Conversations in love & philosophy. Beyond Dichotomy. With Andrea Hiott.
Sensation. Invitation. Exploration. Way-making. Research in science, art and philosophy towards understanding how our approach to life and cognition might address the urgent divides we face.
Moving beyond traditional demarcations for learning and development.
By love and philosophy, we mean the people, passions, and ideas that move us, shape the trajectories of our lives, and co-create our wider social landscapes.
Through these research conversations, we are hoping to better observe binary distinctions in our academic & personal lives: What positive roles have these structures played? How might rethinking these structures & their parameters open new paths & ecological potentials?
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social media with the help of friends @waymaking23
I love this guy. Around 55m he says digital twin is “problematic”….(and I don’t think he meant just a challenging engineering problem to implement). Seems to appreciate our wonderful unique life: a good in itself. This channel just keeps getting banger guests… 🙏
1:07:26 we want to grow anew(path) - while I agree wholeheartedly with *so* much of what is said here, I'd suggest that operating on foundational Ξmotional trajectories of {people•groups}' identity categories would be better beginning anew. Love this talk. Thank you
That was either a very good teaser trailer or this will be one of the most relatable (and therefore, comprehensible) talks on category theory I’ve seen .. or both. …maybe this time my dual adjoint co-functor natural morphism will transcend the co-span into a universal limit. Or something. Anyway, really looking forward to this presentation!
The mathematician can calculate the rainfall and make predictions based on these. The biologist can describe how the rainfall becomes organisms and predict behaviors based on the waters conditions. The philosopher can clarify the commonalities within divergent realms. But it is the poet who tells the story of meaning within the waters connection from sky to blood, from excretion to fruit and flower, and from feeling to culture. Science is bound within our common understanding of meanings, while meaning is the substance that fills and enlivens the phenomenon. As the poet redefines the terms, the scientist can broaden her area of study. Another excellent guest and a lovely discussion. Thanks for sharing.
@tinfoilhatscholar Do you know the poetry of John Koethe? I've found myself remembering it when I read some of your comments "... a state of being / Of a different kind, not compromised / And caught between the twin extremes of / something inconceivable and something else / untrue; between the overarching heavens / and the merely human. Some things are / not to be sought after in reality, not / even in the mind, but in a hidden region / where the soul is free and unrestrained / and thought proceeds like weightless stars across an unseen sky..." (From Falling Water)
You should look to a very tribal separated ppl . The shining capital on the hill ✨️ textualism methodology objectivism = how successful social behavior like curses and blessings emerges into addition and subtraction. This just goes to the keys to the cosmos of how we know how to triangulate 3 lines of measure = truest flattest surface tunes all precision instruments in thermodynamical systems . Everyone under the great debate and duslistic umbrella of evolutionary prenticious over time makes you form a marduk basisn mind model. It's the same time issue to why you need a mond theory lazy light methusela equation to try and save how we prescribe realism over anti realism to further over time lines of measure. 1945s Smith_mundt act European solutions we compromised and few understands the challenges to why we tried to order and cateregorize the universe how we did. Why everything starts in Greece revisionist history curriculum to make academic participatory to the world. Puritan pilgrim esoterica America would feel right at home with emerging energetic actors lol I witness things my 1890s born great grandmother's (mother teacher) used to train the most illiterate poor people coming into classical America. It was pitiful the health and cog in wheel ancestors coming in to America. Anylitical intellect was well defined to them Just like image & llms nureal nodes I'm seeing the teacher put a ✝️ x,y,z manmade time hierarchy knowledge of good evil equations . By for thru = saved reborn renormalize rebirth reorientate sir bacon dig out code. Everything 1,2,3 =time Then the class catorgized the world around them. They knew subjective space emerging energetic actors= 1atoms individual personal actors2 lattus structure and body free will inertia3 frame of reference critical extreme states or environment Never read a word in most the family lives. Really sad world just 150 years ago
Once you correlate and text that the cool low entropic state is a red apple no bad magician can come trick you by saying red is really purple hi entropy apple. Shakespeare king James English and puritan movement anchor pragmatic common sense objectivism to physical stones 3 of any shape grinded together = truest flattest surface tunes all precision instruments. Pilgrim search for roots of civilization confirms oreintation and direction alphabetical exodus, indo European language prescribed it upon pragmatic common sense objectivism proper. But einstein and grand unified evolutionary theory we prescribe realism over anti realism to further over time lines of measure to accommodate old world dualistic babylonian cosmogony structural alignment platos macro micro atomized model is. It leads to cast systems they just think they imitate nature top down form and shape. People get treated badly in this
Lucid Hive and Honeycomb have merged will include the philosophy classes and first signed copies of books. If you have questions write to wayandlifeworld(at)gmail
Crucial: All navigability is inaccurate precisely because it is a representation/model and thus limited to the position, orientation and reason for which it was made. Navigability is a heuristic towards opening perspective, not anything that can be objective. There is no 'one' or 'right' navigability. Also, 'affordance' does not mean 'good' or 'bad' but is a way of discussing interactive probability.These are maps, not territories, and there are many different maps that can be made of a shared space depending on what part of the territory one is hoping to better understand. Those maps are different from each position and matter differently from each position accordingly.
