I understand Dr. Wilson's views are controversial. I found it interesting in that he was speaking on a topic from an unusual perspective, not whether his conclusions are valid. I'm somewhat familiar with the history of scientific thought. Some theories end up being correct, some end up close to reality in some respects, and many end up being plain wrong. As a result, I try to place theories in context. I haven't read enough of anything to have a definitive view on anything, other than the inevitably of taxes.
In between sections of Atlas Shrugged, I've been reading On Intelligence by Jeff Hawkins. He offers some biological explanations for topics encountered in the philosophy of mind. The human brain has to be the most fascinating thing that I've encountered in the universe. Its kind of ironic how one spends so much time thinking about thinking.
In between sections of Atlas Shrugged, I've been reading On Intelligence by Jeff Hawkins. He offers some biological explanations for topics encountered in the philosophy of mind. The human brain has to be the most fascinating thing that I've encountered in the universe. Its kind of ironic how one spends so much time thinking about thinking.
I greatly enjoyed both those books. But Hawkins didn't need to reinvent the wheel, a lot of the ground he covers has been covered before - I think as an engineer he suffers from the 'Not Invented Here' syndrome. He almost admits to being a constructivist but then, without any evidence, backs away from that position. I wrote a critique online somewhere a few years ago but I think its blocked here so can't give you a link offhand.
Regarding Levi's "The Periodic Table" - It's true that his experiences in WWII/Auschwitz color the vignettes in the book ("Chromium". "Cerium" and "Vanadium" are examples), but I found the writing to be exquisite, even in translation, and his passion for a craft/job well done comes through, along with the struggle with "brute matter" that informs both science and engineering. His descriptions of "hank to do" chemistry in post-WWII Italy were interesting, too- we take a lot for granted these days. I also was inspired by this book, knowing full well what he'd been through (I've read his other books). I had assumed that had ended his own life when I read about his death, but there is some doubt about this in retrospect. It is true that he had bouts of depression, no doubt due to his horrific experiences.
Speak about real bad Karma.
The movie La Tregua, starring brilliant actor John Torturro as Primo :
YouTube - Shema
On Intelligence has fundamentally changed the way I look at the world. I can only imagine what is possible with hierarchical-memory model feedback systems. A camera could track the position of your ears within the listening room to dynamically adjust the spatial and temporal response of a large loudspeaker array system! An intelligent system could dynamically adjust the population sizes, mutation operators, etc in a massively complex genetic algorithm while running full multiphysics simulations for each individual. It could optimize the search pattern of global optimization problems.
Are you familiar with any other works which build on or discuss the concepts in Hawkins book?
Enjoy your imagination - because of the various mistaken assumptions in Hawkins' work, those won't be coming along any time soon. Well perhaps the first one could be, but can't see the others myself.
None that build on his concepts as so many of them are flawed in practice. If you're interested in following up thinking which explains why ideas like the ones he's come up with don't work, you could do worse than find works by Antonio Damasio, Walter Freeman, Donald Hoffman and Hubert Dreyfus.
Start with this short piece by Hoffman where he explains that the notion of veridical perception (as apparently adopted by Hawkins in his book) is an assumption too far.
THE WORLD QUESTION CENTER 2008 — Page 1
Thats a bit disappointing. My imagination takes the best of me sometimes.
I purchased the Modern Library Basic Writings of Nietzsche. I believe beginning with an earlier philosopher may have been of benefit, but it was the only worthwhile hardcover philosophy text that Borders had in stock.
I now understand why everyone raves about this man. His writing style is very unique (from my perspective) and his personality is quite interesting. I found his Attempt at a Self Criticism astonishing. He attacks his own work with a severity that would appear difficult to match by anyone.
Since I am not studying this in a University setting, I do not have the benefit of a professor to lead discussion nor do I have any essay assignments to focus critical thinking on specific topics. What would be the best way to approach self-study? For individual philosophers, I assume a biography would be a very valuable resource to place their statements in a historical context and highlight biases. What about secondary sources? What order should I read the works in? (biography --> primary source --> secondary source?)
