Replace Soul with Mind
Choose rather to be strong of soul than strong of body.
— Pythagoras (570-495 BC)
Back of the Envelope Calculations
Replace Soul with Mind
Choose rather to be strong of soul than strong of body.
— Pythagoras (570-495 BC)
The titled responsion is "Replace Soul with Mind". Do I need to say more on this heuristic?
When you describe consciousness, do you gravitate towards soul, mind, or both? Now using the lens of biology, how does your understanding shift? Remember, this is a subjective exercise designed to reflect your own divergent and convergent thinking within a structure of sorts. Aesthetically manifest and for all to see!
I Think You've Got That Backward
In faith, there is enough light for those who want to believe and enough shadows to blind those who don't.
— Blaise Pascal (1623-1662)
The titled responsion is "I Think You've Got That Backward".
Enough with light and darkness dichotomies already! The sun, not the Son, is a reference to the one and only source of life in this particular solar system. Darkness is the absence of this energy. Everything else is a metaphor, a poetic imagining of what it's like to be conscious. I am not discounting your meta-language, we all know what it's "fore". Use it wisely my son!
Mount Olympus
It is a happy thing that there is no royal road to poetry. The world should know by this time that one cannot reach Parnassus except by flying thither.
— Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1889)
The titled responsion is a reference to Mount Olympus, but not the one you might be thinking of. Actually, maybe you are thinking of the same one that I am thinking of. Are you thinking of the memory mnemonic; "On old Olympus' Towering Tops, a Finn and German viewed some hops" is a way to remember the 12 cranial nerves."?
This non-existent pathway to creativity isn't prescriptive, what Gerard Manley Hopkins is referring to is the Mount Parnassus in Greece. I added the "Mount Olympus" to the entitled responsion because of this allusion but also the mnemonic that all first-year neuroscience studies should know by heart. Expand on these themes by intertwining the dendritic with the mountainous.
Biology is the Equalizer
It is only when the rich are sick that they fully feel the impotence of wealth.
— Charles Caleb Colton (1780-1832)
The titled responsion is "Biology is the Equalizer".
The wealthy view wealth differently. Perceptions of being poor are easily manipulated to your benefit. The change is environmental. Speaking of the Environment, have you done your daily good? Minimized? Decluttered? Simplified??
Self Contradiction - Get over it!
Do I contradict myself? Very well then I contradict myself, (I am large, I contain multitudes).
— Walt Whitman (1819-1892)
The titled responsion is "Self Contradiction - Get over it!".
By multiple orders of magnitude, the multitudes that confine the mind of Whitman can temper the reader to be more forgiving of the ironies in our subjective experiences. We cast a wide neural net, parsing perspectives and placing ideas in categorical hierarchies of myelination.
Fear and Loathing Lost in Vagus Nerves
Nothing in life is to be feared, it is only to be understood. Now is the time to understand more, so that we may fear less.
— Marie Curie (1867-1934)
The titled responsion is "Fear and Loathing Lost in Vagus Nerves".
I propose the hermeneutic meme, an individual unit of understanding. Wisdom, in its abstract forme and ambiguous state, acts as a variable list of ingredients, the gradients of value move towards the homeostasis of the ideal. The aesthetic, the essence of beauty lies in its arrangement and the contradictions that emerge, however ironic this may sound.
Fixed Action Potentials
Strength does not come from physical capacity. It comes from an indomitable will.
— Mahatma Gandhi (1869-1948)
The titled responsion is "Fixed Action Potentials".
Deterministic perhaps or partially so, the fixed action potentials of the "will" indomitable probability calculators on the shoulders of dwarfs. Seeing further is cumulative, discuss the strength of knowledge and the wisdom with ignoring.
Commission is the Same as Omission
He who does not bellow the truth when he knows the truth makes himself the accomplice of liars and forgers.
— Charles Péguy (1873-1914)
The titled responsion is "Commission is the Same as Omission", what has been committed? What has been committed? At what cost?
Current social bias tells us that doing harm is viewed as worse than permitting it.[1] According to Charles Péguy's deontological statement[2], the two are sui generis; commission is the same as omission![3]
Robert Sapolsky, Behave (2017) ↩︎
"He who does not bellow the truth when he knows the truth makes himself the accomplice of liars and forgers." - Charles Péguy (1873-1914) ↩︎
J. Knobe, “Intentional Action and Side Effects in Ordinary Language Analysis,” 63 (2003): 190; J. Knobe, “Theory of Mind and Moral Cognition: Exploring the Connections,” TICS 9 (2005): 357. ↩︎
More Than a Matter of Opinion — Know Thyself
The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function.
— F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896-1940)
The titled responsion is "More Than a Matter of Opinion - Know Thyself".
Brainwashing is an Axiomatic Exercise
Society attacks early when the individual is helpless."
— B. F. Skinner (1904-1990)
The titled responsion is "Brainwashing is an Axiomatic Exercise".
Washing the brain is a daily function of sleep. Rinse, wash (REM Sleep) and repeat. The inevitability of sleep is necessary to survival. The idealized human forme has no need for sleep. This blatantly avoids the biology under the blasphemer defense. Logically inconsistent and magically auspicious, entire scientific disciplines were mythologized around the subconscious.
Back of the Envelope Conversations
The excursion is the same when you go looking for your sorrow as when you go looking for your joy.
— Eudora Welty (1909-2001)
The titled responsion is "Back of the Envelope Conversations".
The unified joy/sorrow theory is reified with biochemistry and the mnemonic icon on the back of the envelope. What regions of the brain produce such action potentials you may ask? Look into it and report on what you discover.
Hippocamp Space Navigation Within Each and Every One of Us
Either you repeat the same conventional doctrines everybody is saying, or else you say something true, and it will sound like it's from Neptune.
— Noam Chomsky (1928-present)
The titled responsion is "Hippocamp Space Navigation Within Each and Every One of Us".
Constellations fire between the ears of billions, yet one wrong move and the whole world lets you know. Knowledge through negation in a forme handed down from the thrown-ness of your peers. Top-down and bottom-up, the corrective measure of false intellectual claims should be incentive enough to keep cheaters at bay.
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Daniel Sanderson