigo of Cinerama.

 

And, those differences are attainable via various means. Not just drugs.

 

So my assertion of "Apollonian-er than thou" is a claim that I experience "life" in "Cinerama" and you in "cinema multiplex standard screen."

 

davew

 

On Sat, Mar 7, 2020, at 5:53 AM, [hidden email] wrote:

See Larding below.

 

By the way:  my mail interface is taken to tucking some of my mail into a folder called "important" where, of course, I cannot see it.  So, if I appear to go missing, don't hesitate to write me an unimportant message telling me that there are important ones awaiting me. 

 

Of course I have  n o   I d e a  what distinguishes an important message from an unimportant one. 

 

As I said, see below:  Oh, and dave, what I wrote below is TESTY.  I don’t realty feel testy,  I don’t really feel qualified to be testy.  I think the rhetoric just got away with me.  It has happened before and you have promised it doesn’t’ bother you, so I am counting on your grace-under-fire again. 

 

Your friend ,

Nick

 

Nicholas Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology

Clark University

[hidden email]

https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

 

 

 

-----Original Message-----

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Prof David West

Sent: Friday, March 6, 2020 2:00 AM

To: [hidden email]

Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Acid epistemology - restarting a previous conversation

 

thanks Glen,

 

I totally agree with you about dead white guys. [Except I have had face-to-face conversations with a couple of them :) ] I reference them not as a source of answers but in an attempt to find some kind of conceptual bridge for a conversation. But that might be totally counterproductive as it tends to introduce a propensity for forking the conversation.

 

Engaging with contemporary scientists is hard when it comes to drug-induced data sets / experiences. I hope to make some connections with contemporary researchers at the ICPR conference I mentioned but the focus there seems to be psycho-medical and related to the oxytocin article you posted, and my direct interests tend to diverge from that.

 

Perhaps something more direct might be useful. Two things, the second is mostly to tease Nick.

 

 

1) I am fascinated by the field of scientific visualization, using imagery to present complex data sets. Recently I "observed" the precise moment of sperm-egg fertilization. A whole lot was going on inside the egg cell boundary immediately upon contact (not penetration) with the sperm. The visualization was of thousands (millions?) of discrete inter-cellular elements breaking free from existing structures, like DNA strands, proteins, molecules and moving about independently. I could see several "fields" that were a kind of "probability field." These fields constrained both the movement of the various elements and, most importantly, what structures would emerge from their recombination.  "Watching" the DNA strand 'dissolve" and "reform" was particularly interesting because it was totally unlike the "unzip into two strands, the zip-up a strand-half from each donor" visualization I have seen presented in animations explaining the process.  Instead I saw all kinds of "clumps" form and merge into larger/longer "clumps" then engage in an interesting hula/belly/undulation dance to rearrange the structure into a final form.  All of this "guided" by the very visible "probability fields;" more than one and color coded.

 

Now, if I were a cellular biologist could I make use of this vision?

[NST===>] I love this example.  Every stain produces a new image and some stains are more revealing than others, in that the models they facilitate are more robust and enduring in their predictions.  I stipulate that.  I also stipulate that hitting an alarm clock with a sledge hammer MIGHT reveal robust and enduring information about alarm clocks.  I just don’t think it’s likely.  And there is the possibility that the clock wont be very accurate thereafter.  That is the whole of my argument against drug -epistemology.  So if you are NOT arguing that drug-epistemology is somehow superior to sledge-hammer epistemology, then we agree and we don’t have to argue any more. 

 

Since I am not a cellular biologist and have no understanding of inter-cellular structures/dynamics/chemistry, nor any DNA knowledge, where did the imagery come from and why did it hang together so well?

 

Was this experience just an amusing bit of entertainment" Or, is there an insight of some sort lurking there?

[NST===>] I like the metaphor with stains.  But just remember, if my memory serves me correctly, you don’t see jack shit when cells divide without the right stain.  All such observations are of the Peircean type/; “If I do this, then I will get that.” 

 

2) En garde Nick.

[NST===>] je me garde

 

Quoting Huxley, paraphrasing C.D. Broad — "The function of the brain,  nervous system, and sense organs is, in the main, eliminative and not productive. Each person is at each moment capable of remembering all that has ever happened to him and of perceiving everything that is happening everywhere in the universe. This is Mind-At-Large.

[NST===>] Dave, even without my characteristic ill ease with dispositions (like gravity, for instance), this last sentence gives me the heebs.  And the Heaves.  It is either a definition of memory (=all that I experience as past at a moment) or it is non-sense.  Or some kind of balmy article of faith. 

 

But in so far as we are animals, our business is at all costs to survive.

[NST===>] No.  No animal has ever survived.  No animal has ever tried to survive. No species has ever tried to survive.  This is all foolishness pressed on us by Spencer.  Even Darwin was leery of it.  (and no I cannot cite text)

To make biological survival possible, Mind-At-Large,  has to be funneled through the reducing valve of the brain and nervous system. What comes out at the other end is a measly trickle of the kind of consciousness which will help us to stay alive on the surface of this particular planet."

[NST===>] I suppose one can make sense of this sort of talk by postulating a world outside of experience, but unless you postulate that this world beyond experience can in principle never affect experience, you end up with a contradiction because anything that effects experience in any way, however indirect,  is, by definition, experienced. 

 

Two personal experiences: 1) I tend to not notice when my glasses get cloudy from accumulation of dust and moisture until it is quite bad. I clean my glasses, put them on, and am amazed at how clear and detailed my perceptions are post-cleaning. A very dramatic difference.

[NST===>] Well of course.  Cleaning glasses is a method that increases the predictive potential of your current visual experiences.  If your argument is only that there are experiences I have not had which will surprise me if I have them, I agree, so we don’t have to argue about that any more, right?

And, 2) the proper dose of a hallucinogen (and/or the right kind of meditation) and my perceptions of the world around me, using all my senses, are amazingly clear and detailed in the same way as my visual perception was changed by cleaning grime from my glasses.

[NST===>] The innate school marm gives us little jolts of pleasure from time to time, usually in response to activities that please her.  One of those jolts is a “sense of clarity.”  If you break into her storeroom and steal her clarity candies, you will get the clarity-pleasure even while seeing muddily. 

 

Now I grant you it’s possible you will see something more clearly.  See above the sledgehammered clock argument.

 

I would contend that the drug (meditation) removed the muddying filter of my brain/nervous system/ sense organs just as the isopropyl alcohol removed the muddying filter of moisture-dust on my glasses.

 

I see the world as it "really" is.[NST===>]Well, that remains to be seen, right.  It might be that the dust filters the light in such a way as to reveal structures that you cannot see through the cleaned glass.  The proof is in the pudding … i.e., the proving out.   

 

Now the tease: I would contend that I am more Apollonian than thou because I value Life, and more of Life, more directly, than you do. It is not varied experience I seek, but a direct, clear, complete, apprehension and appreciation of Life Itself.

[NST===>] Similarly, let it be the case that I had a dozen clocks and you told me you had hit them all with a sledge hammer;  now, if you told me you had lied, and gave me back the 12^th clock in perfect working order, I would value it a lot more for having thought I had lost it. 

 

davew

 

 

On Thu, Mar 5, 2020, at 4:58 PM, uǝlƃ ☣ wrote:

> It's not pesky for me in the slightest. I'm *very* interested. I

> haven't contributed because it's not clear I have anything to

> contribute.

> 

> Maybe I can start with a criticism, though. It's unclear to me why you

> (or anyone) would delicately flip through crumbling pages of

> philosophy when there are fresh and juicy results from

> (interventionist) methods right in front of us? The oxytocin post

> really *was* inspired by this thread. But because you guys are talking

> about dead white men like Peirce and James, it's unclear how the science relates.

> 

> My skepticism goes even deeper (beyond dead white men) to why one

> would think *anyone* (alive, dead, white or brown) might be able to

> *think* up an explanation for how knowledge grows. I would like to,

> but cannot, avoid the inference that this belief anyone (or any

> "school" of people) can think up explanations stems from a bias toward

> *individualism*. My snarky poke at "super intelligent god-people" in a

> post awhile back was

> (misguidedly) intended to express this same skepticism. I worry that

> poking around in old philosophy is simply an artifact of the mythology

> surrounding the "mind" and Great Men

> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_man_theory>.

> 

> It seems to me like science works in *spite* of our biases to

> individualism. So, if I want to understand knowledge, I have to stop

> identifying ways of knowing through dead individuals and focus on the

> flowing *field* of the collective scientists.

> 

> Of course, that doesn't mean we ignore the writings of the dead people.

> But it means liberally slashing away anything that even smells obsolete.

> 

> Regardless of what you do post, don't interpret *my* lack of response

> as disinterest or irritation, because it's not.

> 

> On 3/5/20 6:14 AM, Prof David West wrote:

> > And the key to my being a pest — is anyone else curious about these things?

> 

> 

> --

> ☣ uǝlƃ

> 

> ============================================================

> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe

> at St. John's College to unsubscribe

> http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com

> archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/

> FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove

> 

 

============================================================

FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv

Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com

archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/

FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove

============================================================

FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv

Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College

to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com

archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/

FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove

 

 

============================================================

FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv

Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College

to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com

archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/

FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove

 

 

============================================================

FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv

Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College

to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com

archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/

FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove

 

 

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove

[Frank Wimberly-2]

For what it's worth, Freud experimented with cocaine.

On Mon, Mar 9, 2020, 11:37 AM <[hidden email]> wrote:

Dave,

 

Oh, Damn.  I thought I had pretty much sorted this disagreement out, and now I am all confused again.  I am in doubt, and doubt is painful.  He that falls hardest, falls from his highest horse. Where do I stand (as a purported experience monist) EVER to deny your experience? OK. Calm down, Nick.  Let’s see where this comes out.

 

First, let’s go back to unicorns.  You say (let’s say) that during one of your sessions you have encountered a unicorn.  You describe that unicorn in great detail, including the golden horn, the flowing white mane and tail, the restless silver-shod hooves, and (if you like) the golden haired damsel on his back.  (Frank Wimberly is gearing up his Freudian interpretation of my fantasy here as you read.) And you say that this apparition is accompanied in you with a feeling of great joy and peace.  Where could I possibly stand to deny you any of this?

 

Now, feeling my way here, let’s divide what I propose to deny you into two parts.   Was the Unicorn real and was your feeling of well-being real?  As a dualist, I can deny you one without denying you the other.  The test of whether you really saw a UNICORN  is in the world outside of experience (w.e.t.f. that is) whereas the test of whether YOU SAW a unicorn is a matter entirely between you and your mind, a matter about which I could not possibly have any direct information.   Since dualists claim to have two sources of information about the world (their experience and ….God’s?) it’s possible for there to be a unicorn experience (I saw it, God, I saw it!) when in fact God knows there is no unicorn.  So a dualist can grant you your unicorn experience, with all its emotional glory, while not granting you the unicorn.  Not sure I have that out. 

 

Now, mind you, as an experience-monist, I am not tied to the notion that there can be no varieties of experience.  I am only tied to the notion that there is only one kind of stuff in the world, experience, and relations between experiences.  Glen, (I think) once pointed out to me that this is already TWO kinds of stuff, experiences and relations, and that I have already forsaken my monism.  Pressed on that point I would take the position that there are only relations among experiences, at which point perhaps Glen will ask me about the FIRST experience, and I will trot out my usual contempt for twisting our knickers about “first cases”.  I really REALLY don’t give a damn about when the first object was conscious of another object.  I won’t worry about that first case until we have worked out all the subsequent cases.  After all, given that there was, ex hypothesi, only one first case, why should I give a damn?  Why are extreme cases iconic?

 

One of the dimensions along which experiences differ is in the degree to which they prove out in future experience.  If what you saw really as a unicorn, then it should be possible to go to the equine biology section of your local library and read up on them.  They might, perhaps, be very rare, like Nessie or the Ivory Billed Woodpecker, but there are ways of working these disagreements out, and we monists assert only that what we MEAN by saying that unicorns, Loch Ness Monsters, and Ivory Billed Woodpeckers are real, is that, in the fullness of time, the community of inquiry, those who care about the matter, will agree that they exist.  And if the bulk of contemporaneous evidence suggests that they DON’T exist, then I will cheerfully deny you your experience of a unicorn in the limited sense that I confidently deny that what you saw actually was a unicorn. 

 

But can I also deny you your report that you SAW a unicorn.  Well, perhaps.  This is trickier.  What are the practicial consequences of saying that you have seen a unicorn?  Setting aside the non existence of unicorns, how could the community of inquiry come to a conclusion about whether you had, in fact, hallucinated one.  Is that solely between you and your “mind”?  Or do we have standing to deny even that you hallucinated one?   I think the answer is absolutely “Yes”.  Imagine that you’re the jury in a traffic accident case in which the accused driver claims to have swerved to avoid a unicorn.  Now, everybody in the courtroom has stipulated (ex hypothesi) that unicorns do not exist, so the only question before the court is whether I genuinely hallucinated one, or if I am claiming the hallucination in order to get a light sentence.  You can imagine the list of questions that the district attorney might ask me.  Am I in the habit of seeing mythical animals.  Interviewed at the scene, did I describe in detail (and with amazement) the animal? Did it run away, or did I try to approach it?  In short, did I do any or all of the things that an ordinary person might do if he encountered a large white horse, with silver hooves, and a golden horn, ridden by  a fair-haired damsel on a dark road in the middle of the night – other than swerve into my neighbors orchid conservatory?   If not, the community of inquiry would conclude that not only was a unicorn not what I say, but I was lying when I said I saw a unicorn. 

 

Can I also deny your feeling of joy and peace at the sight of your unicorn?  Well, maybe.  What are the practicial consequence of being in a state of joy and peace?  Etc.

 

All the best,

 

NIck

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Nicholas Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology

Clark University

[hidden email]

https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

 

 

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Prof David West
Sent: Monday, March 9, 2020 8:17 AM
To: [hidden email]
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Acid epistemology - restarting a previous conversation

 

But Nick,

 

I don't understand your unwillingness to acknowledge my experience(s).

 

When I return from Amsterdam and provide you with a detailed trip report detailing all things bicycle (rules of the road, rider attitudes, bicycle culture, multi-level bicycle garages, exotic bikes, electro-bikes, utility bikes, bikes with bins on the front for small children and groceries, "deep inner peace" from riding many kilometers, feelings of being one with Nature in a way impossible inside a car, enhanced perception of body language nuances [essential for safety reasons] ... ) will you discount those stories the same way you discount a "Trip" report?

