- May 2024
-
-
the organism has that ability already the reason is simply 00:17:41 because it could use the chance events that occur in his molecular mechanisms there's where the creativity comes from then the question is what what emerges from that do you want to keep and what do you want to reject
for - key insight - eliminating cartesian dualism in biology - creativity - multi-scale explanation
key insight - eliminating cartesian dualism in biology - Noble advances a radical and simple explanation to explain how<br /> - higher level organisms and cellular mechanisms make the decisions that inform the genetic switches which decision path to make - The higher level system takes advantage of the random events in molecular mechanisms and chooses the ones that are most fit - This has the potential to explain creativity at all living scales, up to human consciousness itself!
-
- Sep 2023
-
-
The dualism of scientific materialism and its one-person psychologies are arguably complicit in much of the psychological and social damage we are now recognising.
-
for: dualism, dualism - psychology, unintended consequences, unintended consequences - dualism in psychology, progress trap, progress trap - dualism in psychology
-
paraphrase
- The dualism of scientific materialism gives rise to one-person psychologies
- and are arguably complicit in much of the psychological and social damage we are now recognising.
- For instance, a good deal of the historical denial of the role of psychological and social trauma has been traced
- back to the Freudian model’s almost exclusive focus on the internal world;
- the actual impact of others and society has been, as a result, relatively ignored.
- back to the Freudian model’s almost exclusive focus on the internal world;
- Modern psychiatry, which accepts the same philosophical model but changes the level of explanation, is just as culpable.
- Likewise CBT, with its focus on dysfunctional thought patterns and rational remedies administered from the outside, also follows the same misguided philosophy.
- The dualism of scientific materialism gives rise to one-person psychologies
-
question
- what are concrete ways this has caused harm?
- future work
- perform literature review on case studies where Winnicott's approach has been a more constructive therapeutic one
-
-
his model of the psyche was firmly rooted in the Cartesian-empiricist philosophy that continues to dominate the scientific worldview. The most basic commitment of this model is the idea that we are discrete individual entities opposed to an objective, neutral world that exists independently of us.
- for: dualism, duality, dualism - Freud
- paraphrase
- Freud's model of the psyche was firmly rooted in the Cartesian-empiricist philosophy that continues to dominate the scientific worldview.
- The most basic commitment of this model is the idea that:
- we are discrete individual entities opposed to
- an objective, neutral world that exists independently of us.
- Per this model, we come to know and experience the world outside of us through a combination of:
- internally determined processes and
- the mental assimilation of data from the outside world.
- Minds, as such, are
- a prerequisite for experience, and
- experiences are essentially a result of cognition.
- This perspective perseveres today, for example, in the notion that
- we become familiar with other people’s internal worlds through our private theories of their minds.
- It also perseveres in the conceptual basis of CBT,
- which understands our experience of the world and relationships as being determined, in large part, by
- how we individually perceive and make sense of those things.
- which understands our experience of the world and relationships as being determined, in large part, by
Tags
- question
- CBT
- unintended consequences
- progress trap - dualism in psychology
- Dualism
- Cartesian dualism
- unintended consequences - dualism in psychology
- dualism - psychology
- future work
- future work - advantages of Winnicott's approach
- question - harm from dualism in psychology
- Freud - worldview
- Dualism - Freud
- dualism
- progress trap
Annotators
URL
-
- Apr 2023
-
beiner.substack.com beiner.substack.com
-
If the metaphysical foundations of our society tell us we have no soul, how on earth are we going to imbue soul into AI? Four hundred years after Descartes and Hobbs, our scientific methods and cultural stories are still heavily influenced by their ideas.
Key observation - If the metaphysical foundations of our society tell us we have no soul, - how are we going to imbue soul into AI? - Four hundred years after Descartes and Hobbs, - our scientific methods and cultural stories are still heavily influenced by their ideas.
-
He began a process that would move past merely separating mind and matter, and toward a worldview that saw only matter as real. A contemporary of Descartes, Thomas Hobbes, went further and suggested that thinking arose from small mechanical processes happening in the brain. In doing so, Vervaeke points out, he was laying the ground for artificial intelligence:…what Hobbes is doing is killing the human soul! And of course that’s going to exacerbate the cultural narcissism, because if we no longer have souls, then finding our uniqueness and our true self, the self that we’re going to be true to, becomes extremely paradoxical and problematic. If you don’t have a soul, what is it to be true to your true self? And what is it that makes you utterly unique and special from the rest of the purposeless, meaningless cosmos?
