tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4683970826895755480.post7238177286199644506..comments2024-03-28T15:45:47.867+00:00Comments on Bruce Charlton's Notions: "Emergence" is a metaphysical assumption - just as much as teleologyBruce Charltonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09615189090601688535noreply@blogger.comBlogger6125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4683970826895755480.post-78576637685461028402022-07-17T00:09:31.315+01:002022-07-17T00:09:31.315+01:00Dr C. To my ear Barfield’s concept of polarity sou...Dr C. To my ear Barfield’s concept of polarity sounded more biological and organic than yours! I had noticed but not *noticed* your coupling of abstract and personal. I have now. Yes to what you said about the Greeks although I have read in ABC circles that *the rot* to preference knowledge over being set in much earlier and that us moderns got the rough end of the pineapple via the Greeks.<br /><br />A contemporary original participation story. Possibly. Once upon a time I turned on my transistor radio within range of a transmitter and heard of a 'newspaper' corroboree called the Aeroplane Dance. It was first performed in 1943 and told of a B24 bomber that had lost instrumentation and became disoriented during an electrical storm when flying between New Guinea and Australia, running out of fuel and crash landing just inland from the bottom of the gulf of Carpentaria. At the time I was about a 100 nm from the crash site as the crow flies - off the coast and south of a community called Pompuraaw - so it felt like I was meant to hear this. What struck me about the dance was the spatial language. It was full of detail in geocentric/allocentric coordinates, the track of the plane, its 'posture', how it descended, how it crashed. One line (from memory) was “it landed facing east with arms outstretched”. Orientation was a big deal. To state the bleeding.[The fate of some of the crew who got out of the plane was tragic. They walked the wrong way, thinking they were on the Pacific coast and not in the gulf. It was easier going on the hard sand at the water’s edge and the tide erased their footprints, foiling the Aboriginal trackers searching for them.] <br /><br />Fast forward about a decade and I unexpectedly came across research by a cognitive scientist working with the Pompuraaw people. Even though likely a different tribe, language and country, her descriptions were reminiscent of the aeroplane dance. (from memory) Rather than say, the woman to the left of you is my sister, they say something like, the woman to the south of you is my sister. Rather than say, pass me the salt, they would say, can you move the salt a bit to the north west. It’s not just tribal it’s *earthed*. Somehow. What floored me was this; I became proficient in geocentric spatial language prior to egocentric. The blackboard in my school was to the west. And for a time, to know my left from right outside of class, I would face west and my left hand was the one to the south. It still seems paradoxical that the egocentric frame might be the more ‘abstract’ conjuring of space. How can the horizon be ‘closer’ or more immediate than my left or right? <br /><br />Fast forward another decade and your writing on participation and its evaporation from the modern mind recast my experiences in the gulf and school yard. Then, with my raw prawn reworking of Barfield’s concept of (what I would call) polar participation - an I to All and All to I mapping - I realized that original participation began with All. I had lost touch with the sense of all. I shall read the Coleridge book. Cheers.<br /><br />[The section in Saving on the development of a time that flows on a future-past axis made interesting reading in light of the Pompuraawans geocentric conception of the flow of time]the outriggernoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4683970826895755480.post-13238054488139478502022-07-16T16:30:27.083+01:002022-07-16T16:30:27.083+01:00@TJ - You could look at the references listed afte...@TJ - You could look at the references listed after these articles:<br /><br />https://www.hedweb.com/bgcharlton/evolpsych.html<br />https://www.hedweb.com/bgcharlton/meaning-of-life.html<br />https://www.hedweb.com/bgcharlton/animism.htmlBruce Charltonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09615189090601688535noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4683970826895755480.post-55257207683035575552022-07-16T15:26:17.728+01:002022-07-16T15:26:17.728+01:00"I have come round to the general idea that t..."I have come round to the general idea that the 'original' understanding of the world (of the most simple hunter gatherers and young children) is the correct one"<br /><br />BC, Do you have any recommendations for a book that describes this ancient, childlike understanding of the world? I don't get it. TJnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4683970826895755480.post-68811188406491260932022-07-15T09:37:20.104+01:002022-07-15T09:37:20.104+01:00@to - I can perhaps make things clearer by saying ...