You don't have to choose between pluralism and cultural relativism as you do. For example, there are ethics that are culturally relative but on other levels of absolute truth of morality there is pluralism. In an eventual world where we achieve a population that abides by absolute moral truth, there will still exist cultural relativity of ethics. The goal according to this prediction about the future is to reduce pluralism of morality. Not only this, but if you do not have empirical data to support any conclusion about a universal absolute moral truth, then you may keep it to yourself as tentative; meaning, anything you believe to be subject to pluralism, may one day prove not to be. I think you have to make claims about pluralism relative to time, and make it dynamic.
Sometimes a simple concept or practice needs to be applied in brand new contexts, and over and over and in more new contexts. The reason for this is because the practice or technique is a universal truth; and we just falsely believe we need something new and that the growth we are getting from fronteiring/ discovering new situations/places/ways to apply it has reached plateau. It's not a plateau, it's just fatigue and ebbs and flow to the growth. What technique am I talking about? The scientific method of making inferences and resisting our addiction to make a conclusion before collecting sufficient evidence, and making our conclusions tentative and anticipating the probability of future counter arguments/evidence. That's it. That's all we need to do. It's astounding, the number of ways we deceive each other out of this merely because of conditioning to enable. Enable the addiction as a way to hurt others. "Enabling" is the equivalent to how in nature, beings enable other beings to succumb to forces of nature because it is letting nature take its course. An example of the scientific method in nature is: emerging properties. There is the selective pressure aspect of Evolutionary Biology and the Innovation aspect, and the scientific method is among the latter. The measurable degree to which you hold your own knowledge and opinion as tentative and open to improvement is saying something about your contribution to Evolutionary Biology as a whole.
@@waymaking23 thanks Andrea, my experience writing RU-vid comments is that I am as surprised as others may be by what arises within me when I do so, and so that is why I do it. Thanks for producing such amazing content.
I got caught on 9:45 nematodes having Good/Bad choices. I'd suggest a triune set of {¬∔⁊} non-negative elementary principles are all that's necessary for beneficial value judgments throughout existence. I also got caught on AI providing the help our elders need.
"Consider the African philosophy of “ubuntu” - a concept in which your sense of self is shaped by your relationships with other people. It’s a way of living that begins with the premise that “I am” only because “we are.” The Kenyan literary scholar James Ogude believes ubuntu might serve as a counterweight to the rampant individualism that’s so pervasive in the contemporary world." www.ttbook.org/interview/i-am-because-we-are-african-philosophy-ubuntu
Awesome, Jonathan! As first-time visitors to Ghana, approximately 10 yrs ago, you made our tour across the country a very rich and rewarding experience.
Sometimes, what seems beneficial ends up costing you more in the long run, and conversely, obstacles can teach you valuable lessons you might not otherwise have learnt. So, I think you need to avoid moralising about circumstances.
