Consciousness and the Paranormal — Part 2

Constance · Oct 21, 2014

smcder said:
"This cannot be the history of a movement as organicism has long existed as the vague other. Mechanical logic has had a proud steadily evolving tradition. As a way of thinking, it arose out of ancient maths and philosophy, got quietly polished up by medieval monks, then became a full-blown revolution with the Renaissance and the Enlightenment.

Eventually the mechanical way was responsible for everything from the space shuttle to the Furbie. Organicism was only ever the weak voice of protest - the feeling that there had to be something more than simple-minded reductionism."

This really sounds like McGilchrist 's thesis ... he ties the two approaches Mechanicism and Organicism to the two hemispheres and their evolutionary purposes ... why we evolved to be of two minds. I'll have to see if he cites McGilChrist.

I haven't yet read McGilchrist (so much to read, so little time). Would you link again the text(s) you most recommend?

smcder · Oct 21, 2014

Iain McGilchrist, author of The Master and his Emissary

Brief description
Introduction

Amazon has a 10000 word essay version for 99 cents ...

And for more on A and B types (@Pharoah) read the letter from Steven Pinker and response by McGilChrist.

ImageUploadedByTapatalk1413912437.733188.jpg

The ratio of the corpus colossum to the volume of the brain had decreased as the brain has evolved.

Constance · Oct 21, 2014

The article on Heidegger at the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy is a very good introduction to Heidegger's wide-ranging thought:

Introduction and table of contents:

Martin Heidegger is widely acknowledged to be one of the most original and important philosophers of the 20th century, while remaining one of the most controversial. His thinking has contributed to such diverse fields as phenomenology (Merleau-Ponty), existentialism (Sartre, Ortega y Gasset), hermeneutics (Gadamer, Ricoeur), political theory (Arendt, Marcuse, Habermas), psychology (Boss, Binswanger, Rollo May), and theology (Bultmann, Rahner, Tillich). His critique of traditional metaphysics and his opposition to positivism and technological world domination have been embraced by leading theorists of postmodernity (Derrida, Foucault, and Lyotard). On the other hand, his involvement in the Nazi movement has invoked a stormy debate. Although he never claimed that his philosophy was concerned with politics, political considerations have come to overshadow his philosophical work.

Heidegger’s main interest was ontology or the study of being. In his fundamental treatise, Being and Time, he attempted to access being (Sein) by means of phenomenological analysis of human existence (Dasein) in respect to its temporal and historical character. After the change of his thinking (“the turn”), Heidegger placed an emphasis on language as the vehicle through which the question of being can be unfolded. He turned to the exegesis of historical texts, especially of the Presocratics, but also of Kant, Hegel, Nietzsche and Hölderlin, and to poetry, architecture, technology, and other subjects. Instead of looking for a full clarification of the meaning of being, he tried to pursue a kind of thinking which was no longer “metaphysical.” He criticized the tradition of Western philosophy, which he regarded as nihilistic, for, as he claimed, the question of being as such was obliterated in it. He also stressed the nihilism of modern technological culture. By going to the Presocratic beginning of Western thought, he wanted to repeat the early Greek experience of being, so that the West could turn away from the dead end of nihilism and begin anew. His writings are notoriously difficult. Being and Time remains his most influential work.

Table of Contents

"Heidegger, Martin [Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy]

smcder · Oct 21, 2014

@Constance ... yes?

"From what hemisphere is [McGilchrist] able to observe the two hemispheres, pass judgement on them, and see their rivalry as the motor of the unfolding of human cultures? Does he have a third hemisphere? Or does he have something that is not a hemisphere at all? In short, is he talking from a standpoint that transcends his hemispheres?

I suspect he is; it is the standpoint from which we all speak when
we speak about pretty well everything:

namely the shared, extracranial human world woven over the millennia out of a zillion human (whole person) interactions.

And it is this that he seems to by-pass when he argues that the outcome of the rivalry or balance between the two hemispheres plays a major role in determining the predominant characteristics of cultures, civilisations or epochs.

And I would argue that this extracranial viewpoint is the one we adopt when we comment on our own and others’ brains and cultures. This is more relevant than neural circuitry. It is the community of human minds, the human world, which has gradually built up at least over the hundreds and thousands of years, since hominids emerged.

It is here, and not in the intracranial darkness, that we should look for the motors of history, of cultural change and the evolution of civilizations. Histories, cultures, societies, institutions, have their own internal dynamic… that cannot be usefully captured in neural terms."

