On the bottomless lake of firstness: conjectures on the synthetic power of consciousness

Semiotica ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 0 (0) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ivo A. Ibri

Abstract This essay focuses on the concept of consciousness in C. S. Peirce’s work, revealing how its ways of being are associated with the three Peircean phenomenological categories. In this article, I intend to reflect on the heuristic power of the mind, namely, its ability to bring about new ideas, which, within Peirce’s logic of inquiry, is called by the well-known term of abduction. The abductive logical step promotes a synthesis of signs that constitutes a logical structure capable of proposing a new mediation or representation of a new phenomenon. I make use of a metaphorical passage from Peirce (CP 7.547, undated) not only to give the title to this essay, but also to highlight the importance of the first category as a sort of synechistic envelopment of an unprecedented logical structure of signs that composes a new synthesis. Two continua intertwine themselves, namely, those of the first and third categories, to account for what appears as a fact of the world in the theater of secondness. The essay also seeks to bring to light the core realism of Peirce’s philosophy, the genetic aspect of this bottomless lake, through its cosmology, where the generalization of forms and the acquisition of habits of reality are the proper ground of his Objective Idealism. One of the heuristic aspect of the lake metaphor is a sort of invitation to extend the concept of synthesis from the realm of logical structures to that one of arts, which in this essay will remain as a suggestion for a further reflection.

Author(s):  
Christian Kohls ◽  
Joachim Wedekind

Patterns are systematic approaches to documenting and classifying recurrent problems and their solutions. Patterns are usually based on empirical observations of good practices. This chapter provides a brief introduction to the core concepts of patterns, and distinguishes between patterns in the real world, patterns in the heads of designers, and pattern descriptions. It starts with basic definitions and explains the relationship between context, problems, forces, and solutions. Key concepts such as connecting patterns into pattern languages, finding whole forms, and sharing best practices among peers are elaborated. To distinguish between patterns in the world, in the heads of designers and in documentations it introduces a vocabulary that may clarify the different meanings of the term “pattern” in the context of design. A discussion of how patterns are recognized and induced by practitioners resolves why there are patterns at different levels of granularity and abstraction. Schema theory provides a theoretical framework to understand how successful strategies of problem solving are stored in the mind of an expert. To share this knowledge, patterns can be described in various ways using different pattern formats or templates. While there are many benefits of the pattern approach, both the pattern author and the pattern user face some challenges. Therefore some of the major benefits and challenges are discussed at the end of the chapter.


Author(s):  
Patricia A. Young

This chapter continues with CBM Elements and the design factors related to the psychology of culture. All of the design factors related to psychology are covered. This section, the psychology of culture, draws from cognitive anthropology and cultural psychology that focus on cognitive, psychological, and social realms. Culture affects the psychology of human existence (D’Andrade, 1995) in its ability to configure the mind of human beings. Human beings use their minds to negotiate and make sense of the world. Whether part of a society, culture, or group, human beings search for shared meanings with others and an understanding of self. These meanings are best understood in their cultural contexts; therefore, culture is at the core of creating, understanding, and being human (Bruner, 1996).


2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Neil Bramley ◽  
Eric Schulz ◽  
Fei Xu ◽  
josh tenenbaum

The notion that the mind approximates rational (Bayesian) inference has had a strong influence on thinking in psychology since the 1950s. In constrained scenarios, typical of psychology experiments, people often behave in ways that approximate the dictates of probability theory. However, natural learning contexts are typically much more open-ended --- there are often no clear limits on what is possible, and initial proposals often prove inadequate. This means that coming up with the right hypotheses and theories in the first place is often much harder than ruling among them. How do people, and how can machines, expand their hypothesis spaces to generate wholly new ideas, plans and solutions?Recent work has begun to shed light on this problem via the idea that many aspects of learning can be better understood through the mathematics of program induction.People are demonstrably able to compose hypotheses from parts and incrementally grow and adapt their models of the world. A number of recent studies has formalized these abilities as program induction, using algorithms that mix stochastic recombination of primitives with memoization and compression to explain data, ask informative questions [8], and support one- and few-shot-inferences. Program induction is also proving to be an important notion for understanding development and learning through play and the formation of geometric understanding about the physical world.The aim of this workshop is thus to bring together scientists who have a joint interest in how intelligent systems (humans or machines) can learn rich representations and action plans (expressable as programs) though observing and interacting with the world.