That's a two-edged sword in my book. I have not studied philosophy at university, just picked bits and pieces up as I went along. If you were in a university setting, you'd find there was a temptation to agree with the professor rather than think for yourself. I found this quite recently when discussing neuroscience with a guy who messaged me on Facebook - he was a student and seemed not to accept what I was showing him because it went against what he was learning on his course. If your exam results depend on regurgitating the wrong answers, what are you going to do? Hard choice. Of course, if you picked the right professor (like Hoffman or Dreyfus) you'd be fine
By following your curiosity. Its an individual thing, myself I just keep ordering books which Amazon recommends and which attract me. None so far have been the classics by the famous philosophical names, I think I'd find them too heavy going. Even reading Merleau-Ponty secondhand via Dreyfus at times gets tough...
I don't believe there are any 'shoulds' in regard to self-study. If there were, it would no longer be self-study but rather directed study by the author of the particular 'should' you decided to follow. Your own curiosity is really your best guide.
Maybe. Great philosophers tend to be idiosyncratic. Nietzsche is particularly that way.
The problem with starting with earlier philosophers is that so much of the culture, vocabulary, politics, and so forth, surrounding them is quite different from ours.
I did a degree in Philosophy and the studies basically went oldest -> newest. But I think it might have been pedagogically sounder to have done it in the other direction because it would be easier to understand the older writers because we we could start with more accessible writers that would inform the older. There are caveats here, of course: new brooms sometimes want to sweep clean and philosophers have tended more and more to specialize, especially in the last 150 years.
Some problems were extremely difficult 2500 years ago and remain so and this is what makes Philosophy so challenging. Here's a an extremely short list: reality, logic, good, evil, freedom, tyranny, perception, justice, gods, truth.
Abraxalito is right. You're best off following your curiosity.
You're at a University. Library of Congress cataloguing is neat. I'd just get into the stacks and mess around with the books by and about Nietzsche and see where it leads.
With regard to your original post, the first part of this book is an exceptionally good phenomenological treatment of brain structure and perception and the notes and bibliography are amazing. I think an engineer might find it insightful and useful. (And, yes he does talk about Nietzsche quite a bit). I'm still mulling over the second part - not so sure:
Amazon.com: The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World (9780300148787): Iain McGilchrist: Books
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Earlier? Heraclitus maybe but not Nietzsche. And Heraclitus is still very modern in my book.
YES.
Good for you, I didn't study philosophy at Univesity but the building was next to mine and I attended to some classes. A waste of time... despair in the educational system was the only thing I learned from these "scholars".
Videos for Budding Scientists/Engineers
This thread has been long dormant, but I thought I'd add here that due to the discussion on Primo Levi, I did some rooting around on the web re Levi and discovered as a consequence the delightful Periodic Video series from the University of Nottingham. The videos are fascinating and highly addictive, even if you aren't a chemist. Also included are a couple of videos recorded during a lecture/demonstration series by U. of Nottingham staff at the University of Turin, where they tour Primo Levi's old student lab right before it was demolished/renovated.
The first video in the Periodic Series I watched (it opened the whole series for me like a flower) was Professor Poliakov's presentation on "The Mark of the Chemist", referencing a Primo Levi essay on the same. BTW, this was the video that my Levi investigations turned up.
There are a bunch of supplemental videos included that range very far afield from the original intent of the series, all worth watching. There are also a bunch of other science videos from U. of Nottingham (physics, math, astronomy) linked from the Periodic Video site.
Periodic Videos are here - The Periodic Table of Videos - University of Nottingham
Also informative and highly amusing - In the Pipeline:
This thread has been long dormant, but I thought I'd add here that due to the discussion on Primo Levi, I did some rooting around on the web re Levi and discovered as a consequence the delightful Periodic Video series from the University of Nottingham. The videos are fascinating and highly addictive, even if you aren't a chemist. Also included are a couple of videos recorded during a lecture/demonstration series by U. of Nottingham staff at the University of Turin, where they tour Primo Levi's old student lab right before it was demolished/renovated.