Constance · Oct 21, 2014

This extract from the IEP article on Heidegger is especially clarifying:

". . . The conception of the history of being is of central importance in Heidegger’s thought. Already in Being and Time its idea is foreshadowed as “the destruction of the history of ontology.” In Heidegger’s later writings the story is considerably recast and called the “history of being” (Seinsgeschichte). The beginning of this story, as told by Heidegger especially in the Nietzsche lectures, is the end, the completion of philosophy by its dissolution into particular sciences and nihilism—questionlessness of being, a dead end into which the West has run. Heidegger argues that the question of being would still provide a stimulus to the research of Plato and Aristotle, but it was precisely with them that the original experience of being of the early Greeks was covered over. The fateful event was followed by the gradual slipping away of the distinction between being and beings. Described variously by different philosophers, being was reduced to a being: to idea in Plato, substantia and actualitas in Medieval philosophy, objectivity in modern philosophy, and will to power in Nietzsche and contemporary thought. The task which the later Heidegger sets before himself is then to make a way back into the primordial beginning, so that the “dead end” can be replaced by a new beginning. And since the primordial beginning of western thought lies in ancient Greece, in order to solve the problems of contemporary philosophy and reverse the course of modern history, Heidegger ultimately turns for help to the Presocratics, the first western thinkers.

5. Overcoming Metaphysics
For the later Heidegger, “western philosophy,” in which there occurs forgetfulness of being, is synonymous with “the tradition of metaphysics.” Metaphysics inquires about the being of beings, but in such a way that the question of being as such is disregarded, and being itself is obliterated. The Heideggerian “history of being” can thus be seen as the history of metaphysics, which is the history of being’s oblivion. However, looked at from another angle, metaphysics is also the way of thinking that looks beyond beings toward their ground or basis. Each metaphysics aims at the fundamentum absolutum, the ground of such a metaphysics which presents itself indubitably. In Descartes, for example, the fundamentum absolutum is attained through the “Cogito” argument. Cartesian metaphysics is characterized by subjectivity because it has its ground in the self-certain subject. Furthermore, metaphysics is not merely the philosophy which asks the question of the being of beings.At the end of philosophy—i.e., in our present age where there occurs the dissolution of philosophy into particular sciences—the sciences still speak of the being of what-is as a whole. In the wider sense of this term, metaphysics is thus, for Heidegger, any discipline which, whether explicitly or not, provides an answer to the question of the being of beings and of their ground. In medieval times such a discipline was scholastic philosophy, which defined beings as entia creatum (created things) and provided them with their ground in ens perfectissimum (the perfect being), God. Today the discipline is modern technology, through which the contemporary human being establishes himself in the world by working on it in the various modes of making and shaping. Technology forms and controls the human position in today’s world. It masters and dominates beings in various ways.

“In distinction from mastering beings, the thinking of thinkers is the thinking of being.” Heidegger believes that early Greek thinking is not yet metaphysics. Presocratic thinkers ask the question concerning the being of beings, but in such a way that being itself is laid open. They experience the being of beings as the presencing (Anwesen) of what is present (Anwesende). Being as presencing means enduring in unconcealment, disclosing. Throughout his later works Heidegger uses several words in order rightly to convey this Greek experience. What-is, what is present, the unconcealed, is “what appears from out of itself, in appearing shows itself , and in this self-showing manifests.” It is the “emerging arising, the unfolding that lingers.” He describes this experience with the Greek words phusis (emerging dominance) and alêtheia (unconcealment).He attempts to show that the early Greeks did not “objectify” beings (they did not try to reduce them to an object for the thinking subject), but they let them be as they were, as self-showing rising into unconcealment. They experienced the phenomenality of what is present, its radiant self-showing. The departure of Western philosophical tradition from concern with what is present in presencing, from this unique experience that astonished the Greeks, has had profound theoretical and practical consequences.

According to Heidegger, the experience of what is present in presencing signifies the true, unmediated experience of “the things themselves” (die Sache selbst). We may recall that the call to “the things themselves” was included in the Husserlian program of phenomenology. By means of phenomenological description Husserl attempted to arrive at pure phenomena and to describe beings just as they were given independently of any presuppositions. For Heidegger, this attempt has, however, a serious drawback. Like the tradition of modern philosophy preceding him, Husserl stood at the ground of subjectivity. The transcendental subjectivity or consciousness was for him “the sole absolute being.” It was the presupposition that had not been accounted for in his program which aimed to be presuppositionless. Consequently, in Heidegger’s view, the Husserlian attempt to arrive at pure, unmediated phenomena fails. Husserl’s phenomenology departs from the original phenomenality of beings and represents them in terms of the thinking subject as their presupposed ground. By contrast, Heidegger argues, for the Presocratics, beings are grounded in being as presencing. Being, however, is not a ground. To the early Greeks, being, unlimited in its dis-closure, appears as an abyss, the source of thought and wonder. Being calls everything into question, casts the human being out of any habitual ground, and opens before him the mystery of existence.