1974 ◽  
Vol 7 (03) ◽  
pp. 256-259
Author(s):  
Pendleton Herring

It was in this house that Wilson, after the burdens of public office, sought “some ease.” In words I quote from John Milton's “Samson Agonistes:”“Ease to the body some, noneto the mindFrom restless thoughts, thatlike a deadly swarmOf hornets armed, no soonerfound aloneBut rush upon methronging, and presentTimes past, what once I was,and what am now.”One cannot speak of Woodrow Wilson fifty years after his death without recalling his last tragic days. Most poignant is Raymond Fosdick's account:“I went down to Washington to see him…. It was less than a month before he died, and it was very obvious that his strength was failing, although his mind was keen and alert. When I said to him: ‘How are you, Mr. President,’ he quoted a remark by John Quincy Adams in answer to a similar query: ‘John Quincy Adams is all right, but the house he lives in is dilapidated, and it looks as if he would soon have to move out’…. His whole thought centered on the League of Nations, and I had never heard him speak with deeper or more moving earnestness. In his weakness the tears came easily to his eyes and sometimes rolled down his cheek, but he brushed them impatiently away. I think he had a premonition that his days were numbered - “The sands are running fast,’ he told me - and perhaps he Wanted to make his last testament clear and unmistakable. The League of Nations was a promise for a better future, he said, as well as an escape from an evil past. Constantly his mind ran back to 1914. The utter unintelligence of it all, the sheer waste of war as a method of settling anything, seemed to oppress him. ‘It never must happen again,’ he said. ‘There is a way out if only men will use it.’ His voice rose as he recalled the charge of idealism so often used against the League. ‘The world is run by ideals,’ he exclaimed. ‘Only the fool thinks otherwise.’ The League was the answer. It was the next logical step in man’s widening conception of order and law. The machinery might be changed by experience, but the core of the idea was essential. It was in line with human evolution. It was the will of God.


2014 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Mary Morgan ◽  
Philip Stokoe

James Fisher's work on curiosity and the authors' own thinking in this area are described. Fisher's view of curiosity, as a genetic aspect of human nature, and as the essential driver causing the development of the mind and of consciousness, is restated. The focus of curiosity is emotion, and emotion is meaningful. Thus curiosity serves to represent symbolically the meaning of our experience. The authors agree with Fisher, Bion, and Britton that the impulse to curiosity stands alongside the impulse to pleasure, and that the tension between these two impulses affects and guides our psychological and emotional development. The fields of couple psychoanalytic psychotherapy and organisational consultancy are drawn on to demonstrate the centrality of curiosity and to indicate its essential role in the development of a creative couple stage of identity. The importance of anxiety in either stimulating or de-activating curiosity is described. The authors emphasise the balance between the pleasure impulse and the impulse to curiosity by showing that L and H can be seen as the former, while K pertains to the latter. Where anxiety closes down curiosity, it is argued that this is an example of L and H dominating K, and is another way to describe the paranoid-schizoid position.


2020 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 23-37
Author(s):  
Syarifudin Syarifudin

Each religious sect has its own characteristics, whether fundamental, radical, or religious. One of them is Insan Al-Kamil Congregation, which is in Cijati, South Cikareo Village, Wado District, Sumedang Regency. This congregation is Sufism with the concept of self-purification as the subject of its teachings. So, the purpose of this study is to reveal how the origin of Insan Al-Kamil Congregation, the concept of its purification, and the procedures of achieving its purification. This research uses a descriptive qualitative method with a normative theological approach as the blade of analysis. In addition, the data generated is the result of observation, interviews, and document studies. From the collected data, Jamaah Insan Al-Kamil adheres to the core teachings of Islam and is the tenth regeneration of Islam Teachings, which refers to the Prophet Muhammad SAW. According to this congregation, self-perfection becomes an obligation that must be achieved by human beings in order to remember Allah when life is done. The process of self-purification is done when human beings still live in the world by knowing His God. Therefore, the peak of self-purification is called Insan Kamil. 