 

Or, suppose I attend my next FriAM while under the influence; do you believe I will be less cogent and more stupid than I normally appear?

 

How about an experiment where I play a poker tournament while under the influence of mescaline and another "sober." Want to bet in which one I will do better? If mescaline increases sensitivity and reduces the 'importance" of time, then its influence would increase my ability to detect "tells" and eliminate the, sometimes, crushing boredom I normally experience.

 

When I post all kinds of notes (glen asked for some) and reports of findings from the ICPR conference showing both "no harm" and "measurable benefits" from hallucinogen use — will that be "evidence" or still, in some fashion, "faith?"

 

Two caveats:

 

1) individual experience may vary. My brother, for instance, cannot stand, cannot deal with, any sense of lacking "control" whether that is induced by alcohol, or the one time he tried drugs;

 

and, 2) it is quite possible that some drugs, like large doses of DMT, are pretty much sledgehammers. The experience is so pronounced — very much like being in a different Reality andnot  just an altered state of consciousness — that it may very well be a case of scrambled circuits. I am certain that "glue sniffing," for example, and similar means of "getting high" are exactly what you fear — John Henry size sledgehammers.  There is all kinds of physiological evidence of the harm.

 

Time is something we all experience. Mescaline-Time-Experience is very different than Straight-Time-Experience. Is there value in comparing/contrasting/discussing those differences in order to enhance our common understanding of Time? I don't think it possible to truly understand Time if the only experience we allow into the discussion is either Straight-Time-Experience or Mescaline-Time-Experience.

 

Mayhap your fear is "irrational" and my "faith" is rational?

 

davew

 

 

On Sun, Mar 8, 2020, at 5:41 PM, [hidden email] wrote:

But Dave, I don’t understand your faith that drugs are a Tao-ist butcher, rather than a sledgehammer.   Do you stipulate that feelings of well-being, wisdom, insight, etc. can be neurologically divorced from the facts thereof?  So, the presence of such feelings does not constitute sufficient evidence of the facts, right?  Now remember, I have stipulated to the value of the sledgehammer, and admitted that the position I am taking in this argument arises from in part an from a fear of having my brain sledged.  So “potential benefits of sledgehammering” are irrelevant to our PRESENT argument, unless, of course we want this whole vast, tortured, philosophical argument to boil down to the fact that you like being sledge-hammered and I don’t.  Apart from the fact that you LIKE taking drugs, what is the EVIDENCE that it constitutes a method of gathering knowledge less chaotic than electro-shock therapy.  How does sledging your clock with drugs systematically reveal something about time?   Or are you ready to try ECT? 

 

I apologize for all the typos in my previous messages.  My macular pucker makes it hard sometimes to see the words as they are, but Bill Gates does not have macular pucker, so there is really no excuse.

 

Nick

 

Nicholas Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology

Clark University

[hidden email]

https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

 

 

 

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Prof David West

Sent: Sunday, March 8, 2020 3:10 AM

To: [hidden email]

Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Acid epistemology - restarting a previous conversation

 

Ignore the software thing — an example of cross-talk between two unrelated conversations that happens because so much of my neural network is still twisted-pair copper instead of LSD-Fiber.

 

I clearly missed your sledgehammer metaphor. I think, however, it might reveal a fundamental difference in perspective. You seem to see the taking of a drug (and drugs are not the only or even the most important means available) as destructive of an orderly experience processor (an experience-randomizer); and I see such taking as "oiling the machinery to make it run more efficiently."

 

But the key metaphor — one you admit is different in kind — from the others, is the Taoist butcher and you are correct that I am suggesting drugs (other means available) augment perception/awareness in very roughly a manner akin to the way that telescopes and microscopes augment our perception/awareness capabilities.

 

The self-referential feedback loop you allude to is very real. But it takes us, not to Castenada-land, but to Buddha-land or to Wheeler(et.al. combining information and quantum theories)-land where the Universe is Experiencing Itself as experiencing itself (faith); or the Universe Computing Itself computing (supposedly, science).

 

What you see as paradox, I see as confirmation. A metaphor that provides a perspective that facilitates bringing together fibers from multiple sources and finding the consistencies among them, so as to create threads, from which my tapestry.

 

davew

 

 

On Sat, Mar 7, 2020, at 6:35 PM, [hidden email] wrote:

Ok, so we need to get our metaphor’s straight, here.

 

The sledge hammer is meant to be an experience-randomizer.  To the extent that sledge hammers do predictable things to clocks, it fails for me as a metaphor.  Once my Sledge Hammer has struck my clock, there should be no relation between the positions of the pieces of the clock before the blow and after.  But even granting its limitations, I don’t think my Sledge Hammer is an appropriate metaphor for your complaint about ordinary software.  I think you are talking about a bull-dozer.  Like a Sledge Hammer, a Bulldozer does not care for the structure of whatever it encounters; but unlike my Sledge Hammer, it imposes a highly predictable order of its own. Neither the Sledge Hammer nor the Bulldozer are like the Taoist Butcher, who clearly cares for .the structure of what he cuts. 

 

So, what we are arguing about can be construed as an argument about which metaphor is most aptly applied to taking drugs.  I am arguing for the Sledge Hammer.  Sledge Hammers have their uses.  I have always imagined that electroshock therapy is a kind of sledge hammer, although perhaps it is more like a bulldozer, returning the brain to factory settings. Bulldozers are very useful in that they create a structure on which other things can easily be built.  You might be arguing that drug-taking is a bull dozer.  Or you might be arguing that drug-taking is more like the Taoist butcher, in that it reveals the structure of what is already there.  It is like a microscopist’s stain.  But to make that metaphor work, you have to grant to the drug, or to the person who administers it, the wisdom and experience of the butcher who has become so familiar with meat that he can, without thinking about it, see where the meat isn’t.   Now you are in Castenada territory, the territory of faith. 

 

Thanks, as always, Dave, for your generosity of spirit.  By the way, some keen-eyed observer may detect something seriously awry in my metaphorical proceeding above.  Presumably we both agree that the brain is a device that tells us something about something else, not about itself.  Dubious as I am that a sledge hammer can tell us anything about the structure of clocks, I am even MORE dubious that it can tell us anything about the structure of time. The Taoist Butcher metaphor seems to work in a different way.  To make it consistent, we would have to have the Taoist Butcher dissect HIMSELF in order to discover the structure of meat. 

 

Nick

 

Nicholas Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology

Clark University

[hidden email]

https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

 

 

 

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Prof David West

Sent: Saturday, March 7, 2020 3:37 AM

To: [hidden email]

Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Acid epistemology - restarting a previous conversation

 

Oooh fun ...

 

I also stipulate that hitting an alarm clock with a sledge hammer MIGHT reveal robust and enduring information about alarm clocks.

 

Let me twist this example a bit to make what I think might be a valid way to assert a "benefit" of drug-epistemology over sledge-hammer.

 

I must start a bit afield with a quote from Plato and a Taoist koan:

 

[First,] perceiving and bringing together under one Idea the scattered particulars, so that one makes clear the thing which he wishes to do... [Second,] the separation of the Idea into classes, by dividing it where the natural joints are, and not trying to break any part, after the manner of as a bad carver... I love these processes of division and bringing together, and if I think any other man is able to see things that can naturally be collected into one and divided into many, him I will follow as if he were as a god.

- Plato

 

"A Taoist butcher used but one knife his entire career without the need to sharpen it. At his retirement party the Emperor asked him about this extraordinary feat, The butcher stated, "Oh, I simply cut where the meat wasn't."

 

Now this leads to a problem of decomposition - breaking up a large and complex problem into tractable sub-problems. Software engineering uses a sledgehammer epistemology of data structures and algorithms to accomplish this decomposition with results that are horrific. In contrast, a "vision" induced, daydreaming about biological cells and cellular organisms led to the insight that cells are differentiated from each other by what they do, not what they are. So software modularity might be based on behavior. Far superior results in myriad ways.

 

If we take C.D.Broad and Huxley seriously, mescaline reveals "more of reality" than typically available to our conscious minds. I would assert and be willing to defend that at least that sort of drug-epistemology could enhance our ability to actually see "where the meat wasn't" and therefore enhance our ability to decompose large complicated systems (maybe even complex systems) in tractable sub-problems.

 

* * * * * * *

 

My vision was not based on a stain, nor was it of cells dividing - it was an inter-cellular dissolving and recombining of inter-cellular elements, proteins etc., into other inter-cellular elements such that when the cell did eventually divide its internals were radically different. What I "saw" would more likely inform a genetic engineer than someone investigating cell division stuff.

 

* * * * * *

 

Sorry for making you ill, but it is your interpretation that is at fault.

 

You might remember the early days of Cinerama movies. They would start the movie showing a scene, like flying through the Grand canyon, then suddenly expand the displayed rectangle, the size of a traditional movie screen, into the full height and width of the Cinerama screen.

 

It was still just a movie, but the experience of the movie was enhanced? with sensations of vertigo, movement, detail, etc.

 

What Broad and Huxley suggest is that experience is "filtered" by the organism and that filtering reduces experience to the dimensions of a pre-Cinerama movie. Huxley then asserts that mescaline turns experience into Experience.

 

We are all experience monists here, but some of us are making the claim that there can be, at minimum, quantitative differences among experiences (something akin to the increase in pixel density and 8 versus 64 bit representation of the color of each pixel) and, at least the possibility of qualitative differences, e.g. the vertigo of Cinerama.

 

And, those differences are attainable via various means. Not just drugs.

 

So my assertion of "Apollonian-er than thou" is a claim that I experience "life" in "Cinerama" and you in "cinema multiplex standard screen."

 

davew

 

On Sat, Mar 7, 2020, at 5:53 AM, [hidden email] wrote:

See Larding below.

 

By the way:  my mail interface is taken to tucking some of my mail into a folder called "important" where, of course, I cannot see it.  So, if I appear to go missing, don't hesitate to write me an unimportant message telling me that there are important ones awaiting me. 

 

Of course I have  n o   I d e a  what distinguishes an important message from an unimportant one. 

 

As I said, see below:  Oh, and dave, what I wrote below is TESTY.  I don’t realty feel testy,  I don’t really feel qualified to be testy.  I think the rhetoric just got away with me.  It has happened before and you have promised it doesn’t’ bother you, so I am counting on your grace-under-fire again. 

 

Your friend ,

Nick

 

Nicholas Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology

Clark University

[hidden email]

https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

 

 

 

-----Original Message-----

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Prof David West

Sent: Friday, March 6, 2020 2:00 AM

To: [hidden email]

Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Acid epistemology - restarting a previous conversation

 

thanks Glen,

 

I totally agree with you about dead white guys. [Except I have had face-to-face conversations with a couple of them :) ] I reference them not as a source of answers but in an attempt to find some kind of conceptual bridge for a conversation. But that might be totally counterproductive as it tends to introduce a propensity for forking the conversation.

 

Engaging with contemporary scientists is hard when it comes to drug-induced data sets / experiences. I hope to make some connections with contemporary researchers at the ICPR conference I mentioned but the focus there seems to be psycho-medical and related to the oxytocin article you posted, and my direct interests tend to diverge from that.

 

Perhaps something more direct might be useful. Two things, the second is mostly to tease Nick.

 

 

1) I am fascinated by the field of scientific visualization, using imagery to present complex data sets. Recently I "observed" the precise moment of sperm-egg fertilization. A whole lot was going on inside the egg cell boundary immediately upon contact (not penetration) with the sperm. The visualization was of thousands (millions?) of discrete inter-cellular elements breaking free from existing structures, like DNA strands, proteins, molecules and moving about independently. I could see several "fields" that were a kind of "probability field." These fields constrained both the movement of the various elements and, most importantly, what structures would emerge from their recombination.  "Watching" the DNA strand 'dissolve" and "reform" was particularly interesting because it was totally unlike the "unzip into two strands, the zip-up a strand-half from each donor" visualization I have seen presented in animations explaining the process.  Instead I saw all kinds of "clumps" form and merge into larger/longer "clumps" then engage in an interesting hula/belly/undulation dance to rearrange the structure into a final form.  All of this "guided" by the very visible "probability fields;" more than one and color coded.

 

Now, if I were a cellular biologist could I make use of this vision?

[NST===>] I love this example.  Every stain produces a new image and some stains are more revealing than others, in that the models they facilitate are more robust and enduring in their predictions.  I stipulate that.  I also stipulate that hitting an alarm clock with a sledge hammer MIGHT reveal robust and enduring information about alarm clocks.  I just don’t think it’s likely.  And there is the possibility that the clock wont be very accurate thereafter.  That is the whole of my argument against drug -epistemology.  So if you are NOT arguing that drug-epistemology is somehow superior to sledge-hammer epistemology, then we agree and we don’t have to argue any more. 

 

Since I am not a cellular biologist and have no understanding of inter-cellular structures/dynamics/chemistry, nor any DNA knowledge, where did the imagery come from and why did it hang together so well?

 

Was this experience just an amusing bit of entertainment" Or, is there an insight of some sort lurking there?

[NST===>] I like the metaphor with stains.  But just remember, if my memory serves me correctly, you don’t see jack shit when cells divide without the right stain.  All such observations are of the Peircean type/; “If I do this, then I will get that.” 

 

2) En garde Nick.

[NST===>] je me garde

 

Quoting Huxley, paraphrasing C.D. Broad — "The function of the brain,  nervous system, and sense organs is, in the main, eliminative and not productive. Each person is at each moment capable of remembering all that has ever happened to him and of perceiving everything that is happening everywhere in the universe. This is Mind-At-Large.

[NST===>] Dave, even without my characteristic ill ease with dispositions (like gravity, for instance), this last sentence gives me the heebs.  And the Heaves.  It is either a definition of memory (=all that I experience as past at a moment) or it is non-sense.  Or some kind of balmy article of faith. 

 

But in so far as we are animals, our business is at all costs to survive.

[NST===>] No.  No animal has ever survived.  No animal has ever tried to survive. No species has ever tried to survive.  This is all foolishness pressed on us by Spencer.  Even Darwin was leery of it.  (and no I cannot cite text)

To make biological survival possible, Mind-At-Large,  has to be funneled through the reducing valve of the brain and nervous system. What comes out at the other end is a measly trickle of the kind of consciousness which will help us to stay alive on the surface of this particular planet."

