capitalism vs. individualism

[gepr]

Herein lies the monist rub. If types of things are the same as things of type, then why do we have 2 words: "thing" and "type"? Why not just have one word: "thing"? The same is true of "kind" vs. "type". Or any 2 words you might choose at random from the dictionary. So, we all turn into "enlightened" people and go around mumbling "mu" all the time.

My answer, of course, is methodological pluralism. It's pragmatic to allow different types, to distinguish one thing from another. And that's the end of the hand-wringing. 8^) Sure, if you can partially unify things in order to make some task simpler/better (e.g. inducing patterns into causal graphs to stress test markets), fine. Do your partial unification. But moderation in all things (including moderation) ... except beer consumption, which cannot be moderated!

On 11/17/19 7:17 AM, Steven A Smith wrote:
>      "There are two kinds of people.  Those who believe there are an
> irrational number of types of things, and those who don't."

On 11/17/19 7:31 AM, Frank Wimberly wrote:
> Yes, I meant to say including the types type.

On 11/17/19 7:40 AM, Frank Wimberly wrote:
> Hywel was an experimental particle physicist and a regular Friam attendee.
> He had been a professor at Penn and Cornell and a group leader at Los
> Alamos.  Once he said to me, "the number one does not exist".  He meant
> that there is nothing that is precisely one centimeter long, for example.
> I asked him, "How many biological mothers did you have?"  I don't have
> enough time to repeat his answer.


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[Steve Smith]

I never met Hywel myself, but the stories of him are always apocryphal...  someday I expect all of the stories referencing Mulla Nasruden to reappear with Hywel as the central character.

On 11/17/19 8:40 AM, Frank Wimberly wrote:

Hywel was an experimental particle physicist and a regular Friam attendee.  He had been a professor at Penn and Cornell and a group leader at Los Alamos.  Once he said to me, "the number one does not exist".  He meant that there is nothing that is precisely one centimeter long, for example.  I asked him, "How many biological mothers did you have?"  I don't have enough time to repeat his answer.

Frank 

On Sun, Nov 17, 2019, 8:31 AM Frank Wimberly <[hidden email]> wrote:

Yes, I meant to say including the types type.

On Sun, Nov 17, 2019, 8:02 AM glen∈ℂ <[hidden email]> wrote:

I don't know this Hywel person. But number of things of a type is different from number of types of thing. 8^) Unless types of a thing are also things of a type. Channeling a modern teenager: That's so meta, dude.

On 11/17/19 6:55 AM, Frank Wimberly wrote:
> Channeling Hywel, I hope accurately: There is no irrational number of
> things of any type in the Universe


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[gepr]

Oops. I meant to include a link to this: https://youtu.be/yL_-1d9OSdk

On 11/17/19 7:48 AM, glen∈ℂ wrote:
> So, we all turn into "enlightened" people and go around mumbling "mu" all the time.

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[Nick Thompson]

Glen,

Hywel was Welch born particle physicist who came to rest at Los Alamos.  He
was a dedicated attender of the Mother Church, even though he thought we
were all as silly as hens.  His most famous line was, "It's more complicated
than that" and out would come the pad of paper and the elegant pen and we
would all be subjected to particle diagrams with Greek-lettered thisses and
thatses flying off in various directions.  He loved to taunt the
mathematicians in the group with "Mathematics is ok but eventually you have
to know something."  He was a climate skeptic. He died a couple of years
back.  We miss him terribly, perhaps BECAUSE he drove us crazy.  

Nick

Nicholas S. Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology
Clark University
http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

-----Original Message-----
From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of glen?C
Sent: Sunday, November 17, 2019 8:02 AM
To: [hidden email]
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] flattening -isms

I don't know this Hywel person. But number of things of a type is different
from number of types of thing. 8^) Unless types of a thing are also things
of a type. Channeling a modern teenager: That's so meta, dude.

On 11/17/19 6:55 AM, Frank Wimberly wrote:
> Channeling Hywel, I hope accurately: There is no irrational number of
> things of any type in the Universe


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[Nick Thompson]

Glen, Dave,

Gosh.  So Stuff of Stuff and plain old stuff are different stuffs?  So Nick
Thompson is a dualist?  

Damn!  

Perhaps to maintain my monism I  have to become an "of" monist.  It's "of's"
all the way down.

Nick

Nicholas S. Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology
Clark University
http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/


-----Original Message-----
From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of glen?C
Sent: Sunday, November 17, 2019 8:49 AM
To: [hidden email]
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] flattening -isms

Herein lies the monist rub. If types of things are the same as things of
type, then why do we have 2 words: "thing" and "type"? Why not just have one
word: "thing"? The same is true of "kind" vs. "type". Or any 2 words you
might choose at random from the dictionary. So, we all turn into
"enlightened" people and go around mumbling "mu" all the time.

My answer, of course, is methodological pluralism. It's pragmatic to allow
different types, to distinguish one thing from another. And that's the end
of the hand-wringing. 8^) Sure, if you can partially unify things in order
to make some task simpler/better (e.g. inducing patterns into causal graphs
to stress test markets), fine. Do your partial unification. But moderation
in all things (including moderation) ... except beer consumption, which
cannot be moderated!

On 11/17/19 7:17 AM, Steven A Smith wrote:
>      "There are two kinds of people.  Those who believe there are an
> irrational number of types of things, and those who don't."

On 11/17/19 7:31 AM, Frank Wimberly wrote:
> Yes, I meant to say including the types type.

On 11/17/19 7:40 AM, Frank Wimberly wrote:
> Hywel was an experimental particle physicist and a regular Friam attendee.
> He had been a professor at Penn and Cornell and a group leader at Los
> Alamos.  Once he said to me, "the number one does not exist".  He
> meant that there is nothing that is precisely one centimeter long, for
example.
> I asked him, "How many biological mothers did you have?"  I don't have
> enough time to repeat his answer.


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[Nick Thompson]

Steve,

 

Apparently the modern definition of apocryphal is “widely circulated though probably untrue” .  Nothing that we have said about Hywel (so far) is untrue.  We need a word for “widely circulated and true”.  Notorious? 

 

As you know, I love etymology.  Here from etymology on line:

 

apocrypha (n.)

late 14c., Apocrifa, in reference to the apocryphal books of the Bible, from Late Latin apocrypha (scripta), from neuter plural of apocryphus "secret, not approved for public reading," from Greek apokryphos "hidden; obscure, hard to understand," thus "(books) of unknown authorship" (especially those included in the Septuagint and Vulgate but not originally written in Hebrew and not counted as genuine by the Jews), from apo "off, away" (see apo-) + kryptein "to hide" (see crypt).

Non-Biblical sense "writing of doubtful authorship or authenticity" is from 1735. Properly plural (the single would be Apocryphon or apocryphum), but commonly treated as a collective singular.

