JASPERS’ WORKS APPLIED TO RICHARD DAWKINS’THIRD CONTINUUM (JULY 20, 2006), PANDERING TO “MEME” THE MARTYR SPOILER
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THIRD CONTINUUM 12. Richard Dawkins’ Thomas Beckett v. Oxford’s burning Thomas 12.1. Correction Notations--Attention is directed toward some Second-Continuum corrections—other than misspellings. Revisions involve concepts: In 11.02 I used “Big Ben” to show the misuse of a time-concept as a tool with regard to meanings; the limits of thinking cannot be escaped through big or small time units. (It has nothing consciously to do with Sir Edmund Beckett the Clock’s maker; or Richard’s The Blind Watchmaker, which I’ve not seen.) When “evolutionary time” is used it becomes a substitute for the thinker’s uncertainty that escalates the farther one departs the here-and-now conscious base of individual thinking. So I’ve revised “certainty” to “chronic certainty” as an abstracts indicative of relief from acute existential uncertainty. Uncertainty grows with knowledge in the way that learning humbles the learner through increased awareness of ignorance. Humankind’s ultimate limits have been moralistically misunderstood and misnamed “original sin”. Also, the reference to Richard not being a point-person because he’s not color blind; I’ve clarified that by parenthetically stating that a point-person in military maneuvers might detect camouflages designed for normal sight. My father was color blind in one eye. I am also (corrected 9-20-10) but in an inner-eye sense. This THIRD CONTINUUM should tend to show the grounds for being forewarned about what initially appears to be Richard’s foresight and public-leadership deficiencies. 12.2. Notation of caution—It is recognized that some deficiencies might be quite circumstantial; Richard and his researchers laboriously condescend to condense specialized information into common language to propagate evolutionism. In an inverted sense this evolutionism is origin-sin thinking in that it is the sin of origin groping and holding, a violation of infinitely complex being. The sin is propagated infectiously to the masses through emulation. But that is what he is being paid to do. He can hope to be excused for being too simple to meet the mass need for certainty and also escape into specialized linguistics relative to the being’s phenomenal complex. And if something is not quite simplified enough one is advised to read his other book, e.g., his first book The Extended Phenotype about which he’s proudest. So a taxpayer is obligated to acquire…the other book (it may be on-line now or soon thus avoiding accusations of profiteering in the name of education). Humankind’s phenotypic phenomena have to be infinitely complex, and that leaves plenty of room for the imagination--infinitely complex where humankind is compared to the drosophila. The difficult and meaningful historic paradigms, those that standout of the complex, can be reduced through the use of distracting and lesser paradigms (comparing the strengths of martyrdoms) to support one metaphysical dogma. Anecdotal language or parables can be utilized to camouflage the propagating of a meta-scientific certitude that vigilantly fails to humbly admit that the essence of humankind’s origin, such as consciousness, is unknown. Certitude and attitude can be mistakenly correlated. Under different circumstances Richard might exhibit a theistic preference and manifest the capacity for thinking out of the evolutionism box. Signs of this potential can be found in his writings. Judgmentalism must be withheld. He might be a protesting-type under the cover of a clerical parochialism while disclaiming it—a prevaricating scapegoat. We will have to wait for the UFO’s great judgment day—the unidentifiable foreign officials Richard has referred to. 12.3. Richard’s vulnerability is his underestimation of prelate forces--Let’s be clear that we are more vulnerable to our limitations while hiding behind magistrates or epistemic dichotomies or penetrating them to ontological certitude: cooperatives v. defectors, similarity v. difference, unification v. diversification, catholic v. protestant, Darwinian-evolutionism v. inspiration-revelation, within v. beyond…these represent partially the polemic dichotomy of mentality that can easily be forgotten. Phenotype relates to immanental conceptualization or epiphenomenology, and genotype cannot avoid the dichotomy and limits of the phenomenological approach and method. We will see that Jaspers handles both forms through the use of “anlage” to soften the genotype/phenotype dichotomy for the proper use of facts in the field of psychopathology. The dichotomy is softened philosophically by the use of his word periechontology to avoid the rigidity of meta-ontology. We are dealing with forms of thinking as tools that manifest strengths and weaknesses. Prelate-predators detect the vulnerable. 