Chaos breeds Conflict

My co-blogger asked me to define mind. It should have been an easy task, but it's not. The convention is that 'mind' is defined by some proposition or statement that demarcates mind from brain and everything else. And in so doing 'mind' is presented as a particular, specific sort of a thing. A this or that sort of thing and not another. This type of definition is a conceptual practice that presumes to provide some sort of grounding. So, when done, it can become a final  measure against which other definitions of mind can be assessed. But no, I really don't get very far in my thinking when I try to come out with a definition. And that's because there isn't one that serves all occasions. Whenever I think of something that might pass muster, I have my doubts. I pass all the conditions mentioned by the philosopher Richard Rorty in his description of the liberal ironist: I shall define an "ironist" as someone who fulfils three conditions: (1) She ha...

We (Ken and Ron)  have been involved in psychotherapy for a long time, and have come out of different psychotherapeutic modalities. Each of us has been aware of the limitations and problems of therapeutic modalities that do not communicate with one another and as a whole are closed off-from one another. We are interested in the epistemological commitments of various psychotherapeutic modalities. Rather than trying to work out the philosophical ground(s) of these positions we intend to start elsewhere. We intend to start with recent positions in philosophy of mind and see how they might link to the validity or otherwise of psychotherapy, or rather of various psychotherapeutic positions. Our title is the first sentence of 'The extended mind' by Andy Clark & David Chalmers.(Analysis 58.1, January 1998,pp.7-19.)

In 2014-5 we combined a lot of our themes in a new site:   Alienation and Distress   -http://www.occupymind.net/   Ageing Are we in danger of being sucked into a very destructive space? We are being pulled into somewhere horrible, sucked into a whirlpool of awful feelings.  We are lost in the hostile energy of denial. It's a frightening space, somehow familiar, but also alienating. This website explores these frightening feelings and the social and political context that gives rise to them. Our new theme was ageing. This was linked to our other themes, death and dying and yet again, swirls. We laid out our themes on the site: Ageing In death's waiting room. My experience is of my mental and physical sytems failing. Loneliness My internal world is a landscape of desolation. I have no connection with others. We live as we dream - alone...... (Joseph Conrad) Despair I am often in emotiona...

"...aged care has become a ghastly warehousing of the old in poorly designed facilities."  ( Guy Rundle-The Saturday Paper-   April 11-17 )

"...aged care has become a ghastly warehousing of the old in poorly designed facilities."  ( Guy Rundle-The Saturday Paper-   April 11-17 )

There is an argument that strong denial mechanisms are essential to the attempt to survive our existential plight, our brief time on Earth.  The jogging and fitness regimes, the nagging need to find out what “superfood” will enhance our health; even the dangerous activities that convince us that we can outmanoeuvre mortality. Maybe the maintenance of such delusions is the secret of a happy life. Yet for many the thought won’t quite go away. So we are never quite at ease, because we are always working hard to divert our eyes from staring at the sun, symbol of our inevitable end.  We immerse ourselves in trivial distractions – online gaming and gambling, drugs, streaming music and the latest series, watching sport on screen, competing with others or ourselves on Facebook. Striving for superiority...  As the existential psychologist Rollo May observed: “Anxiety about nothing tries to become anxiety about something.”  That is to say, the anxiety about nothing-ness drives...

There is an argument that strong denial mechanisms are essential to the attempt to survive our existential plight, our brief time on Earth.  The jogging and fitness regimes, the nagging need to find out what “superfood” will enhance our health; even the dangerous activities that convince us that we can outmanoeuvre mortality. Maybe the maintenance of such delusions is the secret of a happy life. Yet for many the thought won’t quite go away. So we are never quite at ease, because we are always working hard to divert our eyes from staring at the sun, symbol of our inevitable end.  We immerse ourselves in trivial distractions – online gaming and gambling, drugs, streaming music and the latest series, watching sport on screen, competing with others or ourselves on Facebook. Striving for superiority...  As the existential psychologist Rollo May observed: “Anxiety about nothing tries to become anxiety about something.”  That is to say, the anxiety about nothing-ness drives us to attempt to f...

