David Riesman « POETICKS-

David Riesman « POETICKS

Archive for the ‘David Riesman’ Category

Entry 1568 — Me ‘n’ Riesman, Part 2

Friday, September 12th, 2014

After more reading of The Lonely Crowd, I’ve decided I’m very much inner-directed, according to Riesman’s description of the type. I got him wrong when I though his inner-directed type was similar to my rigidnik. I now an unsure how his autonomous type differs from his inner-directed type. According to Riesman, many of his readers, including colleagues of his, confused the two. I now see why–and Riesman himself seems to consider it a natural mistake. (He is excellently self-critical, it seems to me, but has surprising blind spots: for instance, about the possibility of innate psychological tendencies: he mentions such a possibility every once in a while, but quickly drops the subject, seeming to take social determinism the only important kind of determinism in the main body of his book–or so my impression is after not going very far in it.)

I’m also wondering how Riesman’s other-directed types ultimately differ from his tradition-directed types. Possibly, I just thought, because their memories coincide with their environmental input? They pray to whomever their tribal god is only partly because they’ve been trained to, but mostly because everyone else in the tribe is. The inner-directed person prays to his god because of his indoctrination entirely: he more or less has to because he is part of Riesman’s inner-directed society and thus not sure of having the right people to imitate.

The autonomous person will differ from the inner-directed person only in that he will be much more likely to question his indoctrination.

* * *

Last night while lying in bed hoping for sleep to come, I suddenly had a few ideas for poems, two of which follow:

intuition + reason = moonlight + pond

I’m not sure whether they’re finished or not, or whether, if finished, they’re keepers or not.
.

Posted in Autobiographica, David Riesman, From My Poetry Workshop, Knowlecular Psychology, Mathematical Poetry Specimen, Temperaments | No Comments »

Knowlecular Psychology « POETICKS

Archive for the ‘Knowlecular Psychology’ Category

Entry 346 — The Definition of Visual Poetry, Yet Again

Thursday, January 13th, 2011

In a comment to the entry Geof Huth made to his blog about my taxonomy, Kaz Maslanka said, “I like what I understand to be Karl Kempton and Karl Young’s definition of: ‘Visual Poetry is a Poetry that has to be seen.’ This is such a simple yet powerful definition that seems to me to be true in every case of vizpo that I have seen.”

My definition is not so simple–because while the double-Karl definition probably does cover every case of visual poetry, it fails to distinguish certain works that I do not consider visual poetry: illustrated poems and captioned or labeled visimages; ordinary poems whose visual appearance has been improved by calligraphy or special graphic touches like ornate capitals at the beginning of stanzas–poetry, in other words that has been graphically decorated enough to make it more pleasing but not enough to significantly increase its aesthetic effect; certain infraverbal texts like Joyce’s “cropse,” which must be seen to be appreciated but are not visual, if by “visual” we mean “of any special interest to the eye.” Of course, the definition works for those for whom just about any combination of textual and graphic material is visual poetry–but then we would still need a special term for artworks in which the interrelation of words and graphics causes has a significant aesthetic effect (or is intended to). For that, the double-Karl definition won’t work, and that more than any of the other combinations of text and graphics is what requires definition. Because, in my view, only that will jolt an engagent in both the reading section and the seeing section of his brain simultaneously, or nearly simultaneously.

This latter, by the way, is only one example of the way that my taxonomy of poetry is, like a proper theory of science, falsifiable. Eventually superior forms of cat-scans will be able to determine where in the brain different forms of poetry are appreciated. I claim each of the main kinds I classify will have a unique brainprint. Moreover, that brainprint will prove close to exactly what one would expect it to be: visual poems, by my definition, will have a visioverbal brainprint (which will be different from textual designs’ visiotextual brainprint); linguexclusive poems will have a purely verbal brainprint–initially, for most of them will give rise to visual imagery; avisual mathematical poems will have a purely verbomathematical brainprint, but visiomathematical poems will have a visioverbomathematical brainprint. The brainprints of more specialized poems–particular kinds of visual poems should–if my taxonomy is valid and my theory of psychology right–each have its own unique visioverbal brainprint.

One brainprint that especially intrigues is the one a cryptographic poem would have. It’d have to be verbal, of course, but also something caused by a conceptual part of the brain I haven’t worked out yet. Okay, crazy maybe, but don’t be too sure about that until it’s tested.

Posted in Knowlecular Psychology, Poetics, Taxonomy | 9 Comments »

Entry 276 — The Irratioplex

Saturday, November 6th, 2010

Another day in the null zone for me, perhaps because I’m going without the pain pills I’ve been on for my bad hip as an experiment. I played tennis this morning without any more of the slight hip pain I’ve been having with the pain pills. That was nice but since I got home from that and a little marketing (for socks and new sneakers), I I’ve been feeling blah. A nap didn’t help.

Meanwhile, I’m been feeling bitter about my reputation as a defender of Shakespeare. SHAKSPER, an Internet discussion group I’m in, has for several days been discussing the proper reaction to a movie coming out called Anonymous, in which the Earl of Oxford is depicted as Shakespeare–and as Queen Elizabeth’s son–and Southampton is depicted as Oxford and Elizabeth’s son. I think it may destroy Oxfordianism the way the preposterous codes found in Shakespeare’s plays “proving” Bacon wrote them pretty much destroyed Baconism.

What irks me is that several who comment at SHAKSPER mentioned James Shapiro’s recent book on the authorship question, and books and articles on it by others, but not my book. No doubt I’m biased, but I consider my book the best refutation of anti-Stratfordianism in print, and the only one that presents a serious theory of what makes people become anti-Stratfordianism–whether valid or not. Yet the Shakespeare establishment, and their little followers at the two authorship sites I participate in don’t mention me, or respond to my posts to SHAKSPER. Maybe they don’t want it known that our side has a crank like me on it. A crank, morover, who calls anti-Stratfordians “psitchotics.”

Nonetheless, my attempt to understand what causes reasonably intelligent people to become psitchotics where Shakespeare is concerned, and–more important–find a way to express my finding entertainingly and coherently, continues, with a minor development today, the new term “irratioplex.” This I pronounce ehr RAH shuh plehks. Do I misspell it? Possibly, but “irratiplex” doesn’t do it for me.

And irratioplex is an irrational knowleplex. There are several. Two of them are the rigidniplex and the enthusiaplex. I now maintain that all anti-Stratfordians are afflicted with one or the other of these two irratioplexes. The new term allows me to couple them as victims of irratioplexes, then show how they differ from one another by virtue of their (slightly) different irratioplexes. The rigidniks’ irratioplex is forced on them by their innate psychology; the enthusiasts’ (who are frrewenders) acquire their irratioplexes during fits of enthiuiasm, making them quickly too strong thereafter to resist. Both irratioplexes act the same once active. both nearly impossible for their victims’ to resist.

My new strategy for the description of wacks is to concentrate on irratioplexes in general, proceed to rigidniplexes and enthusiaplexes in general, then to how the latter two specifically enslave their victims to anti-Stratfordianism.

Posted in Autobiographica, Grumman coinage, Knowlecular Psychology | No Comments »

Entry 269 — Problem-Solving

Saturday, October 30th, 2010

When faced with a mess as bad as my attempt to work of how we process language is in, as shown by yesterday’s entry, and with no idea what to do about it, a sound reaction is to drop it and go on to something else, with or without exclamations of despair. Or one can try anyway to do something about it. What I think is a clever response is to think of it as A General Problem, and try to work up procedures that may be of value in solving it. That way, you can imagine that you are working out a Method of Attack which may help others, or yourself in the future–even if it fails, since then it will indicate actions not to repeat. At the same time you can deal with a possibly intractable problem from a distance that takes some of the pressure off you.