12.4. Richard perhaps rests too long in certitude and gets predator’s attention--Richard settles too soon and too long in one of dichotomy’s spots. He becomes a victim of catholicity due to his overt but misplaced protesting of dependable historic lessons while underestimating the forcefulness of more “evolved” (pardon my language) institutionally established authority. In his world where all roads lead to unification, kin -like solidarity, he is thereby handicapped and marked as a scapegoat for predators. His weakness is resting too long on the presumption that “I doubt if the priests were that clever” at “meme” expertise. He is more wrong than correct, or he wants the reader distracted from possible priestly influence upon his works. Priests can be both clever and subtle, and great pretenders. Cleverness is not as generally needed but prelates have to be good at taking their orders seriously, for without obedience or faithful replication, vatic catholicity loses its “evolutionary stable strategy”. Richard places this stability-idea and fixates it in the formula form of “ESS” as though it is a desirable principle to be propounded. To not fall into that trap, the formula symbol will not be used. Prelate-strategy-thinking outmaneuvered and overcame Richard’s better more critical moments, for then, in another place he says: “Perhaps we could regard an organized church…as a co-adapted stable set of mutually-assisting memes”. Without the profane cult-like word “meme” he might have seen the deceptive process. It was a priest that shocked Jaspers into realizing that his philosophical logic was in effect theology, and one has to be an in-depth psychologist to see that, and subtle enough to hope it would sway Jaspers toward Catholicity. What Catholic prelates can be no less good at is preying on others’ brilliance and harvesting ripened amyloidoses-like superciliousness through honorific machinations. But, back to the phenomenon describable as a manifestation of the historic invisible church of inspiration, e.g., Cranmer’s burning at Oxford. 13. Thomas Cranmer’s Burning v. Thomas Beckett’s Murder—The Second Continuum ended with a forewarning about allowing Richard to set the terms of involvement. Curiously, he provides a good example by his own description of how the title “The Ancestor’s Tale” unfolded. Richard says, in effect, that he was talked into using the Thomas Becket milieu—though only Chaucer’s name is used. Chaucer also used the highly charged Becket situation in his Canterbury Tales. The exploitation of its popularity contributed to the particulate-air, the psyche-atmosphere (suggestibility) that inspired or conspired some “pilgrim’s” miracles, which were used to support Thomas Becket’s canonization. “Saint” Thomas was judged, kin-selected, to be a paradigmatic for the catholic cause. Richard uses Chaucer’s work as a popular enough title for his “pilgrimages” in the unification-search, the grasping hold of humankind’s origin. It’s doubtful that Richard would object to the accusation that he was being parasitic. He considers it a quite natural process in his “evolutional” time scale and something to be replicated in the time/spacelessness of the moment. The use shows how something natural like “evolutionary” thinking can justify any urge to quit being critical and get on the way toward singularity.* Parasitic “evolutionary” tactics can justify the search for hosts upon which to get attached and he obviously swayed toward capitalizing on the emotional word “pilgrim”. The choice would immediately capture the informed Catholic reader, and normally avert the informed protestant. (*Richard Rhodes, in his book Deadly Feasts uses the Darwinian-struggle idea to show how two mad-cow-like infectious strains might have struggled over a host’s nucleic acid, i.e., DNA/RNA. The use of the popular name “Darwinian evolution” can distract from research; it can short-circuit on a correlation of research-events that may not be connected.) 13. Richard’s questionable holy pilgrimage--The other choice for a title would have alienated Catholic readers. Richard’s first urge was to use Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress but changing it to “Pilgrim’s Regress”. Even good Catholics, who claim modernity-reform, would object to such overt and open persecutions reminiscent of the persecuted Huguenots. And of course it would bring attention to the embarrassing Conventicle Act. Peripheral influences vectored Richard’s decision. Remember! Pilgrim’s Progress was written from a protesting, i.e., protestant perspective. The author began the work while imprisoned for participating in religious services in violation of the Catholic King’s imposition of the Anglican’s Church’s allegiance to bishop of Rome (the Conventicle Act). What is surprising, if not revealing, is that Richard devoted a few lines as more of an excuse than his personal reasons, or he wanted to get off that shot about Pilgrim’s Progress. The decision, made under influence, has meaningfulness for it involves the difference between protestant and catholic cultural mimicking, a real banner-waving