- May 2023
- Jul 2022
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now we go back to jakub von ogskul and we find him critiquing exactly the 00:09:20 same thing for exactly the same reasons 30 years after john dewey there on the left he has picked out the reflex arc pointing out that it is a linear throughput which leaves no room 00:09:34 for subjectivity no room for intentional action no room for meaning to arise if you if the middle is only animated by inputs then it's a puppet 00:09:47 he replaces this with a model on the right that will whose terms will not be entirely clear to you as you read the article but i want you to notice one thing about it it's circular it's not a linear 00:09:59 throughput it's circular he starts by noting the embeddedness of the body in the world and the fact that the activity of the 00:10:13 body is meaningful at all times and not separable into inputs and outputs his replacement of the linear throughput with this circular model that he elaborates in various ways 00:10:25 is remarkably prescient of the basic cybernetic insight that will arise after the second world war in which it's all feedback systems positive feedback systems negative feedback systems 00:10:37 homeostatic systems um reciprocity is always involved the fact that you do something and something is done to you at the same time that that we dance in the world 00:10:50 rather than standing apart from it and recording a movie of it so his um uncovery of this basic cybernetic principle with which one might approach the body and its being in the world is 00:11:02 remarkably prescient but these profound ideas of vulnerable are often hidden because he's well frankly so charming well he's a problematic character as we'll see lately 00:11:14 but he tells a good story and he does cool experiments
30 years after Dewey's paper, Uexkull affirms the same finding as Dewey in his article: A Stroll Though the Worlds of Animals and Men (1934).
In his article, Uexkull compares two diagrams, a linear input/output and a circular with subjectivity in the middle. Uekull anticipates the fundamental cybernetic concept of positive and negative feedbacks - you do something to the world and the world does something back to you.
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- Apr 2022
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solo thinking isrooted in our lifelong experience of social interaction; linguists and cognitivescientists theorize that the constant patter we carry on in our heads is a kind ofinternalized conversation. Our brains evolved to think with people: to teachthem, to argue with them, to exchange stories with them. Human thought isexquisitely sensitive to context, and one of the most powerful contexts of all isthe presence of other people. As a consequence, when we think socially, wethink differently—and often better—than when we think non-socially.
People have evolved as social animals and this extends to thinking and interacting. We think better when we think socially (in groups) as opposed to thinking alone.
This in part may be why solo reading and annotating improves one's thinking because it is a form of social annotation between the lone annotator and the author. Actual social annotation amongst groups may add additonal power to this method.
I personally annotate alone, though I typically do so in a publicly discoverable fashion within Hypothes.is. While the audience of my annotations may be exceedingly low, there is at least a perceived public for my output. Thus my thinking, though done alone, is accelerated and improved by the potential social context in which it's done. (Hello, dear reader! 🥰) I can artificially take advantage of the social learning effects even if the social circle may mathematically approach the limit of an audience of one (me).
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