Nick

 

 

Nicholas S. Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology

Clark University

http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

 

From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Steven A Smith
Sent: Sunday, November 17, 2019 8:56 AM
To: [hidden email]
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] flattening -isms

 

I never met Hywel myself, but the stories of him are always apocryphal...  someday I expect all of the stories referencing Mulla Nasruden to reappear with Hywel as the central character.

On 11/17/19 8:40 AM, Frank Wimberly wrote:

Hywel was an experimental particle physicist and a regular Friam attendee.  He had been a professor at Penn and Cornell and a group leader at Los Alamos.  Once he said to me, "the number one does not exist".  He meant that there is nothing that is precisely one centimeter long, for example.  I asked him, "How many biological mothers did you have?"  I don't have enough time to repeat his answer.

 

Frank 

-----------------------------------
Frank Wimberly

My memoir:
https://www.amazon.com/author/frankwimberly

My scientific publications:
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Frank_Wimberly2

Phone [phone]

 

On Sun, Nov 17, 2019, 8:31 AM Frank Wimberly <[hidden email]> wrote:

Yes, I meant to say including the types type.

-----------------------------------
Frank Wimberly

My memoir:
https://www.amazon.com/author/frankwimberly

My scientific publications:
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Frank_Wimberly2

Phone [phone]

 

On Sun, Nov 17, 2019, 8:02 AM glen∈ℂ <[hidden email]> wrote:

I don't know this Hywel person. But number of things of a type is different from number of types of thing. 8^) Unless types of a thing are also things of a type. Channeling a modern teenager: That's so meta, dude.

On 11/17/19 6:55 AM, Frank Wimberly wrote:
> Channeling Hywel, I hope accurately: There is no irrational number of
> things of any type in the Universe


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[gepr]

My guess is you're a methodological pluralist just like the rest of us.

The trick is that monism is moot. Even *if* all things are somehow organizations of experience, to be pragmatic, you have to be able to *generate* 2 seemingly different things (like your experience vs. my experience) by different organizations (or timelines, or historical ephemerides, or iterations, or embeddings, or whatever). And so even if there is only 1 stuff, there must be different ways of organizing the stuff. So, there's, literally, no point in making a big stink about the 1 stuff. Multiplicities will *always* creep in. So, monism is one of: tautological, false, or useless, perhaps all three!

Worst case, if we can't *show* (i.e. actually *do* it) how the 1 stuff is differently organized into different things and are only left with the different things, then reality may as well *be* pluralist because saying it's not is pure fideism/imputation/speculation and does no explanatory or predictive work.

String theory and loop quantum gravity are *trying* to show how to construct multiple stuff from singular stuff. So, they're setting the bar pretty high. If you want to be a monist, why not work on those?

On 11/17/19 8:42 AM, Nick Thompson wrote:> Gosh.  So Stuff of Stuff and plain old stuff are different stuffs?  So Nick
> Thompson is a dualist?
>
> Damn!
>
> Perhaps to maintain my monism I  have to become an "of" monist.  It's "of's"
> all the way down.

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[Nick Thompson]

Thanks, Glen, and Dave,

 

Well, I should have conceded this point long ago:  of course I am a èmethodological ç pluralist.  There are many ways to skin a cat. 

 

Years ago I participated in a longrunning forum on Research Gate on Philosophy of Science run by an Iranian intellectual who was putting some of the great texts of western science into Persian so they would be more widely read in Iran.  My colleagues in this forum were mostly an odd lot of physicists.  What struck me about them was how many of them held the view that reality was beyond experience: i.e., that our experience provided clues to reality, but the thing itself was beyond experience.  I never could convince them that that their belief in a reality beyond experience had to be based on … experience.  So, why not be monists, and talk about organizations of experience.  Ultimately, it was their dualism that confirmed me in my monism.

 

I am serious about your forcing me to become an “of” monist.  Everything is relations; it’s relations all the way down.  So the turtles are themselves relations.  To the inevitable “what about the first relation: what was that a relation of?” I will only say, “The limiting case is never a particularly interesting one; I will worry about it when I have explained all the others.”  (I do not understand the complexity theorists’ passion for explaining “first life”, for instance, or psychologists who tie themselves in knots over the “dawn” of consciousness.”  To worry so intensely over origins when there is so much other work to be done is an implicit caving to Christian theology.  We pragmatists, we begin in the middle.

 

So you force me to admit that even if I declare my allegiance to “of” monism, I have immediately to admit that there are different kinds of “of’s”.  So EVERY monist is a pluralist at the next level up.  So why am I suddenly stuck on the monist origin story?  Ach.  Hoist by my own petard. 

 

By the way, speaking of etymology, to be hoist by one’s own petard is to be ejected from one’s own saddle by the force of one’s own fart.  Look it up.

 

By the way, speaking of Clifford Geertz, here is the original quote:

 

“There is an Indian story -- at least I heard it as an Indian story -- about an Englishman who, having been told that the world rested on a platform which rested on the back of an elephant which rested in turn on the back of a turtle, asked (perhaps he was an ethnographer; it is the way they behave), what did the turtle rest on? Another turtle. And that turtle? 'Ah, Sahib, after that it is turtles all the way down”
― Clifford Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures.

 

By the way, Geertz is probably the locus classicus of the relativism I deplore. 

 

Nick

Nicholas S. Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology

Clark University

http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

 

 

-----Original Message-----
From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of glen?C
Sent: Sunday, November 17, 2019 10:25 AM
To: [hidden email]
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] flattening -isms

 

My guess is you're a methodological pluralist just like the rest of us.

 

The trick is that monism is moot. Even *if* all things are somehow organizations of experience, to be pragmatic, you have to be able to *generate* 2 seemingly different things (like your experience vs. my experience) by different organizations (or timelines, or historical ephemerides, or iterations, or embeddings, or whatever). And so even if there is only 1 stuff, there must be different ways of organizing the stuff. So, there's, literally, no point in making a big stink about the 1 stuff. Multiplicities will *always* creep in. So, monism is one of: tautological, false, or useless, perhaps all three!

 

Worst case, if we can't *show* (i.e. actually *do* it) how the 1 stuff is differently organized into different things and are only left with the different things, then reality may as well *be* pluralist because saying it's not is pure fideism/imputation/speculation and does no explanatory or predictive work.

 

String theory and loop quantum gravity are *trying* to show how to construct multiple stuff from singular stuff. So, they're setting the bar pretty high. If you want to be a monist, why not work on those?

 

On 11/17/19 8:42 AM, Nick Thompson wrote:> Gosh.  So Stuff of Stuff and plain old stuff are different stuffs?  So Nick

> Thompson is a dualist?

>

> Damn!

>

> Perhaps to maintain my monism I  have to become an "of" monist.  It's "of's"

> all the way down.

