December 5, 2011

C.I.C.


This blogpost is about intuition and the psychology of mind. There's a lot of news lately about the mind and the distinction between what we know and do and what we think we know an do. It's been a few years since the introduction of Malcolm Gladwell's Blink.

Here is an article in Discover Magazine: Your Brain Knows a Lot More Than You Realize:
...neuroscientist David Eagleman of Baylor College of Medicine argues that the unconscious workings of the brain are so crucial to everyday functioning that their influence often trumps conscious thought. To prove it, he explores little-known historical episodes, the latest psychological research, and enduring medical mysteries, revealing the bizarre and often inexplicable mechanisms underlying daily life.
Favorite line in the video:
You're not seeing what's out there, you are seeing an internal model of what is out there.


This is Daniel Kahneman, talking about the marvels and flaws of intuition, culled from this article.

Interesting, right? I'm thinking about the years I spent aboard ship, watching radar scopes in the Combat Information Center, C.I.C. I'm thinking about philosophers such as Kant and Hegel and how they painted the distinction between the world and the model of the world as an inevitable intermediary and master illusionist. I'm thinking about theories of the intuition, there are several. I'm thinking about how much we really know about ourselves, about the mind as a multiple and singular entity. I'm thinking about morality and the consequences of multiple minds. I'm thinking about art, how the conceptualistic heart of postmodernity became distinct and defining. If the postmodern correlates with System Two, would modernism correlate with System One?

This brings to mind Frederich Shiller, who carved the distinction between the spontaneous, the naive, that which is equal to nature and the sentimental, that which is alienated from nature. The poet is either nature or he will seek her, the former is naive the latter is the sentimentalist.

Posted by Dennis at December 5, 2011 1:21 PM

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