So, my first thought is to focus on one element of the problem, with my main intent being to clarify what it is and what I need to understand in order to make sense of it rather than go all out fully to explain it. First question: where to begin. To decide that, I think I need to list all the elements involved. That, in fact, was mainly what I was trying to do yesterday. (Phooey. That means I have to read what I wrote yesterday!)

Okay, thew elements seem to be the word-flows: heard, read, said (formerly “spoken,” but “said” rhymes with “read,” so I like it better) and . . . mathematical (because I can’t think of a nice short, or even long, verb to use–assuming “heard,” “read” and “said” are verbs, something unimportant but would like to know). “Mathed.” No, not really, but it’s a temptation.

My problem now is that I have this intuition that I ought to be dealing with more than the four word-flows so far named. One might be the grammatical word-flow. I want to add a rhythmical word-flow, but tend to consider rhythm too insignificant compared to the others to merit a word-flow. I don’t like “rhythmical” as an adjective here, either. Maybe I’ll try “word-beat-flow”. . .

I’m going to think about it. I may try to finish a portion of a mathemaku I’m working on, too. I was going to use it today but found it as difficult to get in shape as the linguistics. I know I can get it in shape, though–it’ll just take a lot of drudgery.

Posted in Knowlecular Psychology, Linguistics | No Comments »

Entry 268 — More Thoughts on Linguistics, Sputterfully

Friday, October 29th, 2010

Gosh, kids, I’m finding out that language-Processing is pretty durned complicated. One thing that makes it so is its having to do with responding in kind to its input, something that doesn’t happen elsewhere in the brain, that I can think of right now, so now strikes me as particularly interesting. I had to take a break from thinking about it to clear my synapses. I think they’re clear now, but I still feel over-matched by my opponent. I’m not conceding the game, though.

First, another coinage: Ultilinguiceptuality. That’s where all the “word-flows” occurring in the Ultilinguiceptual Awareness, or final language-processing area in the brain, end up. I propose, very tentatively, that four word-flows can arise in the cerebrum, the heard word-flow, the read word-flow, the spoken word-flow and the mathematical word-flow.

Some of what I’m now saying may contradict previous statements of mine. But this is definitely a sketch-in-progress.

The heard word-flow starts in the auditory pre-awareness in which a syllable-identifier sensitive to sounds representing language. When the syllable-identifiers identifies an incoming datum as a syllable (which includes what I call “nulletters”–but may call “nullybles”–for pauses between syllables that are those part of the word-flow), it forms a verbiceptual percept of the datum. This percept it relays to a second linguistic-identificatioon mechanism which determines whether the percept is rhythmiceptual and metriceptual, If either, a rhythmiceptual or metriceptual percept will be fashioned, or both, and sent with the verbiceptual perceptto the verbiceptual subawareness in the linguiceptual subawareness of the Reducticeptual Awareness. The activation of the m-cells in the verbiceptual sub-awareness will be experienced as the heard word-flow.

The pre-visual awareness cointains a texteme-identifier that separates signals from stimuli that are letters and other textual data from visual data and constructs lexiceptual percepts from them which are sent to the pre-lexiceptual subawareness where a grammar identifier mechanism will tag strings of letters nouns, verbs, prepostitions and other parts of speech. At the same time the mechanism will determine the inflection to be given verbs and give them tags indicating what tense they are. The tags will actually be accompanying percepts. The linguiceptual percepts and their “tags” will end in the lexiceptual sub-awareness of the linguiceptual subawareness of the Reducticeptual Awareness, froming the the read word-flow.

When a person speaks, sensors in the neck pass on data to the dicticeptual sub-awareness where they activate m-cells having to do with the sounds the vocal cords have just made. The subject will experience the spoken word-flow. All word-flows active at a given time will join in the ultilinguistic subawareness to form the total word-flow. Here they will interact with input from most of the awarenesses in the Protoceptual Awareness to permit words to connect with what they symbolically represent.

Warning, what I’ve just written is a blur. Consider it an extreme first draft intended to show the complexities involved with trying to figure out how the brain processes language. It makes no sense. But it is now in a form I hope I can think about effectively enough to make a better clutter–to think about until I make a still better one, and so on, until I have something that makes sense. To me, if to no one else. I’ve succeeded in doing that before, so maybe I can again, although this may be the most complicated problem I’ve yet dealt with.

Later note: I forgot about the mathematical word-flow. I posit an identifier that sorts mathematical textemes from non-mathematical textemes, and sends them to a purely mathematical awareness outside the linguiceptual awareness, but sends all the mathematical textemes along with non-mathematical textemes to the linguiceptual wareness hwere they participate as words–that is, amathematically.

Also note that I am confusing stimuli with results of stimuli, and probably with transmitted energy, and neuro-transmitters. My next task, it would seem, will be getting that straightened out–because it’s a straight-forward job which should not be difficult, although it may take a while.

Posted in Knowlecular Psychology, Linguistics | 3 Comments »

Entry 267 — A Project Expansion

Thursday, October 28th, 2010

A problem of people like me is the tendency of our projects to expand. A form of impracticality. It’s struck me again. I want simply to self-publish my taxonomy of poetry, mainly so my Runaway Spoon Press will get a title into print for the twenty-third year in a row, but also because it’s worth getting into print. Immediately, it became a taxonomy of more then just poetry, although I’m not sure just what more. Except that it would include things like “utilitry,” or man-made items to make life easier rather than better. And the taxonomy didn’t start with poetry or literature but at the very beginning with reality, then matter and mind.

It is now expanding through a definition of poetry that I’ve decided requires me to explain how our nervous systems process poetry . . . which requires me to describe how they process words. That now has been trying to figure out and coherently describe my theory of an innate grammar. Which, I’ve just discovered, means I must tackle the process of generalization. I’m excited by that, because I think it has led to a concept of a process that makes generalizations automatic that I hadn’t previously come close to thinking might be in the mix. If I can make my idea of it work, it would elegantly explain quite a few things that our brains do.

But it makes me fear I’ll never get my taxonomy done.

I’ll keep you informed.

Posted in Autobiographica, Knowlecular Psychology | No Comments »

Entry 266 — The Pre-Awareness Revisited

Wednesday, October 27th, 2010

Long after the first organisms with protoceptuality came into being, and some of them had developed other awarenesses, the most advanced of them found it biologically useful to split their protoceptual aware-nesses in two. One of these remained the protoceptual awareness, the other became the pre-awareness.

The Pre-Awareness gradually become quite complex in the higher species, becoming for us a sort of confederacy of primary pre-awarenesses, one for each of the senses. Each primary pre-awareness has become in turn a confederacy of specialized secondary pre-awarenesses such as the visiolinguistic pre-awareness in the visual pre-awareness and the audiolinguistic pre-awareness in the auditory pre-awareness. Each incoming perceptual cluster (or “pre-knowlecule,” or “knowlecule-in-progress,” by which I mean cluster of percepts, or “atoms of perception,” which have the potential to form full-scale pieces of knowledge such as the visual appearance of a robin, that I call “knowlecules”) enters one of the primary pre-awarenesses, from which it is sent to all the many secondary pre-awarenesses within that primary pre-awareness.