 

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[Steve Smith]

On 11/17/19 10:01 AM, Nick Thompson wrote:

Steve,

 

Apparently the modern definition of apocryphal is “widely circulated though probably untrue” .  Nothing that we have said about Hywel (so far) is untrue.  We need a word for “widely circulated and true”.  Notorious? 

My working definition of "apocryphal" is that such stories carry a kind of transcendent Truth, independent of the literal and specific truths.    I didn't intend to impugne Hywel's reputation in any way, but rather to acknowledge the reverence held in "the Mother Church".   I suspect that some day there will be a similar reverence held for other regular posters here... perhaps in some circles that reverence is already being circulated...    

I would also claim, appealing to the etymology you included, that references to Hywel are are often vague in the sense that the teller of the story seems to really claim to understand Hywel's pronouncements, that they were all somehow "beyond the ken of common man"?

Speaking of "the Mother Church",  my partner's son treated us to a an evening with "Joe Bob Briggs", explaining to the Austin Film Society "how Rednecks Saved Hollywood".   All other nonsense aside, he gave a credible history of Rednecks, starting with the Scots-Irish from the Cumberland region of northern England (as well as the eastern tip of northern Ireland), and the Cumberland Presbyterians.   My own hillbilly relatives (radiating from my parents who moved west in 1949) from KY pay homage to that heritage in spite of most all of the geneology offered to me named German, Polish and northern Scots immigration.   What struck me most strongly in Briggs' story was the story that Cumberland Presbyterians did not have "churches", they had "meeting houses" in a similar fashion to the Quakers, not believing that any man held a higher station or was more able to talk to God than any other (I don't know how that translates to women?).  

 

As you know, I love etymology.  Here from etymology on line:

 

apocrypha (n.)

late 14c., Apocrifa, in reference to the apocryphal books of the Bible, from Late Latin apocrypha (scripta), from neuter plural of apocryphus "secret, not approved for public reading," from Greek apokryphos "hidden; obscure, hard to understand," thus "(books) of unknown authorship" (especially those included in the Septuagint and Vulgate but not originally written in Hebrew and not counted as genuine by the Jews), from apo "off, away" (see apo-) + kryptein "to hide" (see crypt).

Non-Biblical sense "writing of doubtful authorship or authenticity" is from 1735. Properly plural (the single would be Apocryphon or apocryphum), but commonly treated as a collective singular.

Nick

 

 

Nicholas S. Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology

Clark University

http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

 

From: Friam [[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Steven A Smith
Sent: Sunday, November 17, 2019 8:56 AM
To: [hidden email]
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] flattening -isms

 

I never met Hywel myself, but the stories of him are always apocryphal...  someday I expect all of the stories referencing Mulla Nasruden to reappear with Hywel as the central character.

On 11/17/19 8:40 AM, Frank Wimberly wrote:

Hywel was an experimental particle physicist and a regular Friam attendee.  He had been a professor at Penn and Cornell and a group leader at Los Alamos.  Once he said to me, "the number one does not exist".  He meant that there is nothing that is precisely one centimeter long, for example.  I asked him, "How many biological mothers did you have?"  I don't have enough time to repeat his answer.

 

Frank 

-----------------------------------
Frank Wimberly

My memoir:
https://www.amazon.com/author/frankwimberly

My scientific publications:
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Frank_Wimberly2

Phone [phone]

 

On Sun, Nov 17, 2019, 8:31 AM Frank Wimberly <[hidden email]> wrote:

Yes, I meant to say including the types type.

-----------------------------------
Frank Wimberly

My memoir:
https://www.amazon.com/author/frankwimberly

My scientific publications:
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Frank_Wimberly2

Phone [phone]

 

On Sun, Nov 17, 2019, 8:02 AM glen∈ℂ <[hidden email]> wrote:

I don't know this Hywel person. But number of things of a type is different from number of types of thing. 8^) Unless types of a thing are also things of a type. Channeling a modern teenager: That's so meta, dude.

On 11/17/19 6:55 AM, Frank Wimberly wrote:
> Channeling Hywel, I hope accurately: There is no irrational number of
> things of any type in the Universe


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[Steve Smith]

I prefer the loose interpretation of Heraclitus' "Life is Flux, all else
is Opinion".    Heraclitus was a material monist (fire being the
substance all other "things" are somehow derived of...  possibly
presaging the E/M unity as elaborated for us by Einstein)

> My guess is you're a methodological pluralist just like the rest of us.
>
> The trick is that monism is moot. Even *if* all things are somehow
> organizations of experience, to be pragmatic, you have to be able to
> *generate* 2 seemingly different things (like your experience vs. my
> experience) by different organizations (or timelines, or historical
> ephemerides, or iterations, or embeddings, or whatever). And so even
> if there is only 1 stuff, there must be different ways of organizing
> the stuff. So, there's, literally, no point in making a big stink
> about the 1 stuff. Multiplicities will *always* creep in. So, monism
> is one of: tautological, false, or useless, perhaps all three!
>
> Worst case, if we can't *show* (i.e. actually *do* it) how the 1 stuff
> is differently organized into different things and are only left with
> the different things, then reality may as well *be* pluralist because
> saying it's not is pure fideism/imputation/speculation and does no
> explanatory or predictive work.
>
> String theory and loop quantum gravity are *trying* to show how to
> construct multiple stuff from singular stuff. So, they're setting the
> bar pretty high. If you want to be a monist, why not work on those?
>
> On 11/17/19 8:42 AM, Nick Thompson wrote:> Gosh.  So Stuff of Stuff
> and plain old stuff are different stuffs?  So Nick
>> Thompson is a dualist?
>>
>> Damn!
>>
>> Perhaps to maintain my monism I  have to become an "of" monist.  It's
>> "of's"
>> all the way down.
>
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[Steve Smith]

By the way, speaking of etymology, to be hoist by one’s own petard is to be ejected from one’s own saddle by the force of one’s own fart.  Look it up.

And I grew up thinking it was a fancy way of saying "lift oneself by their own bootstraps" which was paradoxically both a physical impossibility yet somehow touted as the highest aspiration. 

I suspect it is actually petards, not turtles, all the way down!

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[Prof David West]

Steve,

Previously, I noted: "Asserting that all is interpretation is an invitation to engage in a conversation about "meaning" or "reality" from a level playing field — i.e. absent any grant of privilege to one interpretation over another; and, any expectation that somewhere, somehow, even the most consensual and widely shared interpretation can, or will, morph into some kind of "fact" or "truth."

Both axiomatic statements and "self-evident truths" (Declaration of Independence) are consensual assumptions about an interpretation; an agreement that said statements are reasonably "correct" and sufficiently shared among ourselves, that we can use them as starting points for conversations about "reality" (e.g. constants like e, c, and i, or relationships like E= M times Csquared) or the "meaning" of something (e.g what it is to be self governing).

