A wrench in the Gear of Reason

The Cartesian mind is no longer plausible to a growing number of today's scientists. Because of this, may philosophers, biologists and physicists are rethinking the nature of our existence, since it isn't - in fact - what our culture implicitly assumes: that emotion and reason are "different" things deriving from two different ontological substances - matter and mind.

Antonio Damasio's 1994 book Descartes Error really got the ball rolling, even though other biologists, philosophers and physicists - people like Fransisco Varela (biology, philosophy), Humberto Maturana (biology/philosophy), Evan Thompson (biology, philosophy), Terrence Deacon (biophysics, psychology, linguistics), Stuart Kauffman (biophysics, philosophy), Brian Goodwin (biophysics, philosophy) Mae Wan Ho (biophysics, philosophy), Ervin Lazslo (complexity sciences, philosophy), Harold Morowitz (biophysics, philosophy), George Lakoff (biology, philosophy, linguistics), Mark Johnson (philosophy) Walter Freeman (neuroscience), Gerald Edelman (Biology, philosophy, neuroscience) Ilya Prigogine (biophysics, philosophy) and a few others (I either don't know of or am too lazy to keep citing) have helped pain a picture of Human reality that is radically unitary.

When I hear people like Bill Maher speak, I can enjoy him for a good 40 minutes, or, at other times, I can find every word he utters to be fueled and motivated from a place of unreflective stupidity.. Maher expresses two common strands in current American culture: an appreciation for science, and a libertarian philosophy of "let everyone do what they want so "long as they don't hurt other people". The first value, of course, is what allows me to like Bill Maher in the first place. He evidently subscribes to a world view in which reason is afforded value. Reason, for him, as for me, is about knowing "objective reality".

The problem is, Bill Maher - like many other people - do not realize that reason is about regulating emotions. Furthermore, it is categorically impossible to speak - to be motivated to assert something - without whatever was said having a contingent relationship to everything you have ever said over your lifetime. We simply do not notice this because we are constantly embedded in a "relational caccoon" from which our thinking and narrating self begins from. The psychoanalyst Joseph Palombo captures this idea with his term "mindsharing":



“Mindsharing is the process through which we are at one with other peoples thoughts, feelings, and experiences. This process includes our capacity for empathy for other people and their ability for attunement to our mental states. As we will see, through mindsharing we provide others with psychological functions they require to maintain their self-cohesion, even as we, being interconnected to others, require them to provide similar functions for us. I call this process “providing complementary functions”, a process through which we search for others to complement our sense of self.

The fact that we need others is not simply a reflection of our imperfections; our need is related to the social imperative to have others “be with us”. Others enhance our existence by their companionship, their presence, and the nurturance they provide us (Stern, 1983) – Joseph Palombo, The Neuropsychodynamic Treatment of Self-Deficits: Searching for Complementarity; pg. 14-15, Routledge, 2017



Palombo speaks about the mind in terms of a complex-adaptive system, which is what more and more practicing psychoanalysts and therapists are beginning to do. Indeed - the more you come to relate to your self with this knowledge, the more you begin to realize you function just like a non-linear dynamical system, but the question is, how to think about it?

Since we live in a world of relational experiences that are bad and good, we are literally "split" within ourselves - because of a lack of education of this issue - to become organized by how negative objects affect us, and how positive objects affect us. Our brain thus records (1) the sorts of objects which hurt us (a certain person, adults, males, etc) and the (2) "instrumental behavior", or adaptation, that the mental system should take.

What is the focus in the first situation versus the second situation? Objects which affect us our initially located in the external world, although with development they begin to take on an "inner" correlate in a linked chain of associations with the external object. The response, however - or how your mind becomes organized to respond in response to external objects that have induced past sufferring - has much more of a "verb(al)" quality, both in the sense of it being an feeling relation which contains knowledge of the world and its inevitable tendency to produce verbal speech a second later.

It is truly amazing to me that some minds "don't know what they feel" - or can't "name it to tame it". Naming is necessary: the left hemispheres regulation of the right entails the use of words - symbols, to configure its inner tension in terms of its actual development i.e.temporal, structure i.e. I feel this way because so-and-so did this to me, because they themselves felt a certain way because someone did this to him, ad nauseum.

We don't realize it, but we are making reality coherent - at a physical level - as the very atoms which create our thinking - when we temporally integrate the inchoate realities of our feeling, into the sequential understanding of its actual historical causality - how it shaped the feeling which confuses you.

A coherent representation which confirms and affirms values intrinsic in material processes i.e. in the natural symmetry processes which build up structure - like Human bodies - structures the dynamism of the brain-mind to become more resonantly consonant with the existences of other Humans. Such an orientation is felt - and begins to be felt by Other humans who are resistant, because the consciousness on the inside has 'worked through' all those dynamics which block a sense of correlation - or compassion - for other people.

This is what we name this process. Compassion is the effort of the Human being to 'put itself back together' after thousands of years of chronic dissociation from its existential condition. Dissociation yields a world of 'good' (idealized) and evil (feared, dissociated) - and thus the self-other dichotomy that has played such a huge role in fomenting conflicts in human history and deepening traumas which today motivate the minds of today's living.