The secondary pre-awarenesses, in turn, screen the pre-knowlecules entering them, accepting for further processing those they are designed to, rejecting all others. The visiolinguistic pre-awareness thus accepts percepts that pass its tests for textuality, and reject all others; the audiolinguistic pre-awareness tests for speech; and so on. All this, remember, is as my theory describes it. However, much of conventional neurophysiuology, especially concerning mechanisms in the eyes and areas between the eyes and the visual center in the brain (which is in the occipital lobe, if I remember rightly) has established the existence of such processes, although few, probably, act too much like my hypothetical ones. Some do act like mine, processes in the eyes or just behind them, for instance, that recognize circles and lines. It is a fault of mine that I can’t match my hypothetical processes to the known ones due to lack of familiarity with conventional terminology. Another fault of mine is that I can’t draw on the evidence conventional science has turned up to support what I say about my theory’s processes. I feel my time is much more valuably spent on thinking my way to undiscovered processes, incompletely understood known processes, and how they might be organized than on work anyone in the field could do, though.

Ideally, I could call on grad students to take care of these side-jobs, or even, if grants ever went to people actually significantly furthering knowledge, take care of them myself (which I think would be fun doing) because freed from all the things that are screwing up my life because of impoverishment, including I firmly believe my bouts of blah.

Okay, that’s it for my whining–for today, at any rate.

Back to the Pre-Awareness, which I need to give its full name, to wit: “protoceptual pre-awareness. Aside from being a relay station for reports from all the senses, glands and muscles, the protoceptual pre-awareness has an area, the visual pre-awarreness, that I hypothesize as having broken off from the visual awareness fairly early on to become a visual detail-awareness center. It contained processes that identified significant visual details such as the human figure, the human face, landscape features, motion, geometrical shape, and so forth. Eventually when human beings began marking things, and the marks became ideograms and then letters, a texteme-identifier became one of the processes that evolved in the visual pre-awareness. Textemes are the smallest units of textual meaning in my linguistics. Basically letters, numerals and punctuation marks. The basis of language, and hence of poetry.

Similarly, an auditory pre-awareness evolved with a syllable-identifier sensitive to sounds representing language. This word-identifier and the texteme-identifier transmitted energy to the Linguiceptual Awareness in the reducticeptual awareness. This area is divided into lesser sub-awarenesses, five of which are the Lexiceptual, the Verbiceptual, Dicticeptual, Vocaceptual, Rhythmiceptual and Metriceptual. The first is an charge of the written word, the second of the spoken word, the third of vocalization, the fourth of the rhythm of speech and the fifth of the meter of speech. All five of the linguiceptual sub-awarenesses transmit to a further sub-awareness, the Linguassociative Awareness, which receives input from most of the awarenesses in the Protoceptual Awareness to permit words to connect with what they symbolically represent.

There are also grammatical awarenesses in the linguiceptual awareness. These are too complicated for me to deal with right now.

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Entry 264 — On the Ten Awarenesses, Again

Monday, October 25th, 2010

I’ve been reworking my thoughts on the ten awarenesses (or abilities or intelligences, whatever you want to call them) that I so far posit, as part of the essay I’m writing on the taxonomy of poetry I’ve devel- oped. Some of them will play role in my taxonomy. Kinds of poetry, for instance, will be partially defined by what areas of the brain–what awarenesses, that is–they primarily activate. I haven’t added much to what I previously posted here at my blog, but I added a few guesses about the evolution of the awarenesses that I consider rather interesting.

The Ten Awarenesses

I’ll begin with the protoceptual awareness because it was almost certainly the first, or “proto” awareness to evolve. Hence, it was the ancestor of the other nine awarenesses, and the one all forms of life have in some form. As, I believe, most real theoretical psychologists would agree. Some but far from all would also agree with my belief in multiple awarenesses, although probably not with my specific choice of them. It has much in common with and was no doubt influenced by Howard Gardner’s theory of multiple intelligences. It is much more advanced and much less superficial than his, however.

The protoceptual awareness deals with reality in the raw: directly with what’s out there, in other words–visual, auditory, tactile, olfactory, gustatory stimuli. It also deals directly with what’s inside its possessor, muscular and hormonal states. Hence, I divide it into three sub-awarenesses, the Sensoriceptual, Viscraceptual and Musclaceptual Awarenesses. The other nine awarenesses are (2) the Behavraceptual Awareness, (3) the Evaluceptual Awareness, (4) the Cartoceptual Awareness, (5) the Anthroceptual Awareness, (6) the Sagaceptual Awareness, (7) the Objecticeptual Awareness, (8) the Reducticeptual Awareness, (9) the Scienceptual Awareness, and (10) the Compreceptual Awareness.

24 May 2011 note: I may return to “fundaceptual” from “protoceptual.” I dropped “fundaceptual” to free “funda” up for use in another coinage of mine, but can’t remember now what coinage it was. I’m also considering “execuceptual” in place of “behavraceptual.”

The Behavraceptual Awareness is concerned with causing behavior, and telling you of it. It is the only awareness that does anything but store memories, and cause remembering.

At this point, I need to make a metaphysical digression. I could skip it, because it is irrelevant, but I want to be thorough. When I speak of “you,” I actually mean what I call your “urwareness,” or fundamental conxciousness of the universe, which is somehow connected to “your” body.” It does nothing but observe what your brain tells is in “your” environment and what actions “your” brain has taken. Your urwareness, no doubt, will think it was the one causing said actions, it will have had nothing to do with them, however; it will merely have observed what the brain it is attached to chose to do and did.

I believe all this because I can conceive of no way mind could have any influence on matter, since it is itself immaterial, or by definition without material effect. The question as to how it connects in any manner to anything material is leave as an Eternal Unanswerable–a simpler unanswerable since it’s only about how an awareness can be aware of matter, not about that and how it can tell matter what to do, which matter can easily do by following the law of cause and effect without any input.

But “I” am sure “you,” like my urwareness, will feel more comfortable believing that “you” initiate “your” behavior. No problem: I can, and will hereafter, drop the italics (which I’ve been dispensing with till now, anyway), and advance from the position that behavraceptual awareness is concerned with carrying out your orders and describing to you what you have made it do in each instance.

The Evaluceptual Awareness has, like the protoceptual awareness, been around forever, I believe, although–unlike the protoceptual awareness–it need not have been. It measures the ratio of pain to pleasure one experiences during an “instacon” (or instant of consciousness) and causes one to feel one or the other, or neither, depending on the value of that ratio. In other words, it is in charge of our emotional state.

The Cartoceptual Awareness tells one where one is in space and time. I imagine this was another early awareness, but not as early as the three preceding ones.

The Sagaceptual Awareness is one’s awareness of oneself as the protagonist of some narrative in which one has a goal one tries to achieve. It evolved to help motivate an organism to become aware of consequential goals such as escaping a predator or defeating and devouring prey and persist in the achievement of it, something which, again, would probably have developed early in our rise to humanhood.

The Objecticeptual Awareness is sensitive to inanimate objects. My guess is that it began a few eons after the protoceptual awareness did, in order to separate neutral entities in the environment for entities which might be predator or prey.