The key paragraph from our point of view is this: "The current ruling ontology denies any possibility of a social causation of mental illness. The chemico-biologization of mental illness is of course strictly commensurate with its de- politicization. Considering mental illness an individual chemico-biological problem has enormous benefits for capitalism. First, it reinforces Capital's drive towards atomistic individualization (you are sick because of your brain chemistry). Second, it provides an enormously lucrative market in which multinational pharmaceutical companies can peddle their pharmaceuticals (we can cure you with our SSRIs). It goes without saying that all mental illnesses are neurologically instantiated, but this says nothing about their causation. If it is true, for instance, that depression is constituted by low serotonin levels, what still needs to be explained is why particular individuals have low levels of serotonin. This requires a social and political expla...

https://www.facebook.com/MichaelLeunigAppreciationPage

Dialogue-Ron & Ken This continues a previous post 'The perils of distraction' - August 2014.  I wanted Ken to clarify his position on distraction. He seemed to think it both ubiquitous and a constant. K. Almost from the start people distract themselves from the inevitability of their own death. Culture is itself a distraction...in the widest sense...any activity may be considered distracting, sometimes creative, sometimes not. Cultural artefacts may be seen as attempts to gain some form of immortality. R. Distraction is a negative term. K. I object to distraction when it is an unexamined avoidance of our finitude.  For example, religious or faith based fervour seems to me to be an emotional avoidance of a rational or realist approach to the big questions. R. Fundamentally you seem concerned about acknowledgement, of what? K. Personal mortality. R. If it were then what? K. Plastic surgery out of business. A radical change in what we call narcissism. Potential for  the...

Dialogue-Ron & Ken This continues a previous post 'The perils of distraction' - August 2014.  I wanted Ken to clarify his position on distraction. He seemed to think it both ubiquitous and a constant. K. Almost from the start people distract themselves from the inevitability of their own death. Culture is itself a distraction...in the widest sense...any activity may be considered distracting, sometimes creative, sometimes not. Cultural artefacts may be seen as attempts to gain some form of immortality. R. Distraction is a negative term. K. I object to distraction when it is an unexamined avoidance of our finitude.  For example, religious or faith based fervour seems to me to be an emotional avoidance of a rational or realist approach to the big questions. R. Fundamentally you seem concerned about acknowledgement, of what? K. Personal mortality. R. If it were then what? K. Plastic surgery out of business. A radical change in what we call narcissism. Potential for  the...

Dialogue-Ron & Ken This continues a previous post 'The perils of distraction' - August 2014. I wanted Ken to clarify his position on distraction. He seemed to think it both ubiquitous and a constant. K. Almost from the start people distract themselves from the inevitability of their own death. Culture is itself a distraction...in the widest sense...any activity may be considered distracting, sometimes creative, sometimes not. Cultural artefacts may be seen as attempts to gain some form of immortality. R. Distraction is a negative term. K. I object to distraction when it is an unexamined avoidance of our finitude. For example, religious or faith based fervour seems to me to be an emotional avoidance of a rational or realist approach to the big questions. R. Fundamentally you seem concerned about acknowledgement, of what? K. Personal mortality. R. If it were then what? K. Plastic surgery out of business. A radical change in what we call narcissism. Potential for the individua...

The waning days of our lives are given over to treatments that addle our brains and sap our bodies for a sliver’s chance of benefit. They are spent in institutions—nursing homes and intensive care units—where regimented, anonymous routines cut us off from all the things that matter to us in life. Our reluctance to honestly examine the experience of aging and dying has increased the harm we inflict on people and denied them the basic comforts they most need. from Being Mortal      by Atul Gawande   seen in NYRB  A better way out

The waning days of our lives are given over to treatments that addle our brains and sap our bodies for a sliver’s chance of benefit. They are spent in institutions—nursing homes and intensive care units—where regimented, anonymous routines cut us off from all the things that matter to us in life. Our reluctance to honestly examine the experience of aging and dying has increased the harm we inflict on people and denied them the basic comforts they most need. from Being Mortal      by Atul Gawande   seen in NYRB  A better way out