Year: 2023

In theory I’m not reading, so I can focus on writing, but just acquired these three, on top of the two recent reads of Humboldt and Prigogine. Help!!!

Guess I can leave the two memoirs until some “time off in reward” and having seen Kevin talk about his latest, I probably have his thinking already absorbed in mine, so far as my immediate writing is concerned.

Couldn’t resist flipping through the dust-jacket blurbs and intros of Dan’s. As well as discovering a few biographical nuggets I was unaware of – it was always the content of his thinking I was focussed on anyway – I can rest easy on one thing.

I was baffled, in this interview of him in “Tufts Now” about his memoir, that “From Bacteria to Bach and Back” (B2BnB) wasn’t even mentioned in their list of his most important works. (Obviously “Consciousness [not] Explained” (C[n]E) was, as it always is, despite being over 30 years old.) Fortunately inside the back cover of his memoir, the publisher has B2BnB first in their list of his most important works (as well as a pretty comprehensive sequential bibliography in the front). C[n]E was about what an explanation of consciousness would need to be – the explaining of consciousness, not the explanation of it. B2BnB on the other hand is his best final version of the explanation he’s nailed to the mast.

The must read of his, a consolidation and update of all that went before. “This is a good place to start if you’re new to Dennett.”

I can rest easy.

[Great chat with Robert Kuhn (Closer To Truth) with Dan about his Memoir.]

[Great also to have Kevin’s alongside Dan’s here, Kevin dismissed Dan’s “illusionism” – but in fact says pretty much the same as Dan more recently. Something to work into the writing.]

Onward.

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A recurring mention of mine is that “I am in writing mode” – deliberately avoiding reading new publications, even where it will obviously be relevant to my writings – everything is connected at some level of abstraction after all. I acknowledged this state existed “in theory anyway” when failing and reading a couple things in the last month – Humboldt and Prigogine for example.

That pattern recurs in microcosm ever month or two when I find I have dozens of browser pages open, after clicking on social media responses to topics I’m working on. And then I have to do a post, like this one below, to close all those pages whilst nevertheless saving them for posterity.
(I used to use a bookmarking app for that – but it’s a vicious cycle, the easier it is to bookmark, the more things get bookmarked and the harder it is to index or tag in ways that make them findable in future!)

So here goes:

“Book Review: Elon Musk – Not the new one, sorry” Musk’s interference in the social media (and the political commentary and free-speech landscape generally) highlights / intersects another topic of mine. That is he and many problematic modes of thought deserve honest use of the technical term “Autistic”. The PC / Woke agenda reminds us we need to be careful being critical of individuals – respect the human – on that spectrum, but the problematic thought pattern is real and really is problematic.

Philip Goff on Fine Tuning – not one I expected.
And this is the Philip session at HTLGI mentioned in that piece at BBC3 Free Thinking. Featuring Liz Oldfield as well as Dan Dennett.

Literary Kicks – I think this James Joyce link was a Pirsig connection?
(via ZMMQuality on Facebook)

Matt Crawford – this is a piece he wrote for the Smithsonian about Pirsig / ZMM after Bob died, and we know Matt provides  an intro to next years 50th anniversary edition of ZMM. Hat tip David Matos at ZMMQuality on Facebook again.

Is There a Crisis in Cosmology? Is there ever – part of The meta-crisis. pay-walled at NYT.

A professional full length documentary version of Des Molloy’s “authentic” re-run of the Pirsig ZMM journey. He’s an interesting person. From “The Motorcycle Film Fest” – watched it last night.

A 2016 review of Stafford Beer and his Cybersyn Allende’s Chile project. (See previous “Santiago Boys“.

Information Theoretic Thermodynamics – not a new topic here, but a recent novel take from Chiara Marletto, in the Journal of the Institute Of Physics –  I’ve not got my head round yet.

Alan Watts is alive online: contradictions of a pop philosopher by Nicolás Boullosa on March 22, 2023. Came up because The Whole Earth Catalogue came up at the recent Teesside Skeptics.

One of my less well known heroes John C Doyle.

Gregory Bateson on Wikipedia – still catching-up on what I’m missing with him. (I was originally dismissive after his connection with discredited Margaret Mead?

REFLECTIONS
ON
THE
MOTIVE
POWER
OF
FIRE, AND
ON
MACHINES
FITTED
TO DEVELOP
THAT
POWER Sadi
Carnot 1825 (Excerpts)
Still following up Tim Kueper’s references to this.