Thank you! @surfism Navigability does not imply any objective good or bad or moralising. “Affordances” is a term that can mean good or bad or neutral as used by Gibson, and as i mean it here. If there is a part where you feel there is moralising could you point it out specifically? That would be helpful so I can better understand how it might come across as such, i certainly do not mean to imply any morals in this sense, only that each person by way of their situadedness and experience will have different paths open or afforded, different parameters of navigability
Remember that you have the power to control your thoughts and emotions. Choose positive thoughts, practice mindfulness, and let go of negativity that doesn't serve you.
Hi there! Paul here. I'm not sure what is mean by "it's" above (e.g., our mind, our brain, conciousness, or something else). Depending on what phenomenon we are trying to understand, different kinds of models, processes, etc. will likely need to be appealed to. It's also worth noting that the term "sense data" while often taken as an uncontroversial attempt to describe aspects of our mental lives (concious states in particular), it has particular meanings within the philosophy of mind and is a significantly less popular concept compared to alternatives than it was a century or so ago (when Russell and others were popularizing it).
Hey there! Paul here. The nature of confirmation is a complex epistemic notion. "Confirmation theory" attempts to make sense of how confirmation is possible (as opposed to older notions such as "verification"). With that said, it doesn't seem right to say that all we have are "just models" that have "no confirmation." Take, for example, the Hodgkin-Huxley model of the action potentials in neurons. That model is (at least normally taken to be) highly confirmed by the available evidence.
"The ability to imagine the world as it is not"... That's an excellent statement. This is one of the biggest issues that we run up against in the world today (which certainly makes me wonder: Is there some portion of the neo cortex that becomes disabled in modern humans?), which is that the way we manage lands and agriculture, extractive, reductive, industrialized and institutionalized, manages ecosystems for the way that they are, as opposed to the way we want them to be. I think the actual answer to this predicament, is that individual humans are actually not disabled at all in their capacity, but it is the top down systems that decapitate their ability to manage (intelligently).
@@waymaking23 well, I think, that to consider and acknowledge binary dichotomies, does not necessary mean that we are bound by them. As we work within continual and dynamic spectra, I think it is perhaps wise to still acknowledge the extremes at both sides of any equation. Just as accepting the nuances is a fundamental aspect of maturity, so too is being honest about the scope of the issues. In a way, all leadership is inherently top down, but a good steward guides from the bottom up, and does not demand results. Authoritarianism vs cooperation and participatory relations.
@@tinfoilhatscholar yes, great, thank you. I too say this often in my work and even on the www.loveandphilosophy.com website, that the binaries as ways of organizing have been and can be helpful but this is different from assuming they are real (that there is any one top or bottom or extreme)
@@tinfoilhatscholar "leadership" doesn't work up OR down the stack, tho "directing" stewardship throughout might. If life is most enjoyable as a dance, leadership's top-down dictation introduces far more problems than the freedom-at-the-end goals they espouse. Direction takes life's inspirational lead.
Re-listening to see if I have more thoughts to share on this one, but I will go ahead and share with you my definition of intelligence: the ability to solve problems/meet goals, associated with intermediary goals that are continuously adjusted within contexts, while remaining inside the framework of achieving larger goals. Intelligence = directed adaptability.
Thanks so much @lucrativeleadershipconvers5149 I had not thought of that, would love to hear more about the bridge you’ve noticed between this discussion and Active Inference
Wow. All I can really say to this one is; wow. This is why Love & Philosophy is my favorite show these days. Two very brilliant minds and a lovely conversation. Thanks for sharing it
When we grow into our Buddha-nature, we move into a different type of time (Alan Watts). From our adolescent phase, we toy with these words like children playing hot potato. As we begin to mature, we take our words, our ideas and perceived facts, and we run with them like players in the games of football. We spike the ball in the endzone to proclaim our victory, and some live their entire lives, and perhaps many, satisfied with the narrowness of the game. They willingly play along. For others, there comes a moment when the game itself disappears into the field of play. The dialogue transitions from a way to prove our points, to a way of exploring the field of many points, and we begin to see the threads that bind them. We toy with these concepts of linear causality vs dynamic continuity, until we fall head first into the latter. In the state of broadened awareness, duration expands to consume us. Our words lose their value outside of our ability to articulate upon them. Music and poetry, sound more of the space between the notes than of the melody. We lose the value of the coin for counting the inverse of its relation to us, as we begin to see around two corners from our present stance. This dialogue beckons new laughter at humor we were once immune to in our own states of folly. We still turn pages as we write and read, but somehow the meanings become deeper and fuller than before. Our real eyes see from our whole minds, while before we only counted. Even sour grapes are laced with sweet notes, and our perception of true beauty is born out of our new patience and presence. It is the practice that calms the hands into skillful ability. The wisdom of all eternity is contained in every breath, but some will never learn to breathe. We go through life to make our way, and sometimes, just sometimes, the way begins to make us alive.
