Steps to an Ecology of Mind - Revision history

Robert.adlington: /* Effects of Conscious Purpose on Human Adaptation */

2025-08-27T16:15:31Z

Effects of Conscious Purpose on Human Adaptation

← Older revision		Revision as of 16:15, 27 August 2025
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	=== Effects of Conscious Purpose on Human Adaptation ===		=== Effects of Conscious Purpose on Human Adaptation ===

	*		* Three cybernetic or homeostatic systems:
			** The individual human organism
			** The human society
			** The larger ecosystem
			*This phenomenon of spreading change is in the widest sense a sort of learning. Acclimation and addiction are special cases of this process.
			*All biological change is conservative and all learning is aversive (to try to keep things as they are).
			*Consciousness has feedback into the remainder of mind and so an effect upon action
			*The system of selection of information for the screen of consciousness is importantly related to "purpose", "attention", and similar phenomena
			*The cybernetic nature of self and the world tends to be imperceptible to consciousness, insofar as the contents of the "screen" of consciousness are determined by considerations of purpose.
			*The attempt to achieve a change in a given variable, located either in self or environment, is likely to be undertaken without comprehension of the homeostatic network surrounding that variable.
			*Conscious man, as a changer of his environment, is now fully able to wreck himself and that environment - with the very best of conscious intentions.
			*The social scene is nowadays characterized by the existence of a large number of self-maximizing entities which, in law, have something like the status of "persons" - trusts, companies, political parties, unions, commercial and financial agencies, nations, and the like.

	=== Form, Substance and Difference ===		=== Form, Substance and Difference ===

	*		* The unit of survival is a flexible organism-in-its-environment.
			* In the map and the territory combination, what gets onto the map is "difference"
			* Difference which occurs across time is what we call "change".
			* The word "idea", in its most elementary sense, is synonymous with "difference".
			* The elementary unit of information is a difference which makes a difference.
			* What travels in an axon is "news of a difference".
			* The mental world is only maps of maps of maps, ad infinitum. All "phenomena" are literally "appearances".
			* Freudian psychology expanded the concept of mind inwards to include the whole communication system within the body - the autonomic, the habitual, and the vast range of unconscious process. What I am saying expands mind outwards. And both of these changes reduce the scope of the conscious self.
			* Under LSD, I have experienced, as have many others, the disappearance of the division between self and the music to which I was listening. The perceiver and the thing perceived become strangely united into a single entity. This state is surely more correct than the state in which it seems that "I hear the music".

	=== Comment on Part V ===		=== Comment on Part V ===

	*		* -

	== Part VI: Crisis in the Ecology of Mind ==		== Part VI: Crisis in the Ecology of Mind ==
	=== From Versailles to Cybernetics ===		=== From Versailles to Cybernetics ===

	*		* This is what mammals are about. They are concerned with patterns of relationship, with where they stand in love, hate, respect, dependency, trust, and similar abstractions, vis-a-vis somebody else. This is where it hurts us to be put in the wrong. If we trust and find that that which we have trusted was untrustworthy; or if we distrust, and find that that which we distrusted was in fact trustworthy, we feel bad.
			* The Treaty of Versailles was one of the great sellouts in the history of our civilization.
			* One of the roots of cybernetics goes back to Whitehead and Russell and what is called the Theory of Logical Types. In principle, the name is not the thing named, and the name of the name is not the name, and so on. In terms of this powerful theory, a message about war is not part of the way. The message "Let's play chess" is not a move in the game of chess. It is a message in a more abstract language than the language of the game on the board.
			* What is wrong with the international field is that the rules need changing.