[NST===>] I suppose one can make sense of this sort of talk by postulating a world outside of experience, but unless you postulate that this world beyond experience can in principle never affect experience, you end up with a contradiction because anything that effects experience in any way, however indirect,  is, by definition, experienced. 

 

Two personal experiences: 1) I tend to not notice when my glasses get cloudy from accumulation of dust and moisture until it is quite bad. I clean my glasses, put them on, and am amazed at how clear and detailed my perceptions are post-cleaning. A very dramatic difference.

[NST===>] Well of course.  Cleaning glasses is a method that increases the predictive potential of your current visual experiences.  If your argument is only that there are experiences I have not had which will surprise me if I have them, I agree, so we don’t have to argue about that any more, right?

And, 2) the proper dose of a hallucinogen (and/or the right kind of meditation) and my perceptions of the world around me, using all my senses, are amazingly clear and detailed in the same way as my visual perception was changed by cleaning grime from my glasses.

[NST===>] The innate school marm gives us little jolts of pleasure from time to time, usually in response to activities that please her.  One of those jolts is a “sense of clarity.”  If you break into her storeroom and steal her clarity candies, you will get the clarity-pleasure even while seeing muddily. 

 

Now I grant you it’s possible you will see something more clearly.  See above the sledgehammered clock argument.

 

I would contend that the drug (meditation) removed the muddying filter of my brain/nervous system/ sense organs just as the isopropyl alcohol removed the muddying filter of moisture-dust on my glasses.

 

I see the world as it "really" is.[NST===>]Well, that remains to be seen, right.  It might be that the dust filters the light in such a way as to reveal structures that you cannot see through the cleaned glass.  The proof is in the pudding … i.e., the proving out.   

 

Now the tease: I would contend that I am more Apollonian than thou because I value Life, and more of Life, more directly, than you do. It is not varied experience I seek, but a direct, clear, complete, apprehension and appreciation of Life Itself.

[NST===>] Similarly, let it be the case that I had a dozen clocks and you told me you had hit them all with a sledge hammer;  now, if you told me you had lied, and gave me back the 12^th clock in perfect working order, I would value it a lot more for having thought I had lost it. 

 

davew

 

 

On Thu, Mar 5, 2020, at 4:58 PM, uǝlƃ ☣ wrote:

> It's not pesky for me in the slightest. I'm *very* interested. I

> haven't contributed because it's not clear I have anything to

> contribute.

> 

> Maybe I can start with a criticism, though. It's unclear to me why you

> (or anyone) would delicately flip through crumbling pages of

> philosophy when there are fresh and juicy results from

> (interventionist) methods right in front of us? The oxytocin post

> really *was* inspired by this thread. But because you guys are talking

> about dead white men like Peirce and James, it's unclear how the science relates.

> 

> My skepticism goes even deeper (beyond dead white men) to why one

> would think *anyone* (alive, dead, white or brown) might be able to

> *think* up an explanation for how knowledge grows. I would like to,

> but cannot, avoid the inference that this belief anyone (or any

> "school" of people) can think up explanations stems from a bias toward

> *individualism*. My snarky poke at "super intelligent god-people" in a

> post awhile back was

> (misguidedly) intended to express this same skepticism. I worry that

> poking around in old philosophy is simply an artifact of the mythology

> surrounding the "mind" and Great Men

> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_man_theory>.

> 

> It seems to me like science works in *spite* of our biases to

> individualism. So, if I want to understand knowledge, I have to stop

> identifying ways of knowing through dead individuals and focus on the

> flowing *field* of the collective scientists.

> 

> Of course, that doesn't mean we ignore the writings of the dead people.

> But it means liberally slashing away anything that even smells obsolete.

> 

> Regardless of what you do post, don't interpret *my* lack of response

> as disinterest or irritation, because it's not.

> 

> On 3/5/20 6:14 AM, Prof David West wrote:

> > And the key to my being a pest — is anyone else curious about these things?

> 

> 

> --

> ☣ uǝlƃ

> 

> ============================================================

> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe

> at St. John's College to unsubscribe

> http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com

> archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/

> FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove

> 

 

============================================================

FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv

Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com

archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/

FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove

============================================================

FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv

Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College

to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com

archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/

FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove

 

 

============================================================

FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv

Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College

to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com

archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/

FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove

 

 

============================================================

FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv

Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College

to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com

archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/

FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove

 

 

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove

[gepr]

Why?! Oh why do y'all keep talking about unscientific things when you could be talking about scientific things? Dave's report about what goes on at a conference is, to me, *exactly* the same as Dave's report about any other experience he may have had, high or sober. They're both anecdotal at best.

Why talk about the truth-status of unicorns when we could be talking about the reliability of predictors of *categories* of experiences like this:

Neuroticism is associated with challenging experiences with psilocybin mushrooms.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28781400

> Abstract
>
> OBJECTIVES:
> Classic hallucinogens (e.g. psilocybin and LSD) have substantial effects on perception, cognition, and emotion that can often be psychologically challenging, however we know very little regarding the source of significant individual variability that has been observed in the frequency and intensity of challenging experiences (i.e. "bad trips") with psychedelics. Previous clinical and observational literature suggests that there may be an association between neuroticism and challenging psychedelic experiences.
>
> METHODS:
> Data from two online surveys of challenging experiences with psilocybin were analyzed. Multivariate analysis was used to estimate the associations between total score and scores from seven sub-factors (fear, grief, physical distress, insanity, isolation, death, and paranoia) of the Challenging Experience Questionnaire (CEQ), and scale scores from the Ten Item Personality Inventory (TIPI) in Study 1 (N=1993) and the Big Five Inventory (BFI) in Study 2 (N = 981).
>
> RESULTS:
> CEQ scores were negatively associated with emotional stability scores (the inverse of neuroticism) in Study 1 and positively associated with neuroticism scores in Study 2.
>
> CONCLUSIONS:
> Neuroticism may contribute to the strength of challenging experiences in uncontrolled settings.

On 3/9/20 10:36 AM, [hidden email] wrote:
> First, let’s go back to unicorns.
--
☣ uǝlƃ

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove

[Frank Wimberly-2]

Ah.  Neuroticism is something like a tendency to be neurotic.  Neurotic is actually a good diagnosis in psychoanalytic therapy.  It means you're treatable.  Also it's essentially universal so it's a question of degree.

On Mon, Mar 9, 2020, 3:05 PM uǝlƃ ☣ <[hidden email]> wrote:

Why?! Oh why do y'all keep talking about unscientific things when you could be talking about scientific things? Dave's report about what goes on at a conference is, to me, *exactly* the same as Dave's report about any other experience he may have had, high or sober. They're both anecdotal at best.

Why talk about the truth-status of unicorns when we could be talking about the reliability of predictors of *categories* of experiences like this:

Neuroticism is associated with challenging experiences with psilocybin mushrooms.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28781400

> Abstract
>
> OBJECTIVES:
> Classic hallucinogens (e.g. psilocybin and LSD) have substantial effects on perception, cognition, and emotion that can often be psychologically challenging, however we know very little regarding the source of significant individual variability that has been observed in the frequency and intensity of challenging experiences (i.e. "bad trips") with psychedelics. Previous clinical and observational literature suggests that there may be an association between neuroticism and challenging psychedelic experiences.
>
> METHODS:
> Data from two online surveys of challenging experiences with psilocybin were analyzed. Multivariate analysis was used to estimate the associations between total score and scores from seven sub-factors (fear, grief, physical distress, insanity, isolation, death, and paranoia) of the Challenging Experience Questionnaire (CEQ), and scale scores from the Ten Item Personality Inventory (TIPI) in Study 1 (N=1993) and the Big Five Inventory (BFI) in Study 2 (N = 981).
>
> RESULTS:
> CEQ scores were negatively associated with emotional stability scores (the inverse of neuroticism) in Study 1 and positively associated with neuroticism scores in Study 2.
>
> CONCLUSIONS:
> Neuroticism may contribute to the strength of challenging experiences in uncontrolled settings.



On 3/9/20 10:36 AM, [hidden email] wrote:
> First, let’s go back to unicorns.
--
☣ uǝlƃ

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove

[thompnickson2]

Glen --

In the absence of other commentary, you are perhaps a good bell-wether of whether (?) we should Dave and I should take this offlist.  I don’t think the topic of acid epistemology is inappropriate to the list, but if he and I are the only people paying attention, and even YOU are bored, then perhaps now is the time for us to bag it.

Nick

Nicholas Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology
Clark University
[hidden email]
https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/
 


-----Original Message-----
From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of u?l? ?
Sent: Monday, March 9, 2020 3:05 PM
To: FriAM <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Acid epistemology - Eric Help!!!!

Why?! Oh why do y'all keep talking about unscientific things when you could be talking about scientific things? Dave's report about what goes on at a conference is, to me, *exactly* the same as Dave's report about any other experience he may have had, high or sober. They're both anecdotal at best.

Why talk about the truth-status of unicorns when we could be talking about the reliability of predictors of *categories* of experiences like this:

Neuroticism is associated with challenging experiences with psilocybin mushrooms.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28781400

> Abstract
>
> OBJECTIVES:
> Classic hallucinogens (e.g. psilocybin and LSD) have substantial effects on perception, cognition, and emotion that can often be psychologically challenging, however we know very little regarding the source of significant individual variability that has been observed in the frequency and intensity of challenging experiences (i.e. "bad trips") with psychedelics. Previous clinical and observational literature suggests that there may be an association between neuroticism and challenging psychedelic experiences.
>
> METHODS:
> Data from two online surveys of challenging experiences with psilocybin were analyzed. Multivariate analysis was used to estimate the associations between total score and scores from seven sub-factors (fear, grief, physical distress, insanity, isolation, death, and paranoia) of the Challenging Experience Questionnaire (CEQ), and scale scores from the Ten Item Personality Inventory (TIPI) in Study 1 (N=1993) and the Big Five Inventory (BFI) in Study 2 (N = 981).
>
> RESULTS:
> CEQ scores were negatively associated with emotional stability scores (the inverse of neuroticism) in Study 1 and positively associated with neuroticism scores in Study 2.
>
> CONCLUSIONS:
> Neuroticism may contribute to the strength of challenging experiences in uncontrolled settings.

On 3/9/20 10:36 AM, [hidden email] wrote:
> First, let’s go back to unicorns.
--
☣ uǝlƃ

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove


============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove

[Prof David West]

Trying your larding method

On Mon, Mar 9, 2020, at 6:36 PM, [hidden email] wrote:

Dave,

 

Oh, Damn.  I thought I had pretty much sorted this disagreement out, and now I am all confused again.  I am in doubt, and doubt is painful.  He that falls hardest, falls from his highest horse. Where do I stand (as a purported experience monist) EVER to deny your experience? OK. Calm down, Nick.  Let’s see where this comes out.

 

First, let’s go back to unicorns.  You say (let’s say) that during one of your sessions you have encountered a unicorn.  You describe that unicorn in great detail, including the golden horn, the flowing white mane and tail, the restless silver-shod hooves, and (if you like) the golden haired damsel on his back.  (Frank Wimberly is gearing up his Freudian interpretation of my fantasy here as you read.) And you say that this apparition is accompanied in you with a feeling of great joy and peace.  Where could I possibly stand to deny you any of this?

 

Now, feeling my way here, let’s divide what I propose to deny you into two parts.   Was the Unicorn real and was your feeling of well-being real?  As a dualist, I can deny you one without denying you the other.  The test of whether you really saw a UNICORN  is in the world outside of experience (w.e.t.f. that is) whereas the test of whether YOU SAW a unicorn is a matter entirely between you and your mind, a matter about which I could not possibly have any direct information.   Since dualists claim to have two sources of information about the world (their experience and ….God’s?) it’s possible for there to be a unicorn experience (I saw it, God, I saw it!) when in fact God knows there is no unicorn.  So a dualist can grant you your unicorn experience, with all its emotional glory, while not granting you the unicorn.  Not sure I have that out. 

 

Now, mind you, as an experience-monist, I am not tied to the notion that there can be no varieties of experience.  I am only tied to the notion that there is only one kind of stuff in the world, experience, and relations between experiences.  Glen, (I think) once pointed out to me that this is already TWO kinds of stuff, experiences and relations, and that I have already forsaken my monism.

**DW—This need not be true: you experience a relation between/among experiences. A "relationship-experience" is just another experience, different in variety, not essence.—DW**

Pressed on that point I would take the position that there are only relations among experiences, at which point perhaps Glen will ask me about the FIRST experience, and I will trot out my usual contempt for twisting our knickers about “first cases”.  I really REALLY don’t give a damn about when the first object was conscious of another object.  I won’t worry about that first case until we have worked out all the subsequent cases.  After all, given that there was, ex hypothesi, only one first case, why should I give a damn?  Why are extreme cases iconic.

 

**DW—Ultimate first case: the Singularity when the Universe was contained within a point; a point is dimensionless; so Everything was contained within Nothing, and located Nowhere. Impossibly — in every possible sense of that word — a differentiation (a single string vibrating in the OM frequency perhaps). That which could hold everything cannot hold Two and Bang!, the One becomes Two, becomes Many.  Been There, Saw That. —DW**

One of the dimensions along which experiences differ is in the degree to which they prove out in future experience.  If what you saw really as a unicorn, then it should be possible to go to the equine biology section of your local library and read up on them.

**DW—Not necessarily True. You have granted varieties of experience and perhaps the class of experience that contains Unicorns is a different class than Library-Experiences. Just how strongly typed are your varieties of experience?—DW**

They might, perhaps, be very rare, like Nessie or the Ivory Billed Woodpecker, but there are ways of working these disagreements out, and we monists assert only that what we MEAN by saying that unicorns, Loch Ness Monsters, and Ivory Billed Woodpeckers are real, is that, in the fullness of time, the community of inquiry, those who care about the matter, will agree that they exist.  And if the bulk of contemporaneous evidence suggests that they DON’T exist, then I will cheerfully deny you your experience of a unicorn in the limited sense that I confidently deny that what you saw actually was a unicorn. 