@@waymaking23 awe, thanks friend. I do wax poetic from time to time, and am possibly moving more towards talking about mindfulness on mine chanchan. But also it's a real joy to watch that rebirth happening in others too:) We do have to be careful though, that as we begin to see the world and all its processes differently, we still speak (to whomever is listening) in a way that they may be receptive to. No matter how much we awaken to broadened awareness, we still have to meet people where they are. Being in the world, but not of the world kinda business;) I do hope we can dialogue at some point on shared interests, and also, a couple recommendations/requests: I'd love to see/hear you interview James Tunney and also Federico Faggin! I think they would both be open to it and would have a lot to offer with what you are working on. <3
a poem to share. The Dance Came First. Jah and Jahlah, in Their Eternal-Embrace, dance together through the sacred geometries of light. The Divine Lovers did not dance to a rhythm or a song. Through Their dance of Eternal-Love a song was born. That song was Love and Life liberated. Jah and Jahlah want us to share in Their dance. To dance with us and we with Them. But we have to choose. To dance to the rhythm of Love and giving Or the dance of hate and selfishness, ours to decide. They will dance for ever. The dance of creation never started and never ends. The creation is now. Will we join in Their dance? To dance apart or dance together? From that first dance so were born one thousand more and then infinitely more again. And from that first song so came a million melodies and then a million more from each of them. Will we share our songs and dance together? Or dance alone and forget to sing? Our bodies are made from music and our lives are a song.
Fascinating! In a similar way, I look at economic theory through the lens of music, specifically how the macrocosmic diatonic scale imposes (through intervallic temperaments) a debt on the microcosmic note value (frequency).
I strongly disagree about the naming of hippocampal neurons: place cells, head-direction cells, grid cells. They are (were) named by their descriptive correlate, not their function. Yes, it's easy to jump to functional guesses from the names, but the names were and are descriptions of firing correlates. Head-direction cells. These care clearly a class, named for their firing correlate. Plus, and importantly, these description lead to hypotheses about function. O'Keefe's discovery of place cells led to O'Keefe and Nadel's extended hypothesis that the hippocampus is a "cognitive map'. This theory, although far from perfect, has been tremendously productive.
There's a lot of good work that follows this template, like early results supporting faces and places areas, which were named accordingly (FFA and PPA). The pattern seems to be that someone finds a receptive field in an impoverished task/environment and people get excited, then the field subsequently details the ways in which the receptive fields deviate from the classic description under various conditions (e.g., value and goal manipulations for place cells). Personally, I don't view this as a productive paradigm going forward. However, our main point in that "The inevitability and superfluousness of cell types in spatial cognition" paper was a bit different. Our point was that intuitive cell types will pop out of any complex network, including random networks, so finding intuitive cells is not valuable in and of itself. One conclusion is that we should be weary of forcing human interpretable functions on complex systems (e.g., the brain). Anyway, I appreciate the feedback and never intended to denigrate the trailblazers in this field. Their observations were invaluable. Instead, I am suggesting a different future path.
@@lovebradleyc @jkubie I would agree with both of you if that is possible, though not on every point. It seems to me part of what we are trying to figure out (either in the philosophy like me, or in the neuroscience and computational models and important work being done in your labs) is how to hold what seem like opposites as paradox--namely, that there are cells in the brain which fire according to regularities of place and the body's position in place AND that there is no one objective label that can be applied in all 'places' to those regularities. That these seem irreconcilable is the 'mistake' as I see it, because they do not need to be reconciled but rather better clarified in the experimental setup. In other words, any label is an assessment and measurement that can only make sense when we have determined the experimental orientation (what 'place' is being parameterized by the experiment itself) before we can say that the firing regularities of the cells are this or that label, but these labels are extremely helpful and clarifying once we understand that they allow us a new observation of what was before unobserved (like in the historical sense of the discoveries and naming of place, grid, border, head direction cells). The labels and the correlations--that cells fire with regularities that correlate to those of place --does not seem to be to be threatened if we also allow that those same cells might fire with different regularities if that 'place' is some non-traditional or non-geographical place like a semantic or virtual experiment. Where the clarification is needed as I see it is in the paramterization of what is meant by place in the experiment and the understanding that this is a measurement (within specific parameters of the experiment) not THE measurement. Does that even make sense? Push back welcome, as I am trying to better understand and clarify this.
