More school happened. More school ought to happen until sometime near the beginning of what Westerners call December. Candians celebrate thanksgiving this coming Moon's Day, so I don't have one of my seminars this week. I took the oppurtunity to take my reading light since I had a busy weekend last weekend and felt like I needed a break. I have all my reading for next week done now, so I plan to use my free time on the weekend to work on my pragmatism term paper. I have not yet begun the research phase, but I know that I want to discuss some debate centering around William James' ideas on religious belief. I want to work with linguisitc communication and implicit truth-telling for my epistemology of testimony seminar. Just from the in-class readings, I can see some shit I can stir. I really like the fact that so much vagueness surrounds the issue, one can use arguments to manufacture requirements for the existence of god while you work on the actual topic (no kidding, see chapter 4 in Plantiga's Warrant and Proper Function).
I finished The Glass Bead Game and Cosmic Trigger 3 this week. I just started reading VALIS and I intend to start Lilly's Programming and Metaprogramming the Human Biocomputer. I didn;t feel up to the latter when I picked it up in the middle of last week, but this morning I went through some of his assumptions and found what looked to me like a very elegant model of the mind. The model looked computationalist without committing to digital computation (it sounded pretty connectionist, actually, but that book predates the earliest glimmers of connectionism by about 2 years, and predates its current form and popularity by over ten years). Now, I want to read it and see what Lilly has to say.
I have felt stuffy for the last three or four days, but not quite sick. I blame the changing weather, since the temperatures have fallen and the rainfall has risen in the last week or so. I like that kind of weather, but the fluctuation plays merry hell with my sinuses. At least I do not think I have an infection. I did take some NyQuil a few minutes ago in order to alleviate some symptoms. I don't quite know how NyQuil mixes with Lady Cannabis, but so far, so good. I think I have used such a cocktail before to no ill effect. If anyone feels anal enough to keep a tally of psychoactive drugs in my right this minute, don't forget that I have had some iced tea and some Earl Grey, both of which have a repectable amount of caffeine. I feel ok at the moment, but Hypnos and his offspring beckon.
Things to document for later:
Tara and I think "the masses" came into existence as a meme spread by 1st and 2nd circuit authority figures in order to fix firmly the "us" in the "us vs them" dialectice. The masses need strong, alpha male leaders to protect against invasions of "them." Rather than fear the masses as many intelligensia appear to do, I think we should cancel our subscription to "the masses" and begin stocking the shelves with more egalitarian social models.
Scholarly pursuits come easier to me when I maintain a meditation schedule. In that sense, the monastic or aesetic orders of all mystical collectives have a useful strategy.
All occult texts contain some form of cryptography. Mythologies often figure into occult matters. I see no reason not to extend the thesis to them as well. (No, at no point in this statement do I think "sombunall" should replace "all"; I have not made my own exhaustive survey, so the evidence does not alone support the thesis. However, the nature of mystical experience seems to forbid any kind of literal linguistic transmission, so I feel justified in the universal assertion.)
Ich schlafe jetzt. Gutennatcht.
I finished The Glass Bead Game and Cosmic Trigger 3 this week. I just started reading VALIS and I intend to start Lilly's Programming and Metaprogramming the Human Biocomputer. I didn;t feel up to the latter when I picked it up in the middle of last week, but this morning I went through some of his assumptions and found what looked to me like a very elegant model of the mind. The model looked computationalist without committing to digital computation (it sounded pretty connectionist, actually, but that book predates the earliest glimmers of connectionism by about 2 years, and predates its current form and popularity by over ten years). Now, I want to read it and see what Lilly has to say.
I have felt stuffy for the last three or four days, but not quite sick. I blame the changing weather, since the temperatures have fallen and the rainfall has risen in the last week or so. I like that kind of weather, but the fluctuation plays merry hell with my sinuses. At least I do not think I have an infection. I did take some NyQuil a few minutes ago in order to alleviate some symptoms. I don't quite know how NyQuil mixes with Lady Cannabis, but so far, so good. I think I have used such a cocktail before to no ill effect. If anyone feels anal enough to keep a tally of psychoactive drugs in my right this minute, don't forget that I have had some iced tea and some Earl Grey, both of which have a repectable amount of caffeine. I feel ok at the moment, but Hypnos and his offspring beckon.
Things to document for later:
Tara and I think "the masses" came into existence as a meme spread by 1st and 2nd circuit authority figures in order to fix firmly the "us" in the "us vs them" dialectice. The masses need strong, alpha male leaders to protect against invasions of "them." Rather than fear the masses as many intelligensia appear to do, I think we should cancel our subscription to "the masses" and begin stocking the shelves with more egalitarian social models.
Scholarly pursuits come easier to me when I maintain a meditation schedule. In that sense, the monastic or aesetic orders of all mystical collectives have a useful strategy.
All occult texts contain some form of cryptography. Mythologies often figure into occult matters. I see no reason not to extend the thesis to them as well. (No, at no point in this statement do I think "sombunall" should replace "all"; I have not made my own exhaustive survey, so the evidence does not alone support the thesis. However, the nature of mystical experience seems to forbid any kind of literal linguistic transmission, so I feel justified in the universal assertion.)
Ich schlafe jetzt. Gutennatcht.
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And earl grey is good. It's in my list of happy things I think...