 

**DW—My but we are being elitist and exclusive, are we not?  Just who decides the constituents of the "community of inquiry?"  I see a great big bouncer with a clipboard allowing only the "beautiful people" entry to the club. And, of course, the bouncer is checking purses and briefcases to make sure that no traitorous beautiful person is attempting to smuggle in contraband "evidence."—DW**

But can I also deny you your report that you SAW a unicorn.  Well, perhaps.  This is trickier.  What are the practicial consequences of saying that you have seen a unicorn?  Setting aside the non existence of unicorns, how could the community of inquiry come to a conclusion about whether you had, in fact, hallucinated one.  Is that solely between you and your “mind”?  Or do we have standing to deny even that you hallucinated one?   I think the answer is absolutely “Yes”.  Imagine that you’re the jury in a traffic accident case in which the accused driver claims to have swerved to avoid a unicorn.  Now, everybody in the courtroom has stipulated (ex hypothesi) that unicorns do not exist, so the only question before the court is whether I genuinely hallucinated one, or if I am claiming the hallucination in order to get a light sentence.  You can imagine the list of questions that the district attorney might ask me.  Am I in the habit of seeing mythical animals.  Interviewed at the scene, did I describe in detail (and with amazement) the animal? Did it run away, or did I try to approach it?  In short, did I do any or all of the things that an ordinary person might do if he encountered a large white horse, with silver hooves, and a golden horn, ridden by  a fair-haired damsel on a dark road in the middle of the night – other than swerve into my neighbors orchid conservatory?   If not, the community of inquiry would conclude that not only was a unicorn not what I say, but I was lying when I said I saw a unicorn. 

 

**DW—The jury was fixed!! A kangaroo court!! See previous elitism argument.  Add to the mix a predetermination of what constitutes a "practical consequence." I was so affected by being in the presence of the unicorn that I immediately, and forever after, stopped harming small animals, gave up my hunting license and quit the NRA. Are those not practical consequences? And, I so eloquently communicated my experience to others that NRA membership actually dropped by 50%. Still not practical consequences?—DW**

Can I also deny your feeling of joy and peace at the sight of your unicorn?  Well, maybe.  What are the practicial consequence of being in a state of joy and peace?  Etc.

 

**DW—Have you read Huxley's Doors of Perception? In addition to describing the experience of a mescaline trip, he waxes eloquent about potential ethical, social, inter-personal, and psychological differences if our society had socialized something like mescaline instead of alcohol. Nothing but what I would call "practical consequences" as far as I can tell.—DW**

All the best,

 

NIck

And, if you have the time and inclination, could you reply directly to the questions I posed in the previous posting?

Best to you

davew

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Nicholas Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology

Clark University

[hidden email]

https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

 

 

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Prof David West

Sent: Monday, March 9, 2020 8:17 AM

To: [hidden email]

Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Acid epistemology - restarting a previous conversation

 

But Nick,

 

I don't understand your unwillingness to acknowledge my experience(s).

 

When I return from Amsterdam and provide you with a detailed trip report detailing all things bicycle (rules of the road, rider attitudes, bicycle culture, multi-level bicycle garages, exotic bikes, electro-bikes, utility bikes, bikes with bins on the front for small children and groceries, "deep inner peace" from riding many kilometers, feelings of being one with Nature in a way impossible inside a car, enhanced perception of body language nuances [essential for safety reasons] ... ) will you discount those stories the same way you discount a "Trip" report?

 

Or, suppose I attend my next FriAM while under the influence; do you believe I will be less cogent and more stupid than I normally appear?

 

How about an experiment where I play a poker tournament while under the influence of mescaline and another "sober." Want to bet in which one I will do better? If mescaline increases sensitivity and reduces the 'importance" of time, then its influence would increase my ability to detect "tells" and eliminate the, sometimes, crushing boredom I normally experience.

 

When I post all kinds of notes (glen asked for some) and reports of findings from the ICPR conference showing both "no harm" and "measurable benefits" from hallucinogen use — will that be "evidence" or still, in some fashion, "faith?"

 

Two caveats:

 

1) individual experience may vary. My brother, for instance, cannot stand, cannot deal with, any sense of lacking "control" whether that is induced by alcohol, or the one time he tried drugs;

 

and, 2) it is quite possible that some drugs, like large doses of DMT, are pretty much sledgehammers. The experience is so pronounced — very much like being in a different Reality andnot  just an altered state of consciousness — that it may very well be a case of scrambled circuits. I am certain that "glue sniffing," for example, and similar means of "getting high" are exactly what you fear — John Henry size sledgehammers.  There is all kinds of physiological evidence of the harm.

 

Time is something we all experience. Mescaline-Time-Experience is very different than Straight-Time-Experience. Is there value in comparing/contrasting/discussing those differences in order to enhance our common understanding of Time? I don't think it possible to truly understand Time if the only experience we allow into the discussion is either Straight-Time-Experience or Mescaline-Time-Experience.

 

Mayhap your fear is "irrational" and my "faith" is rational?

 

davew

 

 

On Sun, Mar 8, 2020, at 5:41 PM, [hidden email] wrote:

But Dave, I don’t understand your faith that drugs are a Tao-ist butcher, rather than a sledgehammer.   Do you stipulate that feelings of well-being, wisdom, insight, etc. can be neurologically divorced from the facts thereof?  So, the presence of such feelings does not constitute sufficient evidence of the facts, right?  Now remember, I have stipulated to the value of the sledgehammer, and admitted that the position I am taking in this argument arises from in part an from a fear of having my brain sledged.  So “potential benefits of sledgehammering” are irrelevant to our PRESENT argument, unless, of course we want this whole vast, tortured, philosophical argument to boil down to the fact that you like being sledge-hammered and I don’t.  Apart from the fact that you LIKE taking drugs, what is the EVIDENCE that it constitutes a method of gathering knowledge less chaotic than electro-shock therapy.  How does sledging your clock with drugs systematically reveal something about time?   Or are you ready to try ECT? 

 

I apologize for all the typos in my previous messages.  My macular pucker makes it hard sometimes to see the words as they are, but Bill Gates does not have macular pucker, so there is really no excuse.

 

Nick

 

Nicholas Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology

Clark University

[hidden email]

https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

 

 

 

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Prof David West

Sent: Sunday, March 8, 2020 3:10 AM

To: [hidden email]

Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Acid epistemology - restarting a previous conversation

 

Ignore the software thing — an example of cross-talk between two unrelated conversations that happens because so much of my neural network is still twisted-pair copper instead of LSD-Fiber.

 

I clearly missed your sledgehammer metaphor. I think, however, it might reveal a fundamental difference in perspective. You seem to see the taking of a drug (and drugs are not the only or even the most important means available) as destructive of an orderly experience processor (an experience-randomizer); and I see such taking as "oiling the machinery to make it run more efficiently."

 

But the key metaphor — one you admit is different in kind — from the others, is the Taoist butcher and you are correct that I am suggesting drugs (other means available) augment perception/awareness in very roughly a manner akin to the way that telescopes and microscopes augment our perception/awareness capabilities.

 

The self-referential feedback loop you allude to is very real. But it takes us, not to Castenada-land, but to Buddha-land or to Wheeler(et.al. combining information and quantum theories)-land where the Universe is Experiencing Itself as experiencing itself (faith); or the Universe Computing Itself computing (supposedly, science).

 

What you see as paradox, I see as confirmation. A metaphor that provides a perspective that facilitates bringing together fibers from multiple sources and finding the consistencies among them, so as to create threads, from which my tapestry.

 

davew

 

 

On Sat, Mar 7, 2020, at 6:35 PM, [hidden email] wrote:

Ok, so we need to get our metaphor’s straight, here.

 

The sledge hammer is meant to be an experience-randomizer.  To the extent that sledge hammers do predictable things to clocks, it fails for me as a metaphor.  Once my Sledge Hammer has struck my clock, there should be no relation between the positions of the pieces of the clock before the blow and after.  But even granting its limitations, I don’t think my Sledge Hammer is an appropriate metaphor for your complaint about ordinary software.  I think you are talking about a bull-dozer.  Like a Sledge Hammer, a Bulldozer does not care for the structure of whatever it encounters; but unlike my Sledge Hammer, it imposes a highly predictable order of its own. Neither the Sledge Hammer nor the Bulldozer are like the Taoist Butcher, who clearly cares for .the structure of what he cuts. 

 

So, what we are arguing about can be construed as an argument about which metaphor is most aptly applied to taking drugs.  I am arguing for the Sledge Hammer.  Sledge Hammers have their uses.  I have always imagined that electroshock therapy is a kind of sledge hammer, although perhaps it is more like a bulldozer, returning the brain to factory settings. Bulldozers are very useful in that they create a structure on which other things can easily be built.  You might be arguing that drug-taking is a bull dozer.  Or you might be arguing that drug-taking is more like the Taoist butcher, in that it reveals the structure of what is already there.  It is like a microscopist’s stain.  But to make that metaphor work, you have to grant to the drug, or to the person who administers it, the wisdom and experience of the butcher who has become so familiar with meat that he can, without thinking about it, see where the meat isn’t.   Now you are in Castenada territory, the territory of faith. 

 

Thanks, as always, Dave, for your generosity of spirit.  By the way, some keen-eyed observer may detect something seriously awry in my metaphorical proceeding above.  Presumably we both agree that the brain is a device that tells us something about something else, not about itself.  Dubious as I am that a sledge hammer can tell us anything about the structure of clocks, I am even MORE dubious that it can tell us anything about the structure of time. The Taoist Butcher metaphor seems to work in a different way.  To make it consistent, we would have to have the Taoist Butcher dissect HIMSELF in order to discover the structure of meat. 

 

Nick

 

Nicholas Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology

Clark University

[hidden email]

https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

 

 

 

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Prof David West

Sent: Saturday, March 7, 2020 3:37 AM

To: [hidden email]

Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Acid epistemology - restarting a previous conversation

 

Oooh fun ...

 

I also stipulate that hitting an alarm clock with a sledge hammer MIGHT reveal robust and enduring information about alarm clocks.

 

Let me twist this example a bit to make what I think might be a valid way to assert a "benefit" of drug-epistemology over sledge-hammer.

 

I must start a bit afield with a quote from Plato and a Taoist koan:

 

[First,] perceiving and bringing together under one Idea the scattered particulars, so that one makes clear the thing which he wishes to do... [Second,] the separation of the Idea into classes, by dividing it where the natural joints are, and not trying to break any part, after the manner of as a bad carver... I love these processes of division and bringing together, and if I think any other man is able to see things that can naturally be collected into one and divided into many, him I will follow as if he were as a god.

- Plato

 

"A Taoist butcher used but one knife his entire career without the need to sharpen it. At his retirement party the Emperor asked him about this extraordinary feat, The butcher stated, "Oh, I simply cut where the meat wasn't."

 

Now this leads to a problem of decomposition - breaking up a large and complex problem into tractable sub-problems. Software engineering uses a sledgehammer epistemology of data structures and algorithms to accomplish this decomposition with results that are horrific. In contrast, a "vision" induced, daydreaming about biological cells and cellular organisms led to the insight that cells are differentiated from each other by what they do, not what they are. So software modularity might be based on behavior. Far superior results in myriad ways.

 

If we take C.D.Broad and Huxley seriously, mescaline reveals "more of reality" than typically available to our conscious minds. I would assert and be willing to defend that at least that sort of drug-epistemology could enhance our ability to actually see "where the meat wasn't" and therefore enhance our ability to decompose large complicated systems (maybe even complex systems) in tractable sub-problems.

 

* * * * * * *

 

My vision was not based on a stain, nor was it of cells dividing - it was an inter-cellular dissolving and recombining of inter-cellular elements, proteins etc., into other inter-cellular elements such that when the cell did eventually divide its internals were radically different. What I "saw" would more likely inform a genetic engineer than someone investigating cell division stuff.

 

* * * * * *

 

Sorry for making you ill, but it is your interpretation that is at fault.

 

You might remember the early days of Cinerama movies. They would start the movie showing a scene, like flying through the Grand canyon, then suddenly expand the displayed rectangle, the size of a traditional movie screen, into the full height and width of the Cinerama screen.

 

It was still just a movie, but the experience of the movie was enhanced? with sensations of vertigo, movement, detail, etc.

 

What Broad and Huxley suggest is that experience is "filtered" by the organism and that filtering reduces experience to the dimensions of a pre-Cinerama movie. Huxley then asserts that mescaline turns experience into Experience.

 

We are all experience monists here, but some of us are making the claim that there can be, at minimum, quantitative differences among experiences (something akin to the increase in pixel density and 8 versus 64 bit representation of the color of each pixel) and, at least the possibility of qualitative differences, e.g. the vertigo of Cinerama.

 

And, those differences are attainable via various means. Not just drugs.

 

So my assertion of "Apollonian-er than thou" is a claim that I experience "life" in "Cinerama" and you in "cinema multiplex standard screen."

 

davew

 

On Sat, Mar 7, 2020, at 5:53 AM, [hidden email] wrote:

See Larding below.

 

By the way:  my mail interface is taken to tucking some of my mail into a folder called "important" where, of course, I cannot see it.  So, if I appear to go missing, don't hesitate to write me an unimportant message telling me that there are important ones awaiting me. 

 

Of course I have  n o   I d e a  what distinguishes an important message from an unimportant one. 

 

As I said, see below:  Oh, and dave, what I wrote below is TESTY.  I don’t realty feel testy,  I don’t really feel qualified to be testy.  I think the rhetoric just got away with me.  It has happened before and you have promised it doesn’t’ bother you, so I am counting on your grace-under-fire again. 

 

Your friend ,

Nick

 

Nicholas Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology

Clark University

[hidden email]

https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

 

 

 

-----Original Message-----

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Prof David West

Sent: Friday, March 6, 2020 2:00 AM

To: [hidden email]

Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Acid epistemology - restarting a previous conversation

 

thanks Glen,

 

I totally agree with you about dead white guys. [Except I have had face-to-face conversations with a couple of them :) ] I reference them not as a source of answers but in an attempt to find some kind of conceptual bridge for a conversation. But that might be totally counterproductive as it tends to introduce a propensity for forking the conversation.

 

Engaging with contemporary scientists is hard when it comes to drug-induced data sets / experiences. I hope to make some connections with contemporary researchers at the ICPR conference I mentioned but the focus there seems to be psycho-medical and related to the oxytocin article you posted, and my direct interests tend to diverge from that.

 

Perhaps something more direct might be useful. Two things, the second is mostly to tease Nick.