@to - I can perhaps make things clearer by saying that the conceptualization of 'polarity' uses mathematics and physics as its ruling metaphor ("physicsy" metaphysics, as I term it sometimes); whereas I believe we can and should use more biological (indeed, human-like and person) ways of analyzing, explaining and understanding. <br /><br />It seems that the notion that metaphysics was ultimately mathematics, or physics, came in with the ancient Greeks, Pythagoras and especially Plato and the later Neo-Platonists - and it has become so habitual (in which I include myself) that we do it with hardly a second thought.<br /><br />I regard physicsy metaphysics as capable of sometimes-useful approximation, but ultimately false because grossly limited, and tending to prevent real, simple, easy understanding by its bad habits and false expectations. <br /><br />Instead, we ought deliberately to practice regarding ultimate created reality as consisting of "beings in relationships" as I have put it sometimes. Bruce Charltonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09615189090601688535noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4683970826895755480.post-46892040651337357582022-07-15T07:34:24.796+01:002022-07-15T07:34:24.796+01:00@to - "Is this post an example of your use of...@to - "Is this post an example of your use of 'polarity thinking’? And. If pressed, would you be able to draw a diagram of what you mean by 'polarity'?"<br /><br />I don't myself advocate 'polarity' thinking, because regard it as suffering from Residual Unresolved Positivism. Polarity terminology and analysis tries to solve the problems of classical logic while retaining several of its assumptions, in particular the tendency to omit Time (as an essential part of beingness - as a part of any being) from primary assumptions. Thus polarity remains very abstract, and extremely difficult to explain. <br /><br />If you want to understand what Barfield and Coleridge mean by polarity, I would suggest Barfield's book - What Coleridge Thought. Of course one could make a diagram of polarity - but it would not help understand it. The required understanding is very abstract indeed - which is why I think it is mistaken. <br /><br />I have come round to the general idea that the 'original' understanding of the world (of the most simple hunter gatherers and young children) is the correct one: which is that creation consists of living, conscious, purposive beings. An 'animistic' understanding. As I have said: the opposite of abstract is 'personal' - including alive and conscious in-time <br /><br />(ie. the opposite of abstract is not 'concrete' - because both abstract and concrete are 'dead'=unalive abstractions!). <br /><br />Final Participation is mostly a matter of making conscious, and deliberately choosing, and instantiating in our thinking, Original Participation - which is another term for this spontaneous, immersive, mostly-unconscious way of existing. Bruce Charltonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09615189090601688535noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4683970826895755480.post-42569347499480125142022-07-15T01:13:31.244+01:002022-07-15T01:13:31.244+01:00Can't let this one through to the 'keeper ...Can't let this one through to the 'keeper uncommented. I read it. We all read it.<br /><br />Apropos of nothing. Is this post an example of your use of 'polarity thinking’? And. If pressed, would you be able to draw a diagram of what you mean by 'polarity'? Not asking you to do so. Is it possible? <br /><br />A bit of a shaggy dog story: About a year ago I used the word 'participation' with a nuance I had only met with on this blog - so I thought I’d better read Saving the Appearances to find out what I meant. The book turned out to be a before and after experience - although about the only concrete thing I can say about it is it destroyed my idea that the meaning of words could be chased back to bedrock. Oh. And that my use of 'participation' had been more or less on song. However. The way you use the word 'polarity' - which I have never understood - was not enlightened by reading Barfield. Yet, what I took him to mean by ‘polarity’ was a significant reason I consider it to be a (rare) before and after book. Belated thanks for the recommendation.the outriggernoreply@blogger.com