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Oct. 9th, 2003 07:05 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sophiaserpentiaSo, what bold new direction am I heading in? Well, the starting point is inquiry into the relationship between mind and brain. The post I made in ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
philosophy on math and reality was kind of a watershed for me in many ways, because I finally had an "aha!" moment.
The classical Hermetic position is that the cosmos is arranged like a mind, with objects in the cosmos operating like thoughts. Furthermore, the individual mind (or microcosmos) is of the same essence as the cosmic Mind (or macrocosmos).
The classical Gnostic position is that God is most like the mind in a moment of perfect stillness. The disorderly swirl of the material universe is more like the disordered thoughts of a mind held captive by impulses, neuroses, and addictions.
The classical Platonic position, reflected in Kantian and post-Kantian thought, is that certain kinds of conceptual truths have eternal existence or are true whether or not there is a human mind to behold them. This includes the cardinal numbers as well as the platonic solids and numerous other shapes and concepts.
The position of mid-20th-century structuralism is that the things in the universe can be seen as though they are linguistic units. IOW, meaning in the universe corresponds to linguistic meaning. Structuralism was in many ways a restating of the Hermetic conception of the cosmos.
All of these things come together because of the way the brain works.
Imagine three concentric circles. The innermost circle is mind. The next circle around it is the neurological machinery of the brain. The next circle is the external universe.
Not to get caught up in terminology... by "mind" here I mean the process of conscious cognition, or in other words, thinking about things.
Now, I knew before that information about the universe has to first go through the senses, then the brain, before it gets to cognition. But what didn't really strike me until a few days ago is the way sensory data is handled by the brain. The brain, you see, has neurons that correspond to basic shapes like lines, points, stars, crosses, and circles... and neurons that correlate to deep syntax (cf. the work of Noam Chomsky)... and neurons that correlate to specific cardinal numbers -- a neuron for "two," a neuron for "three," and so on.
Since sensory data is "square-pegged" through the narrow gateways of these kinds of neural processing, the mind cannot tell at all where cosmos ends and brain begins. THIS IS WHY numbers, platonic solids, and linguistic forms, among other conceptual blocks, seem to be inherent in the cosmos. Numbers, words, colors, horizontal or vertical edges, perceived movement, geometric shapes, and so on, are not products of the mind. They are products of the BRAIN. And this makes all the difference in the world.
Edit: There are two questions this leaves open.
(1) Did the brain evolve this way because these are survival strategies? Or do they reflect underlying strategies that in fact DO reside deeply in the structure of the cosmos? After all, the brain, being an object IN the cosmos, can reasonably be expected to reflect its workings.
(2) Neurologists have also found the brain activities that correlate to mystical experience. What are the implications of this?
philosophy on math and reality was kind of a watershed for me in many ways, because I finally had an "aha!" moment.The classical Hermetic position is that the cosmos is arranged like a mind, with objects in the cosmos operating like thoughts. Furthermore, the individual mind (or microcosmos) is of the same essence as the cosmic Mind (or macrocosmos).
The classical Gnostic position is that God is most like the mind in a moment of perfect stillness. The disorderly swirl of the material universe is more like the disordered thoughts of a mind held captive by impulses, neuroses, and addictions.
The classical Platonic position, reflected in Kantian and post-Kantian thought, is that certain kinds of conceptual truths have eternal existence or are true whether or not there is a human mind to behold them. This includes the cardinal numbers as well as the platonic solids and numerous other shapes and concepts.
The position of mid-20th-century structuralism is that the things in the universe can be seen as though they are linguistic units. IOW, meaning in the universe corresponds to linguistic meaning. Structuralism was in many ways a restating of the Hermetic conception of the cosmos.
All of these things come together because of the way the brain works.
Imagine three concentric circles. The innermost circle is mind. The next circle around it is the neurological machinery of the brain. The next circle is the external universe.
Not to get caught up in terminology... by "mind" here I mean the process of conscious cognition, or in other words, thinking about things.
Now, I knew before that information about the universe has to first go through the senses, then the brain, before it gets to cognition. But what didn't really strike me until a few days ago is the way sensory data is handled by the brain. The brain, you see, has neurons that correspond to basic shapes like lines, points, stars, crosses, and circles... and neurons that correlate to deep syntax (cf. the work of Noam Chomsky)... and neurons that correlate to specific cardinal numbers -- a neuron for "two," a neuron for "three," and so on.
Since sensory data is "square-pegged" through the narrow gateways of these kinds of neural processing, the mind cannot tell at all where cosmos ends and brain begins. THIS IS WHY numbers, platonic solids, and linguistic forms, among other conceptual blocks, seem to be inherent in the cosmos. Numbers, words, colors, horizontal or vertical edges, perceived movement, geometric shapes, and so on, are not products of the mind. They are products of the BRAIN. And this makes all the difference in the world.
Edit: There are two questions this leaves open.
(1) Did the brain evolve this way because these are survival strategies? Or do they reflect underlying strategies that in fact DO reside deeply in the structure of the cosmos? After all, the brain, being an object IN the cosmos, can reasonably be expected to reflect its workings.
(2) Neurologists have also found the brain activities that correlate to mystical experience. What are the implications of this?