The departure of western philosophical tradition from what is present in presencing results in metaphysics. Heidegger believes that today’s metaphysics, in the form of technology and the calculative thinking related to it, has become so pervasive that there is no realm of life that is not subject to its dominance. It imposes its technological-scientific-industrial character on human beings, making it the sole criterion of the human sojourn on earth. As it ultimately degenerates into ideologies and worldviews, metaphysics provides an answer to the question of the being of beings for contemporary men and women, but skillfully removes from their lives the problem of their own existence.

Moreover, because its sway over contemporary human beings is so powerful, metaphysics cannot be simply cast aside or rejected. Any direct attempt to do so will only strengthen its hold. Metaphysics cannot be rejected, canceled or denied, but it can be overcome by demonstrating its nihilism. In Heidegger’s use of the term, “nihilism” has a very specific meaning. It refers to the forgetfulness of being. What remains unquestioned and forgotten in metaphysics is Being; hence, it is nihilistic."

Constance · Oct 21, 2014

smcder said:
@Constance ... yes?

. . . I would argue that this extracranial viewpoint is the one we adopt when we comment on our own and others’ brains and cultures. This is more relevant than neural circuitry. It is the community of human minds, the human world, which has gradually built up at least over the hundreds and thousands of years, since hominids emerged.

It is here, and not in the intracranial darkness, that we should look for the motors of history, of cultural change and the evolution of civilizations. Histories, cultures, societies, institutions, have their own internal dynamic… that cannot be usefully captured in neural terms."

Yes, in spades.

smcder · Oct 21, 2014

The definition of metaphysics and nihilism are helpful ... and the idea of going back to the Presocratics to start over ... an interesting alternative history but the concerns over technicity in the last paragraph and his end of life interview in Der Spiegel. "Only a god can save us" did he even think there could have been an alternate history?

"Organicism was only ever the weak voice of protest - the feeling that there had to be something more than simple-minded reductionism."

Maybe we had to get this far to consider alternatives.

(Compare this to the Jungian analyst we discussed who seemed to feel that global corporate consumerism was the expression of spirit and our inevitable future?)

smcder · Oct 21, 2014

Constance said:
This extract from the IEP article on Heidegger is especially clarifying:

". . . The conception of the history of being is of central importance in Heidegger’s thought. Already in Being and Time its idea is foreshadowed as “the destruction of the history of ontology.” In Heidegger’s later writings the story is considerably recast and called the “history of being” (Seinsgeschichte). The beginning of this story, as told by Heidegger especially in the Nietzsche lectures, is the end, the completion of philosophy by its dissolution into particular sciences and nihilism—questionlessness of being, a dead end into which the West has run. Heidegger argues that the question of being would still provide a stimulus to the research of Plato and Aristotle, but it was precisely with them that the original experience of being of the early Greeks was covered over. The fateful event was followed by the gradual slipping away of the distinction between being and beings. Described variously by different philosophers, being was reduced to a being: to idea in Plato, substantia and actualitas in Medieval philosophy, objectivity in modern philosophy, and will to power in Nietzsche and contemporary thought. The task which the later Heidegger sets before himself is then to make a way back into the primordial beginning, so that the “dead end” can be replaced by a new beginning. And since the primordial beginning of western thought lies in ancient Greece, in order to solve the problems of contemporary philosophy and reverse the course of modern history, Heidegger ultimately turns for help to the Presocratics, the first western thinkers.

5. Overcoming Metaphysics
For the later Heidegger, “western philosophy,” in which there occurs forgetfulness of being, is synonymous with “the tradition of metaphysics.” Metaphysics inquires about the being of beings, but in such a way that the question of being as such is disregarded, and being itself is obliterated. The Heideggerian “history of being” can thus be seen as the history of metaphysics, which is the history of being’s oblivion. However, looked at from another angle, metaphysics is also the way of thinking that looks beyond beings toward their ground or basis. Each metaphysics aims at the fundamentum absolutum, the ground of such a metaphysics which presents itself indubitably. In Descartes, for example, the fundamentum absolutum is attained through the “Cogito” argument. Cartesian metaphysics is characterized by subjectivity because it has its ground in the self-certain subject. Furthermore, metaphysics is not merely the philosophy which asks the question of the being of beings.At the end of philosophy—i.e., in our present age where there occurs the dissolution of philosophy into particular sciences—the sciences still speak of the being of what-is as a whole. In the wider sense of this term, metaphysics is thus, for Heidegger, any discipline which, whether explicitly or not, provides an answer to the question of the being of beings and of their ground. In medieval times such a discipline was scholastic philosophy, which defined beings as entia creatum (created things) and provided them with their ground in ens perfectissimum (the perfect being), God. Today the discipline is modern technology, through which the contemporary human being establishes himself in the world by working on it in the various modes of making and shaping. Technology forms and controls the human position in today’s world. It masters and dominates beings in various ways.