The first video in the Periodic Series I watched (it opened the whole series for me like a flower) was Professor Poliakov's presentation on "The Mark of the Chemist", referencing a Primo Levi essay on the same. BTW, this was the video that my Levi investigations turned up.
There are a bunch of supplemental videos included that range very far afield from the original intent of the series, all worth watching. There are also a bunch of other science videos from U. of Nottingham (physics, math, astronomy) linked from the Periodic Video site.
Periodic Videos are here - The Periodic Table of Videos - University of Nottingham
Also informative and highly amusing - In the Pipeline:
avoid "The Martian" - my condolences if the advice is too late
I bought it in an airport, tossed it down after a few dozen pages due to the science/engineering errors and the annoying "voice"
as some have pointed out every budding author has 100k words of bad writing to get out of the way before being fit to read
"The Martian" draft should have been left in a closet or circular filed
I bought it in an airport, tossed it down after a few dozen pages due to the science/engineering errors and the annoying "voice"
as some have pointed out every budding author has 100k words of bad writing to get out of the way before being fit to read
"The Martian" draft should have been left in a closet or circular filed
It's actually non-fiction, rather than a novel. It won a Pulitzer prize in the early 1980's, and I read it shortly after.I wasn't even aware this book existed 5 minutes ago, but it looks to be exactly the type of book that would capture my interest. Thanks for the recommendation!
Have you read it? If so, what were your impressions?
By now (2015), many of the references to particular technologies could be dismissed as simply a nostalgia trip for geeks, but in fact they provide historical background for where modern computers and computing came from. Much more significantly it's a fascinating look into how engineering work is done, how engineers think, and their worldview. The chapter called "Midnight Programming" is especially revealing.
Dale
Reading Leopardi's Zibaldone this summer. Translation kinda sucks.
"Reason is the enemy of all greatness: reason is the enemy of nature: nature is great, reason is small. I mean that it will be more or less difficult for a man to be great the more he is governed by reason, that few can be great (and in art and poetry perhaps no one) unless they are governed by illusions. Thus it happens that those things which we call great (an undertaking, for example) are generally out of the ordinary and consist of a certain disorder. Now, this disorder is condemned by reason. Example: Alexander’s undertaking: all illusion. The extraordinary seems to us to be great. Whether it is actually greater than the ordinary, abstractly speaking, I am not sure: perhaps sometimes it will even measure quite a lot smaller on an abstract scale, and when this strange and famous man is strictly compared with another ordinary and unknown man, he will be found to be the lesser. Nevertheless, because he is extraordinary he is called great: even smallness when it is extraordinary is believed to be, and is called, greatness. Reason does not allow any of this, and we are in the age of reason (if only because the world has aged and is more experienced and colder) and few can now be or are great, especially in the arts. Even someone who is truly great now knows how to weigh and understand his greatness, how to dissect his character in cold blood, examine the merit of his actions, foretell how he may act, write meticulously with acute and detailed reflections about his life. Great enemies, terrible obstacles to greatness: even illusions are now clearly understood as such, and they are fostered with a certain self-satisfaction, in the full knowledge, however, of what they are. How is it possible, therefore, for such illusions, once discovered, to be sufficiently lasting and strong? And for them to inspire us to great things? And, without illusions, what greatness can exist or be hoped for? (An example of when reason is in conflict with nature: a sick man is absolutely incurable and will certainly die in a few days. His relatives, in order to feed him as his illness now requires, suffer real hardship in providing for him; they will sustain losses from doing so even after the sick man’s death, and the sick man will obtain no benefit and may perhaps even be harmed because he will suffer longer. What does naked, dry reason suggest? You are mad if you feed him. What does nature say? You are barbarous and wicked if you do not do everything possible to feed him. It should be noted that religion sides with nature. It is nature, therefore, that presses great men to great actions. But reason pulls them back: and so reason is the enemy of nature, and nature is great and reason is small. Another proof that reason is often the enemy of nature can be seen in the benefit of toil (as much for health as for everything else), which nature finds repugnant, and, in the same way, in the repugnance of nature to a hundred other things that are either necessary or highly beneficial and therefore encouraged by reason, and vice versa in the inclination of nature toward many other things that are harmful or useless or forbidden, unlawful, and condemned by reason: and with these appetites, nature often tends to harm and destroy itself."