conflict that fans the flames of reformation. To distract from those bellows, or at least regardless of them, Richard had already laid claimed to having introduced the word “meme”. He introduces the word similarly to the way--in the first decade of the 20th century--the words “genotype” and “phenotype” were introduced. The two words were then used by Jaspers in his General Psychopathology in his in-depth critique of heredity, but concluded by returning to the word “anlage”. The significance of Pilgrim’s Progress as an analogue is that protestants ideally don’t make geographic treks in seeking anything like a holy DNA grail, a localized holy site somewhere else other than the inward transformation of thinking. A protestant pilgrim can stay at home, right here in Oxford where a protestant Thomas Cranmer still smolders within consciousness. 13.1. Pilgrims’ holiness--So, as a saint continues to burn, the molecules of smell-information are collected in nerves at the back of the nose and those nerve fibers, the axons, transport the particulates to the hippocampus for the brain’s deciphering for the encompassing transcendent mind. It is no wonder that there’s so much distraction away from the focal-locale. The Canterbury Tales are Catholic. The power is not the popularity of the phonetic/semiotics of the title, but rather the historical context of the great controversy over the standard of faith, practice, and feedback-history v. a vatic “evolved-evolving” established and organized church. The matter is central to the restoration of understanding what has primordially existed though forgotten, i.e., an awareness of consciousness/conscience lessons--not an updated mind-brain interest, not the nearly grasped conclusiveness resulting from consciousness studies and highly functional computer models. 13.2. Pilgrimages and crusades are more a Catholic phenomena than protestant, though the tendency toward geographic localization can be found in both Protestantism and Catholicism. The difference rather than the similarity between Beckett and Cranmer is equal to the difference--rather than similarity--between Pilgrim’s Progress and the Canterbury Tales. Bunyan emphasizes individual transformation of the mind or spirit, and fits into the history of reform and religious freedom. It is not regressive as Richard wanted to say, but inwardly progressive for it recognizes that conversion begins within and does not emphasize the regression-psychology of pilgrimages. So, in analyzing Richard’s excuses or reasons, it is important to look for differences rather than accept or mimic unquestionably what appears at face value something overtly innocent. Just as Richard indirectly uses “St. Thomas” as an item for mankind’s unification, I more directly exploit Oxford’s Cranmer, the more real burning saint--ecologically emphasized for the sake of the conservation of energy rather than quietly permitting the phenomenon go to waste. 14. Saddling and symbiotically simulating the singing saddleback; s’s hissing uniformly in the Oxford school-kin choir--In the beginning of this Web Page I did not intend to make a comparison of Thomas Cranmer and Thomas Beckett. Finding it difficulty to swallow, I ruminated on Richard’s title-tale for it was one of those saddleback bird-songs too unbird-like with too many an “s” and when mimicked too clearly and distinctly, it was like a killdeer’s fluttering too much, causing the more alert empathetic critic to look around for the real meaning behind the outstanding phenomenon. Richard writes interestingly about the bird and the “s” phenomena in the “meme” Chapter in the Gene book. It tends to show how intone he is to the catchiness of “meme” and its potential for dissonance. 14.1. Extended prelate influence cashes-in on Richard’s vulnerability—The limitation of Richard’s thinking is important to see for it easily lends itself to manipulation. What encompasses DNA experience within and without is consciousness, and should include the conscience to admit it. Seeing and admitting it is the first line of defense against being subjugated. He is aware of such manipulation potential for there’s plenty potential for it in his own mind; he adeptly suspects that historians can revise history (and lineage information can be revised and perhaps the potential inherited). His waffling between dogmatic certitude and functional attitude may tempt clerics to approach while in the altruistic stabilizing mode. His 1979 work The Selfish Gene did not leave enough room for institutional “Saints” and could have been folded toward the protestant ethos; hermeneutic experts, honed with a sharp eye toward loose protesting, could expose the logical, informational, descriptive, and stylistic weaknesses. He would need all the catholic forces claiming universality that he could get. The protesting ethos too is well exercised in detecting strengths and weaknesses for institutional mimicking. So, by hindsight we might find that Richard’s 1989 revisions were designed to make his reputation and money-backing fiscally responsible, his “evolving” fidelity more accountable and amenable for a vatican’s parasitic proclamation (like in 1996). Richard has propagated effectively enough to acquire universal appeal (that’s called catholicity). His popularity helped Catholicism to appropriate evolutionism to the point that Richard’s fellow-in-arms, Stephen Gould, declared that “[S]incere Christians must now accept evolution...as an effectively proven fact”. If one saddleback imitator in a choir, Gould, (who had grasped the importance of injury-plus-parasitic harmonizing on the back of genus to mutated species) sank further into certitude from the weight of this authority, surely so could Richard—but by voluntary replication. 