“In distinction from mastering beings, the thinking of thinkers is the thinking of being.” Heidegger believes that early Greek thinking is not yet metaphysics. Presocratic thinkers ask the question concerning the being of beings, but in such a way that being itself is laid open. They experience the being of beings as the presencing (Anwesen) of what is present (Anwesende). Being as presencing means enduring in unconcealment, disclosing. Throughout his later works Heidegger uses several words in order rightly to convey this Greek experience. What-is, what is present, the unconcealed, is “what appears from out of itself, in appearing shows itself , and in this self-showing manifests.” It is the “emerging arising, the unfolding that lingers.” He describes this experience with the Greek words phusis (emerging dominance) and alêtheia (unconcealment).He attempts to show that the early Greeks did not “objectify” beings (they did not try to reduce them to an object for the thinking subject), but they let them be as they were, as self-showing rising into unconcealment. They experienced the phenomenality of what is present, its radiant self-showing. The departure of Western philosophical tradition from concern with what is present in presencing, from this unique experience that astonished the Greeks, has had profound theoretical and practical consequences.

According to Heidegger, the experience of what is present in presencing signifies the true, unmediated experience of “the things themselves” (die Sache selbst). We may recall that the call to “the things themselves” was included in the Husserlian program of phenomenology. By means of phenomenological description Husserl attempted to arrive at pure phenomena and to describe beings just as they were given independently of any presuppositions. For Heidegger, this attempt has, however, a serious drawback. Like the tradition of modern philosophy preceding him, Husserl stood at the ground of subjectivity. The transcendental subjectivity or consciousness was for him “the sole absolute being.” It was the presupposition that had not been accounted for in his program which aimed to be presuppositionless. Consequently, in Heidegger’s view, the Husserlian attempt to arrive at pure, unmediated phenomena fails. Husserl’s phenomenology departs from the original phenomenality of beings and represents them in terms of the thinking subject as their presupposed ground. By contrast, Heidegger argues, for the Presocratics, beings are grounded in being as presencing. Being, however, is not a ground. To the early Greeks, being, unlimited in its dis-closure, appears as an abyss, the source of thought and wonder. Being calls everything into question, casts the human being out of any habitual ground, and opens before him the mystery of existence.

The departure of western philosophical tradition from what is present in presencing results in metaphysics. Heidegger believes that today’s metaphysics, in the form of technology and the calculative thinking related to it, has become so pervasive that there is no realm of life that is not subject to its dominance. It imposes its technological-scientific-industrial character on human beings, making it the sole criterion of the human sojourn on earth. As it ultimately degenerates into ideologies and worldviews, metaphysics provides an answer to the question of the being of beings for contemporary men and women, but skillfully removes from their lives the problem of their own existence.

Moreover, because its sway over contemporary human beings is so powerful, metaphysics cannot be simply cast aside or rejected. Any direct attempt to do so will only strengthen its hold. Metaphysics cannot be rejected, canceled or denied, but it can be overcome by demonstrating its nihilism. In Heidegger’s use of the term, “nihilism” has a very specific meaning. It refers to the forgetfulness of being. What remains unquestioned and forgotten in metaphysics is Being; hence, it is nihilistic."

Dreyfus and Kelly's book

All Things Shining: Reading the Western Classics to Find Meaning in a Secular Age:Amazon:Books

I listened to Dreyfus lecture when I was reading Moby Dick and put this on my reading list. You might enjoy their thesis:

"The authors' general theme, and lament, is that we are no longer "open to the world." ... What makes their case finally compelling is their insistence on the importance of openness, on attentiveness to the given moment, on what they call "a fully embodied, this-worldly kind of sacred."

...

How we lost this sense of the sacred is the hidden history of the west.

smcder · Oct 21, 2014

smcder said:
@Constance ... yes?

