Identity - a combination of forms and (hence) experiences

Continuing to sort books, magazines ... I realised in the autumn that I'd need to return to issue #72 of The Philosopher's Magazine and its theme of  '50 New Ideas'. ...

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"Who are you? Who am I? Are we persons and if we are, are we the same persons we were yesterday? What does our being persons consist in? These are the sorts of questions philosophers try to answer on the nature of personal identity, the persistence question. The persistence question is often considered the question of personal identity: what are the conditions under which a person who exists at time t1 is identical to a person who exists at time t2?" p.51. "A new wrinkle in this debate is owed to Lynne Rudder Baker: the not-so-simple view of personal identity. Baker identifies persons with 'the first-person-perspective'. The answer to the question 'who am I?' is that I am the perspective I have of myself, and my persistence conditions are first-personal." p.52. [Grain, K.]

"Microscopes have revealed an invisible world to us and whether from secondary school science or probiotic yoghurt adverts most of us are now familiar with the idea that our bodies host a plethora of variously beneficial bacteria. These tiny creatures, which live inside us, contribute to our lives; they help us digest food and bolster our physiological defences against harmful presences - other bacteria and viruses. These 'endo-symbionts' participate in our living activity, just as we contribute to theirs in providing them with nutrients and a stable environment. The philosophical question this raises - belied by the talk of 'our' bodies and 'our' insides - is: where exactly do our organic boundaries lie?" p.49. [Ferner, A.M.]

Social foundation / scaffold

Political foundation / scaffold

Ferner, A.M., Organic identity, pp.49-50 - and 

Grain, K., Personal identity, pp.51-52 -

In The Philosopher's Magazine, "50 New Ideas", 1st Quarter 2016. Issue 72.

There is a 'simple' take-away message (thought!) here. It is the way, through its structure that Hodges' model provides a means to reflect, critique, debate and relate the self with the collective: and situate them and other concepts.

See also:
Nov. 2023: Hodges' model - as 'a' philosophy c/o TPM

See, hear, feel... Drama still has a role to play

Mr Bates vs The Post Office

4 Episodes

The first part of a four-part drama.

Mysterious financial losses lead the

Post Office to sack and prosecute village

sub-postmasters who have no way

 to prove their innocence.


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personal ethics? listen - listening Well, this hasn't happened to anyone else! Losing control of one's horizons ...	socio-technical methods software testing verification - validation life-cycle management data/information standards human-factors - (need a chance to breathe?) ... !?
	politics law justice Establishment Institutions Public services group think lack of whistleblowers?

Sometimes* political and legal action -::- needs a social nudge.

*All the time?

My sources:
Quality press and BBC Radio 4 The Great Post Office Trial

Consilience: Not limited to 'vertical integration' alone?

"'Consilience' is an important term in philosophy of science, one with a distinguished history; yet you may never have heard of it." ...

Here is the astronomer John Herschel in his Preliminary Discourse on the Study of Natural Philosophy (1830):

"The surest and best characteristic of a well founded and extensive induction... is when verifications of it spring up, as it were, spontaneously, into notice, from quarters where they might be least expected, or even among instances of that very kind which were at first considered hostile to them. Evidence of this kind is irresistible, and compels assent with a weight which scarcely any other possesses." (Sec. 180)

"The Scottish thinkers were aware that there are invisible 'backhands' as well as 'forehands'; but their emphasis was on the upside of surprises , believing as they did that the very foundation of society - language and law, money and property - arise by the 'wisdom of nature' with the help of conscious human design.

Friedrich Hayek (who dedicated his Studies in Philosophy, Politics and Economics to Popper) and Popper (who dedicated his Conjectures and Refutations to Hayek) were among the few twentieth-century thinkers to embrace this Scottish Enlightenment idea. Popper even went so far as to claim that the "main task" (his italics) of the 'theoretical social sciences' is to study 'the unintended social repercussions of intentional human actions,' and 'to analyse in this way the existence and the functioning of institutions (such as police forces or insurance companies or schools or governments) and of social collectives (such as states or nations or classes). (Conjectures, p.125)"

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psychology philosophy mind	natural philosophy scientific evidence
culture social sciences language schools	law institutions: police forces insurance companies governments states, nations

Carey, T.V., Consilience. Philosophy Now. March/April 2013. Issue 95: p.25-27.

