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An anatomy of the idea

in A Place For Thought, Analytical Philosophy, Art, Belief, Broken Postcard, Consciousness, Design, Embodied, Logic, Psychology, Science, Sleep, The World, Thoughts by Alexander Crockett | Comment

Liv­ing day to day we some­times for­get the sig­nif­i­cance of our brain are with respect to the ideas that make up our worlds. In our brain are a con­sid­er­able num­ber of neu­rons with sig­nif­i­cantly more con­nec­tions. Odd as it may sound, there is noth­ing like the world in the brain, nor are there any clear ideas, just some gray and white mushy stuff. How your brain and my brain know a table is a table or an idea is an ideas is there­fore puzzling.

Of course as sci­ence has pro­gressed the ques­tions have been framed dif­fer­ently. The way in which the ques­tions have been framed has become and index for under­stand­ing how we relate to mean­ing in the world; under­stand­ing thought and the rela­tion­ships ideas have to each other is impor­tant if we want to under­stand how we relate to our cul­tural envi­ron­ment. Know­ing how our brains work will help us to frame our­selves in the con­cep­tual world of memes and archetypes.

A good place to start to think about our dreams. In our dreams our expe­ri­ences bear lit­tle resem­blance to the actual world. But when we dream we are as good as con­science. For all intents and pur­poses we see, move and exist in a world, albeit a dream world. The ques­tion is how? A lot of work has gone into try­ing to explain ‘how mat­ter becomes imag­i­na­tion’ (to bor­row a phrase from one of my favorite scientists).

To start to under­stand we must return to when we are awake; there is dis­tri­b­u­tion of activ­ity going on in our heads. Mem­o­ries encoded across regions of the brain are acti­vated, not just to explic­itly remem­ber some­thing, but to relate what we hear to the bank of infor­ma­tion already encoded in our brains. Those seman­tic net­works that become active rec­i­p­ro­cally influ­ence the way in which we encode the envi­ron­ment, we thus fur­ther per­ceive the world and our rela­tion to it in rela­tion to the meme­ories already banked up in our brains.

Prim­ing offers a rather good illus­tra­tion. If we are asked to study a list of words, and we are then given syl­la­bles and asked to com­plete them we are more likely to com­plete the syl­la­bles as the words that were in the list we stud­ied. On a seman­tic level, if we are ‘primed’ with a word like doc­tor, we would be more likely to think ‘nurse’ than say ‘tele­phone’, why, because they are seman­ti­cally related. Sim­i­larly, researchers have found that ‘prim­ing’ peo­ple with aggres­sively related stim­uli will get peo­ple to inter­pret oth­ers behav­ior dur­ing com­pet­i­tive games as more aggres­sive and will sim­i­larly trig­ger a more aggres­sive response than one would oth­er­wise have seen.

One other impor­tant things about sleep­ing is that when we sleep our minds have a chance to encode and rehearse infor­ma­tion that was impor­tant dur­ing the day, that is as well as process things that may have been on our minds. The same seman­tic net­works that are active dur­ing the day are active in our sleep minus the real world to order them. Of course this is a rather sim­ple account. But it’s the prin­ci­ple that’s impor­tant. The prin­ci­ple is that the world that we expe­ri­ence is related to active con­stel­la­tions of infor­ma­tion in our brains, formed by the activ­ity between neu­rons that struc­ture and encode that infor­ma­tion. That activ­ity has an impact on how we act on the world, and of course that has an impact on our expe­ri­ences, which fur­ther influ­ences the world that influ­ences us.

As human beings, as minds a sig­nif­i­cant part of that activ­ity is ideational. A sig­nif­i­cant por­tion of our expe­ri­ence is formed through ideas, con­cepts and seman­tic activ­ity. Things mean things (if I am per­mit­ted a circularity).