"From what hemisphere is [McGilchrist] able to observe the two hemispheres, pass judgement on them, and see their rivalry as the motor of the unfolding of human cultures? Does he have a third hemisphere? Or does he have something that is not a hemisphere at all? In short, is he talking from a standpoint that transcends his hemispheres?

I suspect he is; it is the standpoint from which we all speak when
we speak about pretty well everything:

namely the shared, extracranial human world woven over the millennia out of a zillion human (whole person) interactions.

And it is this that he seems to by-pass when he argues that the outcome of the rivalry or balance between the two hemispheres plays a major role in determining the predominant characteristics of cultures, civilisations or epochs.

And I would argue that this extracranial viewpoint is the one we adopt when we comment on our own and others’ brains and cultures. This is more relevant than neural circuitry. It is the community of human minds, the human world, which has gradually built up at least over the hundreds and thousands of years, since hominids emerged.

It is here, and not in the intracranial darkness, that we should look for the motors of history, of cultural change and the evolution of civilizations. Histories, cultures, societies, institutions, have their own internal dynamic… that cannot be usefully captured in neural terms."

The third hemisphere is extra-cranial ... it's hard for me to switch from the brain in a box mentality ... limited POV as opposed to mind being in the environment and society.

Constance · Oct 21, 2014

smcder said:
. . . did he even think there could have been an alternate history?

"Organicism was only ever the weak voice of protest - the feeling that there had to be something more than simple-minded reductionism."

Maybe we had to get this far to consider alternatives.

(Compare this to the Jungian analyst we discussed who seemed to feel that global corporate consumerism was the expression of spirit and our inevitable future?)

I don't know if Heidegger thought there could have been an alternate history. I do think we could have had many alternate histories, but that's for another discussion. The fact being that we've had the history that we've had and that it has taken us farther and farther from the understanding of our being within the being of what-is -- and our taking on of that understanding and what it means, signifies.

Maybe we had to get this far to consider alternatives.

(Compare this to the Jungian analyst we discussed who seemed to feel that global corporate consumerism was the expression of spirit and our inevitable future?)

Again I have no answer to the idea that "we had to get this far to consider alternatives." We can only hope that we still have an opportunity, as a species, to recognize and bring about alternatives. That Jungian was the redoubtable Wolfgang Giegerich, the title of one of whose most recent books is The Soul Always Thinks. I think that that title names the essential nature of our consciousness/mind, but the problem is always the weight of established ideas that draw us away from the ground of experience out of which we need to begin our thinking.

Pharoah · Oct 21, 2014

Constance said:
What I am saying, is that there are many examples of artists creating in the absence of conceptual principles and conceptual understanding. They create what they "feel" is right - Mozart didn't know about Schoenberg's serial technique (sorry, I said twelve tone before when I meant serial technique Serialism - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia In the case of a composer, he/she might listen to the "natural" cadence of rhythm, harmony, and melody to create - often in the absence of conceptual knowledge about such things (similarly applicable to other art forms).

When I listen to music, I hear each key changes, often understand conceptually the impact they have on "feeling" or mood, as I understand conceptually the impact of articulation, rhythm, and melody. Alternatively, someone else might say, "I love that piece - but I don't know why".

So, someone (A) may create (or listen) intuitively through their sensibilities. They may understand the phenomenal characteristics related to that art form.
Someone else (B) might understand the concepts from which such sensibilities seem to arise.

I am a B person. I hanker (that word again!) for conceptual principles that explain the sensibilities. I am analytical, even in art.

Yes, that's clear. I think it's a function of your training in analytical and positivist philosophy, which has been dominated by science and its objectivist/materialist premises and presuppositions for a century and a half. Phenomenological philosophy began in a critique of those premises and presuppositions and has been a major influence in consciousness studies, changing the perspectives of an increasing number of neuroscientists and cognitive scientists. I do think you need to become aware of what phenomenology is before you attempt to explain it away or continue ignoring it. There is also this to consider: a rapproachement is in process [or at least beginning] between analytical and phenomenological perspectives in philosophy and consciousness/mind science as a result of the interdisciplinary work done in CS over the last 25 years.

I'm not sure what you mean by "artistic intuition"? Can you explain that? Artists are generally more 'intuitive people' than analytical thinkers are, but that's an aspect of their approaching experience more openly, more holistically, more sensually through greater use of the right-hemisphere of the brain. You seem to be working toward a theory that artworks in general arise from 'intuition' of something informational that 'unifies' art and that is essentially the same kind of information that emerges from analytical concepts. Can you be more specific, provide illustrations?

