british library no. 3

"After all, the cultivated person's first duty is to be always prepared to rewrite the encyclopedia." - p. 28

«The discussion of emergence has grown out of the successes and the failusers of the scientific quest for reduction. Emergence theories presuppose that the once-popular project of complete explanatory reduction -- that is, explaining all phenomena in the natural world in terms of the objects and laws of physics -- is finally impossible. See, among many others, Austen Clark 1990, Hans Primas 1983, Evandro Agazzi 1991, and Terrance Brown and Leslie Smith 2003. Also helpful is Carl Gillet and Barry Loewer 2001, e.g. Jaegwon Kim's article, `Mental Causation and Consciousness: The Two Mind-body problems for the physicalist.»

These are: Clark: Psychological Models and Neural Mechanisms: An examination of reductionism in psychology -- Primas: Chemistry, Quantum Mechanics and Reductionism: Perspectives in Theoretical Chemistry -- Agazzi: The problem of Reductionisim in Science -- Brown and Smith: Reductionism and the Development of Knowledge -- Gillet and Loewer: Physicalism and its discontents

«By embracing an active externalism, we allow a more natural explanation of all sorts of actions. One can explain my choice of words in Scrabble, for example, as the outcome of an extended cognitive process involving the rearrangement of tiles on my tray. Of course, one could always try to explain my action in terms of internal processes and a long series of "inputs" and "actions," but this explanation would be needlessly complex. If an isomorphic process were going on in the head, we would feel no urge to characterize it in this cumbersome way. In a very real sense, the re-arrangement of tiles on the tray is not part of action; it is part of thought.»

Rather similar to Gilbert Ryle on the "Concept of Mind" and a way around "Ryle's regress."

Regarding the idea of levels -- Ruesch and Bateson deal with Intrapersonal, Interpersonal, one-to-many, many-to-one, space binding messages of many-to-many, and time-binding messages of many-to-many (Table on p. 277).

They make the interesting claim that «At the cultural level, the temporal and spatial limits of the network are not perceptible to the participants, who also are incapable of perceiving its topologoy. Therefore, for the participants, predictability is minimal and excessively difficult for the scientific observer.»

Does the universe exist? They refer to Rosenblueth, Wiener, and Bigelow, "Behavior, Purpose, and Teleology", J. Philos. Sc. 10:18-24, 1943.

I definitely would like a copy of "Structure and process in social relations" Psychiatry 12:105-124, 1949, which I had ahold of last week...

Entirely analogous to what Andy Clark was getting at: «Figure 2 represents the case in which the organism includes within the self various objects and events outside his skin but intimately connected with him, while he labels as parts of the environment certain of his own body parts or functions of which he is perhaps dimly aware or over which he feels that he has no control.»

«It was argued that the study of knowing or, as we call it, the study of "information," is inseparable from the study of communication, codification, purpose, and values. We have thus modified the study of epistemology towards the inclusion of a specific range of external phenomena, and at the same time have shifted the subject in our handling of it somewhat away from philosophical abstractions and toward scientific generalization.» p. 228

«If, for example, it were effective to tell the patient about normality, the language of psychiatry would surely have developed a rich terminology for this type of educational therapy. That it has not done so is due to a variety of circumstances -- not merely the impossibility of "telling the patient," but also a belief on the part of the pyschiatrists that the healthy state toward which patient A might progress is certain to be unique for him, and that of patients B, C, and D, each will have his own unique possibilities for growth and development. Language can only deal with recurring phenomena; never can it specify the unique, and especially the uniquely personal developments and complex growth which are still in the future.»

How's that for a Nietzschean sentence... And an invitation to 'pataphysics...

«Another Freudian states: "Neurosis is the expression of a tendency to repeat the experience and master the stimulus by repetition. If the child is capable of accepting the conditions and mastering traumatic events by repetition, then he is normal.»

Which of course connects directly to the lingistic comment above.

«A Jungian similarly shifts emphasis away from the clinical entity, but where the Freudians stress etiology, he stresses prognosis. "I look at the psychiatric aspects of the case -- but see them not as a diagnosis -- rather as prognosis. It is not a case history but a talk: and on the basis of his demands I see whether I think I can help.»

«I would not start with the person who is 'at fault' but with the persons who define what is a fault. We should ask, 'why does who call it a crime?'»

«We may introduce the discussion of reality by quoting the words of a Freudian lecturer, replying to a question from the floor. He said: "Yes. In fact, I wanted to come to that. In fact, ... I have to modify again everything I said." The concept "reality" is slippery because, always, truth is relative to context, and context is determined by the questions which we ask of events.» - p. 238