Sven Lindqvist – wrote some articles about Pirsig at MSU Bozeman, Mt but seem to have lost them.

And an interview with Dan Dennett at Tufts on the publication of his memoir (already on order).

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Now, where was I?

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Mentioned a few days ago, I was seeing Graham Parker last night – and I did. Just some impressions.

The set-list was indeed fascinating:

25 albums over 48 years between 1976 and 2023 so ~250/300 (?) tracks to choose from. 8 from the new album “Last Chance to Learn to Twist” and 4 from the very first 1976 album “Howlin’ Wind” leaving only 8 from the other 23 albums from a set-list of 21 (inc 2 covers). So not surprising not many I would have pre-identified as favourites. And yet … a great set.

Not quite as much energy as the original Rumour days and no Bob Andrews and no brass section, but at 72 he’s still got that voice and a passion for his songs, many of which have political messages, poetic without being angrily in your face (like the current naïve fashion of Sleaford Mods, Benefits and Meryl Streek to name but 3.) And playing a lot more on the guitar than I ever remember – but there were two top pros behind him in those days – Brinsley Schwarz and Martin Belmont. Just Martin remains from The Rumour, 2 years older than GP at 74 and looking his age, pretty frail and unsteady on his feet, coming on stage with a walking stick and sitting on his stool when concentrating on the rhythm backing, but instantly recognisable standing and rocking / leaning into the riffs and solos.

Most of the audience seemed to be from the 70’s too and all seated – contrast with the Public Image gig from a couple of weeks ago – but Graham was in light-hearted banter mode throughout, enjoying his audience. Remember now the link to how Southside Johnny and Bruce Springsteen came into our lives. Not many appeared to recognise him in the bar beforehand and the few that did acknowledge left him in peace with the roadie/tech and the chorus girls – The Ladybugs. Couldn’t resist wishing him luck once the others had gone backstage and sharing the image I’d taken – what I’d taken to be – the last time I saw him in Nov’78, at least 3 memorable ’78 gigs, but I did see him another 3 or 4 times post “Sparks” ’79 to ’82. I know that because shortly after Sylvia and I married and moved to Reading I saw him at The Hexagon but Sylvia couldn’t be there she reminded me.  Yet, she did see him too, checking into the Post House Hotel where she was doing a shift on reception that day. Pretty close to “home” in Deepcut, but that’s another story.

Great fun

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Dan Dennett shared this Nick Humphrey lecture at the RI.

https://t.co/We3BW2QEGe
Nick’s best version by far of his theory of consciousness:
the positive side of illusionism, with new lines of evidential support.

— Daniel Dennett (@danieldennett) September 23, 2023

I’ve watched once through and notwithstanding clear differences – evolution of warm blooded mammals (environmental independence), not just vertebrates (brain architecture) and the “attractor” version of the internal model (?) – the whole active inference monitoring cycle and the affect-centred sense of subjective self in self and empathy in others seems exactly consistent with Solms.

Only issue I have is Nick has adopted “sentience” limited to the consciousness that comes with such an internal affective model of the self – phenomenal consciousness contrasted with “blind” sensation – I guess I can be OK with that, but I’ve used it more broadly.

And like Solms Humphry’s model also predicts artificial sentience.

Anyway -just a quickie to capture the links.

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Notes:

Solms knows Humphry’s work and admires the deep evolutionary  aspect. Consistent with his own functional brain architecture focus.

Using “Sentient” to mean being aware of sensed inputs – that there is a self-aware being “in” the organism doing the experiencing (and responding).

Cognitive … unpicking overloaded meanings?

(Just to be clear – getting lots of pedants on social media pointing out that they’re not telling the same story. Obviously. But what they are telling by focussing on different aspects of the consciousness story at different levels of detail is that they fit one consistent overarching story … need to find time for a proper piece here.)

#EMFAMBE

Last couple of days – Sarah Freiesleben – “Shaping Human Centered Progress” – posted a recommendation on LinkedIn for the thinking of Iain McGilchrist (of whom I’m a big fan, as you know) and it drew a lot of flak in reaction to the old left-right-brained-people suggestion (though of course she never actually said that). Dave Snowden (of whom I’m also a big fan since 2003) responded typically robustly against “that left/right brain nonsense – a simplistic dichotomy” – and the dialogue developed to some kind of sensible but disjointed concensus, with people including myself giving opinions.

So, today she posted an update (which also included an implied criticism of Dave’s attitude – and in his inimitable style, he let her have it again!)