 

 

1) I am fascinated by the field of scientific visualization, using imagery to present complex data sets. Recently I "observed" the precise moment of sperm-egg fertilization. A whole lot was going on inside the egg cell boundary immediately upon contact (not penetration) with the sperm. The visualization was of thousands (millions?) of discrete inter-cellular elements breaking free from existing structures, like DNA strands, proteins, molecules and moving about independently. I could see several "fields" that were a kind of "probability field." These fields constrained both the movement of the various elements and, most importantly, what structures would emerge from their recombination.  "Watching" the DNA strand 'dissolve" and "reform" was particularly interesting because it was totally unlike the "unzip into two strands, the zip-up a strand-half from each donor" visualization I have seen presented in animations explaining the process.  Instead I saw all kinds of "clumps" form and merge into larger/longer "clumps" then engage in an interesting hula/belly/undulation dance to rearrange the structure into a final form.  All of this "guided" by the very visible "probability fields;" more than one and color coded.

 

Now, if I were a cellular biologist could I make use of this vision?

[NST===>] I love this example.  Every stain produces a new image and some stains are more revealing than others, in that the models they facilitate are more robust and enduring in their predictions.  I stipulate that.  I also stipulate that hitting an alarm clock with a sledge hammer MIGHT reveal robust and enduring information about alarm clocks.  I just don’t think it’s likely.  And there is the possibility that the clock wont be very accurate thereafter.  That is the whole of my argument against drug -epistemology.  So if you are NOT arguing that drug-epistemology is somehow superior to sledge-hammer epistemology, then we agree and we don’t have to argue any more. 

 

Since I am not a cellular biologist and have no understanding of inter-cellular structures/dynamics/chemistry, nor any DNA knowledge, where did the imagery come from and why did it hang together so well?

 

Was this experience just an amusing bit of entertainment" Or, is there an insight of some sort lurking there?

[NST===>] I like the metaphor with stains.  But just remember, if my memory serves me correctly, you don’t see jack shit when cells divide without the right stain.  All such observations are of the Peircean type/; “If I do this, then I will get that.” 

 

2) En garde Nick.

[NST===>] je me garde

 

Quoting Huxley, paraphrasing C.D. Broad — "The function of the brain,  nervous system, and sense organs is, in the main, eliminative and not productive. Each person is at each moment capable of remembering all that has ever happened to him and of perceiving everything that is happening everywhere in the universe. This is Mind-At-Large.

[NST===>] Dave, even without my characteristic ill ease with dispositions (like gravity, for instance), this last sentence gives me the heebs.  And the Heaves.  It is either a definition of memory (=all that I experience as past at a moment) or it is non-sense.  Or some kind of balmy article of faith. 

 

But in so far as we are animals, our business is at all costs to survive.

[NST===>] No.  No animal has ever survived.  No animal has ever tried to survive. No species has ever tried to survive.  This is all foolishness pressed on us by Spencer.  Even Darwin was leery of it.  (and no I cannot cite text)

To make biological survival possible, Mind-At-Large,  has to be funneled through the reducing valve of the brain and nervous system. What comes out at the other end is a measly trickle of the kind of consciousness which will help us to stay alive on the surface of this particular planet."

[NST===>] I suppose one can make sense of this sort of talk by postulating a world outside of experience, but unless you postulate that this world beyond experience can in principle never affect experience, you end up with a contradiction because anything that effects experience in any way, however indirect,  is, by definition, experienced. 

 

Two personal experiences: 1) I tend to not notice when my glasses get cloudy from accumulation of dust and moisture until it is quite bad. I clean my glasses, put them on, and am amazed at how clear and detailed my perceptions are post-cleaning. A very dramatic difference.

[NST===>] Well of course.  Cleaning glasses is a method that increases the predictive potential of your current visual experiences.  If your argument is only that there are experiences I have not had which will surprise me if I have them, I agree, so we don’t have to argue about that any more, right?

And, 2) the proper dose of a hallucinogen (and/or the right kind of meditation) and my perceptions of the world around me, using all my senses, are amazingly clear and detailed in the same way as my visual perception was changed by cleaning grime from my glasses.

[NST===>] The innate school marm gives us little jolts of pleasure from time to time, usually in response to activities that please her.  One of those jolts is a “sense of clarity.”  If you break into her storeroom and steal her clarity candies, you will get the clarity-pleasure even while seeing muddily. 

 

Now I grant you it’s possible you will see something more clearly.  See above the sledgehammered clock argument.

 

I would contend that the drug (meditation) removed the muddying filter of my brain/nervous system/ sense organs just as the isopropyl alcohol removed the muddying filter of moisture-dust on my glasses.

 

I see the world as it "really" is.[NST===>]Well, that remains to be seen, right.  It might be that the dust filters the light in such a way as to reveal structures that you cannot see through the cleaned glass.  The proof is in the pudding … i.e., the proving out.   

 

Now the tease: I would contend that I am more Apollonian than thou because I value Life, and more of Life, more directly, than you do. It is not varied experience I seek, but a direct, clear, complete, apprehension and appreciation of Life Itself.

[NST===>] Similarly, let it be the case that I had a dozen clocks and you told me you had hit them all with a sledge hammer;  now, if you told me you had lied, and gave me back the 12^th clock in perfect working order, I would value it a lot more for having thought I had lost it. 

 

davew

 

 

On Thu, Mar 5, 2020, at 4:58 PM, uǝlƃ ☣ wrote:

> It's not pesky for me in the slightest. I'm *very* interested. I

> haven't contributed because it's not clear I have anything to

> contribute.

> 

> Maybe I can start with a criticism, though. It's unclear to me why you

> (or anyone) would delicately flip through crumbling pages of

> philosophy when there are fresh and juicy results from

> (interventionist) methods right in front of us? The oxytocin post

> really *was* inspired by this thread. But because you guys are talking

> about dead white men like Peirce and James, it's unclear how the science relates.

> 

> My skepticism goes even deeper (beyond dead white men) to why one

> would think *anyone* (alive, dead, white or brown) might be able to

> *think* up an explanation for how knowledge grows. I would like to,

> but cannot, avoid the inference that this belief anyone (or any

> "school" of people) can think up explanations stems from a bias toward

> *individualism*. My snarky poke at "super intelligent god-people" in a

> post awhile back was

> (misguidedly) intended to express this same skepticism. I worry that

> poking around in old philosophy is simply an artifact of the mythology

> surrounding the "mind" and Great Men

> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_man_theory>.

> 

> It seems to me like science works in *spite* of our biases to

> individualism. So, if I want to understand knowledge, I have to stop

> identifying ways of knowing through dead individuals and focus on the

> flowing *field* of the collective scientists.

> 

> Of course, that doesn't mean we ignore the writings of the dead people.

> But it means liberally slashing away anything that even smells obsolete.

> 

> Regardless of what you do post, don't interpret *my* lack of response

> as disinterest or irritation, because it's not.

> 

> On 3/5/20 6:14 AM, Prof David West wrote:

> > And the key to my being a pest — is anyone else curious about these things?

> 

> 

> --

> ☣ uǝlƃ

> 

> ============================================================

> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe

> at St. John's College to unsubscribe

> http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com

> archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/

> FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove

> 

 

============================================================

FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv

Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com

archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/

FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove

============================================================

FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv

Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College

to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com

archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/

FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove

 

 

============================================================

FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv

Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College

to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com

archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/

FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove

 

 

============================================================

FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv

Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College

to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com

archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/

FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove

 

 

============================================================

FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv

Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College

to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com

archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/

FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove

[Prof David West]

I don't think bored is a correct term.

More interested in examples and arguments-tied-to-examples that are less fanciful than unicorns.

Eagerly awaiting the ICPR conference and gathering lots of "evidence" from a well established, and credentialed, "community of interest."

davew


On Tue, Mar 10, 2020, at 3:58 AM, [hidden email] wrote:

> Glen --
>
> In the absence of other commentary, you are perhaps a good bell-wether
> of whether (?) we should Dave and I should take this offlist.  I don’t
> think the topic of acid epistemology is inappropriate to the list, but
> if he and I are the only people paying attention, and even YOU are
> bored, then perhaps now is the time for us to bag it.
>
> Nick
>
> Nicholas Thompson
> Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology
> Clark University
> [hidden email]
> https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/
>  
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of u?l? ?
> Sent: Monday, March 9, 2020 3:05 PM
> To: FriAM <[hidden email]>
> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Acid epistemology - Eric Help!!!!
>
> Why?! Oh why do y'all keep talking about unscientific things when you
> could be talking about scientific things? Dave's report about what goes
> on at a conference is, to me, *exactly* the same as Dave's report about
> any other experience he may have had, high or sober. They're both
> anecdotal at best.
>
> Why talk about the truth-status of unicorns when we could be talking
> about the reliability of predictors of *categories* of experiences like
> this:
>
> Neuroticism is associated with challenging experiences with psilocybin
> mushrooms.
> https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28781400
>
> > Abstract
> >
> > OBJECTIVES:
> > Classic hallucinogens (e.g. psilocybin and LSD) have substantial effects on perception, cognition, and emotion that can often be psychologically challenging, however we know very little regarding the source of significant individual variability that has been observed in the frequency and intensity of challenging experiences (i.e. "bad trips") with psychedelics. Previous clinical and observational literature suggests that there may be an association between neuroticism and challenging psychedelic experiences.
> >
> > METHODS:
> > Data from two online surveys of challenging experiences with psilocybin were analyzed. Multivariate analysis was used to estimate the associations between total score and scores from seven sub-factors (fear, grief, physical distress, insanity, isolation, death, and paranoia) of the Challenging Experience Questionnaire (CEQ), and scale scores from the Ten Item Personality Inventory (TIPI) in Study 1 (N=1993) and the Big Five Inventory (BFI) in Study 2 (N = 981).
> >
> > RESULTS:
> > CEQ scores were negatively associated with emotional stability scores (the inverse of neuroticism) in Study 1 and positively associated with neuroticism scores in Study 2.
> >
> > CONCLUSIONS:
> > Neuroticism may contribute to the strength of challenging experiences in uncontrolled settings.
>
>
>
> On 3/9/20 10:36 AM, [hidden email] wrote:
> > First, let’s go back to unicorns.
> --
> ☣ uǝlƃ
>
> ============================================================
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe
> http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
> archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/
> FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove
>
>
> ============================================================
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
> to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
> archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/
> FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove
>

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove

[gepr]

A search for neurotic in my copy of the DSM V turned up a lot of mentions as a "risk factor". But is there a diagnosis? As I understand it, they tend to treat everything as a continuum and you only get diagnosed if the tendency/trait is bad enough to interfere with regular activities ... you know the things normies do. So, you may be a heavy drinker, but you're not diagnosed with a dependency until you start missing work or black out or somesuch.

My guess would be the *setting* in which one takes a high dose of a psychedelic would strongly regulate the impact of neurotic tendencies on one's trip. Since I get very antsy in crowds, I'd never load up on shrooms or acid and go to a rave or somesuch. But if I had a "guide" help me do it in a calm, low density, environment, I'd be all over it. The thing that worries me is that my highs always involve lots of work ... running, intense concentration, etc. ... more akin to Csikszentmihalyi's flow maybe ... I'm not puritanical like Nick. But I worry about succumbing to "cheap thrills". My friends from across the pond are appalled by my advocacy of hand guns. >8^D But at least one of them agrees with me. The difference being that in the US, any idiot can walk into a Walmart and buy one, whereas he had to train and be certified (somewhat) competent before he could take one home with him. Drugs are like guns ... or should be, anyway. The point being that the correlation between neuroticism and bad trips mentioned in the article *might* simply be the too easily accessed high. The "work for it" part can take the place of (or is in the same category as) the *ritual* that helps regulate us. So, neurotics might be the most capable of efficient use of psychedelics.

On 3/9/20 2:34 PM, Frank Wimberly wrote:
> Ah.  Neuroticism is something like a tendency to be neurotic.  Neurotic is actually a good diagnosis in psychoanalytic therapy.  It means you're treatable.  Also it's essentially universal so it's a question of degree.

--
☣ uǝlƃ
============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove

[gepr]

Right. I'm not at all bored with your conversation. But, to me, what/how we know things has more to do with *repeated* invocation of thoughts/behaviors, not unitary experiences. Being as "episodic" as I am, any single experience is useless, meaningless nonsense. But a repeated experience acquires meaning. I'm that way with names, too. People tell me their names and I forget them immediately ... even if I use their name repeatedly right after I learn it. But if I meet that person twice, three times, etc., then their name (the word "Bob" or whatever) takes on meaning ... becomes grounded to that person.

It seems so silly to talk about epistemology without requiring repeated experiences. A one-off conversation with Brigham Young means nothing. But repeated conversations means something. Granted, it's impossible to treat the Nth experience accumulation without talking about how the 2nd experience accumulates knowledge from the 1st experience. So, accounting for trust transfer from your one-off conversation with BY to another person is important. But what we're really after is the *accumulation*. Consideration of the 1st experience is only in service to consideration of the 1000th or the 10,000th.

I suppose we *could* get there by talking about how to predictably *force* Nick to have the same experience you had (of unicorns or whatever). But, again, to do that, we'd have to talk about the science ... controlled manipulation of behavior that has been shown to channel people such that they have some experience. Attributing too much causal influence of the drug (or any particular tool in the toolkit) ignores/discounts the objective, which is the method, the process, the protocol. It's that protocol that carries the knowledge, not the internal experiences or the particular toolchain used to execute the protocol.

On 3/10/20 1:48 AM, Prof David West wrote:
> I don't think bored is a correct term.
>
> More interested in examples and arguments-tied-to-examples that are less fanciful than unicorns.

--
☣ uǝlƃ

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove

[thompnickson2]

Glen,

 

Thanks. 

 

You often and rightly accuse me of overstating stuff, and I apologize if I am about to do it again.  But I think you are perhaps saying that there are no idiosyncratic experiences?  That an experience, to be an experience, has to be repeated or shared or both.  If so, I think I agree with you.  And a very strident position it would be if that were the position.  I think many humanists would assert that ONLY idiosyncratic experiences are real and that it is upon the uniqueness of individual experience that we must focus.  Hmmm! 

 

I feel that this thought is a genuine crowbar.

 

. It's that protocol that carries the knowledge, not the internal experiences or the particular toolchain used to execute the protocol.