That art, music, and literary critics use conceptual analysis in their attempts to analyze how artworks work and what they might be said to signify does not mean, in my experience, that their analyses and interpretations of artworks uncover the concepts that have been intuited by the makers of these works which turn out to be somehow "unified." We are on the cusp of another long digression here which I don't think we should undertake unless the resident company is agreed about the value of doing so. We'll be taking on the discipline of philosophy designated as "aesthetics," which would take another hundred pages to explore adequately. Getting back to art itself, in what sense do you consider it in general to be 'unified' conceptually? I also have to ask you to clarify and support your statement above that "Someone else (B) might understand the concepts from which such sensibilities seem to arise." Can you present a case that artistic sensibilities arise from concepts rather than from embodied conscious presence in the world? You also write above that you "hanker . . . for conceptual principles that explain the sensibilities." What conceptual principles do you think (or hope) might one day "explain the sensibilities"?

Indeed, what Heidegger referred to as the "calculative thinking" rampant in the 20th century, itself developing out of overly categorical thinking which has long falsified the nature of phenomenological experience and expression in the world.

Constance, I have re-read your post here quite a few times and am not sure what questions you are asking really.
When I talk of unity in art, I am talking of individual works, their unity, and the diversity that springs from them, not of a unity that encompasses an entire art form. I could give examples of the former, but these would entail rather heavy duty analysis - of music mostly (but this is a small taster ‘Hans Keller, Nikos Skalkottas and the notion of symphonic genius’, in Mousikos Logos, ISSN: 1108–6963 (August 2013) | Eva Mantzourani - Academia.edu )

Artistic intuition - well we intuit that combining chilli, mixed herb and bananas is going to taste disgusting.
Any form of art applies the qualitative characteristics of a medium in its construction. Some people have an intuitive talent for understanding these characteristics and how they relate to one another, other people do not.

I believe that all diversity in nature can be explained by profound unity - I first came to accept this as a youngster after reading ‘On Growth and Form‘ by D'Arcy Thompson - Peter Medawar, the 1960 Nobel Laureate in Medicine, called it “the finest work of literature in all the annals of science that have been recorded in the English tongue”.
Artists of note begin with a profound unity (the germ of an idea) and create great diversity of expression with it.

smcder · Oct 21, 2014

Pharoah said:
Constance, I have re-read your post here quite a few times and am not sure what questions you are asking really.
When I talk of unity in art, I am talking of individual works, their unity, and the diversity that springs from them, not of a unity that encompasses an entire art form. I could give examples of the former, but these would entail rather heavy duty analysis - of music mostly (but this is a small taster ‘Hans Keller, Nikos Skalkottas and the notion of symphonic genius’, in Mousikos Logos, ISSN: 1108–6963 (August 2013) | Eva Mantzourani - Academia.edu )

Artistic intuition - well we intuit that combining chilli, mixed herb and bananas is going to taste disgusting.
Any form of art applies the qualitative characteristics of a medium in its construction. Some people have an intuitive talent for understanding these characteristics and how they relate to one another, other people do not.

I believe that all diversity in nature can be explained by profound unity - I first came to accept this as a youngster after reading ‘On Growth and Form‘ by D'Arcy Thompson - Peter Medawar, the 1960 Nobel Laureate in Medicine, called it “the finest work of literature in all the annals of science that have been recorded in the English tongue”.
Artists of note begin with a profound unity (the germ of an idea) and create great diversity of expression with it.

I'm pretty sure that was one of Elvis' favorite recipes ... on bread and deep fried ...

Peanut butter, banana and bacon sandwich - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

But I can't hold the rest of the world to our culinary standards here in the Deep South, to include:

Souse meat
Chitlins
Poke sallet
Pickled pigs feet
Gator
Hog jowl

... and now I'll stop as my mouth's waterin' and I got a hankerin'

Although I don't know what is "mixing herb"?

smcder · Oct 21, 2014

Pharoah said:
Constance, I have re-read your post here quite a few times and am not sure what questions you are asking really.
When I talk of unity in art, I am talking of individual works, their unity, and the diversity that springs from them, not of a unity that encompasses an entire art form. I could give examples of the former, but these would entail rather heavy duty analysis - of music mostly (but this is a small taster ‘Hans Keller, Nikos Skalkottas and the notion of symphonic genius’, in Mousikos Logos, ISSN: 1108–6963 (August 2013) | Eva Mantzourani - Academia.edu )

Artistic intuition - well we intuit that combining chilli, mixed herb and bananas is going to taste disgusting.
Any form of art applies the qualitative characteristics of a medium in its construction. Some people have an intuitive talent for understanding these characteristics and how they relate to one another, other people do not.

