Neither Nor: Notes on Dry Run (themes and principles) - lydgate/mindmeld GitHub Wiki

Notes on Dry Run of neither/nor writing by Bryan
- (A) The N/N approach: A methodology for self, philosophy, and society/science
  - 1. Personal and pragmatic methodology to alleviate suffering:
    - " The point of Neither/Nor is to evaluate the effects of adopting different metaphysical assumptions... [on personal suffering]" (see bottom of page for further articulations and questions for elaboration)
    - Dependent origination discussion: "Buddha teaches patiloma and anuloma paticcasamuppada. These are methods by which we can build concepts and stories and then destroy them. Doing this repeatedly brings insight into the nature of what we're concerned with"
      - The original sin of the "cowardly" set of philosophers: to build epistemologies that start in fear (e.g., Daston) and anger (e.g., Pierce); they are reactionary and start with personal suffering
        
        "The true end goal is to reside comfortably on neither end of the [universal/nomonalism] spectrum. But you're better off reading Derrida than reading Pinker, or other people who will lull you into a false sense of comfort. It's fine to do that in your 20s, out of fear, but growing up means getting over that desire to know."
        
        these are reactionary approaches, while ours is intentionally historical, but also novel and proactive
        
        We start with practices that first and foremost address personal fear and anger and provide methods for alleviating that suffering
        
        we overcome the childish requirement for safety and predictability and move towards building a NON-REACTIVE alternative approach first for ourselves, then generalize these methods, for others, in different domains
        
        Note: Dylan threw out the NY sessions out of fear. He could have shared something genuinely new, the experiential messages from his soul, but instead he retreated to predictable, safe presentations, and so failed to be the revolutionary he could have been; (You had a gut sense of the message of those original masterpieces, an obsession to feel out what the difference was between the NY sessions and the eventual released album)
      - N/N is a middle wayward approach: "the Buddha teaches the middle way is the only way because it avoids both failure modes and teaches how to find your own path out of personal suffering"
        
        but the middle way is not a fixed destination to learn to get to, it is a wayward path
        
        Suffering can't be ended by the Socratic move towards defending/reification of concepts. (Note what Zhuangzi means by illumination?).
      - So, after dealing with personal suffering, we apply the same N/N methodology outside of the self, towards understanding the pitfalls of different epistemologies, schools of philosophical thought, philosophers themselves and their approaches
  - 2. Methodology for evaluating philosophical approaches throughout history:
    - To show how the N/N methodology works to examine any philosophical position.
      - "What are the effects of adopting different metaphysical assumptions? I have no need to "prove" that the realists are wrong. Though I think this is a good first step to take."
      - "So... we do eventually need to see what is produced: something that must prove those realists wrong or not. We'd probably want to avoid any such dualistic battles, but why does it feel so sticky? It's about the problem of truth isn't it?"
      - We focus importantly on the motivated reasoning of philosophers, their WHY; why are these philosophers taking their approach
      - N/N strives to be a metaphysics of metaphysics
      - Again, returning to the Buddha teaching patiloma and anuloma paticcasamuppada. Now we use these same methods by which we build PERSONAL concepts and stories, and then destroy them, and apply to societal levels and diverse disciplines to derive insights into the nature of what we're concerned with.
        
        Buddha shows how we do this for the self, but it's also a model of how we can go about doing the same at different levels and foci of analysis
        