2020 ◽  
Vol 63 (10) ◽  
pp. 74-87
Author(s):  
Irina N. Sidorenko

 The author analyzes the conceptions of ontological nihilism in the works of S. Kierkegaard, F. Nietzsche, M. Heidegger, E. Jünger. On the basis of this analysis, violence is defined as a manifestation of nihilism, of the “will to nothingness” and hypertrophy of the self-will of man. The article demonstrates the importance of the problem of nihilism. The nihilistic thinking of modern man is expressed in the attitude toward a radical transformation of the world from the position of his “absolute” righteousness. The paradox of the current situation is that there is the reverse side of this transformative activity, when there is only the appearance of action and the dilution of responsibility. Confidence in the rightness of own views and beliefs increases the risk of the violent imposition of own vision of reality. Historical and philosophical reconstruction of the conceptions of nihilism allowed to reveal the following projects of its comprehension and resolution: (1) the project of “positing of values,” which consists in the transformation of the evaluation, which is understood as another perspective of positing values, leading to the affirmation of being; (2) the project of overcoming nihilism from the space of temporality, carried out through the resoluteness to accept the historicity of own existence; (3) the project of overcoming nihilism as the oblivion of being from the spatial perspective of the “line,” allowing to realize the “glimpse” of being. The author concludes that it is impossible to solve the problem of violence and its various forms of its manifestation without overcoming “ontological nihilism.” Significant role in solving the problem of ontological violence is assigned to philosophy as a critical and responsible form of thinking, which is capable to help a person to bear the burden of the world, to provide meanings and affirm being, as well as to unite people and resist the fundamentalist claims of exclusivity and rightness.


Author(s):  
Sergey Nickolsky

The question of the Russian man – his past, present and future – is the central one in the philosophy of history. Unfortunately, at present this area of philosophy is not suffciently developed in Russia. Partly the reason for this situation is the lack of understanding by researchers of the role played by Russian classical literature and its philosophizing writers in historiosophy. The Hunting Sketches, a collection of short stories by I.S. Turgenev, is a work still undervalued, not fully considered not only in details but also in general meanings. And this is understandable because it is the frst systematic encyclopedia of Russian worldview, which is not envisaged by the literary genre. To a certain extent, Turgenev’s line is continued by I. Goncharov (the theme of the mind and heart), L. Tolstoy (the theme of the living and the dead, nature and society, the people and the lords), F. Dostoevsky (natural and rational rights), A. Chekhov (worthy and vulgar life). This article examines the philosophical nature of The Hunting Sketches, its structure and content. According to author’s opinion, stories can be divided into ten groups according to their dominant meanings. Thus, in The Hunting Sketches the main Russian types are depicted: “natural man,” rational, submissive, cunning, honest, sensitive, passionate, poetic, homeless, suffering, calmly accepting death, imbued with the immensity of the world. In the image and the comments of the wandering protagonist, Ivan Turgenev reveals his own philosophical credo, which he defnes as a moderate liberalism – freedom of thought and action, without prejudice to others.


Edupedia ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 45-53
Author(s):  
Ilzam Dhaifi

The world has been surprised by the emergence of a COVID 19 pandemic, was born in China, and widespread to various countries in the world. In Indonesia, the government issued several policies to break the COVID 19 pandemic chain, which also triggered some pro-cons in the midst of society. One of the policies government takes is the closure of learning access directly at school and moving the learning process from physical class to a virtual classroom or known as online learning. In the economic sector also affects the parents’ financial ability to provide sufficient funds to support the implementation of distance learning applied by the government. The implications of the distance education policy are of course the quality of learning, including the subjects of Islamic religious education, which is essentially aimed at planting knowledge, skills, and religious consciousness to form the character of the students. Online education must certainly be precise, in order to provide equal education services to all students, prepare teachers to master the technology, and seek the core learning of Islamic religious education can still be done well.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document