Quote - Descartes created the mind / body dualism - Thomas Hobbes reduced consciousness to physicalism - by claiming that thinking was an epi-phenomena of atomic interactions
-
The issue at play in the AI question, or the question of tempering our growth in general, isn’t just that our technology is built without higher values that can mitigate its excesses. It’s that culturally we lack a story as to why values even matter to begin with. It’s futile to appeal to ethics in this context, because the ethics aren’t embedded at a deep enough level to counter powerful incentive structures. They aren’t worth dying for, because the system doesn’t value them, it only values quantity.
Key observation - Quantity is all modernity values - Quality is thrown out the window - Later, the author connects - quantity to the Cartesian world view, - that seeks to measure everything - and quality to the Idealist worldview - that elevates consciousness over physicalism and materialism - (Destructive) growth - is an outcome of the cartesian worldview
-
- Aug 2022
-
Local file Local file
-
t is clear that theCartesians understood, as well as Gilbert Ryle and other contemporary criticsunderstand, the difference between providing criteria for intelligent behavior, onthe one hand, and providing an explanation for the possibility of such behavior,on the other;
-
- Jul 2022
-
ernestbecker.org ernestbecker.org
-
If this notion of human existence as a unity of participation in both perishing and non-perishing reality sounds odd to modern ears, it is mainly because philosophical and scientific–and consequently popular–thought during the last few centuries has been busy constructing a very different image of the human person. The image of participation has been changed and simplified into an image of two entities: a body, and a mind inside the body that has intelligence and ideas. This is the image that eventually came out of Descartes and Hobbes and other early modem thinkers, and wound up as a portrayal of human beings as mental entities encased in physical entities: a mind-thing imprisoned in a body–thing. Now a mind-thing imprisoned in a body-thing cannot experience participation in the ground of reality. Why not? Because it is imprisoned, isolated in the head. It can only have ideas about it and “project” them out onto reality. What becomes, then of the non-perishing dimension of meaning? Accepting the modem image, we could have faith that we have a relation to non-perishing reality only through first conceiving of a non-perishing reality–let us call it “God”–in the isolation of our bodily-encased minds, and then projecting that conception onto a “beyond” of things, and finally engaging in the desperate procedure of believing that it is real and that we have a connection with it in spite of not knowing anything of the kind. In other words, as long as self-understanding is dominated by this modem image, human consciousness cannot make sense of its own experience of immediate participation in a non-perishing ground of reality. And therefore, it cannot really make sense of its moral striving–since what is the point of the struggle for goodness if goodness is nothing more than temporary private opinion? Thus the modem image of human nature short-circuits the Socratic and Kierkegaardian understanding of existence, and leaves us with the familiar contemporary mess of radical moral relativism. This modern image of human existence is tenacious, though–partly because it is so closely connected to the modem view of what real knowing is, a view that enjoys an almost unassailable status. It might be summarized with extreme brevity as follows. If the mind is a thing encased in the physical body that only knows reality through the mediation, through the channeling, of the physical senses, any valid knowing has to validate itself through the presence of the relevant sense data. And this means that all true knowing is the type of knowing involved in the natural sciences, where empirical verification must take place through quantifiable data. Data that cannot be mathematically measured, such as the data consciousness discovers in its own activity and awareness–for example moral insight–can never be a matter of knowing, merely of opinion. How could the Socratic experience of discovering that the moral autonomy of the soul involves a non-perishing dimension of meaning ever be verified, if the data of sense, quantifiable data, are the only relevant data for affirming truth? The life of Socrates–an exemplary model for over two millennia of the moral liberation of the soul through the catharsis of practicing death–is, in this view, a life based on nothing more substantial than a private irrational belief. So to sum up: what has happened is that the enthronement by modem philosophy and science of an image of human nature as a thingly mind entrapped in a thingly body, has made all symbolizations of a non-perishing dimension of reality non-credible to many people–particularly to the intelligentsia, who emphasize their modem credentials by presenting themselves as the cultured despisers of religion. And, of course, one of the reasons why this modem image is so popular and so resistant to critique is what it appears to promise. If we go back to the founding texts of modernity, to the writings of Descartes, of Bacon, of Hobbes, we find a great optimism. If there is no participation in a mysterious origin of