Becoming Animal - Integral Post-Metaphysical Spirituality2024-03-29T14:08:47Zhttp://integralpostmetaphysics.ning.com/forum/topics/becoming-animal?commentId=5301756%3AComment%3A25059&feed=yes&xn_auth=noHappy Earth Day! To honor i…tag:integralpostmetaphysics.ning.com,2015-04-22:5301756:Comment:606932015-04-22T15:55:50.091ZBalderhttp://integralpostmetaphysics.ning.com/profile/BruceAlderman
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<p>Happy Earth Day! To honor it here on IPS, I am sharing this paean to the fleshy, sensuous world by David Abram:</p>
<p><a href="http://www.wildethics.org/essays/earth_in_eclipse.html" target="_blank">Earth in Eclipse</a></p>
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<p>Happy Earth Day! To honor it here on IPS, I am sharing this paean to the fleshy, sensuous world by David Abram:</p>
<p><a href="http://www.wildethics.org/essays/earth_in_eclipse.html" target="_blank">Earth in Eclipse</a></p> The following article centers…tag:integralpostmetaphysics.ning.com,2012-09-30:5301756:Comment:437202012-09-30T02:14:30.618ZBalderhttp://integralpostmetaphysics.ning.com/profile/BruceAlderman
<p>The following article centers on Deleuze and Guattari's conception of animality, but opens with a useful description of their more basic notions of 'becoming' and 'assemblages':</p>
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<p><a href="http://www.criticalanimalstudies.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/5.-Beaulieu-A-2011-Issue-1-2-TheStatus-of-Animality-pp-69-88.pdf" target="_blank">The Status of Animality in Deleuze's Thought</a>.</p>
<p>The following article centers on Deleuze and Guattari's conception of animality, but opens with a useful description of their more basic notions of 'becoming' and 'assemblages':</p>
<p></p>
<p><a href="http://www.criticalanimalstudies.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/5.-Beaulieu-A-2011-Issue-1-2-TheStatus-of-Animality-pp-69-88.pdf" target="_blank">The Status of Animality in Deleuze's Thought</a>.</p> An interesting neuroscientifi…tag:integralpostmetaphysics.ning.com,2012-09-06:5301756:Comment:434022012-09-06T20:29:40.260ZBalderhttp://integralpostmetaphysics.ning.com/profile/BruceAlderman
<p>An interesting neuroscientific statement on the presence of consciousness in animals:</p>
<p> </p>
<p><a href="http://fcmconference.org/img/CambridgeDeclarationOnConsciousness.pdf" target="_blank">The Cambridge Declaration on Consciousness</a></p>
<p>An interesting neuroscientific statement on the presence of consciousness in animals:</p>
<p> </p>
<p><a href="http://fcmconference.org/img/CambridgeDeclarationOnConsciousness.pdf" target="_blank">The Cambridge Declaration on Consciousness</a></p>
Edward - It's one thing to…tag:integralpostmetaphysics.ning.com,2011-08-18:5301756:Comment:258122011-08-18T13:06:07.306Zvallihttp://integralpostmetaphysics.ning.com/profile/vallisan
<p> </p>
<p>Edward - <i>It's one thing to say "mind" is an interrelationship between an organic lifeform with its inorganic environment, but another to say that the inorganic environment has a mind of its own. Not sure he's saying the latter, just a vague sense from the limited info above. What do you think?</i></p>
<p>Balder - <i>In a sense, Abram's writings strike me as perfectly useless and impractical, but delightful nonetheless (and perhaps the better for being useless). In another mood,…</i></p>
<p> </p>
<p>Edward - <i>It's one thing to say "mind" is an interrelationship between an organic lifeform with its inorganic environment, but another to say that the inorganic environment has a mind of its own. Not sure he's saying the latter, just a vague sense from the limited info above. What do you think?</i></p>
<p>Balder - <i>In a sense, Abram's writings strike me as perfectly useless and impractical, but delightful nonetheless (and perhaps the better for being useless). In another mood, I might be prepared to defend a "use" for them, but this feels right to me now.</i></p>
<p>Well, I wont defend what Iam going to say :) I think phenomena/environment is the expression of the mind . I was suggesting there isn’t a qualitative difference between I, we and it. What’s interesting (beside the exterior) is this quantitative difference in the quantum of qualitative stuff. Which is to say there is more mind in a jumpy organism than in a rock. The quality of all interiors in itself isn’t isolated</p>
<p>I think that mind is that zone between consciousness and creativity or rather dual directional between them. The performative mind is consciousness and the creative mind, is that instantaneous mind that does not act or needs to. The expression of this mind is phenomena. Like if your hanging out with someone in a strange place and a pink and blue cloud appears, it could be your or say an intersubject/objective aesthetic that is its origin, beside the odd possibility that, that cloud loves your sense of how a cloud should be . the Navajo way rings a bell – coextensive with the surrounding environment</p> Well, a few more pages in to…tag:integralpostmetaphysics.ning.com,2011-08-17:5301756:Comment:258092011-08-17T20:39:17.676ZBalderhttp://integralpostmetaphysics.ning.com/profile/BruceAlderman