I believe that all diversity in nature can be explained by profound unity - I first came to accept this as a youngster after reading ‘On Growth and Form‘ by D'Arcy Thompson - Peter Medawar, the 1960 Nobel Laureate in Medicine, called it “the finest work of literature in all the annals of science that have been recorded in the English tongue”.
Artists of note begin with a profound unity (the germ of an idea) and create great diversity of expression with it.

Looked up Thompson - I've read this ... years ago or in another life, having a look.

smcder · Oct 21, 2014

Pharoah said:
Constance, I have re-read your post here quite a few times and am not sure what questions you are asking really.
When I talk of unity in art, I am talking of individual works, their unity, and the diversity that springs from them, not of a unity that encompasses an entire art form. I could give examples of the former, but these would entail rather heavy duty analysis - of music mostly (but this is a small taster ‘Hans Keller, Nikos Skalkottas and the notion of symphonic genius’, in Mousikos Logos, ISSN: 1108–6963 (August 2013) | Eva Mantzourani - Academia.edu )

Artistic intuition - well we intuit that combining chilli, mixed herb and bananas is going to taste disgusting.
Any form of art applies the qualitative characteristics of a medium in its construction. Some people have an intuitive talent for understanding these characteristics and how they relate to one another, other people do not.

I believe that all diversity in nature can be explained by profound unity - I first came to accept this as a youngster after reading ‘On Growth and Form‘ by D'Arcy Thompson - Peter Medawar, the 1960 Nobel Laureate in Medicine, called it “the finest work of literature in all the annals of science that have been recorded in the English tongue”.
Artists of note begin with a profound unity (the germ of an idea) and create great diversity of expression with it.

"Utterly sui generis, the book has never conformed to the mainstream of biological thought. It does not really include a single unifying thesis, nor, in many cases, does it attempt to establish a causal relationship between the forms emerging from physics with the comparable forms seen in biology. It is a work in the "descriptive" tradition; Thompson did not articulate his insights in the form of experimental hypotheses that can be tested. He was aware of this, saying that "This book of mine has little need of preface, for indeed it is 'all preface' from beginning to end."

"Thompson was a visual thinker, and the lyrical and aesthetic terms in which he describes the mathematical beauty of nature have appealed to readers in varied disciplines, something D'Arcy himself would have approved of as an advocate of interdisciplinary thinking. On Growth and Form has inspired thinkers including biologists Julian Huxley and Conrad Hal Waddington, mathematician Alan Turing and anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss. The book has powerfully influenced architecture and has long been a set text on architecture courses. On Growth and Form has inspired artists including Henry Moore, Richard Hamilton and Jackson Pollock."

Constance · Oct 21, 2014

smcder said:
"Utterly sui generis, the book has never conformed to the mainstream of biological thought. It does not really include a single unifying thesis, nor, in many cases, does it attempt to establish a causal relationship between the forms emerging from physics with the comparable forms seen in biology. It is a work in the "descriptive" tradition; Thompson did not articulate his insights in the form of experimental hypotheses that can be tested. He was aware of this, saying that "This book of mine has little need of preface, for indeed it is 'all preface' from beginning to end."

"Thompson was a visual thinker, and the lyrical and aesthetic terms in which he describes the mathematical beauty of nature have appealed to readers in varied disciplines, something D'Arcy himself would have approved of as an advocate of interdisciplinary thinking. On Growth and Form has inspired thinkers including biologists Julian Huxley and Conrad Hal Waddington, mathematician Alan Turing and anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss. The book has powerfully influenced architecture and has long been a set text on architecture courses. On Growth and Form has inspired artists including Henry Moore, Richard Hamilton and Jackson Pollock."

Sounds like a book worth reading and I will.

smcder · Oct 21, 2014

"Described variously by different philosophers, being was reduced to a being: to idea in Plato, substantia and actualitas in Medieval philosophy, objectivity in modern philosophy, and will to power in Nietzsche and contemporary thought. The task which the later Heidegger sets before himself is then to make a way back into the primordial beginning, so that the “dead end” can be replaced by a new beginning."

That's a gem of an idea ... new beginning and now I understand what he means by not doing metaphysics. This is what is meant by Nietzsche as the end of metaphysics ... Plato to Nietzsche.

Nietzsche philosophized with a hammer but not Heidegger's ... the will to power ran throughout his work and it borrows from Schopenhauer ... it would be interesting to look at it in "modern thought" ...