non-perishing meaning, there is no mystery essential to human existence. If there is no such participation, then all knowledge originates only in human consciousness itself. And if there is no primal mystery, and if all meaning is of human creation, we can hope one day to bring nature, human society, and history fully under human control. In his last book, Escape from Evil, Becker wrote: “Hubris means forgetting where the real source of power lies and imagining that it is in oneself (37).” I would suggest that imagining that notions of a non-perishing dimension of meaning are the pure creations of an isolated human consciousness, entails a forgetting of where the real source of consciousness lies: in the experienced mysterious ground of consciousness, which grants us the quite rational opportunity of a free and loving commitment to an enduring dimension of meaning. Of course, in some sense, human awareness of the non-perishing mystery in which it participates remains alive and well, because people keep striving to be moral, and they keep asking questions about that experience. Human questioning will always keep uncovering the eternal dimension of meaning, keep introducing people to the Socratic catharsis, and keep leading people to what Becker called a life of courageous self-realization. But they can be helped to do so by promoting insights like those of Becker on the choice between denying death or facing up to mortality. Like Becker in his chapter on Kierkegaard in The Denial Of Death, what I’ve tried to show is that the problem does not lie in the notion of human participation in imperishable reality. Rather, where the problem lies is in the self-comforting delusion that one possesses eternal meaning, and especially in the measures people take to defend their feeling of righteous invulnerability, especially through aggression. Authentic faith, by contrast, affirms enduring meaning in the context of an open if anxious acceptance of mortality. And so one must conclude that there are two opposites to authentic faith. One is the dogmatic clinging to an immortality project; and the other is the equally dogmatic insistence that enduring meaning is an illusion. Both of these are denials of our real human situation, making up two sides of the same counterfeit coin.
The essay closes with a critique of the subject / object mind / body framework that now dominates modernity. Socrates, Kierkigaard and Becker's claims, when seen through the lens of Cartesian modernity, are relegated to the margins. materialism denies any legitimacy to such claims. Recent 4E cognition is an attempt to push back on this. Hughes notes that:
"In his last book, Escape from Evil, Becker wrote: “Hubris means forgetting where the real source of power lies and imagining that it is in oneself (37).” "
-
-
bafybeicho2xrqouoq4cvqev3l2p44rapi6vtmngfdt42emek5lyygbp3sy.ipfs.dweb.link bafybeicho2xrqouoq4cvqev3l2p44rapi6vtmngfdt42emek5lyygbp3sy.ipfs.dweb.link
-
We approach the problem of the extended mind from a radically non-dualistperspective. The separation between mind and matter is an artefact of the outdatedmechanistic worldview, which leaves no room for mental phenomena such as agency,intentionality, or feeling. We propose to replace it by an action ontology, which conceivesmind and matter as aspects of the same network of processes. By adopting the intentionalstance, we interpret the catalysts of elementary reactions as agents exhibiting desires,intentions, and sensations. Autopoietic networks of reactions constitute more complex super-agents, which moreover exhibit memory, deliberation and sense-making. In the specific caseof social networks, individual agents coordinate their actions via the propagation ofchallenges. The distributed cognition that emerges from this interaction cannot be situated inany individual brain. This non-dualist, holistic view extends and operationalizes processmetaphysics and Eastern philosophies. It is supported by both mindfulness experiences andmathematical models of action, self-organization, and cognition.
The proposal is to interpret mind and matter as aspects of the same process network, and decouple both from the Cartesian/Newtonian mechanistic worldview. Catalysts of elementary reactions are agents exhibiting intention, which can exhibit increasingly complex behavior Distributed cognition that emerges from high level social interactions cannot be situated in any single individual brain.
Tags
Annotators
URL
-
- Sep 2021
-
fs.blog fs.blog
-
Scott Sampson has argued that we should subjectify nature rather than objectifying it. People are a part of nature and integral to it. We are not separate from it and we are assuredly not above it.
Can the injection of multi-disciplinary research and areas like big history help us to see the bigger picture? How have indigenous and oral cultures managed to do so much better than us at this? Is it the way we've done science in the past? Is it our political structures?
-
- Feb 2019
-
static1.squarespace.com static1.squarespace.com
-
herefore, the university's curricular philosophy or "study methods" will have a profound effect on both the individual and society.
Robert Yagelski basically makes this argument, citing Cartesian dualism as a major factor in why we're destroying our planet. In ignoring the interconnectivity of all things, we fail to understand the myriad effects our actions have on the (natural) world around us.
-