And that is the sig­nif­i­cance of mean­ing. The mean­ing we find in things dri­ves us. We relate to mean­ing of things. Jung in his book The Sci­ence of Mythol­ogy drew this point out (albeit psy­cho­an­a­lyt­i­cally), and if we think of the way in which we use rep­re­sen­ta­tional medi­ums, like deserted islands (Deleuze), or the sig­nif­i­cance of a Brand in the mod­ern world, we come close to under­stand­ing the sig­nif­i­cance of ideas in our lives. But they run deeper.

The con­cept of a schema is impor­tant in under­stand­ing the same point. Schema, or pat­terns that rep­re­sent some part of the world don’t come in-​​built like the abil­ity to rec­og­nize faces (or like the struc­tures that con­tain the schemata). The con­cept of the arche­type is of this form as is the con­cept of the meme. They share enough sim­i­lar­i­ties to be syn­onyms for each other. That is they are both ref­er­ents for ideas.

Com­bin­ing all of the ele­ments in this pic­ture we can begin to form an under­stand­ing of our rela­tion­ship with the world of ideas. Ideas, rep­re­sented often as objects, have sig­nif­i­cance by virtue of our rela­tion to them. The rela­tion­ship between the objects we encounter, the ideas that we form them and the ideas we get learn in soci­ety act as ref­er­ents, pro­vid­ing the envi­ron­ment with a sense of sig­nif­i­cance. That sig­nif­i­cance dri­ves our rela­tion­ship with our envi­ron­ment: press­ing for­ward en-​​mass the devel­op­ment of ideas con­tained in that envi­ron­ment shape a she­matic of ideational con­tent press­ing us with mean­ing. Thank­fully this is a par­tial pic­ture. One I hope devel­ops the impor­tance of ideas in the world as fac­tors in our rela­tion­ship with it. One that can help us bet­ter con­cep­tu­al­ize why some ideas work and some don’t as we cre­ativ­ity develop an image of the world we’re in.

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Writing as I see it

in A Place For Thought, Art, Belief, Broken Postcard, Love, Me, The World, Thoughts by Alexander Crockett | 1 comment

Writers write by reflecting the world in their minds into the world. The nuances that give away their feelings and their assumptions tell you as much about what they don’t know they believe as they aim to communicate. In that sense writing is a massively psychological discipline. The better able a writer is to be honest with themselves the better what they write will be. It is that aspect of writing that puts you in direct contact with a writer, irrespective of when and where they wrote.

I once read an account from someone who had experimented with DMT for the first time. DMT is a psychoactive substance. The DMT trip is supposed to be mind blowing (please excuse the phraseology). People report the world vanishing before them as the truths of this world are made clear to them. In the account I read the writer talked about seeing a sphere from all sides at once.

Imagine that, all sides of sphere being equally apparent at once, as if the mind could acquiesce in the total experience of spherical truth. Such revelation under normal conditions would be chaos for any mind. The world, much like a sphere, appears at any time from a point of view. We see the world from our own perspectives. To see everything at once requires more of our minds than our minds are capable. And even if we could see the whole world from every perspective it is doubtful that it would do us much good. After all in order that we act on the world we need to be able to grasp a part of it. In much the same way we would need to grasp one aspect of a sphere in order that we pick it up and turn it.

In another sense we are also only capable of making a part of our own perspective conspicuous at any one time. It is doubtful that describing the whole of our visions of the world at once would make much sense and much of what we communicate is cloaked in assumptions, both our own and the assumptions we believe others will understand. For example it is often taken for granted that people will understand the use of certain words, such as ‘milieu’. One has to bear in mind that even the use of such a common word suggests that both writer and reader have sufficient background to understand the use of the word as it is intended. The same goes for the form and structure of what is communicated. All of these things together tell us something about the writer.

