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

 <mailto:[email protected]> [email protected]

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

 

 

From: Friam <[email protected]> On Behalf Of Prof David West
Sent: Monday, March 9, 2020 8:17 AM
To: [email protected]
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, [email protected] 
<mailto:[email protected]>  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

 <mailto:[email protected]> [email protected]

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

 

 

 

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

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

To: [email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> 

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, [email protected] 
<mailto:[email protected]>  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

 <mailto:[email protected]> [email protected]

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

 

 

 

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

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

To: [email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> 

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, [email protected] 
<mailto:[email protected]>  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

[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> 

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

 

 

 

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

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

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

To: [email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> 

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 12th 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> 
> 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

> 

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

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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

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