Well, a few more pages in to the chapter, and he has switched voices and now <em>is</em> making more of a philosophical case for a particular conception of mind: arguing, essentially, that 'mind' not be viewed as a special substance or property contained within isolated objects, but as something which is metaphorically more like air and sunlight: a vibrant medium into which we are all born, and in which we are participant. However, he doesn't appear to be positing 'mind' as some sort of…
Well, a few more pages in to the chapter, and he has switched voices and now <em>is</em> making more of a philosophical case for a particular conception of mind: arguing, essentially, that 'mind' not be viewed as a special substance or property contained within isolated objects, but as something which is metaphorically more like air and sunlight: a vibrant medium into which we are all born, and in which we are participant. However, he doesn't appear to be positing 'mind' as some sort of 'extra' special substance, like an ether or disembodied spirit; rather, he seems to be making something more like a panpsychic claim: that physical world and mind are different perspectives on, different modes of 'access' available 'within' (to different degrees and in different ways) this creative thickness in which we "live and move and have our being." His main argument for regarding awareness as a 'medium' appears to be largely metaphoric: he doesn't appear to be directly saying that rocks are aware (at the level of rocks), but rather suggests that awareness is medium-like because it is something 'in' which we form (as social subjects) and from which we can never extricate ourselves or stand aloof. But he does appear to want to transgress the traditional boundaries which make awareness strictly internal to bodies. He says that awareness has an 'internal' quality, but this internality does not mean 'inside the skin': rather, it is internal because it is phenomenologically or qualitatively an 'immersive field' for the individual subject and because it involves or 'is' a 1p mode of access. Reading a little more of Abra…tag:integralpostmetaphysics.ning.com,2011-08-17:5301756:Comment:257122011-08-17T18:44:46.587ZBalderhttp://integralpostmetaphysics.ning.com/profile/BruceAlderman
<p>Reading a little more of Abram today, I'm reminded of Thomas Merton's Taoist-influenced reflections on, and celebration of, "perfectly useless" expressions -- like poetry, like the wild hammering of rain on the roof. In a sense, Abram's writings strike me as perfectly useless and impactical, but delightful nonetheless (and perhaps the better for being useless). In another mood, I might be prepared to defend a "use" for them, but this feels right to me now.</p>
<p><br></br>In his chapter on…</p>
<p>Reading a little more of Abram today, I'm reminded of Thomas Merton's Taoist-influenced reflections on, and celebration of, "perfectly useless" expressions -- like poetry, like the wild hammering of rain on the roof. In a sense, Abram's writings strike me as perfectly useless and impactical, but delightful nonetheless (and perhaps the better for being useless). In another mood, I might be prepared to defend a "use" for them, but this feels right to me now.</p>
<p><br/>In his chapter on Mind, Abram plays with the notion that thinking functions by embodied metaphor, questioning the metaphors that cognitive science has recently used (mechanistic, computer-based), and exploring instead the wilderness landscape as a metaphoric 'base' for conceiving of mind's 'climates' and teeming activities. I won't try to repeat his metaphoric play here, but I was struck most recently by his careful description of encountering a deer in the wild, which moved quietly (and only partly visibly) through the underbrush nearby, and then which simply disappeared without a sign. He likens the presence and the sudden disappearance of this warm, intensely vital being to thoughts that move (with hints of strength, grace, wild life) at the edge of awareness, and then suddenly vanish upon close inspection. There's a "so what?" factor to this comparison, perhaps, but I like it nonetheless, finding it nicely captures my own experience of brief, enticing encounters with "wild" thoughts that escape capture or close inspection, and I appreciate where he takes this line of thinking: conceiving of the mind, not as a 'room' full of possessions (thoughts) but as an open world, in which 'thoughts' can present themselves in various ways (slithering barely seen underfoot, moving at the edges of awareness, fluttering lightly through awareness, etc) and in which 'thoughts' cannot simply be claimed as 'ours,' but which rather seem to have their 'own' intelligence, their own habits and patterns of movement.</p>
<p><br/>This reminds me of the Navajo (Dine') conception of thought: as wind-like, co-extensive with the surrounding environment, moving through the awareness of the individual but not clearly (or solely) the possession or product of the individual.</p> Yes, he does do a bit of anth…tag:integralpostmetaphysics.ning.com,2011-08-17:5301756:Comment:255312011-08-17T15:35:36.138ZBalderhttp://integralpostmetaphysics.ning.com/profile/BruceAlderman