 

Can you pry some more things with it?

 

Nick

 

Nicholas Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology

Clark University

[hidden email]

https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

 

 

-----Original Message-----
From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of u?l? ?
Sent: Tuesday, March 10, 2020 9:19 AM
To: FriAM <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Acid epistemology - Eric Help!!!!

 

Right. I'm not at all bored with your conversation. But, to me, what/how we know things has more to do with *repeated* invocation of thoughts/behaviors, not unitary experiences. Being as "episodic" as I am, any single experience is useless, meaningless nonsense. But a repeated experience acquires meaning. I'm that way with names, too. People tell me their names and I forget them immediately ... even if I use their name repeatedly right after I learn it. But if I meet that person twice, three times, etc., then their name (the word "Bob" or whatever) takes on meaning ... becomes grounded to that person.

 

It seems so silly to talk about epistemology without requiring repeated experiences. A one-off conversation with Brigham Young means nothing. But repeated conversations means something. Granted, it's impossible to treat the Nth experience accumulation without talking about how the 2nd experience accumulates knowledge from the 1st experience. So, accounting for trust transfer from your one-off conversation with BY to another person is important. But what we're really after is the *accumulation*. Consideration of the 1st experience is only in service to consideration of the 1000th or the 10,000th.

 

I suppose we *could* get there by talking about how to predictably *force* Nick to have the same experience you had (of unicorns or whatever). But, again, to do that, we'd have to talk about the science ... controlled manipulation of behavior that has been shown to channel people such that they have some experience. Attributing too much causal influence of the drug (or any particular tool in the toolkit) ignores/discounts the objective, which is the method, the process, the protocol. It's that protocol that carries the knowledge, not the internal experiences or the particular toolchain used to execute the protocol.

On 3/10/20 1:48 AM, Prof David West wrote:

> I don't think bored is a correct term.

>

> More interested in examples and arguments-tied-to-examples that are less fanciful than unicorns.

 

--

☣ uǝlƃ

 

============================================================

FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv

Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com

archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/

FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove

[thompnickson2]

Dave,

 

The word I keep using is not “practical” but “practicial”.  It refers not to everyday, seat of the pants doings, but to practices, in particular, scientific practices.  I am rewriting the Pragmaticist Maxim.

 

Answers to previous post WAY below.

 

N

 

 

 

Nicholas Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology

Clark University

[hidden email]

https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

 

 

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Prof David West
Sent: Tuesday, March 10, 2020 2:38 AM
To: [hidden email]
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Acid epistemology - Eric Help!!!!

 

Trying your larding method

 

On Mon, Mar 9, 2020, at 6:36 PM, [hidden email] wrote:

Dave,

 

Oh, Damn.  I thought I had pretty much sorted this disagreement out, and now I am all confused again.  I am in doubt, and doubt is painful.  He that falls hardest, falls from his highest horse. Where do I stand (as a purported experience monist) EVER to deny your experience? OK. Calm down, Nick.  Let’s see where this comes out.

 

First, let’s go back to unicorns.  You say (let’s say) that during one of your sessions you have encountered a unicorn.  You describe that unicorn in great detail, including the golden horn, the flowing white mane and tail, the restless silver-shod hooves, and (if you like) the golden haired damsel on his back.  (Frank Wimberly is gearing up his Freudian interpretation of my fantasy here as you read.) And you say that this apparition is accompanied in you with a feeling of great joy and peace.  Where could I possibly stand to deny you any of this?

 

Now, feeling my way here, let’s divide what I propose to deny you into two parts.   Was the Unicorn real and was your feeling of well-being real?  As a dualist, I can deny you one without denying you the other.  The test of whether you really saw a UNICORN  is in the world outside of experience (w.e.t.f. that is) whereas the test of whether YOU SAW a unicorn is a matter entirely between you and your mind, a matter about which I could not possibly have any direct information.   Since dualists claim to have two sources of information about the world (their experience and ….God’s?) it’s possible for there to be a unicorn experience (I saw it, God, I saw it!) when in fact God knows there is no unicorn.  So a dualist can grant you your unicorn experience, with all its emotional glory, while not granting you the unicorn.  Not sure I have that out. 

 

Now, mind you, as an experience-monist, I am not tied to the notion that there can be no varieties of experience.  I am only tied to the notion that there is only one kind of stuff in the world, experience, and relations between experiences.  Glen, (I think) once pointed out to me that this is already TWO kinds of stuff, experiences and relations, and that I have already forsaken my monism.

 

**DW—This need not be true: you experience a relation between/among experiences. A "relationship-experience" is just another experience, different in variety, not essence.—DW**

 

Pressed on that point I would take the position that there are only relations among experiences, at which point perhaps Glen will ask me about the FIRST experience, and I will trot out my usual contempt for twisting our knickers about “first cases”.  I really REALLY don’t give a damn about when the first object was conscious of another object.  I won’t worry about that first case until we have worked out all the subsequent cases.  After all, given that there was, ex hypothesi, only one first case, why should I give a damn?  Why are extreme cases iconic.

 

**DW—Ultimate first case: the Singularity when the Universe was contained within a point; a point is dimensionless; so Everything was contained within Nothing, and located Nowhere. Impossibly — in every possible sense of that word — a differentiation (a single string vibrating in the OM frequency perhaps). That which could hold everything cannot hold Two and Bang!, the One becomes Two, becomes Many.  Been There, Saw That. —DW**

 

 

One of the dimensions along which experiences differ is in the degree to which they prove out in future experience.  If what you saw really as a unicorn, then it should be possible to go to the equine biology section of your local library and read up on them.

 

**DW—Not necessarily True. You have granted varieties of experience and perhaps the class of experience that contains Unicorns is a different class than Library-Experiences. Just how strongly typed are your varieties of experience?—DW**

 

They might, perhaps, be very rare, like Nessie or the Ivory Billed Woodpecker, but there are ways of working these disagreements out, and we monists assert only that what we MEAN by saying that unicorns, Loch Ness Monsters, and Ivory Billed Woodpeckers are real, is that, in the fullness of time, the community of inquiry, those who care about the matter, will agree that they exist.  And if the bulk of contemporaneous evidence suggests that they DON’T exist, then I will cheerfully deny you your experience of a unicorn in the limited sense that I confidently deny that what you saw actually was a unicorn. 

 

**DW—My but we are being elitist and exclusive, are we not?  Just who decides the constituents of the "community of inquiry?"  I see a great big bouncer with a clipboard allowing only the "beautiful people" entry to the club. And, of course, the bouncer is checking purses and briefcases to make sure that no traitorous beautiful person is attempting to smuggle in contraband "evidence."—DW**

 

But can I also deny you your report that you SAW a unicorn.  Well, perhaps.  This is trickier.  What are the practicial consequences of saying that you have seen a unicorn?  Setting aside the non existence of unicorns, how could the community of inquiry come to a conclusion about whether you had, in fact, hallucinated one.  Is that solely between you and your “mind”?  Or do we have standing to deny even that you hallucinated one?   I think the answer is absolutely “Yes”.  Imagine that you’re the jury in a traffic accident case in which the accused driver claims to have swerved to avoid a unicorn.  Now, everybody in the courtroom has stipulated (ex hypothesi) that unicorns do not exist, so the only question before the court is whether I genuinely hallucinated one, or if I am claiming the hallucination in order to get a light sentence.  You can imagine the list of questions that the district attorney might ask me.  Am I in the habit of seeing mythical animals.  Interviewed at the scene, did I describe in detail (and with amazement) the animal? Did it run away, or did I try to approach it?  In short, did I do any or all of the things that an ordinary person might do if he encountered a large white horse, with silver hooves, and a golden horn, ridden by  a fair-haired damsel on a dark road in the middle of the night – other than swerve into my neighbors orchid conservatory?   If not, the community of inquiry would conclude that not only was a unicorn not what I say, but I was lying when I said I saw a unicorn. 

 

**DW—The jury was fixed!! A kangaroo court!! See previous elitism argument.  Add to the mix a predetermination of what constitutes a "practical consequence." I was so affected by being in the presence of the unicorn that I immediately, and forever after, stopped harming small animals, gave up my hunting license and quit the NRA. Are those not practical consequences? And, I so eloquently communicated my experience to others that NRA membership actually dropped by 50%. Still not practical consequences?—DW**

 

Can I also deny your feeling of joy and peace at the sight of your unicorn?  Well, maybe.  What are the practicial consequence of being in a state of joy and peace?  Etc.

 

**DW—Have you read Huxley's Doors of Perception? In addition to describing the experience of a mescaline trip, he waxes eloquent about potential ethical, social, inter-personal, and psychological differences if our society had socialized something like mescaline instead of alcohol. Nothing but what I would call "practical consequences" as far as I can tell.—DW**

 

All the best,

 

NIck

 

And, if you have the time and inclination, could you reply directly to the questions I posed in the previous posting?

 

Best to you

davew

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Nicholas Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology

Clark University

[hidden email]

https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

 

 

 

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Prof David West

Sent: Monday, March 9, 2020 8:17 AM

To: [hidden email]

Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Acid epistemology - restarting a previous conversation

 

But Nick,

 

I don't understand your unwillingness to acknowledge my experience(s).

 

When I return from Amsterdam and provide you with a detailed trip report detailing all things bicycle (rules of the road, rider attitudes, bicycle culture, multi-level bicycle garages, exotic bikes, electro-bikes, utility bikes, bikes with bins on the front for small children and groceries, "deep inner peace" from riding many kilometers, feelings of being one with Nature in a way impossible inside a car, enhanced perception of body language nuances [essential for safety reasons] ... ) will you discount those stories the same way you discount a "Trip" report?

 

Or, suppose I attend my next FriAM while under the influence; do you believe I will be less cogent and more stupid than I normally appear?

[NST===>] I dunno.  It remains to be seen.  It’s more a question of the truth of the matter, how we decide.  Your view on the matter is one, but only one, data point. 

 

How about an experiment where I play a poker tournament while under the influence of mescaline and another "sober." Want to bet in which one I will do better? If mescaline increases sensitivity and reduces the 'importance" of time, then its influence would increase my ability to detect "tells" and eliminate the, sometimes, crushing boredom I normally experience.[NST===>]

[NST===>]   Well, I can’t deny that some drugs increase some performance levels, so the question is only, what do we make of that fact, and why am I not keen to take those drugs all the time?  My caution would arise from the shadow of the future.  I would assume that for most purposes my body knows what it is doing without the drug and that when I drug myself, I am like the government agency sweeping in to tell the entrepreneur how to run his life. 

 

When I post all kinds of notes (glen asked for some) and reports of findings from the ICPR conference showing both "no harm" and "measurable benefits" from hallucinogen use — will that be "evidence" or still, in some fashion, "faith?"

[NST===>] My faith comment had to do with the notion of guide which I think appears in Castenada.  I mean only that I have to trust the person who gives me the drug.  That’s the kind of faith I am talking about. 

 

Two caveats:

 

1) individual experience may vary. My brother, for instance, cannot stand, cannot deal with, any sense of lacking "control" whether that is induced by alcohol, or the one time he tried drugs;

 

and, 2) it is quite possible that some drugs, like large doses of DMT, are pretty much sledgehammers. The experience is so pronounced — very much like being in a different Reality andnot  just an altered state of consciousness — that it may very well be a case of scrambled circuits. I am certain that "glue sniffing," for example, and similar means of "getting high" are exactly what you fear — John Henry size sledgehammers.  There is all kinds of physiological evidence of the harm.

 

Time is something we all experience. Mescaline-Time-Experience is very different than Straight-Time-Experience. Is there value in comparing/contrasting/discussing those differences in order to enhance our common understanding of Time? I don't think it possible to truly understand Time if the only experience we allow into the discussion is either Straight-Time-Experience or Mescaline-Time-Experience.

 

Mayhap your fear is "irrational" and my "faith" is rational?

[NST===>]  Well, then, recapitulate the reasoning.

 

davew

 

 

On Sun, Mar 8, 2020, at 5:41 PM, [hidden email] wrote:

But Dave, I don’t understand your faith that drugs are a Tao-ist butcher, rather than a sledgehammer.   Do you stipulate that feelings of well-being, wisdom, insight, etc. can be neurologically divorced from the facts thereof?  So, the presence of such feelings does not constitute sufficient evidence of the facts, right?  Now remember, I have stipulated to the value of the sledgehammer, and admitted that the position I am taking in this argument arises from in part an from a fear of having my brain sledged.  So “potential benefits of sledgehammering” are irrelevant to our PRESENT argument, unless, of course we want this whole vast, tortured, philosophical argument to boil down to the fact that you like being sledge-hammered and I don’t.  Apart from the fact that you LIKE taking drugs, what is the EVIDENCE that it constitutes a method of gathering knowledge less chaotic than electro-shock therapy.  How does sledging your clock with drugs systematically reveal something about time?   Or are you ready to try ECT? 

 

I apologize for all the typos in my previous messages.  My macular pucker makes it hard sometimes to see the words as they are, but Bill Gates does not have macular pucker, so there is really no excuse.

 

Nick

 

Nicholas Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology

Clark University

[hidden email]

https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

 

 

 

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Prof David West

Sent: Sunday, March 8, 2020 3:10 AM

To: [hidden email]

Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Acid epistemology - restarting a previous conversation

 

Ignore the software thing — an example of cross-talk between two unrelated conversations that happens because so much of my neural network is still twisted-pair copper instead of LSD-Fiber.

 

I clearly missed your sledgehammer metaphor. I think, however, it might reveal a fundamental difference in perspective. You seem to see the taking of a drug (and drugs are not the only or even the most important means available) as destructive of an orderly experience processor (an experience-randomizer); and I see such taking as "oiling the machinery to make it run more efficiently."

 

But the key metaphor — one you admit is different in kind — from the others, is the Taoist butcher and you are correct that I am suggesting drugs (other means available) augment perception/awareness in very roughly a manner akin to the way that telescopes and microscopes augment our perception/awareness capabilities.

 

The self-referential feedback loop you allude to is very real. But it takes us, not to Castenada-land, but to Buddha-land or to Wheeler(et.al. combining information and quantum theories)-land where the Universe is Experiencing Itself as experiencing itself (faith); or the Universe Computing Itself computing (supposedly, science).

 

What you see as paradox, I see as confirmation. A metaphor that provides a perspective that facilitates bringing together fibers from multiple sources and finding the consistencies among them, so as to create threads, from which my tapestry.