Sensitivity to the latter entities, as distinct from objects was the basis of what become the Anthroceptual Awareness, which has to do with our experience of ourselves as individuals and as social beings (so is divided into two sub-awareness, the egoceptual awareness and the socioceptual awareness). The “society” it is sensitive to includes many other life-forms, some of which no doubt cohabit the society of living beings, and the company of objects that the objecticaptual awareness is concerned with.

The Reducticeptual Awareness is basically our conceptual intelligence. It reduces protoceptual data to abstract symbols like words and numbers and deals with them (and has many sub-awarenesses). It would seem to have come late, biologically. On the other hand, there were probably primitive forms of it early on, such as a sense of the difference between one and many.

The Scienceptual Awareness deals with cause and effect, and may be the latest of our awarenesses to have evolved.

Finally, there is the Compreceptual Awareness,which is our awareness of our entire personal reality. I’m still vague about it, but tend to believe it did not precede the protoceptual awareness but later formed when some ancient life-form’s number of separate awarenesses required some general intelligence to co:ordinate their doings.

Posted in Awarenesses, Knowlecular Psychology | No Comments »

Entry 252 — 12 October 2010 Report

Tuesday, October 12th, 2010

I did more work on my essay concerning aesthetics. I’m burned out on it now, but it’s still not right. I have to leave it for a while. I’m burned out on about everything, it would appear. Can’t think of anything concerning poetry I feel like writing about. My heath seems okay, and I’m not sleepy. The pain pills I’ve been taking have helped with that, and with my hip, which held up moderately well earlier when I played tennis. I think I’ll need hip replacement surgery, anyway. I want to get a shot for my hip before I do, though. I’m hopeful that will be enough to get me back to feeling the way I think I should.

Possible rough draft currently taking shape:

. Poem, Nearing the Center

.
. Swans wrinkled
. against Poem’s current memory of
. Excalibur
. multiplied by lake-grey branches
. simpling deeper than winter.
. A bridge hand glows
. through a made finesse
. toward game bid and made
. in the wake of
. Brillo pads renewing the white shine
. of a toilet bowl.
. Holy smoke
. so slowly centering
. the universe
. as the next hand is dealt.
. Model T’s coming off the
. assembly line
. proving mankind
. ocean-eminent
.
.
.

Posted in Autobiographica, Knowlecular Psychology, Nothing Much, Of Poem | No Comments »

Entry 251 — “Homage to Shakespeare”

Monday, October 11th, 2010

I keep directing my Shakespeare authorship friends and enemies to this poem, but none has commented on it, that I recall. I tend to think Shakespeare fans rarely are much interested in newer forms of poetry. I made it around twenty years ago. It was the first of my visual poems to get accepted for Kaldron, the leading American visual poetry magazine of the time (but international in scope). Unfortu- nately, I can’t show it large enough for the small print to be visible her.

Here’s an annotated detail of it showing what the small print says.

Posted in Aesthetics, Knowlecular Psychology | No Comments »

Entry 250 — Going in Reverse

Monday, October 11th, 2010

I now know more about pleasure and pain than I understand. My problem, I think, is that what I know seems right, but I can’t organize it into any kind of neat, accessible package. The thing bothering me is what beauty is. I once pegged it as simply the right ratio of pleasure to pain a stimulus produces. Then I remembered something obvious to almost everyone but me: that there are stimuli that are automatically perceived by healthy minds as beautiful. Nothing wrong with two kinds of beauty, but the two seemed to me too different from one another to share a name. Next thing you know, I’d have to accept an elegant mathematical proof as beautiful. Okay in bull sessions, but not if one is concerned with useful serious communication since a term loses its linguistic value to the degree that it can be applied to significantly different things.

So, how about calling the stimulus with the proper familiarity to unfamiliarity ratio . . . ? I can’t think of anything. There’s the beauty our instincts are sensitive to, and the truth our instincts about what contradicts, what harmonizes, are sensitive to. Empathy would be what our instincts derive pleasure from when interacting with others–that which is anthroceptually pleasurable, in terms of knowlecular psychology. There’s good, too, or the pleasure–instinctive in many cases–we feel when we, or others, act in a manner we consider moral.

Okay, folks, I have to turn to neologization, again. “Assimlatry.” That is now my term for any stimulus causes that has the right r/f ratio (or “resolution/frustration” ratio, resolution being what happens when a psychevent leads to the familiar, frustration being what happens when it leads to unfamiliarity). “Assimlatrous” is the adjectival form. Yes, grotesque terms, but naming is the first step toward understanding, and essential.

There’s also the need for the instinctive pleasure one feels when achieving a goal. “Triumph” may be sufficient. No, I think “success” better. And “resolution” for “assimilatry.” No, no” “comprehension” is the perfect name for it! So, I have the following pairing on my list of kinds of pleasure and pain (with which of my theory’s awareness’s is involved in each case):

instinct-based evaluception

beauty/ ugliness: fundaceptual evaluception
empathy/ hostility: personal anthroceptual evaluception
good/ bad: moral anthroceptual evaluception
success/ failure: sagaceptual evaluception

logic-based evaluception

truth/ error: reducticeptual evaluception

experience-based evaluception

comprehension/ perplexity: combiceptual evaluception

I think I may be getting somewhere, after all. And, wow, a list of terms none of which is a coinage! (I mean aside from the names of my awarenesses.)

Posted in Aesthetics, Knowlecular Psychology | No Comments »

William Wordsworth « POETICKS

Archive for the ‘William Wordsworth’ Category

Entry 1294 — A Break from Difficult Art

Monday, December 9th, 2013

Today it’s back two centuries to Wordsworth’s “Lines Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey,” when he speaks of having felt

A presence that disturbs me with the joy  Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime  Of something far more deeply interfused,  Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,  And the round ocean and the living air,  And the blue sky, and in the mind of man:  A motion and a spirit, that impels  All thinking things, all objects of all thought,  And rolls through all things.

And this from his sonnet about the beauteous evening:

The gentleness of heaven broods o'er the Sea;  Listen! the mighty Being is awake,  And doth make with his eternal motion  A sound like thunder--everlastingly.

In these two poems, Wordsworth, it seems to me, connects to what I am calling the Urceptual Under-Presence, although his conception of it differs from mine in important respects, and is much more vague than mine is–or perhaps I should say as I hope mine will be. This Under-Presence is what I think many identify as God. I think of it as something evolution gave us to cope with the vast meaninglessness of the universe–a personification of it we carry around in our heads it as a comprehensible being, false but soothing. But it is also a powerful–and valid–metaphor.
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Entry 268 — More Thoughts on Linguistics, Sputterfully « POETICKS

Entry 268 — More Thoughts on Linguistics, Sputterfully

Some of what I’m now saying may contradict previous statements of mine. But this is definitely a sketch-in-progress.

This entry was posted on Friday, October 29th, 2010 at 12:00 AM and is filed under Knowlecular Psychology, Linguistics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

3 Responses to “Entry 268 — More Thoughts on Linguistics, Sputterfully”

Mark Houlsby says:

30 October 10 at 9:32 AM

http://tinyurl.com/37me2ky
Bob Grumman says:

30 October 10 at 10:22 AM

Here’s what the verosopath linked to in the comment above:

> > > > >/2010/10/12/entry-252/

> > > > > I have no interest in discussing this poem.

> > > > >http://groups.google.co.uk/group/ardenmanagers/msg/a39eb1eb4aa72274

> > > > > MUAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

> > > >/2010/10/17/entry-257/

> > > > Entry 256 — For the Diary I’m No Longer Keeping

> > > > Entry 257 — Me and My Day-Dreaming.