Anyway, the valuable content:

Yesterday I wrote a post where I referred to the in-depth work that Dr Iain McGilchrist has done in explaining the various ways in which the brain’s hemispheres process information. I used this reference to make a point about how being able to navigate #complex and #complicated situations is already baked into the #humanexperience, but we seem to be devaluing it.

It attracted a lot of attention while I was out camping and enjoying the wonderful nature of Denmark, and I do not have time to respond to all the comments individually. But I want to take a moment to add some clarity based on the general categories of comments I have read.

Firstly, the modern science around this is not about people being right-brained or left-brained, like we used to think in the 80s. Nor can we categorically say that music, art, or math come from certain halves. That work has been debunked. But we should not mistake the old, now disproven science, with the compelling modern science around (sometimes competing) hemispheric behaviors, and be curious about its implications in relation to understanding and bringing awareness to how we engage in sensemaking.

Next, I wrote a concluding comment about how we need to use both hemispheres at work and some seem to have taken this literally. I want to clarify that leaving one behind is indeed not possible. People are always using their whole brains. But what I wanted to convey with the metaphor is that we value the style of thinking that is associated with the right hemisphere increasingly less in our world and this is a major problem.

The more we glorify quantifying and creating algorithms for everything, the less we seem to be able to find contextual truths that lead to possibilities. And since we are all, always thinking contextually, but becoming less aware of contextual truths existing and having value, we are perhaps unconsciously creating static polarities that eventually serve no real context at all.

Finally, to those who suggest that my post and Iain’s work are creating a dichotomy, I would like to highlight the crucial importance of noticing the differences and similarities between things as a tool to preserve and invite nuance back into situations. Dichotomies are similar but different in that they look at differences with an either/or perspective; nuance generally notices differences and aims to connect on them by noticing “differences that make a difference”. And nuance is of critical importance to evolution, as we often forget that symbiosis is a key part of it.

I hope this has made it more clear. I am always happy to engage in mutual learning in context with people who enjoy constructive dialogue, as time allows. I learn a lot from engaging in the LI community. Your comments and feedback help me know where to take more time to explain and this is a case where much care is clearly required.

(Link to original post.)

My response in support of the original post and the general response:

Fascinating. I’ve written a lot about McGilchrist and as you say, we need to recognise true complexity and be very careful suggesting some “competing” dichotomy when we’re really talking about collaborative interactions (which I guess you already knew – even being careful with the words it’s easy to mislead over the complex subtleties).
My starter for ten –

https://www.psybertron.org/archives/17736

https://www.psybertron.org/archives/17708

https://www.psybertron.org/archives/15472

And Dave’s responses:

Please, not that left/right brain nonsense. McGilchrist says a lot of sensible things but creating a simplistic dichotomy as the explanation doesn’t cut it any more.

(Some things he finds sensible) some of his views on the spatialisation of time, his disputes on free will and some aspects of his views on religion.

(And) no one denies that there are different hemispheres. What is being challenged is the validity of the conclusions that McGilchrist draws from that. That challenge also links with his wider failure to move beyond a cognitive framing.

Reductionism is problematic when people assume that the qualities of the whole are explained by the properties of the parts. There is nothing wrong with breaking things up. My view is that McGilchrist commits the reductionist error and worse he only uses a partial and non contextual account of the parts and further doesn’t take sufficient account of the relationships between those parts and other ‘parts’ and relationships he ignores.

And my response to Dave’s initial position position:

Dave Snowden – Not many things I’d disagree with you on Dave. Obviously, anyone who sees “a simplistic dichotomy” in McGilchrist’s view is in error – that’s debunked old left-right-brained-people bullshit – but surely it’s undeniable that the (divided) brain and its interconnectivity are evolved to be that way? (You make that point in another thread.)

As to what McGilchrist is actually claiming – I’ve already written a lot about both his and Mark Solms’ work – I might pick-up your specific comments in this thread and respond in a separate blog post. (Have you written any critique of McGilchrist elsewhere?)

[He hasn’t – even though I did share a McGilchrist question with him last time out 😉 ]

So this is the start of that piece.

(Basically I think Sarah has it about right and Dave is the kind of influential person we need to get on board with the intended subtle realities here.)

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Can’t believe I didn’t post anything during last week. But here a brief diary entry.

Monday (18th) I attended two venues new to me.