@jkubie and @lovebradleyc regarding the discussion below and my reply, I would also point to this follow up discussion with Max Bennett where we discuss something similar relative to language areas of the brain: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-UBkI5PE9t5Q.htmlsi=h9X9a7XGnSNfsJaJ
@@waymaking23 I am not sure. For example, something looks like a grid cell until a rodent is placed in a non square environment, like a trapezoid, so was it really ever a grid cell if it only shows this response in a very specific and impoverished environment?
@@lovebradleyc the pattern is more elipitical in trapezoidal environments right? less regular? But isn't that with square-space trained rats? Rats who grew up in square spaces. In other words, this seems like an example of what I was trying to say--that the experimental conditions must be taken into account and metricized. Are there any experiments where rats have been born and raised in trapezoids? If they have been trained in trapezoids, do the cells not find some sort of firing pattern?
Hesitation because I seem to remember the Jeremy Bentham in two places over the years: www.ucl.ac.uk/news/2020/feb/jeremy-bentham-finds-new-home-ucls-student-centre
I experience this as a great compliment! And even better, as a great idea, to have this lengthy conversation (as I would now very much like to do so), thank you.
He’s talking about removing and healing scars on a nerve level. I’ve heard him talk about retinas and spinal cord. Does he really think that this is possible within this decade. He does say that this is 1stage?
Is there an equivalent theory for philosophy as physics where consciousness is idealism and materialism similarly to how matter is both wave and particle? To do so requires language be used precisely just like math. Don't know if adding Mcgilchrist's work as an insight to how one is actually superior to the other, would help. Maybe the obstacle this current Civilization faces is how it favors accuracy in language over precision. Accuracy corresponds to the volume of true facts, but precision corresponds to the depth. Precise language is akin to the scientific method where hypothesis remains unsaid until conclusions can be backed by empirical data. Philosophy can help us to make statements that are neither materialism nor idealism. Such statements are already being made but they are not always understood to actually hold both matter and consciousness equal and fundamental, giving rise to each other in the same simultaneous way that waves and particles are. In the future, philosophy may have the job to deliver this explanation to mainstream common sense understanding. I think philosophy must play the role in designing language for scientists to use when their empirical data disproves the already agreed upon meaning of words. For example, I believe that Michael Levin's works is doing this, and he may need philosophers to build arguments or descriptions that cause new agreement of the meaning of words; in other words, philosophy has the role of helping society establish agreement of terminology. This is what I mean when language becomes more and more precise.
@shawnewaltonify Very interesting question you ask here, thank you. The first thing that comes to mind is certain movements in perspectivalism and a book by University of Chicago professor of philosophy and biology William Wimsatt called Re-engineering philosophy for limited beings….thanks for reminding me if it! Will have a look at his work again
I'm a huge fan of Max Bennett and his insights into intelligence have got me day dreaming quite a bit and in quite a profoundly positive way, but I disagree with his reasoning that based on this self-modelizing mechanism that infers intent at the core of our mind, we're not operating fundamentally based on reward. I think it's the exact opposite. I'd go back his example of the group of people who ended up reporting liking better, or whatever the wording is, having a better feeling of being part of a group in which they suffered pain as being part of it. What exactly do they mean by saying they like better being part of their group? To me it's quite clear that what they're reporting on when they say that, is a rewarding feeling. That is to day, it's not just that the intent inferring model infers what the higher intent or objective is based on past actions and pains/pleasures incurred, but it's also that based on how much effort went into accomplishing that higher objective, a deeper reward comes about. I think that's very and only reason why we do go through pain to attain difficult goals, it's because we're being driven by this more profound reward that we'll get for it. It really explains the reason why there are deeper and more profond sorts of pleasures and "rewards", they exist in order to establish a hierarchy of priorities in the many goals that our self-model incurs, a hierarchy without which some of those higher goals would be impossible to attain. For example, if I decide to go on a run and beat some time record, there's no way I'll do that without going through severe physical pain, but I'm still be willing to go through that, because of this self-inferred objective I have, for which I'll get a profond sense of accomplishment, probably the more profond the more I worked for it. I'm going on a little bit of a weird tangent here, but this reminds me of Einstein's model of general relativity. After having completed it, he could have gone on and predicted the expansion of the universe, but he didn't because he insisted on his conception that the universe is static, and then famously later on would have said it was his "biggest mistake" when other people did it for him. Nothing so dramatic here, but I feel like Max is also missing out on this deeper insight that his ideas can bring, because he seems biased towards a conclusion that it's not all about rewards.