> > > > Well, Bob, you’re consistent, at least…..

> > > > Tell us a little bit about yourself, then…..

> > > > “I managed to write the following today. It’s the beginning of the
> > > > book I plan that has commercial possibilities, I’m pretty sure, but
> > > > which I don’t want to say anything about, mainly so as not to
> > > > sidetrack myself into discussing it, rather than writing it, but also
> > > > because it’s based on a simple idea that almost anyone could run with,
> > > > although not half as well as I.”

> > > > Clearly not, Bob, you’re obvioiusly the greatest writer the world has
> > > > ever known.

> > > > “But nevertheless or therefore much more likely to make money from
> > > > it.”

> > > > …than you are? Surely not, o fount of all knowledge.

> > > > “Anyway, here’s my beginning”

> > > > Goody.:

> > > > “I don’t know when day-dreaming became important for me. The
> > > > first ones I can recall occurred when we were living in the Hyde
> > > > House in Harbor View, South Norwalk, Connecticut, so I’d’ve been
> > > > around seven. I’d gotten a gift subscription to Walt Disney Comics
> > > > two or three years before when we were still living at Wilson Point.”

> > > > So you’re asserting that this happened /before/ Wilson Point.

> > > > Perhaps you should have written: “I’d gotten a gift subscription to
> > > > Walt Disney Comics, two or three years before, when we were still
> > > > living at Wilson Point.”.

> > > > Still, you’re obviously correct, o greatest writer the world has ever
> > > > known. Punctuation is accorded altogether too much importance.

> > > > Onward…..

> > > > “Featuring Donald Duck and Mickey Mouse–and the wonder of their
> > > > arrival in the mail!”

> > > > So…the comics *featured* the wonder of their arriving in the mail,
> > > > eh? Was that a long-running storyline, or just a one-off?

> > > > “Comic books were as important to me until my
> > > > mid-teens as day-dreaming, perhaps even more because they formed
> > > > the earliest basis for what I dreamed of, as far as I can recall.”

> > > > Clumsy to the point of unintelligibility. Try this:

> > > > “Until my mid-teens, comic books were at least as important to me as
> > > > my day-dreaming was–indeed, perhaps even more important because–I
> > > > can recall no earlier conscious basis for the stuff of which my dreams
> > > > were made.”.

> > > > You’re the world’s leading expert, however….

> > > > “I suspect my very first day dreams were formless, in need of some
> > > > narrative structure, the kind supplied so brilliantly by Walt Disney
> > > > Comics and the later comics I devoured about Superman, Batman
> > > > and Robin, the Black Hawks and many others,”

> > > > So, you’re asserting that when you were about (presumably you mean
> > > > “around”) Superman, Batman and Robin, the Black Hawks and many others,
> > > > you devoured later comics. Did you add salt?

> > > > Still, you know best, o greatest writer the world has ever known.

> > > > This drivel continues on and on, but really it’s too much like hard
> > > > work.

> > > > You draw far too much attention to yourself, Mr. Grumderhill……

> > >/2010/10/22/entry-261/

> > > Magnipetry:

> > > “The sneer, “he calls himself a poet,” for someone who writes bad
> > > poetry, “could be corrected to “he thinks he write magnipetry.”
> > > Indeed, I hereby recall “magnipoet.”.”

> > > Surely this correction is wrong, Bob. It should read: “he think he
> > > write magnipetry”. Making mistakes like that, you just look silly.

> > More extraordinary gibberish from POETICKS. I refer not to the
> > grammatical mauling to which the language is here subjected (with
> > respect to this blog, that’s a given), but rather to the
> > etymologically-challenged epistemological catastrophe:

> >/2010/10/25/entry-264/

> Once again, Grumman ignores the facts:

> “Their contempt is never accompanied by any argument about why a given
> coinage should be junked,”

> /2010/10/26/entry-265/

> Well, Bob…you’re not often right, but you’re /wrong again/….

> Repeatedly, I have argued that unless you can justify your ridiculous
> inventions with detailed etymologies, they are essentially worthless–
> they’ll never be widely adopted.

> Give us etymologies, or stop creating these otherwise meaningless and
> idiotic lexicographical tangents.

> Put up, or shut up.

Latest:

/2010/10/29/entry-268/

“Entry 268 — More Thoughts on Linguistics, Sputterfully
Gosh, kids, I’m finding out that language-Processing is pretty durned
complicated. One thing that makes it so is its having to do with
responding in kind to its input, something that doesn’t happen
elsewhere in the brain, that I can think of right now, so now strikes
me as particularly interesting. I had to take a break from thinking
about it to clear my synapses. I think they’re clear now, but I still
feel over-matched by my opponent. I’m not conceding the game, though.

First, another coinage: Ultilinguiceptuality. That’s where all the
“word-flows” occurring in the Ultilinguiceptual Awareness, or final
language-processing area in the brain, end up. I propose, very
tentatively, that four word-flows can arise in the cerebrum, the heard
word-flow, the read word-flow, the spoken word-flow and the
mathematical word-flow.

Some of what I’m now saying may contradict previous statements of
mine. But this is definitely a sketch-in-progress.”

That being so…why the fuck do you bring it to the attention of us,
the public?

THE PUBLIC HAS THE OPTION OF NOT READING IT.

Interestingly, you had no comeback to my pointing out, in the post to
which the link below is directed, that there is ZERO EVIDENCE in
support of your assertion, about yourself, that:

“The actual truth of the matter is that I believe I MAY be the most
important theoretical psychologist ever.”

http://groups.google.co.uk/group/humanities.lit.authors.shakespeare/m...

It was good to see you concede that point. One suspects that it may be
possible that all of this research which you’re conducting is
COMPLETELY WORTHLESS, like nearly everything you do in public view.

Here’s a few questions for you, Bob:

How many of those who /genuinely/ are regarded as leading theoretical
psychologists work in the way that you do? How do you rate their work?
How does your work compare with theirs? Have you ever had a paper
published in an appropriate academic or peer-reviewed journal? Have
you ever presented a paper at a conference, or prestigious
institution? Is there /anything/ on your resumé that mitigates your
looking increasingly like a self-obsessed and deluded idiot?

Are your synapses clear?

******

Note the absence of a single rational critique of what I say in Entry 268, although–as I comment in my entry–the entry is extremely confused–a sketch-in-progress, written and posted for my own sake, as a few of my posts are, with apologies, explicit or implicit always to my poor few readers. The blog is my workshop. I keep it open because some people may find what I do in it, as culturateur or crank, of interest.

I’ve been continuing to read what the verosopath says about me because of its entertainment value and because I consider him an interesting specimen of rigidnikry. But I’m beginning to understand that even I, thick-skinned as I am–can not take continual insane, abusive denigration without feeling, uh, a little unhappy about it. So I guess I’ll stop reading his crap. I won’t block his comments here, though. I’m too much of an advocate of freedom of expression for that. Which reminds me, I think one reason for his insane enmity goes back a long way to my opposing a call of his for censorship at HLAS. I went on after the debate on that got out of hand to label him the fascist that he is (here even trying to run my blog). So, more evidence that, as a rigidnik, he can’t stand anti-authoritarians like me.