 

davew

 

 

On Sat, Mar 7, 2020, at 6:35 PM, [hidden email] wrote:

Ok, so we need to get our metaphor’s straight, here.

 

The sledge hammer is meant to be an experience-randomizer.  To the extent that sledge hammers do predictable things to clocks, it fails for me as a metaphor.  Once my Sledge Hammer has struck my clock, there should be no relation between the positions of the pieces of the clock before the blow and after.  But even granting its limitations, I don’t think my Sledge Hammer is an appropriate metaphor for your complaint about ordinary software.  I think you are talking about a bull-dozer.  Like a Sledge Hammer, a Bulldozer does not care for the structure of whatever it encounters; but unlike my Sledge Hammer, it imposes a highly predictable order of its own. Neither the Sledge Hammer nor the Bulldozer are like the Taoist Butcher, who clearly cares for .the structure of what he cuts. 

 

So, what we are arguing about can be construed as an argument about which metaphor is most aptly applied to taking drugs.  I am arguing for the Sledge Hammer.  Sledge Hammers have their uses.  I have always imagined that electroshock therapy is a kind of sledge hammer, although perhaps it is more like a bulldozer, returning the brain to factory settings. Bulldozers are very useful in that they create a structure on which other things can easily be built.  You might be arguing that drug-taking is a bull dozer.  Or you might be arguing that drug-taking is more like the Taoist butcher, in that it reveals the structure of what is already there.  It is like a microscopist’s stain.  But to make that metaphor work, you have to grant to the drug, or to the person who administers it, the wisdom and experience of the butcher who has become so familiar with meat that he can, without thinking about it, see where the meat isn’t.   Now you are in Castenada territory, the territory of faith. 

 

Thanks, as always, Dave, for your generosity of spirit.  By the way, some keen-eyed observer may detect something seriously awry in my metaphorical proceeding above.  Presumably we both agree that the brain is a device that tells us something about something else, not about itself.  Dubious as I am that a sledge hammer can tell us anything about the structure of clocks, I am even MORE dubious that it can tell us anything about the structure of time. The Taoist Butcher metaphor seems to work in a different way.  To make it consistent, we would have to have the Taoist Butcher dissect HIMSELF in order to discover the structure of meat. 

 

Nick

 

Nicholas Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology

Clark University

[hidden email]

https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

 

 

 

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Prof David West

Sent: Saturday, March 7, 2020 3:37 AM

To: [hidden email]

Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Acid epistemology - restarting a previous conversation

 

Oooh fun ...

 

I also stipulate that hitting an alarm clock with a sledge hammer MIGHT reveal robust and enduring information about alarm clocks.

 

Let me twist this example a bit to make what I think might be a valid way to assert a "benefit" of drug-epistemology over sledge-hammer.

 

I must start a bit afield with a quote from Plato and a Taoist koan:

 

[First,] perceiving and bringing together under one Idea the scattered particulars, so that one makes clear the thing which he wishes to do... [Second,] the separation of the Idea into classes, by dividing it where the natural joints are, and not trying to break any part, after the manner of as a bad carver... I love these processes of division and bringing together, and if I think any other man is able to see things that can naturally be collected into one and divided into many, him I will follow as if he were as a god.

- Plato

 

"A Taoist butcher used but one knife his entire career without the need to sharpen it. At his retirement party the Emperor asked him about this extraordinary feat, The butcher stated, "Oh, I simply cut where the meat wasn't."

 

Now this leads to a problem of decomposition - breaking up a large and complex problem into tractable sub-problems. Software engineering uses a sledgehammer epistemology of data structures and algorithms to accomplish this decomposition with results that are horrific. In contrast, a "vision" induced, daydreaming about biological cells and cellular organisms led to the insight that cells are differentiated from each other by what they do, not what they are. So software modularity might be based on behavior. Far superior results in myriad ways.

 

If we take C.D.Broad and Huxley seriously, mescaline reveals "more of reality" than typically available to our conscious minds. I would assert and be willing to defend that at least that sort of drug-epistemology could enhance our ability to actually see "where the meat wasn't" and therefore enhance our ability to decompose large complicated systems (maybe even complex systems) in tractable sub-problems.

 

* * * * * * *

 

My vision was not based on a stain, nor was it of cells dividing - it was an inter-cellular dissolving and recombining of inter-cellular elements, proteins etc., into other inter-cellular elements such that when the cell did eventually divide its internals were radically different. What I "saw" would more likely inform a genetic engineer than someone investigating cell division stuff.

 

* * * * * *

 

Sorry for making you ill, but it is your interpretation that is at fault.

 

You might remember the early days of Cinerama movies. They would start the movie showing a scene, like flying through the Grand canyon, then suddenly expand the displayed rectangle, the size of a traditional movie screen, into the full height and width of the Cinerama screen.

 

It was still just a movie, but the experience of the movie was enhanced? with sensations of vertigo, movement, detail, etc.

 

What Broad and Huxley suggest is that experience is "filtered" by the organism and that filtering reduces experience to the dimensions of a pre-Cinerama movie. Huxley then asserts that mescaline turns experience into Experience.

 

We are all experience monists here, but some of us are making the claim that there can be, at minimum, quantitative differences among experiences (something akin to the increase in pixel density and 8 versus 64 bit representation of the color of each pixel) and, at least the possibility of qualitative differences, e.g. the vertigo of Cinerama.

 

And, those differences are attainable via various means. Not just drugs.

 

So my assertion of "Apollonian-er than thou" is a claim that I experience "life" in "Cinerama" and you in "cinema multiplex standard screen."

 

davew

 

On Sat, Mar 7, 2020, at 5:53 AM, [hidden email] wrote:

See Larding below.

 

By the way:  my mail interface is taken to tucking some of my mail into a folder called "important" where, of course, I cannot see it.  So, if I appear to go missing, don't hesitate to write me an unimportant message telling me that there are important ones awaiting me. 

 

Of course I have  n o   I d e a  what distinguishes an important message from an unimportant one. 

 

As I said, see below:  Oh, and dave, what I wrote below is TESTY.  I don’t realty feel testy,  I don’t really feel qualified to be testy.  I think the rhetoric just got away with me.  It has happened before and you have promised it doesn’t’ bother you, so I am counting on your grace-under-fire again. 

 

Your friend ,

Nick

 

Nicholas Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology

Clark University

[hidden email]

https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

 

 

 

-----Original Message-----

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Prof David West

Sent: Friday, March 6, 2020 2:00 AM

To: [hidden email]

Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Acid epistemology - restarting a previous conversation

 

thanks Glen,

 

I totally agree with you about dead white guys. [Except I have had face-to-face conversations with a couple of them :) ] I reference them not as a source of answers but in an attempt to find some kind of conceptual bridge for a conversation. But that might be totally counterproductive as it tends to introduce a propensity for forking the conversation.

 

Engaging with contemporary scientists is hard when it comes to drug-induced data sets / experiences. I hope to make some connections with contemporary researchers at the ICPR conference I mentioned but the focus there seems to be psycho-medical and related to the oxytocin article you posted, and my direct interests tend to diverge from that.

 

Perhaps something more direct might be useful. Two things, the second is mostly to tease Nick.

 

 

1) I am fascinated by the field of scientific visualization, using imagery to present complex data sets. Recently I "observed" the precise moment of sperm-egg fertilization. A whole lot was going on inside the egg cell boundary immediately upon contact (not penetration) with the sperm. The visualization was of thousands (millions?) of discrete inter-cellular elements breaking free from existing structures, like DNA strands, proteins, molecules and moving about independently. I could see several "fields" that were a kind of "probability field." These fields constrained both the movement of the various elements and, most importantly, what structures would emerge from their recombination.  "Watching" the DNA strand 'dissolve" and "reform" was particularly interesting because it was totally unlike the "unzip into two strands, the zip-up a strand-half from each donor" visualization I have seen presented in animations explaining the process.  Instead I saw all kinds of "clumps" form and merge into larger/longer "clumps" then engage in an interesting hula/belly/undulation dance to rearrange the structure into a final form.  All of this "guided" by the very visible "probability fields;" more than one and color coded.

 

Now, if I were a cellular biologist could I make use of this vision?

[NST===>] I love this example.  Every stain produces a new image and some stains are more revealing than others, in that the models they facilitate are more robust and enduring in their predictions.  I stipulate that.  I also stipulate that hitting an alarm clock with a sledge hammer MIGHT reveal robust and enduring information about alarm clocks.  I just don’t think it’s likely.  And there is the possibility that the clock wont be very accurate thereafter.  That is the whole of my argument against drug -epistemology.  So if you are NOT arguing that drug-epistemology is somehow superior to sledge-hammer epistemology, then we agree and we don’t have to argue any more. 

 

Since I am not a cellular biologist and have no understanding of inter-cellular structures/dynamics/chemistry, nor any DNA knowledge, where did the imagery come from and why did it hang together so well?

 

Was this experience just an amusing bit of entertainment" Or, is there an insight of some sort lurking there?

[NST===>] I like the metaphor with stains.  But just remember, if my memory serves me correctly, you don’t see jack shit when cells divide without the right stain.  All such observations are of the Peircean type/; “If I do this, then I will get that.” 

 

2) En garde Nick.

[NST===>] je me garde

 

Quoting Huxley, paraphrasing C.D. Broad — "The function of the brain,  nervous system, and sense organs is, in the main, eliminative and not productive. Each person is at each moment capable of remembering all that has ever happened to him and of perceiving everything that is happening everywhere in the universe. This is Mind-At-Large.

[NST===>] Dave, even without my characteristic ill ease with dispositions (like gravity, for instance), this last sentence gives me the heebs.  And the Heaves.  It is either a definition of memory (=all that I experience as past at a moment) or it is non-sense.  Or some kind of balmy article of faith. 

 

But in so far as we are animals, our business is at all costs to survive.

[NST===>] No.  No animal has ever survived.  No animal has ever tried to survive. No species has ever tried to survive.  This is all foolishness pressed on us by Spencer.  Even Darwin was leery of it.  (and no I cannot cite text)

To make biological survival possible, Mind-At-Large,  has to be funneled through the reducing valve of the brain and nervous system. What comes out at the other end is a measly trickle of the kind of consciousness which will help us to stay alive on the surface of this particular planet."

[NST===>] I suppose one can make sense of this sort of talk by postulating a world outside of experience, but unless you postulate that this world beyond experience can in principle never affect experience, you end up with a contradiction because anything that effects experience in any way, however indirect,  is, by definition, experienced. 

 

Two personal experiences: 1) I tend to not notice when my glasses get cloudy from accumulation of dust and moisture until it is quite bad. I clean my glasses, put them on, and am amazed at how clear and detailed my perceptions are post-cleaning. A very dramatic difference.

[NST===>] Well of course.  Cleaning glasses is a method that increases the predictive potential of your current visual experiences.  If your argument is only that there are experiences I have not had which will surprise me if I have them, I agree, so we don’t have to argue about that any more, right?

And, 2) the proper dose of a hallucinogen (and/or the right kind of meditation) and my perceptions of the world around me, using all my senses, are amazingly clear and detailed in the same way as my visual perception was changed by cleaning grime from my glasses.

[NST===>] The innate school marm gives us little jolts of pleasure from time to time, usually in response to activities that please her.  One of those jolts is a “sense of clarity.”  If you break into her storeroom and steal her clarity candies, you will get the clarity-pleasure even while seeing muddily. 

 

Now I grant you it’s possible you will see something more clearly.  See above the sledgehammered clock argument.

 

I would contend that the drug (meditation) removed the muddying filter of my brain/nervous system/ sense organs just as the isopropyl alcohol removed the muddying filter of moisture-dust on my glasses.

 

I see the world as it "really" is.[NST===>]Well, that remains to be seen, right.  It might be that the dust filters the light in such a way as to reveal structures that you cannot see through the cleaned glass.  The proof is in the pudding … i.e., the proving out.   

 

Now the tease: I would contend that I am more Apollonian than thou because I value Life, and more of Life, more directly, than you do. It is not varied experience I seek, but a direct, clear, complete, apprehension and appreciation of Life Itself.

[NST===>] Similarly, let it be the case that I had a dozen clocks and you told me you had hit them all with a sledge hammer;  now, if you told me you had lied, and gave me back the 12^th clock in perfect working order, I would value it a lot more for having thought I had lost it. 

 

davew

 

 

On Thu, Mar 5, 2020, at 4:58 PM, uǝlƃ ☣ wrote:

> It's not pesky for me in the slightest. I'm *very* interested. I

> haven't contributed because it's not clear I have anything to

> contribute.

> 

> Maybe I can start with a criticism, though. It's unclear to me why you

> (or anyone) would delicately flip through crumbling pages of

> philosophy when there are fresh and juicy results from

> (interventionist) methods right in front of us? The oxytocin post

> really *was* inspired by this thread. But because you guys are talking

> about dead white men like Peirce and James, it's unclear how the science relates.

> 

> My skepticism goes even deeper (beyond dead white men) to why one

> would think *anyone* (alive, dead, white or brown) might be able to

> *think* up an explanation for how knowledge grows. I would like to,

> but cannot, avoid the inference that this belief anyone (or any

> "school" of people) can think up explanations stems from a bias toward

> *individualism*. My snarky poke at "super intelligent god-people" in a

> post awhile back was

> (misguidedly) intended to express this same skepticism. I worry that

> poking around in old philosophy is simply an artifact of the mythology

> surrounding the "mind" and Great Men

> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_man_theory>.

> 

> It seems to me like science works in *spite* of our biases to

> individualism. So, if I want to understand knowledge, I have to stop

> identifying ways of knowing through dead individuals and focus on the

> flowing *field* of the collective scientists.

> 

> Of course, that doesn't mean we ignore the writings of the dead people.

> But it means liberally slashing away anything that even smells obsolete.

> 

> Regardless of what you do post, don't interpret *my* lack of response

> as disinterest or irritation, because it's not.

> 

> On 3/5/20 6:14 AM, Prof David West wrote:

> > And the key to my being a pest — is anyone else curious about these things?