The bottom line of this post is this: what you are presently feeling refers to what a present event "informs" you of about your past history. Every feeling is a regurgitation of the past - and its expectations for the future. Indeed, past and future is unconscious structurin

while your conscious mind is in the present - but not in the least sense is it 'by itself'. Many "ghosts" are these playing a role in the structuring of the phenomena at hand.

a reply to: Astrocyte

Welcome to the test.

Character is both developed and revealed by tests, and all of life is a test. You are always being tested. You will be tested by major changes, by delayed promises, by impossible problems, by unanswered prayers, undeserved criticism, and even senseless tragedies.

When you understand that life is a test, you realize that nothing is insignificant in your life. Even the smallest incident has significance for your character development. Every day is an important day, and every second is a growth opportunity to deepen your character, to demonstrate love, or to depend on God.

In His Parable of the Sower, Jesus identifies the ones who fall away as those who receive the seed of God’s Word with joy, but, as soon as a time of testing comes along, they fall away.

James says that the testing of our faith develops perseverance, which leads to maturity in our walk with God (James 1:3–4). James goes on to say that testing is a blessing, because, when the testing is over and we have “stood the test,” we will “receive the crown of life, which God has promised to those who love him” (James 1:12). Testing comes from our heavenly Father who works all things together for good for those who love Him and who are called to be the children of God (Romans 8:28).

a reply to: Astrocyte

Very deep stuff Astrocyte, I followed most of your postulations and ideas.

Indeed a balance of reason and emotion can and often does yield results with the greatest purpose and clarity.

You mentioned empathy and our ability to relate to others and feel for them. Recently I did some reading on two related subjects: personality disorders where empathy is lacking such as sociopathy, and a type of brain cell called mirror neurons. If you aren't familiar with mirror neurons, I strongly reccomend doing a brief look into them:

en.m.wikipedia.org...

 In addition, Iacoboni has argued that mirror neurons are the neural basis of the human capacity for emotions such as empathy.[11]

Can you elaborate on your "ghosts" comment? I'm curious.

A few paragraphs in, I am, of course, enthralled as I am mostly . Sometimes you just go off to the other side of the Oort and some times you stick closer to home, like Mars maybe. This one seems on a trajectroy to a near Earth orbit so back I go to try some more.

a reply to: Astrocyte
Is it possible to relate to each other as they are - not as they will be or were?
What are you without any past or future?

Reason is not about regulating emotions.

Reason is about understanding your emotions and incorporating that into your reasoning.

Reason says there are 3 ways to go.

Instinct says only one leads to growth.

Yep plowin deep

All the angles of view start with a base truth....outlined in Scripture....

People are the need in a walk of one through life
Then one has to discern and forgive sorta
Men are builders women tell em how it should look exactly
Something happened so we do a lifetime in this playstage token economy

a reply to: Astrocyte

The fact that we need others is not simply a reflection of our imperfections; our need is related to the social imperative to have others “be with us”. Others enhance our existence by their companionship, their presence, and the nurturance they provide us (Stern, 1983) – Joseph Palombo, The Neuropsychodynamic Treatment of Self-Deficits: Searching for Complementarity; pg. 14-15, Routledge, 2017

"A study by researchers from Aarhus University recently published in the Journal of Physiology and Behavior shows that when people build trust, their hearts get in sync and beat as one. When a Public Goods game is used to introduce trust conditions during a cooperative task, participants’ heart rate arousal and synchrony is increased."

a reply to: Astrocyte

The bottom line of this post is this: what you are presently feeling refers to what a present event "informs" you of about your past history. Every feeling is a regurgitation of the past - and its expectations for the future. Indeed, past and future is unconscious structuring.

As usual, you have not defined what you are talking about. By "feeling" you take in a wide variety of psycho-somatic processes. "Feeling" can refer to raw sensation: "I feel a hard surface." It can refer to emotive reactions to external stimulae: "The picture of that refugee makes me feel sad." It can refer to an emotive response to an identifiable mental process: "When I think of you, I feel happy." Or it can be a spontaneous subject affect that comes from nowhere... a sudden irrational fear, depression, etc. Such "feeling" may be purely chemical products, as dopamine or lactic acid levels change for physiological reasons. Ironically, your attempt to critique the "Cartesian mind" remains dualistic and Cartesian!

a reply to: Astrocyte

I got to thinking after I responded to an others response to me. I was saying "I play the long game to win" ... I composed short narratives of why narrative matters most .Then I went looking and found your post and here I am ...


"It is truly amazing to me that some minds "don't know what they feel" - or can't "name it to tame it". Naming is necessary:" Why would you think it amazing that many people can not artulate such things ? It is not that self evident ,and many like yourself have set out to do so .

Humanmetrics tells us that its not, a one size fits all. That one component with our own bias world view is a multiplying factor . The challenges as to how best articulate a narrative to one person is one thing but to manufacture a one size fits all to a crowd...?

If the human mind is susceptible to confusion from cognitive dissonance and people have mixed feelings that can be confusing to the mind ,then there is a link ...Do we really know what drives what ? Seems that it could be argued either way ...Is our narrative a balancing act of internal survival ? "" how it shaped the feeling which confuses you. ""

Infolurker is correct ""Welcome to the test"" It depends on how we embrace the test or not ...we can become bitter or better .

Good comments by others that provide good take away's ...Like the birds of the air are just birds so too are humans .We differ in that our songs and colorful plumage is internal ...peace S&F