<p>Yes, he does do a bit of anthropomorphizing in his book. Since he does this mostly in the form of poetry -- or prose-poetry -- I have been able to go along with it, since it seems like he's trying to evoke a mood or a sensibility more than to make a definite philosophical assertion. Regarding the notion of anthropomorphizing, from the general movement of his arguments, I expect he would also not want to draw too hard of a line between the 'human' and the 'nonhuman,' seeing in that our long…</p>
<p>Yes, he does do a bit of anthropomorphizing in his book. Since he does this mostly in the form of poetry -- or prose-poetry -- I have been able to go along with it, since it seems like he's trying to evoke a mood or a sensibility more than to make a definite philosophical assertion. Regarding the notion of anthropomorphizing, from the general movement of his arguments, I expect he would also not want to draw too hard of a line between the 'human' and the 'nonhuman,' seeing in that our long desire to hold the soul aloof from the (fallen) world and to preserve a 'place apart' for humanity. In his rhapsodic reflections, he seems to be saying, the 'human' is, in some sense, non-human: a particular 'expression' of multiform inorganic and organic forces and processes that stretch widely beyond us (in space and time); and the non-human is perhaps also 'human,' in some sense, in that what 'feels' close to home to us may not be 'uniquely ours.'</p>
<p><br/>With that said, however, there are places in the book where he does seem to make assertions that border (to me) on a 'pre' form of animism: as when he talks about his house feeling dejected when his daughter and wife go away on a long trip. He specifically addresses the (expected) argument that he is merely projecting his feelings onto the plaster walls and wooden beams of his house, and argues that the explanation of projection is too simple -- that the 'house' confronted him with feelings incongruent with his own present mood. He says that he is no simple pure subject confronting a pure, passive object in his house; that the house is a body which, like other material forms, actively forms and in-forms the space around it. I can go along with the latter suggestion, but that doesn't mean he's not projecting. :-)</p> Just now re-reading the above…tag:integralpostmetaphysics.ning.com,2011-08-17:5301756:Comment:250592011-08-17T13:03:50.809ZEdward theurj Bergehttp://integralpostmetaphysics.ning.com/profile/theurj
Just now re-reading the above I get a sense that Abrams might anthropomorphise the inorganic. It's one thing to say "mind" is an interrelationship between an organic lifeform with its inorganic environment, but another to say that the inorganic environment has a mind of its own. Not sure he's saying the latter, just a vague sense from the limited info above. What do you think?<br/>
Just now re-reading the above I get a sense that Abrams might anthropomorphise the inorganic. It's one thing to say "mind" is an interrelationship between an organic lifeform with its inorganic environment, but another to say that the inorganic environment has a mind of its own. Not sure he's saying the latter, just a vague sense from the limited info above. What do you think?<br/> Yes, the second sentence does…tag:integralpostmetaphysics.ning.com,2011-08-17:5301756:Comment:255302011-08-17T01:24:38.554ZEdward theurj Bergehttp://integralpostmetaphysics.ning.com/profile/theurj
Yes, the second sentence does define mind as not limited to the "human" structure. But the first sentence is more general, noting merely "organic" individuals. This limitation of mind to the organic reminds me a bit of the machine consciousness thread, in that consciousness, awareness or more generally mind seems restricted to organic "life," and not extended downward into inorganic minerals etc. What does Abram say about that?
Yes, the second sentence does define mind as not limited to the "human" structure. But the first sentence is more general, noting merely "organic" individuals. This limitation of mind to the organic reminds me a bit of the machine consciousness thread, in that consciousness, awareness or more generally mind seems restricted to organic "life," and not extended downward into inorganic minerals etc. What does Abram say about that? Yes, good connection. I thin…tag:integralpostmetaphysics.ning.com,2011-08-16:5301756:Comment:258072011-08-16T21:54:40.942ZBalderhttp://integralpostmetaphysics.ning.com/profile/BruceAlderman
Yes, good connection. I think Abram would go along with that, but would likely insist -- as he is wont to do throughout this book -- that the generative, fecund social matrix not be limited to the human sphere.
Yes, good connection. I think Abram would go along with that, but would likely insist -- as he is wont to do throughout this book -- that the generative, fecund social matrix not be limited to the human sphere.