	=== Pathologies of Epistemology ===		=== Pathologies of Epistemology ===

	*		* You don't "really" see me. What you "see" is a bunch of pieces of information about me, which you synthesize into a picture image of me. You make that image. It's that simple.
			* The erroneous premises, in fact, work. On the other hand, the premises work only up to a certain limit, and, at some stage or under certain circumstances, if you are carrying serious epistemological errors, you will find that they do not work any more. But then it is exceedingly difficult to get rid of the error - it's sticky.
			* The unit of information is difference. In fact, the unit of psychological input is difference.
			* Minimal characteristics of a system such as mind. The system shall:
			** Operate with and upon differences.
			** Consist of closed loops or networks of pathways along which differences and transforms of differences shall be transmitted.
			** Many events within the system shall be energized by the respondent part rather than by impact from the triggering part.
			** Show self-correctiveness.
			*Mind is a necessary, an inevitable function of the appropriate complexity, wherever that complexity occurs.
			*A redwood forest or a coral reef, which its aggregate of organisms interlocking in their relationships has the necessary general structure.
			*Every human organization shows both the self-corrective characteristic and has the potentiality for runaway.
			*What "thinks" and engages in "trial and error" is the man plus the computer plus the environment. And the lines between each of the three are entirely fictitious.
			*Ecology, in the widest sense, turns out to be the study of the interaction and survival of ideas and programs (ie differences, complexes of differences, etc) in circuits.
			*Evolution of man's attitude to his environment:
			**Totemism - he identified with the natural world around him and took that empathy as a guide for his own social organization and his own theories of his own psychology.
			**Animism - he reversed the process and took clues from himself and applied them to the natural world around him, giving the notion of personality or mind to mountains, rivers, forests, and such things.
			**Separating the notion of mind from the natural word and getting the notion of gods.
			*If you do not get what you want, you will blame somebody and establish either a jail or a mental hospital, according to taste, and you will pop them in it if you can identify them. If not, you will say, "It's the system". This is roughly where our kids are nowadays.
			*They say that power corrupts, but it is rather the idea of power that corrupts.

	=== The Roots of Ecological Crisis ===		=== The Roots of Ecological Crisis ===

	*		* The creature that wins against its environment destroys itself.

	=== Ecology and Flexibility in Urban Civilization ===		=== Ecology and Flexibility in Urban Civilization ===

	*		*Flexibility is to specialization as entropy is to negentropy. Flexibility may be defined as uncommitted potentiality to change.
			*The variable which does not change its value becomes ipso facto hard programmed (because other variables encroach on its freedom, narrowing its tolerance limits. This is another way of describing habit formation.

Robert.adlington: /* Redundancy and Coding */

2025-08-27T15:36:32Z

Redundancy and Coding

← Older revision		Revision as of 15:36, 27 August 2025
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	=== Redundancy and Coding ===		=== Redundancy and Coding ===

	*		* I suggest that the separate burgeoning evolution of kinesics and paralanguage alongside the evolution of verbal language indicates that our iconic communication serves functions totally different from those of language and, indeed, performs functions which verbal language is unsuited to perform.
			* When considering two animals in an environment:
			** The physical environment contains internal patterning or redundancy.
			** Sounds or other signals from one animal may contribute redundancy to the system.
			** The sequence of signals will certainly contain redundancy.
			** The signals may contribute redundancy to the universe.
			** Some animals are capable of learning.
			** For every organism there are limitation and regularities which define what will be learned and under what circumstances this learning will occur.
			** From the morphology and behavior of the organism a human observer can guess with better than random success at the nature of the environment
			*"the mysterious evolutionary step from the iconic to the verbal."
			*"that world of rigorous fantasy which we call mathematics"

	=== Conscious Purpose versus Nature ===		=== Conscious Purpose versus Nature ===

	*		* I, the conscious I, see an unconsciously edited version of a small percentage of what affects my retina. I am guided in my perception by purposes.
			* Wisdom I take to be the knowledge of the larger interactive system - that system which, if disturbed, is likely to generate exponential curves of change. Consciousness operates in the same way as medicine in its sampling of the events and processes of the body and of what goes on in the total mind. It is organized in terms of purpose. It is a short-cut device to enable you to get quickly at what you want; not to act with maximum wisdom in order to live.
			* If you follow the "common-sense" dictates of consciousness you become, effectively, greedy and unwise.
			* Lack of systemic wisdom is always punished. Call the systemic forces "God" if you will.
			* (in the garden of Eden), On one of the trees there was a fruit, very high up, which the two apes were unable to reach. So they began to think. That was the mistake. They began to think purposively.
			* (man) does not see himself as part of the system in which the mess exists, and he either blames the rest of the system or he blames himself. In my parable Adam combines two sorts of nonsense: the notion "I have sinned" and the notion "God is vengeful".
			* In the period of the Industrial Revolution, perhaps the most important disaster was the enormous increase of scientific arrogance.
			* Evolution was the history of how organisms learned more tricks for controlling the environment; and man had better tricks than any other creature.
			* We might say that in creative art man must experience himself - his total self - as a cybernetic model.