Constance · Oct 22, 2014

Pharoah said:
Constance, I have re-read your post here quite a few times and am not sure what questions you are asking really.
When I talk of unity in art, I am talking of individual works, their unity, and the diversity that springs from them, not of a unity that encompasses an entire art form. I could give examples of the former, but these would entail rather heavy duty analysis - of music mostly (but this is a small taster ‘Hans Keller, Nikos Skalkottas and the notion of symphonic genius’, in Mousikos Logos, ISSN: 1108–6963 (August 2013) | Eva Mantzourani - Academia.edu )

Artistic intuition - well we intuit that combining chilli, mixed herb and bananas is going to taste disgusting.

Any form of art applies the qualitative characteristics of a medium in its construction. Some people have an intuitive talent for understanding these characteristics and how they relate to one another, other people do not.

I believe that all diversity in nature can be explained by profound unity - I first came to accept this as a youngster after reading ‘On Growth and Form‘ by D'Arcy Thompson - Peter Medawar, the 1960 Nobel Laureate in Medicine, called it “the finest work of literature in all the annals of science that have been recorded in the English tongue”.
Artists of note begin with a profound unity (the germ of an idea) and create great diversity of expression with it.

Thanks. This clears up for me some of what you wrote in the post a few days ago concerning 'intuition'.

Consciousness and the Paranormal — Part 2 | Page 77 | The Paracast Community Forums

I took you to be saying that human intuition, as exemplified by some artists, discloses the same unified system of information that is discovered in conceptual thinking about nature. Perhaps that's still not accurate? If not, would you clarify?

I too "believe that [all?] diversity in nature can be explained by profound unity" but a unity that is lost and regained again and again (chaos and systems theory). I also believe that subjectivity {germinal in Panksepp's affectivity > awareness} grows out of nature rather than being inserted into it from someplace outside nature. At the same time it appears that everything becomes more complex and indeed more 'dissonant' when consciousness and mind as we know them emerge on the scene. Distance, difference, and dissonance are often most acutely expressed in human artworks. I think art expresses the human condition, which is always a condition of partial understanding and often one of conflicting feelings, ideas, and values. Stevens sought "an amassing harmony" in a world ravaged by war and oppression. He also celebrated and exemplifed vital presence to experience in the given world, entertained conflicting ideas about the nature of reality, and wrote that "It must be that in time the real / Will from its crude compoundings come."

Anyway, I still wonder how you respond to these questions:

Can you present a case that artistic sensibilities arise from concepts rather than from embodied conscious presence in the world? You also write above that you "hanker . . . for conceptual principles that explain the sensibilities. "What conceptual principles do you think (or hope) might one day "explain the sensibilities"?

Constance · Oct 22, 2014

smcder said:
. . . for more on A and B types (@Pharoah) read the letter from Steven Pinker and response by McGilChrist.

Steve, where can I find that exchange between Pinker and McGilchrist?

Click to expand...

smcder · Oct 22, 2014

Here you go:

Pinker
Iain McGilchrist, Contacts

Mcgilchrist
Iain McGilchrist, Contacts

Pharoah · Oct 22, 2014

Constance said:
Thanks. This clears up for me some of what you wrote in the post a few days ago concerning 'intuition'.

Consciousness and the Paranormal — Part 2 | Page 77 | The Paracast Community Forums

I took you to be saying that human intuition, as exemplified by some artists, discloses the same unified system of information that is discovered in conceptual thinking about nature. Perhaps that's still not accurate? If not, would you clarify?

I too "believe that [all?] diversity in nature can be explained by profound unity" but a unity that is lost and regained again and again (chaos and systems theory). I also believe that subjectivity {germinal in Panksepp's affectivity > awareness} grows out of nature rather than being inserted into it from someplace outside nature. At the same time it appears that everything becomes more complex and indeed more 'dissonant' when consciousness and mind as we know them emerge on the scene. Distance, difference, and dissonance are often most acutely expressed in human artworks. I think art expresses the human condition, which is always a condition of partial understanding and often one of conflicting feelings, ideas, and values. Stevens sought "an amassing harmony" in a world ravaged by war and oppression. He also celebrated and exemplifed vital presence to experience in the given world, entertained conflicting ideas about the nature of reality, and wrote that "It must be that in time the real / Will from its crude compoundings come."

Anyway, I still wonder how you respond to these questions:

"I took you to be saying that human intuition, as exemplified by some artists, discloses the same unified system of information that is discovered in conceptual thinking about nature. Perhaps that's still not accurate? If not, would you clarify" No I wasn't saying that... it was me not being clear.

Artistic sensibilities do not arise from concepts in my view.
All diversity is explainable with unified principles, which are concepts, in my view.

mixed herbs is what I use in pasta source

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