Conversations, so begun, can weave a tapestry of interpretation that can be wonderfully useful, deeply enriching, psychologically comforting, socially beneficial, technologically advancing, etc.

Problems, inevitable it seems, arise when it is forgotten that both the axioms and the tapestry remain interpretations — interpretations shared only by some, not all; interpretations, not fact, not truth.

davew

On Fri, Nov 15, 2019, at 4:13 PM, Steven A Smith wrote:

Where does our resident hermeneuticist fit in the two following ideas?

1. Axiomatic Statements
   
2. The preamble of the US Constitution ("we hold these truths to be self-evident")
   

       

On 11/15/19 6:53 AM, Prof David West wrote:

Nick mentioned earlier a concern about relativist talk in this thread. and Eric is using the term in his post. Lest hermeneuticism — a position I have been advocating — be confused/conflated with relativism (perhaps an unfounded fear), I wish to note the following:

Hermeneutics (intellectual genealogy in previous post) asserts that all is interpretation. A corollary of that assertion is there are no "facts," no objective truths. A second corollary: there are no grounds to "privilege" one interpretation over another. (The point of deconstruction is, simply, exposure of the chain of interpretations and the reasons that they were adopted over alternatives.)

A hermeneuticist would not assert that "competence-incompetence, stupid-smart" lack tangible meaning. Nor would they say that "no point of view (interpretation) is better than another. Of course, "better" is a matter of interpretation.

Asserting that all is interpretation is an invitation to engage in a conversation about "meaning" or "reality" from a level playing field — i.e. absent any grant of privilege to one interpretation over another; and, any expectation that somewhere, somehow, even the most consensual and widely shared interpretation can, or will, morph into some kind of "fact" or "truth."

davew

On Fri, Nov 15, 2019, at 12:47 PM, Eric Charles wrote:

" A nihilist might adopt a campaign slogan like Any Functioning Adult 2020, because the truly objectionable things are incompetence and stupidity. "

But there's the rub in this conversation. "Any Functioning Adult 2020" could be intended as a joke, pointing out that the current president is so incompetent that literally any functional adult would be better. OR, it could be a low-level nihilistic joke, made by someone who knows full well there are no functional adults in the race, and even if there were that person wouldn't be elected, and we are all going to die meaningless deaths no matter who wins. (I imagine that is what it sounds like translated into Russian, based on my deep love of Dostoevsky). BUT, neither of those positions is a relativist. 

The relativist asserts that competence-incompetence and stupid-smart have no tangible meaning.  

Who is competent and who isn't? Eh, it depends on your point of view, and no point of view is better than another. The designation of "competence" is a colonialist activity providing illusory justification for the marginalization already oppressed groups, and while it has a valence, it has no basis in "reality" (i.e., it is bad, you should stop doing it, and you should deeply hate yourself for ever having had done it). To label the president as incompetent is to inappropriately invalidate his way of being in the world; ways of being are all equally valid. 

Who is stupid and who isn't? Eh, it depends on your point of view, and no point of view is better than another.....

If you believe that SOME people ARE competent and/or smart, then you can't be a relativist. If you believe there is still some chance that competent and smart people can make a difference, you are not a nihilist. 

Old Soviet Joke: A man walks into a shop and asks, "You wouldn't happen to have any fish, would you?". The shop assistant replies, "You've got it wrong – ours is a butcher's shop. We don't have any meat. You're looking for the fish shop across the road. There they don't have any fish!"

On Fri, Nov 15, 2019 at 12:13 AM Marcus Daniels <[hidden email]> wrote:

Nick writes:

 

< What I see in much relativism is not fallibilism, which I endorse, but nihilistic fatalism**, which I deplore.  I am not sure I can argue either  for my endorsement OR my condemnation, but them’s my values.  Nihilistic fatalism is endorsed opportunistically by people like Putin because, while they themselves are planning for the “inevitable” collapse, they are arguing that there is no future in planning.  >

 

IThere can be goals without ideology.  I think a nihilist would also have to agree there is also no harm in one value system stomping on another value system since they are both just value systems and so impoverished and arbitrary.    In that spirit, a progressive can be a nihilist simply to collect a partial ordering of different kinds of premises that serve one defined purpose or another, without taking those purposes too seriously.   A nihilist might adopt a campaign slogan like Any Functioning Adult 2020, because the truly objectionable things are incompetence and stupidity.

 

Marcus

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[Prof David West]

Nick said:

"What struck me about them was how many of them held the view that reality was beyond experience: i.e., that our experience provided clues to reality, but the thing itself was beyond experience.  I never could convince them that that their belief in a reality beyond experience had to be based on … experience.  So, why not be monists, and talk about organizations of experience.  Ultimately, it was their dualism that confirmed me in my monism."

How about an assertion that there is A Reality beyond "ordinary" experience; with "ordinary experience" being the half-dozen or so overt sensory inputs (sight, sound, balance, touch, taste, smell)  we typically associate with experience.

Given a different set of inputs — e.g. emotions, hallucinations, visions, dreams — must we assume that we are still experiencing the same Reality as that experienced with overt sensory inputs; or, is the door open to an alternative Reality even if Reality-A and Reality-B have significant but not total congruence? We are still experiencing, so your experiential monism is intact, but Reality is dualist/pluralist.

Or, suppose there are a set of inputs, of the same Reality, that are not included in the overt set (sight, taste, et. al.). Previously it was noted that the eye can detect a single photon (and we can "sense" other quantum level phenomena). You asserted that such sensory inputs would be "lost in the noise" of the functioning organism and hence are not "experienced." Is this not a case of a detectable/sensible Reality beyond experience?

A corollary: can there be "experiences" — a set of stimulus-response pairs — not included in the overt senses, and not describable in ordinary language? Obviously, I am talking about "mystical" experiences such as "being in the zone" or lower-case s, satori, or even upper-case s, Satori (aka enlightenment). It is important to note that these are stimulus-response events, not necessarily "experiences;" as experience, in ordinary language, necessarily implies an experience-r, and in the examples I am thinking about, there is no "I" and hence no experience-r.

AND,

"By the way, Geertz is probably the locus classicus of the relativism I deplore."

Sir! Them's fightin words!!!

But I forgive you, as you clearly misunderstand Geertz (one of my personal heroes). Nothing he says is "relativist." His observations and conclusions are, however, hermeneutic. Geertz merely points out a fact — there are no cross cultural universals (except one, that I will get to in just a moment), nor are there any "objective" criteria for asserting primacy or privilege of one culture over another. From this comes an indictment of ethnocentrism as one culture stating that "obviously" our values, our ways of doing things, our worldview, our customs ... are superior to yours, correct while yours are erroneous, etc.