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mind theory 'The Two cultures'	physics body
social culture	politic

"The purpose of the workshop was to bring together scholars from across the sciences and humanities to explore the potential of an alternative approach—an approach that is referred to as “vertical integration” ( Tooby and Cosmides 1992 ; Slingerland 2008a ) or, increasingly commonly, “consilience” ( Wilson 1998 ). 

Consilience is often framed in terms of bringing the study of humanistic issues into the same framework as the study of non-human species and non-biotic phenomena (e.g., Tooby & Cosmides 1992 ; Wilson 1998 ; Dennett 2009 )." p.3.

"Perhaps the most common way of characterizing the difference between the “two cultures” of the sciences and the humanities—at least from the humanities side of the fence—is to invoke the idea of different modes of knowledge. The humanities are typically characterized as involving a unique mode of apprehension, consciousness studying consciousness, or “understanding” ( Verstehen ), whereas the sciences engage in mechanistic “explanation” ( Erklären ). The latter, on this account, is adequate to deal with the movements of dumb, inert physical objects, but the former is the only way to grasp human meaning." p.10. (Introduction)

Slingerland, Edward, and Mark Collard (eds), Creating Consilience: Integrating the Sciences and the Humanities, New Directions in Cognitive Science (2011; online edn, Oxford Academic, 19 Jan. 2012), https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199794393.001.0001, accessed 21 Dec. 2023.

Introduction: Creating Consilience: Toward a second Wave. Edward Slingerland and Mark Collard.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/285946887_Introduction_Creating_Consilience_Toward_a_second_Wave

Previously on W2tQ: inc. 'Consilience' 

Reprise: Hodges' model introduction

'Geography of Hope' & 'The Great Conversation'

c/o Resurgence & Ecologist

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hope	geography
peoples - places	value / values

"... Stegner explained - we need such [wilderness] places because they remind us of a world beyond the human and also because they allow us to see ourselves as part of the 'environment of trees and rocks and soil ... part of the natural world and competent to belong to it". Taken together, he concluded, such places constitute a 'geography of hope'. ...

There are, as Stegner knew, certain thoughts and feelings that can had only in certain places: cognition is site-specific as well as motion-sensitive. It has long seemed to me that we might imagine landscapes as holding specific ideas and experiences just as they hold certain stones, minerals or species; that we might even talk of landscapes as growing ideas as they grow plants. And that, by extension, when we lose certain places - when they are destroyed incidentally, or deliberately - we lose not only the life that they held but also the thoughts that they enabled." p.38.

Mcfarlane, Robert., The Geography of Hope, Resurgence & Ecologist, Nov/Dec 2012, 275:pp.38-39.

https://www.20-20-vision.org/

Elia T. Ben-Ari, Defender of the Voiceless: Wallace Stegner's Conservation Legacy, BioScience, Volume 50, Issue 3, March 2000, Pages 253–257, https://doi.org/10.1641/0006-3568(2000)050[0253:DOTVWS]2.3.CO;2

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intrinsic elements	PERIODIC table
we are elements too - part of nature	value / values "We have broken the great conversation."

"But does the natural world need our writing? Paul Evans, in his Country Diary in The Guardian, wrote of the importance of observing and describing the world with passion; that communicating 'the significance of ephemeral and overlooked things to a world which couldn't care less' is a political and spiritual act." p.41.

Reason, Peter., The Great Conversation, Resurgence & Ecologist, Nov/Dec 2012, 275:pp.40-41.

In the media and many Resurgence & Ecologist issues, there is a stress on our taking time to be slow. I'd written in the margin of Mcfarlane's article; "Relativistic care: The faster we run (travel) the more mass we consume". While by Reason's text I'd scribbled; "H2CM is a statement of intent, in idealised care. In practice it is an outcome."