14.2. Where Richard’s road leads unless detoured to Oxford’s Cranmer--So, metaphorically speaking, though Richard wants to get on the road to the eternal city (a major source of the replication-ethos), it seems fair to protest not stopping by Oxford again to see if Cranmer is still flailing the arm that has not dropped off. ‘No, look the other arm is now stuck to the chains’. It is no wonder that it is more tempting though less repulsive to make a pilgrimage to where a Catholic was swiftly made unconscious with a sword-blow to the head. Four knights did the killing. They literally fulfilled the words of King Henry II (12th c): “Have I no one who will relieve me from the insults of this turbulent priest?” Perhaps Richard should be quoted with less realistic embroidery: “All roads lead to the origin of life” (Tale, p. 8). I insist on turbulent detours rather than mimicking another’s route. Mimicking involves intentional and unintentional performance relative to the terms “genotype” and “phenotype” (and is considered with up-to-date worthwhileness by Jaspers especially in the section on heredity in his General Psychopathology). Richard considers the words too but he has been placed in that compromising position of distorting exemplary conduct by warping the fabric of time/space so that acculturated biblical imitating is swooped into the black hole of a Huxley/Dawkins’ Darwinian evolutionism. Our pilgrim, Thomas Cranmer, having failed to mimic prelate-emphasized nominalism, is too strong a mimicking force for evolutionism. That sort of suffering human-scapegoat tends to distract from the updated science-jargon--such as that surrounding DNA findings, which, if catholicity is encouraged, could usher in a new-world enlightenment and include the synthetic church of evolution. The support for the spirit of catholicity guaranteed getting away with the introduction of the new sound “meme”, mimicking’s ersatz. “Meme” becomes less meaningful than the imitative force of the martyrs of the inquisition. Photographic memory and responsible mimicking is where Draper now reenters this scenario. He had made significant contributions to the science and art of photography. 15. Dawkins did not introduce the “Meme” ethos; John Draper contemporarily applied the historic idea—The “Karl Jaspers Forum” Web Page and this “Jaspers Applied to Dawkins” Web Page are correlated. In the former, such as UPDATE 27, reference was made to leading back to the application of Jaspers to Dawkins’ ideas, including his “meme”-thinking. My position is that Jaspers position is healthy enough to mimic without one’s loss of selfhood. He has said and means that humankind’s origin is…utterly…unknown, and that position amounts to one of the poles of the eternal ethos-conflict. Again, it should be remembered that Jaspers is known for forearming us by forewarnings about the limits of science; he pulsates between unlimited research and the limits of the findings. That conflict thesis, rather the conflict of theses, has been historically expressed, most extensively biblically, and in the Sanskrit-quote Jaspers would repeat, that “I come I know not whence…” and ends with “I wonder why I am of good cheer”. In The Ancestor’s Tale Richard prefers to begin his first page with denigrating words some pilgrims would find offensive. 15.1. John Draper’s protestant limits--John Draper embarrassingly reemphasized limits but only in a kin-selective mimicking and contradictory manner. His conflict thesis was clearly anti-Catholic and included a reactionary pro-protestant meliorism with little critical thought that the latter would easily slip into catholicity and then into Catholicism’s grasp. With Catholicism in mind he said: “Whatever is resting on fiction and fraud will be overthrown”, and that confidence in human will-power resounds with rationalism with ample disregard for science’s limits. It was said within the Wilberforce/Huxley charged atmosphere. Each personality polarized into respective forces, science-catholicity and conciliatory Catholic catholicity—in this situation, catholicity meaning two forces with claims on universality (though Wilberforce was more Sanskrit-correct but outflanked). The conflict poles are: one, the thinker thinks, and the thinking schemes can be imposed on others in some form of vatic infallibility; two, parallel to it in reactionary intensity is Draper’s vatic-like scientism, that “evolution and development” is absolutely on the verge of certitude and beyond protesting, and therefore the Vatican (Draper said “papacy”) might as well do nothing more than “cast a parting shadow”. Draper’s historical representation of science, his replication of universal history, did not properly focus in on the limits of reason. The uncertainty sides of certain technical advancements such as nuclear physics were not in vogue. But it seems clear he took a good picture of catholicity from one perspective, and then a dangerous and negative one, which excluded a smart degree of the protestant attitude. Mimicking the latter would become certitude with a proneness to catholicity and an easy victim for Catholicism’s infiltration and appropriation—its re-emergence. Draper is known for contributed to the science of photography; photographic representation remained subject to meaning for critical mimicking. Draper yielded to a known origin of humankind in talking the talk essential for an Oxford invitation and presumes “…the savage condition of prehistoric man” but the greatest argument for the presumption, which he emphasized, was Catholicism’s conduct –the inquisition and the…then…papacy’s reaffirmation of its continued need. 15.2. Imitating and ethos forces, conjuring a self-image to be imitated--Because of the tendency to imitate one or the other ethos, the poles above, it seems appropriate to have started and now continue analyzing “meme”. Richard, in endnotes to his “meme” Chapter, takes credit for the characteristically-protestant ideas that Draper had delivered just prior to the Huxley/Wilberforce confrontation. My argument is that the essential meaning of “meme” was not something mysteriously in the wind as a natural law waiting for a couple hybrid personalities to emerge, like E. O. Wilson and Dawkins, to filter it and make it explicit, excessively simplifying it metaphorically for mass consumption. Richard seems to claim that he and Wilson had come to terms about the phenomenon (replication in the “meme”-mutated progressive sense) independently as though inspiration whirled through a cosmic parallel universe’s germ-hole. Richard goes to some length and finds a paper he did earlier enough to suggest no correlation and heroically supposedly rescues both hybrid self-images from public humility. If there is an encompassing dimension escaping comprehension but fundamental to DNA-fingerprinting, and if Wilson and Richard were identical twins, which DNA could tend to substantiate, neither could be DNA-proven guilty of plagiarism —under the condition that simultaneity is practically improbable even in the other dimension—and unless they knew enough to cooperate and not incriminate each other. If one or both confessed, guilt or innocence would still be unproven and they would be considered innocent until proven otherwise. That would be called giving each other the benefit of trust rather than doubt, and irrelevant to theistic thinking enlightened by biblical golden rule. They both knew better than introduce or admit any Draper-evidence. Both could appear as having plagiarized Draper’s snapshot of cultural replication, i.e., mimicking, emulating. (The twin-tale needs refining and extending. My first wife was and is a mirror-twin though one twin is deceased.) 15.3. Draper plagiarizing--It is clear that there is good reason that they both caught the hither side of the Draper-hurricane’s eye. (See 6.12 above on the Draper talk during the dedication of the science building built by bible funds from Oxford Press’s bible sales.) What the Dawkins/Wilson thing affected, intentional or not, minimized the anti-Catholic pole of the Draper “conflict thesis” and exaggerated the pole of scientism’s disregarding the protesting critical attitude of uncertainty restored through nuclear physics. There are many paradigmatic precursors, and if a later precursor is needed but still prior to Dawkins and Wilson, it would be relatively easy to show how Jaspers has used “anlage” to encompass “genotype” and “phenotype”; and uses Existenz to avoid mimicking Richard’s misuse of the God concept (see p. 192-3, Genes). The novel sound of “meme” does not resolve the Draper-call for not mimicking Catholicism; it does not resolve the catholicity of imitating “evolutionism’s” certainty about the origin of humankind. The call for imitating the latter is a call for an equally conjured institutional yoke for the sake of a “evolutionary stability strategy”. The only proper reference Draper made to the Bible was a comment about its call for tolerating private interpretations of the Bible to leave room for the “evolution and development” argument. But what the Bible says is that it is not subject to private interpretation, meaning there is no interpretation that should be imposed by counsel or convention. But the expression of certitude about knowing humankind’s origin amounts to an unreasonable private interpretation being imposed in the name of its universal validity. 15.4. My mimicking “meme” mistake--I publicly and shamefully admit to aiding and abetting the propagation of Richard’s “meme”. I cannot deny that I had a relationship with that “meme” and I repent (and I had no idea “meme” rhymed with “cream” as Richard emphasized). I’ve been guilty of violating meaningfulness by using…that…word, which now must enter the domain of the profane. The remedial course is to not use it. To not protest it would mean that due to well-financed propaganda Richard would have won a round against a meaningful ethos already in vogue. I first saw the word in 1997 or 8 in a cartoon on the desk in an office where my daughter worked. It might have been a “Farside” calendar, my daughter now says. The cartoon depicted a pedestrian hit by an auto. The driver says to the concerned passenger “it’s ok, it was only a meme”. I could not find “meme” in any dictionary and at the time was more computer-illiterate than now. I returned to Truth Or Consequences, NM, with the word on my mind. I had made some meaning of it without knowing its seminal-hybred-hubric questionable source, and used it in a newspaper article for a Sierra County newspaper. The editor, unfamiliar with it too, correctly questioned it, and I said it was a word that seems to be coming into vogue on the West Coast and carries a meaning of imitating. I was being smartly modernistic, having no idea I was fostering evolutionism. The cartoon could be interpreted as referring to a protestant or catholic pedestrian, a sort of “necker box” dichotomy—another word needing extinction. (I apologize for using the word “necker” too.) I told the editor that it simply meant mimickers are expendable compared to thinking outside the box. I had no idea the word was a test to measure the retardation or advancement of an atheist’s growing popularity and a measure of how well he was fulfilling his job-description--the propagating evolutionism. In retrospect, the word as I used and applied it to the local situation, at least could have left the impression that I was currently aware of things in the wind. That was my intention. 15.5. Forcing the Oxford Dictionary to consider “meme”--At the time I was wholly unfamiliar with Dawkins’ dominating efforts. Richard considers it a plus that the Oxford Dictionary now carries the word. I’d not developed a preference for the Oxford Dictionary since receiving one free for joining a book-of-the-month club a half century ago. But Richard, an Oxford establishmentarian, found occasion to boast earlier that it had been added to the prestigious list for future consideration. He is subtle, for now having included that comment in an Oxford Press’ “The Selfish Gene, new edition”, if the word should not thereafter be included, it would be like saying the Oxford Press’ reputation is tarnished by having allowed Richard’s invented word to be published, and in the end-note-comment, republished. Mimicking is a word that should now be restored to former dignity, and “meme” recalled on the grounds of a Dawkins/Oxford Press’ conspiracy—at least an appearance of evil that should not be imitated. 16. The Anlagen complementary affectation upon “phenotypic” and “genotypic”—Microbial bombardment through molecular biology’s substratum; i.e., nuclear physic’s quantum-qualifying effects is less protestable than the inheritable possibilities of chemistry. Jaspers speaks to the reality of this possibility as early as 1913 and in his last work on Philosophical Faith and Revelation. But first, Richard, so far as I have researched, expresses it in the “meme” Chapter of Genes: “Man may well have spent…the last several million years” with “kin selection…in favor of reciprocal altruism” that “may have acted on human genes to produce…basic psychological attributes and tendencies” (p. 191). Richard correctly has trouble correlating this mutation and its source with the complexity of Culture. He cannot escape a serial dimensionality, a natural leaning toward uniformity, and wants to go back to first principles, his first principles. In other words, he does not…know…and than relapses immediately into publicly confessing his perpetual rededication to the Darwinian stance which suddenly becomes too big a principle to fit the complexity of reality. To Richard it appears it is not Darwinianism that is limited but rather complex reality. What is meant is that inspiration is needed but the problem is how highbred egocentricity can afford being caught in a compromising position with its evolutionalism and rationalism exposed, and subject to protests. 16.1 The revelational milieu for inspiration—If Richard is to maintain rational and emotional balance; the revelational milieu for such inspiration to occur must of course be correlated to his popular premise, evolutionism (which boils down to replication). He substitutes for the possibility of revelation, i.e., a transcendental intervention into humankind in some parallel sense. He comes back to a form of deism, which is simply another parallel rationalization to mystify and metaphysically justify serial rationalization. It takes on the anthropological form, a vatic-like canonization of a system of thinking by kindred consensus. He does this in endnotes on page 280 where he makes the comparison of consciousness’ “evolution” using D. C. Dennett’s computer models. He also cites Nicholas Humphrey “evolutionary” explanation that postulates (in a protestant-like slip--my comment) some sort of an inner self-critical eye. Richard correctly senses the protestant and theistic window this leaves opened once the evolutionism verbiage is penetrated. Richard moves from being intellectually honest enough to see it, to immediately closing it before any appreciation ascends beyond kin. He does this by admitting he embellishes Dennett’s (then) unpublished works that might explain the origin of consciousness (by means of consciousness out of unconsciousness—my comment). He wants to understand consciousness comprehensively from a purely immanence perspective and grasps for something substantial in Humphrey’s consciousness processes. Like a kin-selected scapegoat, Richard absorbs the honest intellectual uncertainty of the inner eye of self-inspection by admitting it might not help understand consciousness, but then in more than tit for tat fashion possibly to avoid retaliation he cordially says that Humphrey is a graceful and persuasive writer. Then, in Tales, to repay the kindness that Dennett shows by fostering the “meme” word in the, then, published work, Richard honors him by quotations that contain…that…m-word. Susan Blackmore is repaid also in kind for “her audacious book The Meme Machine. Lighthearted talk about sky-hooks (something my granddad sent me to fetch from the barn—my first immanental-transcendence lesson) there is designed to absorb the awkward reliance on state-of-the-art cybernetic neural-nuclear metaphysical talk. Talking the talk masks the enhancing effects of uncritical human companionship that stultifies while it edifies. The kin-selectivity is obvious and of course evolutionism is what the sky-hook hooks to. The suggestibility of such personal fellowship is strong but it doesn’t substantiate that the source of consciousness is any more gene-like than nuclear-quantum-like or any “thing” else. Conservative historical imitation, mimicking, of the great paradigmatic individualistic performers should not be lost to “replication” and “meme”. That nominalism yet fails to settle the nuclear radioactive ghostly mist of Cranmer’s immeasurable suffering…at Oxford. 16.2. Richard almost persuaded except it sounds too evangelical--Of course he doesn’t admit that no thing helps to establish the known or knowable origin of humankind; it is suppose to be enough that the gang agrees that “evolution” is the answer, and that turf-talk…simply…confirms Richard’s description and popularization of DNA as the analogue, i.e., simian base for metaphoric up-side-down pyramids. That’s like when faced with inimical questions to avoid despair, one says: “God did it” or else “I am fooling myself”. The nearest to that sort of verbalizing is the way he opens Chapter 2 “The replicators”: “In the beginning was simplicity” which is meant to henceforth replace Genesis 1:1’s “In the beginning God”. In reality Richard does not know, but he knows Darwinian “evolution” knows. In other words all things being equal Dawkins thinks it is possible that an organ’s genes can be affected by individual thinker-thoughts and possibly even transmitted, i.e., genetically inherited but he cannot put it clearly for it does not sound enough like darwinian slang. Richard’s argument rests on and proceeds from reductionism, reducing consciousness to genome’s ultimate uncertain substratum. Geneses 1:1 sounds too much like humankind’s thinking--about genes and DNA units--is encompassed and dependent upon consciousness. And Richard is at a loss for words regarding the origin of consciousness, which he uses without question until after its use and when it is too late. He can ask denizens to trust him as a guide to humankind’s origin, while he has not trekked immediate consciousness. In a fleeting humbling moment Richard is almost persuaded by the consciousness side of “in the beginning God”. When not influence by the “acknowledged” crowd, in a moment of me-me-solitude, he said: “The evolution [as is] of the capacity to simulate seems to have culminated in subjective consciousness. Why this should have happened is, to me, the most profound mystery facing modern biology.” Other than the expletive, that is close to having the mystery of being revealed as the mystery, and close to the emotive meaning of Gen. 1:1. But the inspiration is lost as he slips back into superciliousness: “Perhaps consciousness arises when the brain’s simulation of the world becomes so complete that it must include a model of itself” (p. 59 Genes). Other than the transcendental reality behind the sky-hook bit of blasphemy, Richard does not seem to have found anything more certain in Dennett’s works—from what I so far can determine by spot-checking his “Tale” by an unpredictable approach. 16.3. Jaspers muses about transmitting mutations--Jaspers position on transmission when superficially evaluated indicates an awareness that individual potential by mutation might make one more susceptible to reading the “cipher” language of complex reality, but that…known…mutation is rarely transferable, except morbidly, and includes genetics but there are too many variables in genotype and phenotype, and encompassing anlagen to determine it to be genetic only—for there’s no such thing as genetic only. And there is no such thing as loadings or unites (though he does not mention DNA) alone without encompassings (a far better description of reality than parallel and/or serial). But what looks genetic seems also to lie dormant over long periods to appear suddenly in performance under certain milieu. Myself, I wonder, at this point in the research, whether quantum physics is seriously involved in Richard’s thinking, but it could be in Jaspers’ musings. Jaspers considers Heisenberg’s contribution. Myself, bombarding RNA/DNA by energetic neuronal waves of packets must have some effect if not only on inheritable details than in inheritable potential. Inherited potential seems biblical and consistent with the need to train up a child and the continued need for the proclamation of the gospel, and prophets, seers, and reformers popping up unpredictably. It seems reasonable that not knowing that there is some effect does not alter the historically demonstrated need for the written well preserved worded accounts of lessons learned by others’ consciousness and experience. I mean the suffering by burning fully conscious and conscientious saints must have timeless and spaceless rippling effects that also affect affective emotive states. In effect the whole cosmos groans as the biblical Paul says. 16.4. Jaspers on avoiding sweeping genetic-heredity conclusions--Richard probably would appreciate Jaspers’ statement that “most mutants are changes that are morbid and maladaptive to life and disappear” due to what’s commonly natural (the translator uses “natural selection” but that sounds too much like Darwinian evolutionism which Jaspers opposed…so I changed it to “what’s commonly natural”). “But there are positive deviations which may lead to an alteration in the species if in the course of time their frequency increases.” Jaspers then emphasizes that the basic substance of heredity has a general inviolable ground plan with only the slightest proneness toward modification, and warns that genetics is limited to hereditary units that can be distinguished and defined. Though he does not mention DNA, the form of thinking could not be more updated. Jaspers would probably rule that Richard’s fallback and edifying refrain “Darwinian evolutionary replication” is an overly simplistic answer. Jaspers says we have to “content ourselves with at least a surmise of the dumbfounding complexity of heredity, variation and mutation, so that in psychopathology we do not put our confidence in too simple an explanation.” At this point in my research of Richard’s works it appears that with regard to genes and inheritance, though he can see something of a miracle there, he falls far short of agreeing with Jaspers that “at present we are quite unable to grasp” the gene arrangement, that the refinements of heredity in humankind are infinite. That’s a far cry from ‘in the beginning was simplicity’. The “we” in Jaspers’ next quote should include Richard: “We acquire a sense of wonder and a desire to refrain from making sweeping and precipitate conclusions.” 16.5. Richard’s psychopathological charge--Psychopathology is relative to this analysis of Richard’s performance in that he has with too little forethought and insight compared theistic belief to mental illness, whereas I have said that evolutionism is pandemic and fosters the disease now with the backing of a vatic authoritative certitude, a sense of obligation within and without science, and moreover through Simonyi’s funding. There exists the appearance of a conflict of interest here and Jaspers foresaw that force:
16.6. With swollen lips and tongue Cranmer takes on nuclear now-clearer immortality-- CONTINUED………TOWARD INHERITED CONSCIOUSNESS AND INHERITED GENES. ---------------------------------------- CONTINUE TO: FIFTH CONTINUUM (OCTOBER 17, 2006)—EPISTEMIC POSTURING OF DIS-EASED EMOTIVE AFFECTIVE STATES, CONSCIOUSNESS AND MIND: further preparation for handling objective research through epistemic triangularity; a special application of epistemology to torture-trends BACK TO: JASPERS’ WORKS APPLIED TO RICHARD DAWKINS’ (JUNE 5, 2006) SECOND CONTINUUM (JUNE 23, 2006), RICHARD DAWKINS V. KARL JASPERS ON CONSCIOUSNESS, FAITH AND MENTAL DISEASE
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