Hermeneuticism is NOT relativism.

The one cultural universal: every culture (obviously not every individual in every culture) incorporates a belief in the "supernatural." In all but, maybe, 2-3, cultures the "supernatural" includes an alternative realm of existence (pre- and/or after-life or "other planes."  The, interpretations of this universal are multiple - pretty much one per culture/subculture.

davew

On Sun, Nov 17, 2019, at 8:27 PM, Nick Thompson wrote:

Thanks, Glen, and Dave,

 

Well, I should have conceded this point long ago:  of course I am a èmethodological ç pluralist.  There are many ways to skin a cat. 

 

Years ago I participated in a longrunning forum on Research Gate on Philosophy of Science run by an Iranian intellectual who was putting some of the great texts of western science into Persian so they would be more widely read in Iran.  My colleagues in this forum were mostly an odd lot of physicists.  What struck me about them was how many of them held the view that reality was beyond experience: i.e., that our experience provided clues to reality, but the thing itself was beyond experience.  I never could convince them that that their belief in a reality beyond experience had to be based on … experience.  So, why not be monists, and talk about organizations of experience.  Ultimately, it was their dualism that confirmed me in my monism.

 

I am serious about your forcing me to become an “of” monist.  Everything is relations; it’s relations all the way down.  So the turtles are themselves relations.  To the inevitable “what about the first relation: what was that a relation of?” I will only say, “The limiting case is never a particularly interesting one; I will worry about it when I have explained all the others.”  (I do not understand the complexity theorists’ passion for explaining “first life”, for instance, or psychologists who tie themselves in knots over the “dawn” of consciousness.”  To worry so intensely over origins when there is so much other work to be done is an implicit caving to Christian theology.  We pragmatists, we begin in the middle.

 

So you force me to admit that even if I declare my allegiance to “of” monism, I have immediately to admit that there are different kinds of “of’s”.  So EVERY monist is a pluralist at the next level up.  So why am I suddenly stuck on the monist origin story?  Ach.  Hoist by my own petard. 

 

By the way, speaking of etymology, to be hoist by one’s own petard is to be ejected from one’s own saddle by the force of one’s own fart.  Look it up.

 

By the way, speaking of Clifford Geertz, here is the original quote:

 

“There is an Indian story -- at least I heard it as an Indian story -- about an Englishman who, having been told that the world rested on a platform which rested on the back of an elephant which rested in turn on the back of a turtle, asked (perhaps he was an ethnographer; it is the way they behave), what did the turtle rest on? Another turtle. And that turtle? 'Ah, Sahib, after that it is turtles all the way down”

― Clifford Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures.

 

By the way, Geertz is probably the locus classicus of the relativism I deplore. 

 

Nick

Nicholas S. Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology

Clark University

http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

 

 

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

From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of glen?C

Sent: Sunday, November 17, 2019 10:25 AM

To: [hidden email]

Subject: Re: [FRIAM] flattening -isms

 

My guess is you're a methodological pluralist just like the rest of us.

 

The trick is that monism is moot. Even *if* all things are somehow organizations of experience, to be pragmatic, you have to be able to *generate* 2 seemingly different things (like your experience vs. my experience) by different organizations (or timelines, or historical ephemerides, or iterations, or embeddings, or whatever). And so even if there is only 1 stuff, there must be different ways of organizing the stuff. So, there's, literally, no point in making a big stink about the 1 stuff. Multiplicities will *always* creep in. So, monism is one of: tautological, false, or useless, perhaps all three!

 

Worst case, if we can't *show* (i.e. actually *do* it) how the 1 stuff is differently organized into different things and are only left with the different things, then reality may as well *be* pluralist because saying it's not is pure fideism/imputation/speculation and does no explanatory or predictive work.

 

String theory and loop quantum gravity are *trying* to show how to construct multiple stuff from singular stuff. So, they're setting the bar pretty high. If you want to be a monist, why not work on those?

 

On 11/17/19 8:42 AM, Nick Thompson wrote:> Gosh.  So Stuff of Stuff and plain old stuff are different stuffs?  So Nick

> Thompson is a dualist?

>

> Damn!

>

> Perhaps to maintain my monism I  have to become an "of" monist.  It's "of's"

> all the way down.

 

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[Marcus G. Daniels]

Dave writes:

< Geertz merely points out a fact — there are no cross cultural universals (except one, that I will get to in just a moment), nor are there any "objective" criteria for asserting primacy or privilege of one culture over another. From this comes an indictment of ethnocentrism as one culture stating that "obviously" our values, our ways of doing things, our worldview, our customs ... are superior to yours, correct while yours are erroneous, etc. >

It is not an indictment of ethnocentrism.   If one culture displaces another, that is just what happens; it is the law of the jungle.  There are consequences to the actions that come from cultural norms.  Those cultures that encourage, say, above replacement rate fertility will likely contribute to global warming.    That's a measurable thing that impacts all cultures on Earth.

Marcus

---

From: Friam <[hidden email]> on behalf of Prof David West <[hidden email]>
Sent: Monday, November 18, 2019 5:13 AM
To: [hidden email] <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] flattening -isms

 

Nick said:

"What struck me about them was how many of them held the view that reality was beyond experience: i.e., that our experience provided clues to reality, but the thing itself was beyond experience.  I never could convince them that that their belief in a reality beyond experience had to be based on … experience.  So, why not be monists, and talk about organizations of experience.  Ultimately, it was their dualism that confirmed me in my monism."

How about an assertion that there is A Reality beyond "ordinary" experience; with "ordinary experience" being the half-dozen or so overt sensory inputs (sight, sound, balance, touch, taste, smell)  we typically associate with experience.

Given a different set of inputs — e.g. emotions, hallucinations, visions, dreams — must we assume that we are still experiencing the same Reality as that experienced with overt sensory inputs; or, is the door open to an alternative Reality even if Reality-A and Reality-B have significant but not total congruence? We are still experiencing, so your experiential monism is intact, but Reality is dualist/pluralist.

Or, suppose there are a set of inputs, of the same Reality, that are not included in the overt set (sight, taste, et. al.). Previously it was noted that the eye can detect a single photon (and we can "sense" other quantum level phenomena). You asserted that such sensory inputs would be "lost in the noise" of the functioning organism and hence are not "experienced." Is this not a case of a detectable/sensible Reality beyond experience?

A corollary: can there be "experiences" — a set of stimulus-response pairs — not included in the overt senses, and not describable in ordinary language? Obviously, I am talking about "mystical" experiences such as "being in the zone" or lower-case s, satori, or even upper-case s, Satori (aka enlightenment). It is important to note that these are stimulus-response events, not necessarily "experiences;" as experience, in ordinary language, necessarily implies an experience-r, and in the examples I am thinking about, there is no "I" and hence no experience-r.