        Buddha's most concerned about one concept: the self. We're extending to all concepts, across disciplines, domains, and levels of analysis
  - 3. Methodology and also a philosophy in itself, useful for evaluating claims across disciplines and cultural concerns
    - Once we have a useful methodology to evaluate philosophical approaches, and their diverse claims, we us N/N as a philosophical framework itself and apply its practices and insights to physics, history, sociology, anthropology, mathematics, psychology (?)
- (B) Core principles of N/N (interrelated, but distinct, and nonlinear in that they form a web of principles, not a list of steps that need to be followed sequentially)
  - 1. All concepts/epistemologies, philosophies, etc. require a historical lens to understand their meaning/purpose and usefulness.
    - Nietzsche: can't examine final form, must examine history of any idea (e.g., on morality, looking at a final system of morality is unscientific because it justifies that one morality, not sets or systems; without history and context, we get it wrong)
    - Remember and repeatedly return to N/N being a project that is born from our time and place in history.
      - "Kant and Peirce have bad ideas that are not going to help us from where we are now. I make no strong claim about whether they were a bad idea for their time and place really. I'm sure they couldn't help themselves."
      - We are being careful to try to avoid going in the wrong direction for our specific NOW TIMES. N/N is not a dogmatic framework that is deconctextualized and ahistorical.
  - 1. Ways of knowing can be meaningfully divided into two modes: intuition and reason. We don't want to reify this dichotomy as much as name it and encourage the continuous oscillations between these modes of knowing ("Peirce says Kant draws a usefully sharp distinction between intuition and discursive thought... )
    - Do we want to list out thinkers who make this same distinction and where they stand? Is this a useful exercise? What do we learn from laying out these thinkers and their approaches, over historical time, and distinguishing why, when, and how they emerged?
  - 1. The methods of N/N that work best are iterative and involve trial-and-error, improvisation, tinkering, experimentation, Darwinian variation and selection.
    - e.g., can be applied to Physics, but also baseball, as discussed in the writing
  - 1. All meaning and causal relations are socially derived. From the most basic self-focused processes to societal, historical, and scientific processes phenomena need to be understood first and foremost as emergent from social relations, not individual-based factors
    - we discussed how shared concepts feel good for a reason
    - developmentally, concepts are born from early shared perceptions that are co-recognized by our close social partners (starting with the mother)
  - 1. The correct foci of examination are processes/relational not entities/objects.
    - "we're not making claims about static entities that are "true" or anything at all about 'truth"'
    - Most realists/universalists: all the definitions and ways of talking about truth are not claims about HOW to look at phenomena, they're about what those phenomena really are: "Truth really exists" (p. 25: key writing on the social derivation of "truth")
    - Whitehead relevant, but just the beginning; related to writing on the cup throughout first part of writing piece, moving deep into how concepts are culturally derived through shared social processes that shape perception and attention
  - 1. N/N is about committing to the non-collapse, the movement, the oscillations, the non-dogmatic, skeptical move.
    - it is essentially Taoist but unlike Taoism as its usually presented, N/N is about pragmatic usefulness (practices that can be applied daily to self and society)
      - we suggest ways to go beyond the Dharma talks, into daily pragmatic practices that shift mind/heartsets (sorry... cheesy, but you get what I mean)
      - how do you apply these practices on the days/weeks/months level (which goes beyond the moment-to-moment meditation practices)?
      - we teach increasing sensitivity to failure modes on either side, and provide daily, accessible practices to shift the power of one side or the other, intentionally (though both are always active). Balance is not right; it calls to mind the yogic static pose. Think more of the homeostatic physiological processes like the parasympathetic/sympathetic adjustments or like our heartbeat adjusting to contextual demands and our attentional curiosities, slowing or accelerating
    - We are developing, experimenting with, and sharing meditative and conversational practices which support individuals and groups to increase Keats' “negative capability,” tolerance of uncertainty, entropy, and tension without collapsing definitively at either end of the poles.
    - N/N recognizes that each move -- rational and woo, conceptual and intuitive -- does have its usefulness, and even over-use for a while can be helpful, as long as we return to the commitment TO move (we aren't looking for balance in some "static middle")
      - We need to respond to Socrates' (and others') over correction with logical reasoning; it's gone too far and has now brought us to the brink of civilizational collapse
        
        "The issue is that Socrates promises one thing and delivers the opposite. It's like inviting a child in for food and then killing her. That's what bothers me. He advocates for incessant anuloma paticcasamupada: forward conditionality, just keep doing what feels good, i.e., reasoning, proliferating, taking things down the logical paths. Though perhaps his interlocutors are ancient enough not to feel good about this naturally. Maybe to them it feels bad."
        
        Fun article: Socrates as hedonist: he's doing the pleasurable thing; he's taking the easy way out
  - 1. _Because N/N in its written manifestation (book/articles) lays out a theoretical approach, it correctly begins in practice/intuition. _
    - In order to lay out a theoretical/conceptual set of claims, N/N starts with experience (e.g., diabetes, recovery). After the conceptual claims are presented, it then moves back to practice to check if it works, what works better than other elements, etc. and iterates.
      - "Unlike Chapman who starts in intellectual realms and ends in them, we follow Schopenhauer's advise not to. Our advice goes beyond the theoretical to the practical, with methodology and practice steps."
    - McGilchrist is also repeatedly challenged on the same problem: remaining in the conceptual despite advocating for the opposite.
    - And so we have Liminal Learning that is, among other things, is a living lab for N/N applications. It is a safe/unsafe space that is being launched at the same time as the intellectual framework is being elaborated, communicated, written.
      - It needs to have a static form as simply a directional post. It is on the correct path, we follow it both in practice and through abstract thought, and look around carefully every few posts.
      - We examine whether the theory put into practice is useful. Towards this same aim, I am co-developing small-group collective practices that build creative individuals’ trust and confidence while providing a safe social container for fast feedback and productive accountability.

Further considerations related to the motivations of philosophers (linked to first theme above regarding the motivation to alleviate suffering:

"All epistemology begins in fear and no epistemology survives curiosity." (this is beautiful)
Is there a core fear/anger that is the primary driver of N/N?
- law of excluded middle (why must there be this and not that)
- law of contradictions (why the hell CAN'T we have paradoxes? We argue we need their lens)
- the unexamined mainstream view
Related, are all epistemologies and/or systems to think with motivated by cowardice (I think not)? What is the essential difference between those that are and are not?
- the cowardly approach doesn't mean these systems are "wrong", they're just a response to flux, uncertainty; the end result is to end the search
- the alternative is driven by curiosity; ceaseless investigation
- we see this at the societal/science world with the replication crisis
Are we proposing something similar to "know thyself" and "know how to aleviate your own suffering" are the foundations from which we will respect philosophers?
- I wonder if this set of questions wouldn't make a fun Aeon article, with a review of the men / women as well as the processes used for this self investigation