During the day I was at Lincoln University – great new location – at an event in memory of John Friend of (Community) Operations Research fame – more “systems thinking response to (human) complexity” for me. In addition to the current academic / researcher and host Rebecca Herron, probably the most significant new (old) contact was Gerard de Zeeuw.

That same evening I was at the converted and newly refurbished Sunderland Fire Station – another great new venue- and saw Public Image Limited in fine form with three new numbers and a not so obvious selection of oldies, with the usual final three for an encore.
(Sadly no USLS1, setlist in footer).

I’m returning to the Sunderland Fire Station on Tuesday this coming week.

I have tickets for golden oldie Graham Parker with new band The Goldtops. I was a massive fan in the 70’s up to and including “Squeezing Out Sparks” seeing him with The Rumour a dozen or more times. He’s been in the US since then, and I never did see him there, still writing but mostly doing solo unplugged new stuff I understand. That said my 2023 playlist does include his 21st C work too, England’s Latest Clown and I Discovered America – both excellent – from Don’t Tell Columbus (2007). I shall be fascinated to see what mix of tracks he brings to Sunderland after all this time.

(My pic of GP from the November 1978
opening night of Virgin Victoria Venue, London,
pre Squeezing Out Sparks release.)

And, talking of venues new to me, newly re-opened Stockton Globe Theatre looks to have had a fine refurbishment:

Anyway, I have tickets for QOTSA (Josh Homme’s – Queens of the Stone Age) in November.

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Nobel prize-winning physicist Ilya Prigogine “The End of Certainty” (1996, 1997 English 2nd Ed.) is a book recommendation (by David Morey, fellow Pirsigian) I read in 2002.

I say “read”, but my very brief dismissive reference then didn’t amount to much, amidst a brain dump of chaotic early reading:

“Ilya Prigogine – The End of Certainty. – Disappointing, given the guy’s credentials and the title – seems mainly a packaging of Chaos and Complexity. Will need to re-read once I’ve followed some of the references further.”

I’ve no recollection of re-reading it until the last few days (more on which later) – but I can see the follow-up references included the excellent philosophical works of Heisenberg and Schrödinger.

My only other reference back then (2003) was to note that Prigogine had been a participant at the “Einstein Meets Magritte” conference in 1995 at which Pirsig had delivered his “Subjects, Objects, Data and Values” paper. Literally just before Prigogine’s book was published.

Anyway between then and now, I’ve made only one passing reference to Prigogine – a trivial reference in a draft (but important topic) essay that got side-tracked by a meta-argument about disagreement and credibility – weird!

But somewhere along the line, I did actually read it before now. I can tell because whilst annotating the current read I am annotating my previous – naïve –  marginal / highlighting annotations.

Isabelle Stengers has been on the unread reading list recently, but I’d never noticed how much she had been a Prigogine collaborator until this read. In the original 1996 (French) edition she had in fact been co-author, but had apparently asked to be removed from co-authorship of the 1997 translation – more weird!

Suffice to say, I am finding the current read absolutely fascinating. It is full of things important to my thought journey. Systems thinking as a response to complexity. The inevitability of evolution of life and intelligence. The entropy-as-ignorance / knowledge-as-neg-entropy views as more fundamental than any quantum / relativity physics. And a strong Carnot and Gibbs emphasis before Boltzmann and later systems thinkers.

Again, I’ll probably not do any further “review” now before returning it to shelves of half-unread books, but it’s now full of notes I’ll need to incorporate into my wider writing.

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Just to capture a post by long-time correspondent Lee Beaumont, on “Prioritising the Grand Challenges“.

Whilst my agenda is more meta, more abstract, than most, I have been conscious of many others’ focus on the challenges / crises facing us in the every-day world. Poly-crises, omni-crisis, you name them and have settled recently on the meta-crisis prefix (after Rowson) for obvious reasons. What we call things, the names and terms we use, what we care about, matter far more than any objective definitions.

My abstract / meta interests is therefore deliberate and unashamed – a belief that our whole collective decision-making, individual and social (ie cybernetics or free-democratic governance) operates in an environment dominated by an embedded but misguided worldview. [You just have to look at the fake-furore around our illustrious (UK) PM “rowing back” on environmental commitments (not).]

The US “Fulcrum Platform” on which Lee’s piece is published is not surprisingly also aimed at “repairing our democracy”. [The article is actually Chat-GPT generated from Lee’s Wikiversity materials, but seems to have Lee’s blessing?]

Let me know what you think of Lee’s priorities.

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