–Bob
Mark Houlsby says:

30 October 10 at 2:28 PM

http://groups.google.co.uk/group/humanities.lit.authors.shakespeare/msg/a2c98454e2fede47

Old Age « POETICKS

Archive for the ‘Old Age’ Category

Entry 1220 — Old Age, Part 3

Saturday, September 21st, 2013

Now to my thesis that we oldsters can no long fit knowleplexes larger than a certain not-very-large size into our brains—because of the size and complexity of the structures we’ve already erected in them. I have a simple analogy to explain it: one’s understanding of existence as a little city in the cerebrum that one’s brain has spent its lifetime building. Everything in it is basically as permanent as city buildings; repairs are made, unmendable damage occurs, but basically, little changes. Eventually, there is no longer any place to erect anything new of significant size. I suppose one could demolish some old building to make room, but I think that would be more difficult than destroying a city building is.

At some point, one starts to have trouble figuring out where to put new data. A consideration is keeping track of important old understandings. Result: a more and more great disinclination to read anything with new data in it.

I’ve scratched the surface of my ideas on this–without sating them too carefully. Old age making me too tired to? Old age making it hard for me to find the words and ideas I need? Both?

One thing I particular delayed me: my wanting to use my terms for various kinds of data. I was sure I had tree terms, but could not remember the third, and find any list tat had it. The two that are, right now, second-nature enough for me not easily to forget (although I have always been able to forget just about anything) “knowlecule” or word-sized datum like “hoof” or “horse”; and “knowleplex” or complex specialty like zoology–the discipline, not the word for it. Both knowlecules and knowleplexes come in various sizes. In many cases, it’s not easy to say which a given datum is. Many, too, are both: the game of baseball, for instance, is a knowlecule for a doctor specializing in sports injuries; but a knowleplex for a baseball manager.

I’d been wondering about my third conage for several days. It finally occurred to me a little while ago (it’s a little after four as I write this, in case anyone cares–as a scholar in the next century plotting my creative cycles may): “knowlexpanse” or a significantly large field like biology. I think somewhere I coined a word for world-view, too, and lost it. Or maybe accepted “world-view” as good enough.

I’m stopping now–as I seldom would have with so little written forty, or even just twenty, years ago.

Alto Saxophone

Posted in Grumman coinage, Intelligence, Knowlecular Psychology, Old Age | No Comments »

Entry 1219 — Old Age, Part 2

Friday, September 20th, 2013

When I reached my intellectual prime is near-impossible to pin down, but my favorite guess—mainly, I suspect, because it’s a standardly Interesting Number, is the age of fifty. One thing that makes the choice near-impossible is how to compare one’s breakthrough understanding of his subject (or, in my case, one of them) with his later, very gradual efforts to make that understanding full, coherent, and—perhaps most important, and definitely most difficult—accessible to others.

I came up with the basis, still unchanged except superficially, of my knowlecular psychology at the age of 26 and don’t feel I’ve yet made it full, coherent and accessible, although I’ve had many breakthroughs that (in my view, valuably) expanded it, and continuously simplified and clarified it—while simultaneously, alas, complicating and muddying it.

My peak as a poet is much easier to identify, although I’m uncertain of the exact dates involved.¹

My major breakthrough into long division poetry (after a minor breakthrough into mathematical poetry twenty years or so previous that I didn’t go anywhere with for fifteen years or more) happened when I was around fifty-five; my much less consequential breakthrough into my Poem poems occurred at about the same time. Two definite peaks that all that nothing that followed reached although I am sure some of the poems I later made were my best till then. I contend that making one’s best poem does not require more or even as much, intelligence, talent, or whatever, as making one’s first successful poem that is significantly and valuably different from all the other poems one has composed. In fact, coming up with a bad poem may require more skill than making a very good one if the bad one is new in a wonderfully exploitable way.²

In short, I think I peaked as a poet at the age of 55, then held my own pretty much until recently, when I’ve become substantially less productive than I’d been between 55 and 70. I don’t think the level of my poems has dropped, just the number of them. An interesting possibility is that I may still compose the visiopoetic epic I’ve wanted someday to. What kind of peak would it be? It would probably be my major work as a poet. I’m pretty sure it would include several poems I already consider major—for me. But the intelligence and/or related abilities I’d need to bring it off would not need to be at the high level they once were, or even all that close to it.

I realize that I’ve not done much work on my psychology since I turned 70 or 71, either. I want to pull it together into a unified whole the same way I hope to pull together my poetry into a unified epic. Again, it would not take what its discovery and later additions and improvements did.

I don’t know of any thinker or artist who did anything after turning 70 or so that greatly changed the over-all value of his work as a whole. Picasso, for instance, turning out hundreds of works, some of them as fine as anything he’d previously done, but meaning he’d made 654 masterpieces instead of only 611: so what? We don’t really need them, happy as we should be to have them. (For one thing, others are carrying on from where he left off—something true of all the other great artists, and thinkers who went on to do valuable work after 70.)

In every other way, people over 70 are nothing like they were at 35 or even 55. For most jobs, a businessman would be stupid to hire someone that old instead of a much younger person. Affirmative action will no doubt soon force him to. As a matter of fact, I think there have been several cases of elderly farts successfully suing businesses that fired them.

Odd, the idea I had that sparked this discussion I almost left the discussion without mentioning. It concerns the inability of elderly farts to acquire data significantly new to them. In simplest terms, it concerns how these people stop reading complex books. I was thinking of myself, of how it’s been, what, twenty years, since I read the equivalent of an undergraduate textbook on anything?! My thesis, which I hope to get to tomorrow, is that we oldsters can no long fit knowleplexes larger than a certain not-very-large size into our brains—because of the size and complexity of the structures we’ve already erected in them.

* * *

¹I believe my diary has the particulars, or most of them, but I’m certainly not going to research it right now

²As Gertrude Stein’s specimens of prose (evocature, a sub-category of prose, is what I call the kind of literature they are) in Tender Buttons have been for many, albeit not her (although I would call a few of them more successful than not).

Egalapsychosis: the insane belief that no one is inferior in any way to anyone else. A mental dysfunctionality common to American liberals.

Cable Internet Service

Posted in Autobiographica, Old Age | No Comments »

Entry 1218 — My Ageism

Thursday, September 19th, 2013

About the only good thing about being as old as I am is that it gives me a group to be politically incorrect about because I’m in it. The group, of course, is . . . senior citizens. I contend that anyone who thinks senior citizens are not inferior to those younger than they is out of his mind. I do believe that an elderly fart–someone over fifty-five (plus or minus anywhere from one to ten years)–should have one advantage over his juniors, including himself when younger: his experience. He will exploit it more slowly than he once was able to, but possibly get more out of it–or at least something valuably new out of it.

* * *

I’m afraid that’s all for now. I had a meeting of my local writers’ group to go to and when I got back, I was shot.

Note: I had this one done on time but forgot to make it pubic.

Stylish Clothing Store

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Entry 1217 — Old Age

Wednesday, September 18th, 2013

After typing the beginning of a short essay on my ageism, I found out I had suddenly gotten a day behind here. So I needed to do two entries. I decided the one for yesterday would be brief, and about old age since I’d already put it in that category. Ergo, my opinion about being old: it stinks. More about it in my entry for today.

As for the 18th of September, I did get something done on it: my latest Scientific American blog entry, although it won’t posted until Saturday, or maybe late Friday night. I also worked on multiplication poems for dogs, one for my dentist and one for a local writer-friend. I had silly ideas for a while that I could make money selling personalized copies of the thing, but soon realized there was no chance of that–although I hope to try it.