The conjunction of reality and simulation?

 "Models are approximations of reality, constructed by scientists to address specific questions of natural phenomena using the language of mathematics. Mathematical equations allow the practitioner to decide the level of abstraction needed to tackle a given problem, thus transcending the 'billiard ball' approach." p.198.

 

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"In practice, simulations are often limited by a dynamic range problem, meaning that one runs out of computing power to simulate behavior at all scales. The discretization of mathematical equations in order to program them into a computer introduces subtleties such as numerical dissipation - an artificial side effect of differential equation calculations that does not arise from physics. It is also likely that one needs different numerical methods to simulate behavior on different scales, and a single method may be insufficient for all spatial scales. Perhaps the advent of AI will allow us to overcome some of these limitations, but for now emulations remain an aspiration." p.199.  "

"Generally, examining the microscopic components of a complex system in order to understand how macroscopic behaviour emerges falls short - think biology and economics. Implicitly, this brute-force approach suggests that one may study complex systems without having a scientific question in mind, and if enough computing power is deployed then insight naturally emerges. The billion-euro Human Brain Project is a spectacular example of the limitations of such an approach. Essentially, their  simulations have failed to replace laboratory experiments. As has been noted by climate scientist Isaac Held, there is a tension between simulation and understanding.  We simulate in order to mimic as much of an observed phenomenon as possible. But we achieve understanding by using idealized models to capture the essence of the phenomenon. By design, idealized models necessarily employ assumptions." p.198.

Heng, K., Approximating Reality, American Scientist - Special Issue: Scientific Modelling, July-August 2023. 111:4,198-199.

Immigration - in Hodges' model

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You - have seen nothing yet ...?

"One of the key ideas behind Brexit was to 'take back control' of immigration. Back in 2010, David Cameron pledged to bring net migration to under 100,000 a year, but the promise was never met. ... However, in the post-Brexit years, immigration has soared to unprecedented levels. Net immigration, which hovered around 200,000 in pre-Brexit years skyrocketed to an all-time high of 745,000 in 2022." p.10.

We - have seen nothing yet ...?

How Migration Really Works

Hass, H. de., The Necessity of Immigration, BIG ISSUE, 4 December 2023. Issue 1593, pp.10-11.

'Freedom of belief' - really?

"We have seen that our beliefs are tightly coupled to the structure of language and to the apparent structure of the world. Our "freedom of belief," if it exists at all, is minimal. Is a person really to free to believe a proposition for which he has no evidence? No. Evidence (whether sensory or logical) is the only thing that suggests that a given belief is really about the world in the first place. We have names for people who have many beliefs for which there is no rational justification. When their beliefs are extremely common we call them "religious"; otherwise, they are likely to be called "mad," "psychotic," or "delusional." pp.71-72.

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my freedom of belief senses - logic my belief - beliefs belief hygiene my mental health state continuum model -  of mental health-illness	freedom of movement senses logic physical reality personal hygiene
culture organised religions our beliefs	theocracy secular states Mental health law

Harris, S. (2004) The End of Faith, London: Norton & Co.

'Mechanical medicine' is a thing ...

Planet Medicine

"Mechanical Medicine: Ancient surgery, poultices; some herbal medicine and bodywork; all Western technological medicine. 

Since healing occurs in the physical world, all medicines must have some substance, if only the substance from which a potency is derived or the bodies of the participants. The acupuncture needles are not pure energy, and the herbs of the Ayurvedic or Basque doctor grow from real soil; even the mind has the external properties of the brain. The San Pedro cactus of Peru which, according to Eduardo Calderon, transfers its light and vibration to the patient and locks with his aura to drive all physical and mental aspects of alienation to the surface, originates in the physical properties of the desert." p.374.

Grossinger, R. (1982) Planet Medicine - from stone age shamanism to post-industrial healing, London: Shambala Publications Inc.

Book cover: Ebay.