@2CSST2 there’s a lot here to absorb and think about, thanks. Upon first reading, however, I am not sure this is incompatible with the overall idea that Max and I discuss of there being a pattern or algorithm in common in these situations but that it need not be constricted to what neuroscience has defined as reward…I also wonder if some of the seeming divide on this subject may also be a matter of human notions of self-reflection at times being superimposed or forwardly inferred from the human understanding of reward as experienced (as our lived experience of the use of that term). What seems clear is that a body has to deal with all it encounters in order to survive and that from a scientific position of assessment that can be understood as the agent having goals and being motivated by rewards but that does not mean we can say the agent itself actually has any goal or motivation…the body itself is often the model and action and need not have any representation or model in order to be that model and act as it (from the position of scientific assessment). This is difficult to use language to describe without it feeling as if one has to take sides but I am not sure one does if we look at it as pattern or a general learning system rather than the specific label of reward. Again, just thinking out loud here. Appreciate your comment and will continue to contemplate
@Brad Love, have you talked to Michael Levin about where and learning and memory happens in the hierarchy of beings inside the body => cells, organs => entire body?
Thanks! I commented a couple weeks ago but it disappeared somehow. I enjoyed this paper from Michael Levin, "Collective intelligence: A unifying concept for integrating biology across scales and substrates", which seems allied with this work with Rob Mok, "A multilevel account of hippocampal function in spatial and concept learning: Bridging models of behavior and neural assemblies". We are following up in a way Michael would hopefully appreciate. I like his idea of taking CogSci ideas and applying them to other systems.
Karl Friston's work along with others (like Andy Clark) has completely transformed my understanding of human consciousness. For an individual human, active inference, predictive processing via a Bayesian mechanism, implies that the world that each individual human being experiences, is a predictive dream or as Anil Seth would have it a "hallucination", which is then modulated for its predictive accuracy by prediction errors picked up from sensory input as well as the brain's evaluation of the accuracy of any given sensory input. What I am hearing is that the Spatial Web will be composed of AI agents doing the same thing that the human brain is doing, that is "hallucinating" predictive worlds but doing it with more information and greater speed than any human brain can muster. It is astonishing to think of being in this hyperspace interacting with this type of intelligence....
AI agents are already hallucinating in fact (the LLMs invent books papers and etc when asked to provide someone’s biography for example) so the hope is AI can be created that are transparent such that we know when they are hallucinating and how they got there…very interesting to think of this in the context you present in your comment-thank you @mmuances !
Max Bennett fanboy here: He’s got an even, measured way of expression, coupled with the breadth and depth of knowledge of somebody twice his age… I simply can’t wait for his next book, interview, or company ….lucky to have him lucky to have this interview. The interviewer was especially good surfing on top of the narrative and not getting lost in details or references or minutiae, rather guiding and allowing Max to present the full power of his narrative arc. This is the type of interviewer who could safely and productively bring out good speculative conversations without having them evolve into silliness. More like this, please!
wonderful comment @Jules-Is-a-Guy ;) Here is the real Michael Levin ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-T2sH5Q0oR_o.htmlsi=3jJbmiGEfEH1_8DZ