Okay, now to try to get today’s entry done, in spite of being already all worn out.

Buy Flowers

Posted in Autobiographica, Old Age | No Comments »

Grumman coinage « POETICKS

Archive for the ‘Grumman coinage’ Category

Entry 276 — The Irratioplex

Saturday, November 6th, 2010

Posted in Autobiographica, Grumman coinage, Knowlecular Psychology | No Comments »

Entry 261 — “Magnipetry” and “Magnipoet”

Friday, October 22nd, 2010

“Magnipetry” and “magnipoet.” maahg NIH peh tree and MAAH nih POH eht. I know probably no one at all but I will now use them, but I’ve been needing them for years. As I hope will be clear, they mean “superior poetry,” and “superior poet.”

My many critics will tell me that “superior poetry” and “superior poet” or like adjective/noun combinations, have been available for years, and proven satisfactory for everyone but me. So why cram two new words for what they mean into the lexicon? Well, for one thing, I believe important things should have names, not just descriptions, which “superior poetry” is. (Am I really the only person in the world who believes this? Sometimes I think so.)

I hope “magnipetry” suggests “magnificence.” I feel it ought quite clearly to say, “large poetry,” and its derivative say “large poet.” Where I’ve often found myself wanting such words is in discussions of what makes a poet, when we’re talking about what makes a poet worth reading or listening to. One always has to stick an adjective in.

Than there’s my problem with those who denounce poetry they don’t like as “not poetry,” when they have to mean they’re speaking of bad poetry. If they aren’t, then they need a name for what the texts they are referring to are. “Doggerel” is a good one for some but not all of it. They can say, “This is not good poetry,” but that sounds weak to me. They mean more than that, so we need a single name for it.

“Poetaster” is a good word for inferior poet, but it seems awkward to me, and “poetastry” isn’t (yet) a word. Even with “poetaster,” which I’m not even sure how to pronounce, we still need a name for “good poet,” since a poetaster is a kind of poet, not a non-poet.

The real reason I suddenly made my coinages, having woken up with a headache in the middle of last night for a few minutes. I was thinking about a long division poem I’ve made a sketch of in which I divide something (I forget what, right now) into “poetry.” I times that by Shakespeare’s signature, and I get a graphic that’s about A Midsummer Night’s Dream, which I think is Shakespeare’s most poetic comedy, and a favorite of mine. But there’s a remainder. My problem is that the graphic is a poem, in my view–since it has words. Moreover, some of the words play poetic word-games. So there should not be a remainder.

But I really want to be divided into is “poetry of the highest order.” I thought of various phrases for that, including, “poetry of the highest order,” but didn’t like them. They sounded somewhat pretentious to me. And I found nothing with more than one word in it to have the sock I wanted, the sock that “poetry,” would have if I could use it. Hence, “magnipetry.” It will keep most people from liking the poem as much as I’d like them to, but “poetry,” just isn’t right.

The same word will damage my long series of various long divisions of “poetry,” which I’ve always thought had the same problem this new piece has. On the other hand, if my math poetry ever catches on, and people like my series, it’s possible the word might catch on.

While people have little trouble with new names for new things, they seem wired to reject new names for old things, even important old things that have never had a name, like visual art (which I now call “visimagery,” after auditioning more than a dozen names). But I won’t give up trying to get the names I come up with into general usage.

It’s be nice to have a name for okay poetry that isn’t magnipetry, but I’m willing to let adjective take care of such poetry, and those who compose it. “He’s a pretty good poet, but not a magnipoet,” for instance. I think “magnipetry” is a good word. I don’t think “magnipoet” is. Dunno what to do about that, however. I may well drop it. The sneer, “he calls himself a poet,” for someone who writes bad poetry, “could be corrected to him think him write magnipetry.” Hmmm, I will drop it.

Posted in Grumman coinage, Poetics | 2 Comments »

Entry 245 — Varieties of Evaluceptual Types

Thursday, October 7th, 2010

Because the names of my aesthetic appreciation types, “apollonian” and “dionysian,” may connect too confusingly to Nietzsche’s similarly-named personality types, I am now calling apollonians, dionysians and hermesians “verosolysts,” ” instinctilysts” and “expressilysts.”

Because the verosolyst evaluates poetry primarily on the basis of its truth (according to its freedom from or contamination by contradictions), I made his name out of “veroso” of my term for “true wisdom”, or “the rational seeking of significant truths about material reality”, so a general term for philosophy, science, history, literary criticism, economics . . . and the “lyst” of “analyst.”

The instinctilyst’s name derives from the fact that he evaluates an artwork primarily on the basis of the instinctive pleasure it affords by means of its attention to stimuli normal human beings are automatically attracted to like a 3-month-year-old happy baby.

The expressilyst is primarily concerned with how a poem presents its content, or its manner os expression, rather than with its content. So we have the old what versus how again, this time as instinctilystic appreciation versus expressilystic appreciation.

Posted in Aesthetics, Grumman coinage, Knowlecular Psychology | No Comments »

Entry 237 — Celebratory and Illyrical Art

Wednesday, September 29th, 2010

I’ve been reworking my thoughts concerning what I’m now calling “illyrical art”–art, that on the surface, seems mainly to produce pain. I’m planning a short booklet laying out my taxonomy of poetry, which I feel needs a preliminary definition of art, among other things. That is what the following sketch partially addresses.

Celebratory Art & Illyrical Art

Most art–just about all the art I like–celebrates the beauty of
existence. The final claim of such art, however, is not that
existence is beautiful, but that it is beautiful enough to celebrate, or
significantly more beautiful than ugly. Some art, which I call
“illyrical art,” seems obsessed with the ugliness of existence,
though. It is prized by the cognescenti more than celebratory art is,
in fact, tragedy being its most common variety. It seems to
contradict my notion that human beings are wired to seek that
which gives them pleasure, and reject as much as possible that
which gives them pain. And I define art as that which give
aesthetic pleasure. How can I reconcile these views of mine with
the unarguable preference of so many people for art that seems to
give little or nothing but pain?

I’ve pondered this question a good deal, concluding finally that
even illyrical art ultimately provides people with more pleasure
than pain. It does so by providing one of five values, or (more
commonly) some mixture of one or more of these values):

The Pleasurable Details Value

1. A work of illyrical art–an effective tragedy, say–will contain
details that give aesthetic pleasure,” I need only specify that I mean
such details as the metaphors in Shakespearean tragedy, or the
melodic effects of certain sad poems–or vivid scenes or characters.
Their contrast with the painful elements in the art will increase the
pleasure they give. These pleasurable details will rarely if ever
compensate for twork’s pain–unless one of them is a
compensatingly redeeming ending: each of Shakespeare’s
tragedies, for instance, has an ending that nullifies its tragic
message to some degree. Life is shown restored to The Way
Things Should Be. A good king assumes the throne. The bad guys
are buried. Civilization has gotten through another time of horror
bloodied but alive.

The Artistic Conquering of Evil Value

2. A work of illyrical art will cause a person the pleasure of seeing
something conquered, at least to a degree, by art–that is, by an
artist’s organization and expression of it. This is just another way
of saying that finding the exactly right words eloquently to evoke
elements dangerous or ugly, and arranging them in some kind of
pattern (which will “explain” the painful elements, in a manner of
speaking, or make them more coherent, more logical, than they are
in the chaos of reality) is, of course, a way of giving the antithesis
of the beautiful a kind of beauty. That, in turn, will give an
engagent aesthetic pleasure, although probably not enough to offset
the aesthetic pain of the work. But with the other positive
components of the work added to it, it will–as it must to be a
successful work of art.