AND,

"By the way, Geertz is probably the locus classicus of the relativism I deplore."

Sir! Them's fightin words!!!

But I forgive you, as you clearly misunderstand Geertz (one of my personal heroes). Nothing he says is "relativist." His observations and conclusions are, however, hermeneutic. Geertz merely points out a fact — there are no cross cultural universals (except one, that I will get to in just a moment), nor are there any "objective" criteria for asserting primacy or privilege of one culture over another. From this comes an indictment of ethnocentrism as one culture stating that "obviously" our values, our ways of doing things, our worldview, our customs ... are superior to yours, correct while yours are erroneous, etc.

Hermeneuticism is NOT relativism.

The one cultural universal: every culture (obviously not every individual in every culture) incorporates a belief in the "supernatural." In all but, maybe, 2-3, cultures the "supernatural" includes an alternative realm of existence (pre- and/or after-life or "other planes."  The, interpretations of this universal are multiple - pretty much one per culture/subculture.

davew

On Sun, Nov 17, 2019, at 8:27 PM, Nick Thompson wrote:

Thanks, Glen, and Dave,

 

Well, I should have conceded this point long ago:  of course I am a èmethodological ç pluralist.  There are many ways to skin a cat. 

 

Years ago I participated in a longrunning forum on Research Gate on Philosophy of Science run by an Iranian intellectual who was putting some of the great texts of western science into Persian so they would be more widely read in Iran.  My colleagues in this forum were mostly an odd lot of physicists.  What struck me about them was how many of them held the view that reality was beyond experience: i.e., that our experience provided clues to reality, but the thing itself was beyond experience.  I never could convince them that that their belief in a reality beyond experience had to be based on … experience.  So, why not be monists, and talk about organizations of experience.  Ultimately, it was their dualism that confirmed me in my monism.

 

I am serious about your forcing me to become an “of” monist.  Everything is relations; it’s relations all the way down.  So the turtles are themselves relations.  To the inevitable “what about the first relation: what was that a relation of?” I will only say, “The limiting case is never a particularly interesting one; I will worry about it when I have explained all the others.”  (I do not understand the complexity theorists’ passion for explaining “first life”, for instance, or psychologists who tie themselves in knots over the “dawn” of consciousness.”  To worry so intensely over origins when there is so much other work to be done is an implicit caving to Christian theology.  We pragmatists, we begin in the middle.

 

So you force me to admit that even if I declare my allegiance to “of” monism, I have immediately to admit that there are different kinds of “of’s”.  So EVERY monist is a pluralist at the next level up.  So why am I suddenly stuck on the monist origin story?  Ach.  Hoist by my own petard. 

 

By the way, speaking of etymology, to be hoist by one’s own petard is to be ejected from one’s own saddle by the force of one’s own fart.  Look it up.

 

By the way, speaking of Clifford Geertz, here is the original quote:

 

“There is an Indian story -- at least I heard it as an Indian story -- about an Englishman who, having been told that the world rested on a platform which rested on the back of an elephant which rested in turn on the back of a turtle, asked (perhaps he was an ethnographer; it is the way they behave), what did the turtle rest on? Another turtle. And that turtle? 'Ah, Sahib, after that it is turtles all the way down”

― Clifford Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures.

 

By the way, Geertz is probably the locus classicus of the relativism I deplore. 

 

Nick

Nicholas S. Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology

Clark University

http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

 

 

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

From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of glen?C

Sent: Sunday, November 17, 2019 10:25 AM

To: [hidden email]

Subject: Re: [FRIAM] flattening -isms

 

My guess is you're a methodological pluralist just like the rest of us.

 

The trick is that monism is moot. Even *if* all things are somehow organizations of experience, to be pragmatic, you have to be able to *generate* 2 seemingly different things (like your experience vs. my experience) by different organizations (or timelines, or historical ephemerides, or iterations, or embeddings, or whatever). And so even if there is only 1 stuff, there must be different ways of organizing the stuff. So, there's, literally, no point in making a big stink about the 1 stuff. Multiplicities will *always* creep in. So, monism is one of: tautological, false, or useless, perhaps all three!

 

Worst case, if we can't *show* (i.e. actually *do* it) how the 1 stuff is differently organized into different things and are only left with the different things, then reality may as well *be* pluralist because saying it's not is pure fideism/imputation/speculation and does no explanatory or predictive work.

 

String theory and loop quantum gravity are *trying* to show how to construct multiple stuff from singular stuff. So, they're setting the bar pretty high. If you want to be a monist, why not work on those?

 

On 11/17/19 8:42 AM, Nick Thompson wrote:> Gosh.  So Stuff of Stuff and plain old stuff are different stuffs?  So Nick

> Thompson is a dualist?

>

> Damn!

>

> Perhaps to maintain my monism I  have to become an "of" monist.  It's "of's"

> all the way down.

 

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[Steve Smith]

Dave -

Previously, I noted: "Asserting that all is interpretation is an invitation to engage in a conversation about "meaning" or "reality" from a level playing field — i.e. absent any grant of privilege to one interpretation over another; and, any expectation that somewhere, somehow, even the most consensual and widely shared interpretation can, or will, morph into some kind of "fact" or "truth."

It sounds like you think there is such a thing as "a level playing field"?  Or perhaps you just want us to grant that as either axiomatic or self-evident?

Both axiomatic statements and "self-evident truths" (Declaration of Independence) are consensual assumptions about an interpretation; an agreement that said statements are reasonably "correct" and sufficiently shared among ourselves, that we can use them as starting points for conversations about "reality" (e.g. constants like e, c, and i, or relationships like E= M times Csquared) or the "meaning" of something (e.g what it is to be self governing).

I agree that axioms and self-evident truths are consensual assumptions.   The distinction for me is that while both are fundamentally utlititarian or pragmatic, the latter carry an emotional weight.   "self-evident truths" represent a starting point which somehow reflects something more deeply shared among those who hold them.   I'm sure that there were British Loyalists (including or acutely so, wealthy property owners who benefited significantly under British rule) who did NOT "hold these truths" and either fled the revolution or adopted the pretense of sharing and remained in place trying to "game" the new system forming around them.    The most fundamental example of this would be the majority of the "founding fathers" who could out of one side of their mouths (or inkwells) utter "all men are created equal" whilst presuming to *own* men (and women and children) as chattel property.  Similarly the question of women's property rights, voting rights, coverture, etc.  this issue dovetails with the incomplete thread with Glen on the topic of "what means ownership".  

Conversations, so begun, can weave a tapestry of interpretation that can be wonderfully useful, deeply enriching, psychologically comforting, socially beneficial, technologically advancing, etc.

Problems, inevitable it seems, arise when it is forgotten that both the axioms and the tapestry remain interpretations — interpretations shared only by some, not all; interpretations, not fact, not truth.