	=== Effects of Conscious Purpose on Human Adaptation ===		=== Effects of Conscious Purpose on Human Adaptation ===

Robert.adlington: /* Cybernetic Explanation */

2025-08-19T08:59:08Z

Cybernetic Explanation

@@ Line 465: / Line 465: @@
 == Part V: Epistemology and Ecology ==
 === Cybernetic Explanation ===
 === Redundancy and Coding ===
 === Conscious Purpose versus Nature ===
 === Effects of Conscious Purpose on Human Adaptation ===
 === Form, Substance and Difference ===
 === Comment on Part V ===
 == Part VI: Crisis in the Ecology of Mind ==
 === From Versailles to Cybernetics ===
 === Pathologies of Epistemology ===
 === The Roots of Ecological Crisis ===
 === Ecology and Flexibility in Urban Civilization ===

Robert.adlington: /* On Empty-Headedness among Biologists and State Boards of Education */

2025-08-18T17:19:16Z

On Empty-Headedness among Biologists and State Boards of Education

@@ Line 425: / Line 425: @@
 == Part IV: Biology and Evolution ==
 === On Empty-Headedness among Biologists and State Boards of Education ===
 === The Role of Somatic Change in Evolution ===
 === Problems in Cetacean and Other Mammalian Communication ===
 === A Re-examination of "Bateson's Rule" ===
 === Comments on Part IV ===
 == Part V: Epistemology and Ecology ==

Robert.adlington: /* The Cybernetics of "Self": A Theory of Alcoholism */

2025-08-18T16:54:24Z

The Cybernetics of "Self": A Theory of Alcoholism

@@ Line 408: / Line 408: @@
 === The Cybernetics of "Self": A Theory of Alcoholism ===
 === Comment on Part III ===
 == Part IV: Biology and Evolution ==

Robert.adlington: /* The Logical Categories of Learning and Communication */

2025-08-17T10:49:55Z

The Logical Categories of Learning and Communication

@@ Line 335: / Line 335: @@
 === The Logical Categories of Learning and Communication ===
 === The Cybernetics of "Self": A Theory of Alcoholism ===
 === Comment on Part III ===

Robert.adlington: /* Double Bind, 1969 */

2025-08-17T09:49:54Z

Double Bind, 1969

@@ Line 323: / Line 323: @@
 === Double Bind, 1969 ===
 === The Logical Categories of Learning and Communication ===
 === The Cybernetics of "Self": A Theory of Alcoholism ===

Robert.adlington: /* Minimal Requirements for a Theory of Schizophrenia */

2025-08-16T15:54:32Z

Minimal Requirements for a Theory of Schizophrenia

@@ Line 287: / Line 287: @@
 === Minimal Requirements for a Theory of Schizophrenia ===
 === Double Bind, 1969 ===
 === The Logical Categories of Learning and Communication ===

Robert.adlington: /* The Group Dynamics of Schizophrenia */

2025-08-16T15:26:30Z

The Group Dynamics of Schizophrenia

@@ Line 274: / Line 274: @@
 === The Group Dynamics of Schizophrenia ===
 === Minimal Requirements for a Theory of Schizophrenia ===
 === Double Bind, 1969 ===

Robert.adlington: /* Toward a Theory of Schizophrenia */

2025-08-16T15:17:23Z

Toward a Theory of Schizophrenia

@@ Line 259: / Line 259: @@
 ** Catatonic - He might try to ignore metacommunicative messages and then would find it necessary to see and hear less and less or what went on around him, and do his utmost to avoid provoking a response in his environment. He would try to detach his interest from the external world and concentrate on his own internal processes and, therefore, give the appearance of being a withdrawn, perhaps mute, individual.
 ** He cannot discover what people mean nor, without considerable help, discuss the messages of others. Without being able to do that, the human being is like any self-correcting system which has lost its governor; it spirals into never-ending, but always systematic, distortions.
-* (to 212)
+* Family Situation:
 === The Group Dynamics of Schizophrenia ===