> 

> 

> --

> ☣ uǝlƃ

> 

> ============================================================

> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe

> at St. John's College to unsubscribe

> http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com

> archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/

> FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove

> 

 

============================================================

FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv

Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com

archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/

FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove

============================================================

FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv

Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College

to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com

archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/

FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove

 

 

============================================================

FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv

Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College

to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com

archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/

FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove

 

 

============================================================

FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv

Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College

to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com

archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/

FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove

 

 

============================================================

FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv

Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College

to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com

archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/

FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove

 

 

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove

[gepr]

Interesting. I don't think I'd say that a unique experience is not an experience. But I would say than a unique experience is not knowledge of any kind. The trick to this position would be that, when one has a unique experience, one then fiddles with it in order to think about it further or tell it to some other person.

So, I'm along about mile 4 in my 6 mile run, looking up at the moon, plodding along, my body drifts away, and [unsayable somatic, mental, and emotional state obtains] ... then that state fades away when I have to dodge a car or stop at an intersection. Now, when I go to tell Renee' *about* that state within brackets above [...], I have to couch it in my private lexicon and then translate it from my lexicon to hers. So even though [...] may have been unique, the post-processing (couching in my lexicon, translating into hers) has been done before. The post-processing is a repeated/repeating process. This means we can become confused about which part of the _experience_ is unique and which part is repeated.

Regardless, if you cannot *tell* someone about an experience. And you can't even recall it well enough to internally tell yourself about it, then it's meaningless. The only experience that has any meaning at all is an experience that is repeatable enough so you can at least remember it. Remembering is repeating to some extent. And when you guys have this discussion *without* addressing repetition or accumulation (as you've written off regarding experience composition), then I can't see AT ALL how it's in any way related to epistemology.

On 3/10/20 9:31 AM, [hidden email] wrote:
> You often and rightly accuse me of overstating stuff, and I apologize if I am about to do it again.  But I think you are perhaps saying that there are no idiosyncratic experiences?  That an experience, to be an experience, has to be repeated or shared or both.  If so, I think I agree with you.  And a very strident position it would be if that were the position.  I think many humanists would assert that ONLY idiosyncratic experiences are real and that it is upon the uniqueness of individual experience that we must focus.  Hmmm! 
>
> I feel that this thought is a genuine crowbar.
>
> . It's that protocol that carries the knowledge, not the internal experiences or the particular toolchain used to execute the protocol.
>
> Can you pry some more things with it?

--
☣ uǝlƃ

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove

[Marcus G. Daniels]

Glen writes:

< So, I'm along about mile 4 in my 6 mile run, looking up at the moon, plodding along, my body drifts away, and [unsayable somatic, mental, and emotional state obtains] >

I don't think the experience can be conveyed to someone that doesn't exercise to a sufficient intensity, it can only be referenced.

Marcus
 

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove

[Prof David West]

Glen,

Setting is absolutely key. A guide is a definite plus.

Hallucinogen use in cultures that incorporate same, is deeply contextualized in ritual. And it is the ritual that ensures "common" and "repeatable" experience. A visit to the Church of the Vegetal (not their actual name, but anyone in the city could find them by that) in Santa Fe embeds Ayuasca use in a four-six hour ritualistic context — as does any of the myriad places here in NL where you can experience the drug.

I do think that ritual more or less equals the protocol you talk about; and understanding the experience is a function of the protocol.

One of the issues I want to bring up with researchers at CSPR, is the effect/bias/misinterpretation of results when the drugs are taken in a clinical setting instead of the ritualized context that, I think, is essential to understanding the experience.

I don't proselytize, but I have on numerous occasions guided, at their behest, others in "tripping." I do know how to ensure that the experience will fall within certain parameters, even though ultimately determined by individual differences.

The conversation with Brigham was a one off, and came about without prior planning.  My multiple conversations with Hui Neng (6th Patriarch of Zen/Chan Buddhism) have been sufficiently repeatable that I have come to regard him as my personal guru.

I have been watching tourists come into Kokopelli's — a cool head shop in Amsterdam with a lounge area for users of mushrooms (truffles actually) and grass. Those experiencing "bad" trips and/or physical distress are those who are in it for the high and who have little experience. Exactly what you predicted.

davew


On Tue, Mar 10, 2020, at 3:54 PM, uǝlƃ ☣ wrote:

> A search for neurotic in my copy of the DSM V turned up a lot of
> mentions as a "risk factor". But is there a diagnosis? As I understand
> it, they tend to treat everything as a continuum and you only get
> diagnosed if the tendency/trait is bad enough to interfere with regular
> activities ... you know the things normies do. So, you may be a heavy
> drinker, but you're not diagnosed with a dependency until you start
> missing work or black out or somesuch.
>
> My guess would be the *setting* in which one takes a high dose of a
> psychedelic would strongly regulate the impact of neurotic tendencies
> on one's trip. Since I get very antsy in crowds, I'd never load up on
> shrooms or acid and go to a rave or somesuch. But if I had a "guide"
> help me do it in a calm, low density, environment, I'd be all over it.
> The thing that worries me is that my highs always involve lots of work
> ... running, intense concentration, etc. ... more akin to
> Csikszentmihalyi's flow maybe ... I'm not puritanical like Nick. But I
> worry about succumbing to "cheap thrills". My friends from across the
> pond are appalled by my advocacy of hand guns. >8^D But at least one of
> them agrees with me. The difference being that in the US, any idiot can
> walk into a Walmart and buy one, whereas he had to train and be
> certified (somewhat) competent before he could take one home with him.
> Drugs are like guns ... or should be, anyway. The point being that the
> correlation between neuroticism and bad trips mentioned in the article
> *might* simply be the too easily accessed high. The "work for it" part
> can take the place of (or is in the same category as) the *ritual* that
> helps regulate us. So, neurotics might be the most capable of efficient
> use of psychedelics.
>
> On 3/9/20 2:34 PM, Frank Wimberly wrote:
> > Ah.  Neuroticism is something like a tendency to be neurotic.  Neurotic is actually a good diagnosis in psychoanalytic therapy.  It means you're treatable.  Also it's essentially universal so it's a question of degree.
>
> --
> ☣ uǝlƃ
> ============================================================
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
> to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
> archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/
> FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove
>

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove

[gepr]

I disagree, but maybe only because I'm trying to generalize into categories of experience. For example, you can put your body into a ketogenic state (assuming it's not all pseudoscience) by exercising long enough, burning all the available glucose and begin burning ketones. You can do this by running long distances *or* by fasting for long periods. In principle, then, we might be able to achieve the same (or similar) state by 2 methods: intense exercise or intense fasting.

Of course, that doesn't change your basic point, which is akin to Nick's, by saying an experience is somewhat atomic. You can't parse it up such that you can reconstruct it (with language) in another person. You can only reference it and invoke it in another whose had their own (first-hand).

But if the same (or similar) experience can be had by 2 different toolchains, then there's something about that experience that *can* be decomposed and re-assembled elsewhere/elsewhen.

On 3/10/20 10:01 AM, Marcus Daniels wrote:
> I don't think the experience can be conveyed to someone that doesn't exercise to a sufficient intensity, it can only be referenced.


--
☣ uǝlƃ

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove

[Prof David West]

Nick, if you have not read Huxley, you should. It is a small book, well written, and very interesting. He is anti-idiosyncratic experiences.

Transcendental (oh how you hate that word) Humanists would assert that the only real experiences are those that are not idiosyncratic.

davew

On Tue, Mar 10, 2020, at 5:31 PM, [hidden email] wrote:

Glen,

 

Thanks. 

 

You often and rightly accuse me of overstating stuff, and I apologize if I am about to do it again.  But I think you are perhaps saying that there are no idiosyncratic experiences?  That an experience, to be an experience, has to be repeated or shared or both.  If so, I think I agree with you.  And a very strident position it would be if that were the position.  I think many humanists would assert that ONLY idiosyncratic experiences are real and that it is upon the uniqueness of individual experience that we must focus.  Hmmm! 

 

I feel that this thought is a genuine crowbar.

 

. It's that protocol that carries the knowledge, not the internal experiences or the particular toolchain used to execute the protocol.

 

Can you pry some more things with it?

 

Nick

 

Nicholas Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology

Clark University

[hidden email]

https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

 

 

-----Original Message-----

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of u?l? ?

Sent: Tuesday, March 10, 2020 9:19 AM

To: FriAM <[hidden email]>

Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Acid epistemology - Eric Help!!!!

 

Right. I'm not at all bored with your conversation. But, to me, what/how we know things has more to do with *repeated* invocation of thoughts/behaviors, not unitary experiences. Being as "episodic" as I am, any single experience is useless, meaningless nonsense. But a repeated experience acquires meaning. I'm that way with names, too. People tell me their names and I forget them immediately ... even if I use their name repeatedly right after I learn it. But if I meet that person twice, three times, etc., then their name (the word "Bob" or whatever) takes on meaning ... becomes grounded to that person.

 

It seems so silly to talk about epistemology without requiring repeated experiences. A one-off conversation with Brigham Young means nothing. But repeated conversations means something. Granted, it's impossible to treat the Nth experience accumulation without talking about how the 2nd experience accumulates knowledge from the 1st experience. So, accounting for trust transfer from your one-off conversation with BY to another person is important. But what we're really after is the *accumulation*. Consideration of the 1st experience is only in service to consideration of the 1000th or the 10,000th.

 

I suppose we *could* get there by talking about how to predictably *force* Nick to have the same experience you had (of unicorns or whatever). But, again, to do that, we'd have to talk about the science ... controlled manipulation of behavior that has been shown to channel people such that they have some experience. Attributing too much causal influence of the drug (or any particular tool in the toolkit) ignores/discounts the objective, which is the method, the process, the protocol. It's that protocol that carries the knowledge, not the internal experiences or the particular toolchain used to execute the protocol.

On 3/10/20 1:48 AM, Prof David West wrote:

> I don't think bored is a correct term.

>

> More interested in examples and arguments-tied-to-examples that are less fanciful than unicorns.

 

--

☣ uǝlƃ

 

============================================================

FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv

Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com

archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/

FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove

============================================================

FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv

Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College

to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com

archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/

FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove

[Marcus G. Daniels]

Glen writes:

<   I disagree, but maybe only because I'm trying to generalize into categories of experience. For example, you can put your body into a ketogenic state (assuming it's not all pseudoscience) by exercising long enough, burning all the available glucose and begin burning ketones. You can do this by running long distances *or* by fasting for long periods. In principle, then, we might be able to achieve the same (or similar) state by 2 methods: intense exercise or intense fasting. >
 
I don't have reason to think the experience I have in mind has to do with metabolism, because it is relatively consistent whether or not I am glycogen depleted.   30 minutes wouldn't be enough to do that.   30 minutes is about what it takes to be comfortable, e.g. stable thermal regulation.

Marcus

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove

[thompnickson2]

Glen --

Perhaps we should call those "insperiences".  

N

Nicholas Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology
Clark University
[hidden email]
https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/
 


-----Original Message-----
From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of u?l? ?
Sent: Tuesday, March 10, 2020 10:55 AM
To: FriAM <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Acid epistemology - Eric Help!!!!

Interesting. I don't think I'd say that a unique experience is not an experience. But I would say than a unique experience is not knowledge of any kind. The trick to this position would be that, when one has a unique experience, one then fiddles with it in order to think about it further or tell it to some other person.

So, I'm along about mile 4 in my 6 mile run, looking up at the moon, plodding along, my body drifts away, and [unsayable somatic, mental, and emotional state obtains] ... then that state fades away when I have to dodge a car or stop at an intersection. Now, when I go to tell Renee' *about* that state within brackets above [...], I have to couch it in my private lexicon and then translate it from my lexicon to hers. So even though [...] may have been unique, the post-processing (couching in my lexicon, translating into hers) has been done before. The post-processing is a repeated/repeating process. This means we can become confused about which part of the _experience_ is unique and which part is repeated.

Regardless, if you cannot *tell* someone about an experience. And you can't even recall it well enough to internally tell yourself about it, then it's meaningless. The only experience that has any meaning at all is an experience that is repeatable enough so you can at least remember it. Remembering is repeating to some extent. And when you guys have this discussion *without* addressing repetition or accumulation (as you've written off regarding experience composition), then I can't see AT ALL how it's in any way related to epistemology.

On 3/10/20 9:31 AM, [hidden email] wrote:
> You often and rightly accuse me of overstating stuff, and I apologize
> if I am about to do it again.  But I think you are perhaps saying that there are no idiosyncratic experiences?  That an experience, to be an experience, has to be repeated or shared or both.  If so, I think I agree with you.  And a very strident position it would be if that were the position.  I think many humanists would assert that ONLY idiosyncratic experiences are real and that it is upon the uniqueness of individual experience that we must focus.  Hmmm!
>
> I feel that this thought is a genuine crowbar.
>
> . It's that protocol that carries the knowledge, not the internal experiences or the particular toolchain used to execute the protocol.
>
> Can you pry some more things with it?

--
☣ uǝlƃ

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove


============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove

[gepr]

Well, there are 2 issues with mapping the experience you have in mind with the one I have in mind. First, I run in a fasted state, having not eaten since the night before ... so about 12 hours fasted at the minimum. Second, depleting glycogen from the muscle is different from fully depleting the liver, which is why HIIT works. I didn't really do HIIT very often. But I did always start and finish with sprints, with a long steady run in between.

But those details shouldn't prevent you from grokking the gist. To change the experience being referenced, there are many ways to become, say, hypercalcemic. But the experiences of being hypercalcemic should be similar. And given the myriad compensation mechanisms the body has to regulate calcium, if hypercalcemia can be considered knowledge, what matters is the comparisons between the various protocols by which we cause a person to enter the state. The state itself isn't knowledge. But the paths to the state (and out of the state) are.

On 3/10/20 11:15 AM, Marcus Daniels wrote:
> I don't have reason to think the experience I have in mind has to do with metabolism, because it is relatively consistent whether or not I am glycogen depleted.   30 minutes wouldn't be enough to do that.   30 minutes is about what it takes to be comfortable, e.g. stable thermal regulation.


--
☣ uǝlƃ

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove

[Marcus G. Daniels]

Glen writes:

< Second, depleting glycogen from the muscle is different from fully depleting the liver, which is why HIIT works. I didn't really do HIIT very often. But I did always start and finish with sprints, with a long steady run in between. >

A different experience is a hard bonk followed by sugar.   That is an almost thrilling reboot experience.   The grounding in experience that the body can change state that rapidly is much more compelling than reading it in a book.

Marcus

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove