Turning Signs

Science is a way of trying not to fool yourself. The first principle is that you must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool.

— Richard Feynman (from lecture given at the Galileo Symposium in Italy, 1964).

Suppose we define ‘self’ as the boundary between internal and external worlds. Its social function then is to manifest the individual person in the social milieu; but this also means concealing the primal person behind the mask of individuality. Continue reading Bodymind evolves

A trustworthy guidance system must include some self-monitoring as part of its reality and source monitoring. This is necessary not only for consciousness but also for creativity, in order to prevent getting into endless loops or mindless ruts (Hofstadter 1995, 311; Sloman and Chrisley in Holland 2003, 157). ‘Jumping out of the loop’ is an aspect of resurrection, arising, revelation, recreation out of dead routine. Continue reading Watch yourself

Like Peirce, but by a route neither religious nor synechistic, the physicist Erwin Schrödinger embraced the idea of a Universal Self. Continue reading Synself

From Peirce’s semiotic point of view, all ‘thinking is necessarily a sort of dialogue’ between ‘the momentary self’ and a future self (recall Chapter 2). More recently, neuroscientific studies suggest that the very experience of selfhood may be grounded in a dialogue within the brain. Continue reading Dialogues in the brain

Jerome A. Stone (2003) elucidates the tension between ‘self-power’ and ‘other-power’ as motivators of practice – a tension which seems to play itself out in most religious traditions. Perhaps the tension between the two is more fruitful than the predominance of one over the other. Continue reading The conversation

The crux of the human condition is that we have decisions to make. Continue reading Free self-control

Once the whole is divided, the parts need names. There are already enough names. One must know when to stop.

— Tao Te Ching 32 (Feng/English)

Ego is always wanting to ‘make a difference.’ But there are differences enough already. Maybe one should make a connection instead.

The ‘home’ you have to leave, lest it become a prison, is not only your home town (or your home ‘discipline’ if you’re a specialist), but also your vain hope to find a permanent or substantial self within. Continue reading Groundless