When we communicate we are for the most part trying to communicate one thing or other. We are unable to communicate everything at once with any purpose. What is more, usually when we communicate something seemingly general a fair few caveats and instructions are often required in order that what we say is not misapplied. That is in some sense one of the major failures of both mystical writing and thought and also a cause for a great deal of ambiguity. In a sense these are many reasons why writing and communicating is much like looking at a sphere. The more of the sphere we try to look at at once the less definition any one part of it seems to have, much like writing. This is a part a requisite for communicating anything at all well, especially if we understand information in its technical sense as the reduction of uncertainty.

There is another aspect of writing that comes directly from this analogy with points of view, that is that as a descriptive writer writing about a point of view it must be borne in mind that the point of view is a cumulative set of experiences. It is not just that I wish to describe the world, it is that I wish to describe the world as I see it. A purely descriptive account of the world without my perspective would be equivalent to a mathematical description. But if I were to try and describe to you the reason why a mathematical description is best I am at the same time communicating something about how I see the world, truth and knowledge as well as the relative values of different modes of description.

What I am trying here to say is that there is sufficiently more to peoples writing than what they write. However, the reality is that it is what they write that is both surprising and rewarding. For, much like the sphere from many angles, there is more to one perspective than any one person can imagine. In that respect we have another analogy from the sphere. There is a sense in which we as describers of the world are all looking at the same sphere from many different perspectives and backgrounds and, another in which none of us can possible share the perspective held by another without occupying the space that they sit in which they look at the sphere. In order that we do that we would have to read and understand them.

Of course even in the description here there is an eminent danger. That is that one confuse the multiplicity of descriptions and views with multiple truths. I am not sure what the word truth refers to, or if it even refers to anything that we are capable of in the strictest sense (that is not logical). However, I am sure that truth is not capable of being multiple. That is that something is not only true or not but that contradictory statements about the same thing are not both true. That is not to say that the different perspectives are not true for different people individually. I am quite sure that is possible. But, that in no way means that those personal truths are in any way true about the world.

What is important however, is that we are able to collect our accounts of the world and abstract some kind of truth from them. In what I or any other person writes there is a combination of meat and bones. The meat in a sense is the closest thing to my perspective and the bones is not just the subject matter, it is also the essence of what I able to communicate explicitly and what is most likely to be judged for its truth or lack thereof.

Of course there is something very much like art to writing. It is what I have said about writing that not only gives it it’s purpose but makes it what it is. That is a form of communication that allows the writer to communicate in great detail something about the world, or their vision of it. And that is magical. When any person has a vision and is able to articulate their vision, either through writing or any other medium what they have mastered is an art, it is the mastery of those very skills that allow us to fold our inner vision into the world outsides of ourselves that makes both the process and the task as fantastical as it is frustrating.  That is the very beauty in it.

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Poetry Embodied

in A Place For Thought, Art, Belief, Broken Postcard, Consciousness, Death, Design, Fear, Frailty, Humanism, Images, Me, Music, Myself and I, Poetry, Psychology, Screaming, Stories, The World, Thoughts by Alexander Crockett | 2 comments


Sunday.mp3

Overhead the earth is a miracle of magnitude. Removed from the immediate youth of all that is present. Embedded in the flesh we see with our eyes, we are narrowed to the compass of vision, trapped; if it were not for imagination. Trapped to the hunger and lust that are the anathema of civilization.

And at every level each age is closer to the physical character of being. Before we adulterate life children play with no thought of the concrete. The world is the world of imagination, it is the world we destroy.  Possibility, unscathed by the meanings of everything, children free to imagine, the world they dream could be real. It could couldn’t it?

It is blank of the things to come; those things which daunt the prospects of every child.

One Sunday we were like children, playing in the fields, running after gazelle in the mist as they jumped from puff  to dew. Our house traveled with light and warmth through the horizon as the world awoke to a jaded reality, and we lived a moment of innocent nothingness before that time. And soon the quicksand of being took us from the playground to the world; preoccupation faintly understood. But we were not disappointed.

And so from the world within to the world without, life was only told though stories, communicated at other times. Never twice the same.

On the kitchen floor a giggle signified the privacy of our experience. Shared, but not to be shared again. Like a nod between men, as full of meaning and companionship as any nod can be. We giggled like children.

