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mercredi 9 juin 2010

Mental process 2

When this recognition of difference was put together with the clear understanding that Creatura was organized into circular trains of causation, like those that had been described by cybernetics, and that it was organized in multiple levels of logical typing, I had a series of ideas all working together to enable me to think systematically about mental process as differentiated from simple physical or mechanistic sequences, without thinking in terms of two separate "substances." My book Mind and Nature: A Necessary Unity combined these ideas with the recognition that mental process and biological evolution are necessarily alike in these Creatural characteristics.


Gregory Bateson, Angels Fear

Bad premises

I think that Descartes’ first epistemological steps – the separation of "mind" from "matter" and the cogito – established bad premises, perhaps ultimately lethal premises, for Epistemology, and I believe that Jung’s statement of connection between Pleroma and Creatura is a much healthier first step. Jung’s epistemology starts from comparison of difference – not from matter.

Gregory Bateson, Angels Fear

mardi 8 juin 2010

Mind

1. A mind is an aggregate of interacting parts or components.

2. The interaction between parts of mind is triggered by difference.

3. Mental process requires collateral energy.

4. Mental process requires circular (or more complex) chains of determination.

5. In mental process, the effects of difference are to be regarded as transforms (i.e. coded versions) of events which preceded them.

6. The description and classification of these processes of transformation disclose a hierarchy of logical types immanent in the phenomena.

7. In the mind, the information is unevenly distributed.


Gregory Bateson & Mary Catherine Bateson, Angels Fear