"Reason is the enemy of all greatness: reason is the enemy of nature: nature is great, reason is small. I mean that it will be more or less difficult for a man to be great the more he is governed by reason, that few can be great (and in art and poetry perhaps no one) unless they are governed by illusions. Thus it happens that those things which we call great (an undertaking, for example) are generally out of the ordinary and consist of a certain disorder. Now, this disorder is condemned by reason. Example: Alexander’s undertaking: all illusion. The extraordinary seems to us to be great. Whether it is actually greater than the ordinary, abstractly speaking, I am not sure: perhaps sometimes it will even measure quite a lot smaller on an abstract scale, and when this strange and famous man is strictly compared with another ordinary and unknown man, he will be found to be the lesser. Nevertheless, because he is extraordinary he is called great: even smallness when it is extraordinary is believed to be, and is called, greatness. Reason does not allow any of this, and we are in the age of reason (if only because the world has aged and is more experienced and colder) and few can now be or are great, especially in the arts. Even someone who is truly great now knows how to weigh and understand his greatness, how to dissect his character in cold blood, examine the merit of his actions, foretell how he may act, write meticulously with acute and detailed reflections about his life. Great enemies, terrible obstacles to greatness: even illusions are now clearly understood as such, and they are fostered with a certain self-satisfaction, in the full knowledge, however, of what they are. How is it possible, therefore, for such illusions, once discovered, to be sufficiently lasting and strong? And for them to inspire us to great things? And, without illusions, what greatness can exist or be hoped for? (An example of when reason is in conflict with nature: a sick man is absolutely incurable and will certainly die in a few days. His relatives, in order to feed him as his illness now requires, suffer real hardship in providing for him; they will sustain losses from doing so even after the sick man’s death, and the sick man will obtain no benefit and may perhaps even be harmed because he will suffer longer. What does naked, dry reason suggest? You are mad if you feed him. What does nature say? You are barbarous and wicked if you do not do everything possible to feed him. It should be noted that religion sides with nature. It is nature, therefore, that presses great men to great actions. But reason pulls them back: and so reason is the enemy of nature, and nature is great and reason is small. Another proof that reason is often the enemy of nature can be seen in the benefit of toil (as much for health as for everything else), which nature finds repugnant, and, in the same way, in the repugnance of nature to a hundred other things that are either necessary or highly beneficial and therefore encouraged by reason, and vice versa in the inclination of nature toward many other things that are harmful or useless or forbidden, unlawful, and condemned by reason: and with these appetites, nature often tends to harm and destroy itself."
Not a long read but worth it, I was just about to mention it.
I enjoyed the Bounty Trilogy as a high school student as well as all Melville and Poe.
writing well is a is a very different task than reading literature
technical/business writing is different from writing literature too
to learn write well you have to write, get feedback, rewrite
a modern technical "communication" perversion is video "documentation"
I would like to use Fusion 360 CAD - but the "agile development" team seems to think dozens of hours of 5-10 min videos constitutes effective, usable documentation of a complex CAD environment
technical/business writing is different from writing literature too
to learn write well you have to write, get feedback, rewrite
a modern technical "communication" perversion is video "documentation"
I would like to use Fusion 360 CAD - but the "agile development" team seems to think dozens of hours of 5-10 min videos constitutes effective, usable documentation of a complex CAD environment
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