How many freedoms?  The mystic and the rational combine, if only in the innermost parts of the mind; at some level recognizing the sense of another reality, one disconnected from the occupation of the body, connected only with the imagination; we travel with each other infinitely in finite time remembering the the impossibility of the infinite in the expression of mind.

And we would be forgiven for thinking that beyond the concrete lies nothing but space. However, within the depth of our minds are the rhythms  of meaning. That would be nonsense anywhere else. Yet they carry for each a significance not held by any other.

That is the power of nostalgia. A Time forgotten, a time only the passing bird sees. It is held in the spaces beyond quantification, to be understood to the longing for more than the void. There is a world we find within others when we smile, it is that single moment of creative insight that exists between people; the meanings of the worlds are resonant equally among us all at this time.

It is the essence of all human bondage. In a world that none but minds can acquiesce, can forget and can live on: The moment of belonging is the moment of genuine imagination.

But for those moments those worlds were there; between us and forever in our minds, our worlds to share. They were there to remind us that beyond here the world continues, devoid of the facts of the minds but full of a psychological reality. A real reality for us.

It is that world across the human that is the humanity. It was the fact of experience that meant the word and not misunderstanding or false interpretation monopolized existence. It was that which is all that matters, all that does matter.

From the mystical to the concrete we live, and we live on; with pleasure disguised as an opiate, the fallacy of misunderstanding that has left the possibility and the reality of all which is false to nothing; we continue to live, and our life remains in this world between us, between the concrete and the abstract, it is this world of interaction. Embedded we are and embodied we become.

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everything is ‘natural’

in Analytical Philosophy, Belief, Broken Postcard, Cities, Logic, Philosophy, The World, Thoughts by Alexander Crockett | 7 comments

Naturalism,clear thinking and our future

Everything inItsRightPlace.mp3

The physical world is causally closed. The statement is so broad and yet so pointed that understanding the implications in their entirety is impossible. Yet the meaning of the statement needs to be understood, and by everyone. We have all managed to apply in our own beliefs some parts of the tenet but, unfortunately not all. If we were to understand and apply all implications of that one single statement “The physical world is causally closed” our entire attitude to life, the planet and many of the choices we make would be radically different.

The statement that the physical world is causally closed needs some explanation. In essence it means that all of the phenomena we see in the world are caused by other things we find in the world and that the effects of all physical causes will be found in the world. This supposition is taken from the finding that the total of energy and momentum have always been conserved wherever they have been measured.

A more prosaic example comes from Antoine-Laurent de Lavoisier who found that in chemical reaction matter may change its state but it’s total mass will remain the same. Rust is a good example, when iron rusts it also gets heavier because iron and oxygen combine.

The word natural has a long history and has come to be used in many contexts. Advocates of herbal remedies cite that their medicines are natural, people talk about homosexuality as unnatural and we talk about ‘the natural course of action’. However, understanding physical closure permits us to say that each of these statements are nonsense if they are taken even remotely literally. ‘Natural’ as term has its origins in Latin and Greek and roughly in Middle English was used to mean ‘in accordance with nature‘. It is in the sense that the word is used in Lucretius’s epic poem  ’De Rerum Natura‘ that it is used here. That is as a part of the property that things posses by virtue of existence and not as a moral quantifier or proof of goodness.

Not only is it the case that there are a great number of poisons in the ‘natural’ world, it is also the case that it is literally impossible for homosexuality to be unnatural. More broadly speaking, given physical closure all phenomena that we see are natural.

The natural sciences ought to encompass the investigation of all phenomena. However, they have come to mean (through the correct application of the term) the physical sciences (otherwise known as the Naturwissenschaften as opposed to the Geisteswissenschaften, or social sciences). In essence however, the approach employed by all sciences can be called naturalistic and within the present conception of the universe all of the phenomena contained within it are natural.