I'm not sure how you mean that axioms are interpretations.   I agree that they are consensual assumptions (has this discussion just become circular?), though the former (axioms) might seem to be more arbitrary than the latter.  On the other hand, common examples of axiomatic systems such as planar (aka Euclidean) geometry also carry a strong overtone of being "self-evident".

Perhaps it is my formal training in mathematics coming before extensive exposure to philosophy and metaphysics, but I'm not sure what it means to have a discussion of interpretations which are not somehow grounded in assumptions (such as axioms).   I don't disagree that making those assumptions *explicit* is critical to any such conversation being interesting much less productive.

In the domain of our current polarized political scene, much is taken for granted but not made explicit.   Characteristic disagreements between left and right include issues as fundamental as "right to life" (e.g. abortion v. death penalty) and "personal rights" (e.g. abortion v gun ownership).   It is *very* rare in my experience to be able to have reasoned discussions about either issue with *either side*.   In these examples, I am sympathetic with the idea that what is at issue is "interpretation" of "what is life?", "wherefrom derives a right?"

- Steve

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[Steve Smith]

On 11/18/19 5:13 AM, Prof David West wrote:

Nick said:

"What struck me about them was how many of them held the view that reality was beyond experience: i.e., that our experience provided clues to reality, but the thing itself was beyond experience.  I never could convince them that that their belief in a reality beyond experience had to be based on … experience.  So, why not be monists, and talk about organizations of experience.  Ultimately, it was their dualism that confirmed me in my monism."

How about an assertion that there is A Reality beyond "ordinary" experience; with "ordinary experience" being the half-dozen or so overt sensory inputs (sight, sound, balance, touch, taste, smell)  we typically associate with experience.

I generally accept Nunez/Lakoff's position/arguement in Where Mathematics Comes From:

from the Wikipedia article on this book:

Lakoff and Núñez hold that mathematics results from the human cognitive apparatus and must therefore be understood in cognitive terms. WMCF advocates (and includes some examples of) a cognitive idea analysis of mathematics which analyzes mathematical ideas in terms of the human experiences, metaphors, generalizations, and other cognitive mechanisms giving rise to them. A standard mathematical education does not develop such idea analysis techniques because it does not pursue considerations of A) what structures of the mind allow it to do mathematics or B) the philosophy of mathematics.

This point may well support Dave's hermeneutical position, though Lakoff/Nunez do assume that there is such a thing as a human body and that all humans roughly share the same physical/sensory/cognitive apparatus.
...

The one cultural universal: every culture (obviously not every individual in every culture) incorporates a belief in the "supernatural." In all but, maybe, 2-3, cultures the "supernatural" includes an alternative realm of existence (pre- and/or after-life or "other planes."  The, interpretations of this universal are multiple - pretty much one per culture/subculture.

And where does Joseph Campbell's notion of the Monomyth come in?   Is it merely "widely found", or perhaps just "cherry picked" by Western Anthropology?

I am reminded of the Rick Strassman's research into entheogens, with DMT/Ayhuasca in particular.   He seems to suggest/report that it is universal that people tripping on DMT will experience culturally specific interpretations (in the sense of your use of the term I think) of "another plane" and "alien beings"  which could range from angels/demons harkening from heaven/hell to multidimensional alien beings and parallel existences.

- Steve

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[Nick Thompson]

 

 

Nicholas S. Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology

Clark University

http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

 

From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Steven A Smith
Sent: Monday, November 18, 2019 9:28 AM
To: [hidden email]
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] flattening -isms

 

 

On 11/18/19 5:13 AM, Prof David West wrote:

Nick said:

 

"What struck me about them was how many of them held the view that reality was beyond experience: i.e., that our experience provided clues to reality, but the thing itself was beyond experience.  I never could convince them that that their belief in a reality beyond experience had to be based on … experience.  So, why not be monists, and talk about organizations of experience.  Ultimately, it was their dualism that confirmed me in my monism."

 

How about an assertion that there is A Reality beyond "ordinary" experience; with "ordinary experience" being the half-dozen or so overt sensory inputs (sight, sound, balance, touch, taste, smell)  we typically associate with experience.

I generally accept Nunez/Lakoff's position/arguement in Where Mathematics Comes From:

from the Wikipedia article on this book:

Lakoff and Núñez hold that mathematics results from the human cognitive apparatus and must therefore be understood in cognitive terms. WMCF advocates (and includes some examples of) a cognitive idea analysis of mathematics which analyzes mathematical ideas in terms of the human experiences, metaphors, generalizations, and other cognitive mechanisms giving rise to them. A standard mathematical education does not develop such idea analysis techniques because it does not pursue considerations of A) what structures of the mind allow it to do mathematics or B) the philosophy of mathematics.

This point may well support Dave's hermeneutical position, though Lakoff/Nunez do assume that there is such a thing as a human body and that all humans roughly share the same physical/sensory/cognitive apparatus.
...

The one cultural universal: every culture (obviously not every individual in every culture) incorporates a belief in the "supernatural." In all but, maybe, 2-3, cultures the "supernatural" includes an alternative realm of existence (pre- and/or after-life or "other planes."  The, interpretations of this universal are multiple - pretty much one per culture/subculture.

And where does Joseph Campbell's notion of the Monomyth come in?   Is it merely "widely found", or perhaps just "cherry picked" by Western Anthropology?

I am reminded of the Rick Strassman's research into entheogens, with DMT/Ayhuasca in particular.   He seems to suggest/report that it is universal that people tripping on DMT will experience culturally specific interpretations (in the sense of your use of the term I think) of "another plane" and "alien beings"  which could range from angels/demons harkening from heaven/hell to multidimensional alien beings and parallel existences.

- Steve

 

 

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[Nick Thompson]

No, Steve.  Absolutely not.  No Way. 

 

How about an assertion that there is A Reality beyond "ordinary" experience; with "ordinary experience" being the half-dozen or so overt sensory inputs (sight, sound, balance, touch, taste, smell)  we typically associate with experience

 

No.  There lies spiritualist blather.  Having pried me away from my monism, you are driving me back toward it.  Ex hypothesi, what ever your R. B. O. E. might be asserted to be, it is, in fact, a construction of experience.  Because, we agreed, there is no other source, right?  Now, if you want to introduce God’s Love or Extra Sensory Intuition, or the Wisdom of the Spheres, we can talk.  But e   ven if you stipulate additonal senses, beyond the six, they are still contributing to experience.  Unless you are willing to stipulate some other source of knowledge beyond experience, we have to admit that while some experiences, because of their capacity to integrate others, get the label “extra ordinary” they must be, after all, just experiences and experiences of other experiences, ad infinitum.  To assert more is to engage in epistemological smugness. 