If everything said thus far is true then it is meaningful to make statements like ‘photography is natural’ and ‘pollution is natural’ also. Most people, will have a harder time digesting statements like these as opposed to the statement ‘homosexuality is unnatural’.

The difficulty lies in an innate bias. It also highlights our need to guard ourselves from nonsense. The bias comes not just from ambiguity about the word natural but the fact that we have come to assume that pairing the word ‘natural’ with a statement gives that statement moral significance. That is in effect the nonsense which I refer to.

The point is that everything that does occur, occurs in the world, if it occurs in the world then it is natural. The flip-side of the coin is that just because something is natural (or can be found in nature) it doesn’t make it either right or give it any special moral significance. It was a natural event that wiped out the dinosaur. That fact doesn’t make the potential extinction of the human race any more palatable, I happen to be quite attached to the interests of humanity.

There are a number of implications of the discussion so far that ought to be considered. In connexion with this post however, my interest is in the world that we live in.

It is no platitude to say that wherever we are we obey the laws of physics. Gravity is a pervasive feature in all of our lives despite the fact that most of us take little time to notice the effect it has on us. But existing in the natural world is not just about obeying laws such as the law of gravity. The natural world is as much about living in a complex system such as our environment. What is more the point about natural phenomena is that we are embedded within those systems and are component part of them.

In effect we are a part of a much wider system and that system houses us. However, much like  gravity we seem to be too well acquainted with our environment. So well acquainted in fact that it doesn’t seem to make significant difference to us if we destroy it in piecemeal fashion. Of course we don’t experience a great deal of pollution. Nor do we experience the effects of pollution immediately. Environmentalism is concerned with a concept and by virtue of being a concept it is far removed from us.

But that doesn’t change that fact that the destruction of the system that we live in could be the destruction event of our species. By extension this also suggests the possibility that another species one day in the far future will refer to us in making the same arguments. As human beings we have used our imaginations to great use. From migrating bands of hominid to static cities populated by millions of people living not on subsistence but beyond necessity our species has achieved a lot in a short space. However, it is a part of that achievement that we can  see that our actions now have, within the closed physical system that is the world we live, far reaching consequences.

The point is this: Given that we live in the natural environment, (and I see no option but giving ourselves to that fact) a certain clarity of thought is required about our lives within that context. So far we have allowed ourselves an incredible amount of fuzzy thinking on the subject. However, if we are to save the planet we have to divorce ourselves from all of the immediate luxuries of existence (such as gravity) and understand that as necessary as gravity is, so are the effects of our actions on the future of our species.

We are unfortunately predisposed to being told what we want to hear from politicians (lest we don’t vote for them). However, in order that a concerted effort is made by all, that effort will have to be concerted and universal. That means saying a number of unpopular things and effort on all our parts. It means that developing countries will have to develop within the context of change that is uncertain and in developed countries that incentive will have to be on the part of survival. It is after all survival that we are after and survival can only take part within a physical system that we know can sustain us. That system is closed and that leaves a great deal of responsibility on our shoulders.

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Anxiety

in Art, Belief, Broken Postcard, Consciousness, Death, Fear, Frailty, Humanism, Philosophy, Poetry, Psychology, The World, Thoughts by Alexander Crockett | Comment

MourningAir.mp3

Anxiety#1

“How shall a man be proud, when his conception is a crime, his birth a penalty, his life a labour, and death a necessity”

Arthur Schopenhauer, On Human Nature, 1897

“I can’t imagine life going on without me after I die”, a peculiar resonance resounds with these words. They feel wrong, that said, anyone hearing them may make sense of them. ‘Life’ will go on after we die, or so we assume. It is what we believe. If it didn’t our whole notion of reality would be put into question. Entertaining the idea of a reality that has no independence of me is an offence, an offence to our senses and an offence to our reasons for being. There are problems in a world in which your reading this did not exist independently of my writing it, problems; as far as our reason is concerned that is.

To read the full post just click here….

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