 

By the way, the FRIAM server continues to mix things up, putting little obstacles to our communication.  So, for instance, I don’t have Dave’s original response to what Steve responded to.

 

Nick

 

  Nicholas S. Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology

Clark University

http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

 

From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Steven A Smith
Sent: Monday, November 18, 2019 9:28 AM
To: [hidden email]
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] flattening -isms

 

 

On 11/18/19 5:13 AM, Prof David West wrote:

Nick said:

 

"What struck me about them was how many of them held the view that reality was beyond experience: i.e., that our experience provided clues to reality, but the thing itself was beyond experience.  I never could convince them that that their belief in a reality beyond experience had to be based on … experience.  So, why not be monists, and talk about organizations of experience.  Ultimately, it was their dualism that confirmed me in my monism."

 

How about an assertion that there is A Reality beyond "ordinary" experience; with "ordinary experience" being the half-dozen or so overt sensory inputs (sight, sound, balance, touch, taste, smell)  we typically associate with experience.

I generally accept Nunez/Lakoff's position/arguement in Where Mathematics Comes From:

from the Wikipedia article on this book:

Lakoff and Núñez hold that mathematics results from the human cognitive apparatus and must therefore be understood in cognitive terms. WMCF advocates (and includes some examples of) a cognitive idea analysis of mathematics which analyzes mathematical ideas in terms of the human experiences, metaphors, generalizations, and other cognitive mechanisms giving rise to them. A standard mathematical education does not develop such idea analysis techniques because it does not pursue considerations of A) what structures of the mind allow it to do mathematics or B) the philosophy of mathematics.

This point may well support Dave's hermeneutical position, though Lakoff/Nunez do assume that there is such a thing as a human body and that all humans roughly share the same physical/sensory/cognitive apparatus.
...

The one cultural universal: every culture (obviously not every individual in every culture) incorporates a belief in the "supernatural." In all but, maybe, 2-3, cultures the "supernatural" includes an alternative realm of existence (pre- and/or after-life or "other planes."  The, interpretations of this universal are multiple - pretty much one per culture/subculture.

And where does Joseph Campbell's notion of the Monomyth come in?   Is it merely "widely found", or perhaps just "cherry picked" by Western Anthropology?

I am reminded of the Rick Strassman's research into entheogens, with DMT/Ayhuasca in particular.   He seems to suggest/report that it is universal that people tripping on DMT will experience culturally specific interpretations (in the sense of your use of the term I think) of "another plane" and "alien beings"  which could range from angels/demons harkening from heaven/hell to multidimensional alien beings and parallel existences.

- Steve

 

 

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[Steve Smith]

Nick -

No, Steve.  Absolutely not.  No Way. 

Whether FriAM's server or my mailer's mode of larding vs your mode of reading it, you misattribute these words to me when they were in fact Dave's...  what follows *after* that, namely the Lakoff/Nunez reference and discussion of that perspective is mine.

Carry on!

 - Steve

 

How about an assertion that there is A Reality beyond "ordinary" experience; with "ordinary experience" being the half-dozen or so overt sensory inputs (sight, sound, balance, touch, taste, smell)  we typically associate with experience

 

No.  There lies spiritualist blather.  Having pried me away from my monism, you are driving me back toward it.  Ex hypothesi, what ever your R. B. O. E. might be asserted to be, it is, in fact, a construction of experience.  Because, we agreed, there is no other source, right?  Now, if you want to introduce God’s Love or Extra Sensory Intuition, or the Wisdom of the Spheres, we can talk.  But e   ven if you stipulate additonal senses, beyond the six, they are still contributing to experience.  Unless you are willing to stipulate some other source of knowledge beyond experience, we have to admit that while some experiences, because of their capacity to integrate others, get the label “extra ordinary” they must be, after all, just experiences and experiences of other experiences, ad infinitum.  To assert more is to engage in epistemological smugness. 

 

By the way, the FRIAM server continues to mix things up, putting little obstacles to our communication.  So, for instance, I don’t have Dave’s original response to what Steve responded to.

 

Nick

 

  Nicholas S. Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology

Clark University

http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

 

From: Friam [[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Steven A Smith
Sent: Monday, November 18, 2019 9:28 AM
To: [hidden email]
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] flattening -isms

 

 

On 11/18/19 5:13 AM, Prof David West wrote:

Nick said:

 

"What struck me about them was how many of them held the view that reality was beyond experience: i.e., that our experience provided clues to reality, but the thing itself was beyond experience.  I never could convince them that that their belief in a reality beyond experience had to be based on … experience.  So, why not be monists, and talk about organizations of experience.  Ultimately, it was their dualism that confirmed me in my monism."

 

How about an assertion that there is A Reality beyond "ordinary" experience; with "ordinary experience" being the half-dozen or so overt sensory inputs (sight, sound, balance, touch, taste, smell)  we typically associate with experience.

I generally accept Nunez/Lakoff's position/arguement in Where Mathematics Comes From:

from the Wikipedia article on this book:

Lakoff and Núñez hold that mathematics results from the human cognitive apparatus and must therefore be understood in cognitive terms. WMCF advocates (and includes some examples of) a cognitive idea analysis of mathematics which analyzes mathematical ideas in terms of the human experiences, metaphors, generalizations, and other cognitive mechanisms giving rise to them. A standard mathematical education does not develop such idea analysis techniques because it does not pursue considerations of A) what structures of the mind allow it to do mathematics or B) the philosophy of mathematics.

This point may well support Dave's hermeneutical position, though Lakoff/Nunez do assume that there is such a thing as a human body and that all humans roughly share the same physical/sensory/cognitive apparatus.
...

The one cultural universal: every culture (obviously not every individual in every culture) incorporates a belief in the "supernatural." In all but, maybe, 2-3, cultures the "supernatural" includes an alternative realm of existence (pre- and/or after-life or "other planes."  The, interpretations of this universal are multiple - pretty much one per culture/subculture.

And where does Joseph Campbell's notion of the Monomyth come in?   Is it merely "widely found", or perhaps just "cherry picked" by Western Anthropology?

I am reminded of the Rick Strassman's research into entheogens, with DMT/Ayhuasca in particular.   He seems to suggest/report that it is universal that people tripping on DMT will experience culturally specific interpretations (in the sense of your use of the term I think) of "another plane" and "alien beings"  which could range from angels/demons harkening from heaven/hell to multidimensional alien beings and parallel existences.

- Steve

 

 

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[Russell Standish-2]

On Sun, Nov 17, 2019 at 12:27:39PM -0700, Nick Thompson wrote:
>
> By the way, speaking of etymology, to be hoist by one’s own petard is to be
> ejected from one’s own saddle by the force of one’s own fart.  Look it up.

Thanks for this. I always knew that petard meant fart, since schoolboy
French anyway, but did ocasionally wonder how you get hoisted by a
fart.



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