The Sentimental Value

3. Illyrical art may provide an engagent with a friend with whom
one shares a reaction to the pain the art concerns–a character in a
tragic play, a persona in a melancholy poem, or a reader’s
impression of the author of such a poem. For example, an
engagent might experience Macbeth as a friend by sympathizing
with his misery over the death of his wife and his final
dissatisfaction with life (even despite the evil acts he has
performed). The feeling that Macbeth is an ally of the engagent
against the vileness of life will then cause a pleasure possibly
superior to the pain of Macbeth’s bad end, and the pain caused by
his crimes. In other words: tragedy causes one to experience the
anthroceptual pleasure of learning one is not alone.

The Simple Relief Value

4. Tragedy, or any artwork (or art adventure like a ride on a roller
coaster) dealing with ugly, fearsome, horrifying or similar painful
material, can, when the artwork is escaped, result in the pleasure of
gaining safety. I consider this the primary reason people “enjoy”
illyrical art.

The Masonchistic Pleasure

5. illyrical art acts to make the evil of life easier to take simply by
exposing us to it, in packaging that reduces its lethalness, thereby
allowing us to learn it into bearableness. Or: “illyrical art, as
Aristotle has it, arouses pity and fear, the purgation of which
through catharsis, makes one feel better (anthroceptually).” One
feels more fit to withstand evil after effective art.

Posted in Aesthetics, Grumman coinage | No Comments »

Entry 232 — New Knowlecular Terminology!!!

Saturday, September 25th, 2010

After so many near-worthless entries, at last a really really exciting one! A very lame school marm type at HLAS, one of my Shakespeare Authorship “Question” sites, got me thinking about rigidniplexes. They are fixational systems rigidniks form that are the basis of the authorship theories of the most dedicated and rigidly doctrinaire anti-Stratfordians. One of their main functions is defending the rigidnik against non-conformity. I had always thought of them as necessarily irrational.

But it seemed to me the school marm, Mark Houlsby (which may be a pseudonym), has one, because of the way he constantly gets after people for rude remarks, going off-topic, and disregard of what he thinks is grammatical correctness, as well as any view he disagrees with, which are mostly non-conformist views. Yet Houlsby is not an anti-Stratfordian nor does he seem any more irrational than every normal person is, just set in his narrow ways. So, I decided there are two basic kinds of rigidniplexes, “hyperrigidniplexes” and “hyporigidniplexes,” the first being highly irrational, the second not particularly irrational.

Actually, I’ve always believed in more than one kind of rigidniplex, but I hadn’t come up with names for them I liked, and my definitions of them were vague. Now I think I’ll call the most rigidnikal of rigidniplexes, the ones suffered by genuine psychotics, “ultrarigidniplexes.” Such rigidniplexes are either not “sensibly” irrational, the way hyperrigidniplexes are, or are based on unreality rather than the irrational, although they are no doubt irrational as well. For instance, an ultrarigidnik may believe unreal aliens from another dimension are after him whereas a mere hyperrigidnik will only believe, say, that no one whose parents are illiterate can become a great writer, which is idiotic but but is merely a misinterpretation of reality, wholly irrational, but not drawing on pure fantasy.

There are probably two levels of hyporigidniks–no, make that three. Managerial hyporigidniks are the most successful rigidniks, common in the officer corps of the military, and on corporation boards, and, of course, running federal bureaucracies, or universities. Rigidnikal enough to dominate third-raters, and hold unimaginatively to a course that has proved effective in the past, and rally others at their level, along with the masses, against non-conformity, which will include a country’s culturateurs. Such hyporigidniks are the great defenders of mediocrity. And here’s where this entry becomes on-topic for a blog called “Poeticks,” for among the great defenders of mediocrity are the people selecting prize- and grants-winners in poetry, and which contemporaries’ poetry should be taught, published and made the subject of widely-circulated critical essays or books.

A level below the managerial hyporigidniks are the marmly hyporiginiks. Only slightly above-average in charactration, or basal mental energy, below average in accommodance, the engine of flexibility, imagination, creativity, but with possiblely slightly above average accelerance, or the ability to raise their mental energy when appropriate. So, not in managerial hyporigidniks’ league, but able to construct rigidniplexeses about trivialities like table manners, spelling, etc., and lord it over milyoops. And, in poetry, repeat the opinions of the Establishment.

Managerial hyporigidniks, I should have said, are higher in charactration than lesser hyporigidniks. Indeed, each level of rigidniks has more charactration, and less accommodance–and smaller but more life-consuming rigidniplexes. The lowest-level hyporigidniks have average charactration and accommodance, and variable but never inordinately high accelerance. Peasant hyporigidniks, I call them: they form rigidniplexes that are little more than habits sensible for their position in life, and aren’t so much locked into them as too unimaginative to try anything else.

In the past, I’ve often hypothesized a kind of “pararigidniplex”–a rigidniplex formed by freewenders, who are the sanest, most intelligent people. I now have a new name for it: “wendrijniplex.” It’s like any other rigidniplex except for its origin, which is not caused by a person’s chronically having too much charactration and too little accommodance, but by a freewender’s having in a single instance, too much charactration and too little accommodance, his enthusiasm for a discovery of his over-riding his critical sense, and his continued pleasure in the rigidniplex it brings into being, being too great for him to break ties with it. So it blights his intellectual existence every bit as unfortunately as a rigidnik’s rigidniplex blights his.

To be thorough, I will remind my readers (including myself) that everyone forms knowleplexes, which are mental constructs each of which provides an inter-related understanding of some fairly large subject like biology, for a layman, or the biology of mammals, or of one species of mammals, for a biologist. A rational (although not necessarily valid) knowleplex is a “verosoplex.” Offhand, I would say there are two kinds of irrational knowleplexes: rigidniplexes and–another new term coming up–”ignosoplex,” or a knowleplex which is basically too inchoerent to be classified as either rational or irrational. It’s the result of ignorance. We all have many of them, each concerning a field we are “ignosophers” about–not completely ignorant of, but not sufficiently knowledgeable about to be able to form a verosoplex–or any kind of working rigidniplex.

I’m well aware that most readers will find the above the product of an ignosopher. It isn’t. It’s just a pop-psychology–level very rough draft of one small knowleplex the among many making up my knowleplex of temperament, which in turn is a small knowleplex among the many making up my theory of intelligence, which is just a small portion of my theory of epistemology, which is a not-small portion of my theory of the human psychology. Or so I keep telling myself.

Posted in Grumman coinage, Knowlecular Psychology, theoretical psychology | No Comments »

Entry 229 — Reactions to my Cryptographiku

Wednesday, September 22nd, 2010

It turns out I was wrong when I claimed no one had ever discussed my cryptographiku in print: Geof Huth had. I found that out in his response to the two new ones I’ve posted here a week or so and two weeks ago or so. What he insightfully said on each occasion is now archived in this blog’s “Pages” under “Discussions of Bob Grumman’s Poetry.”

I’m still bumbling, although yesterday I did finish the book review I had to do. I’m letting it sit today. Tomorrow, I’ll give it a once-over and release it. I’m not up to writing anything worthwhile here, so am posting the reactions at Geof’s blog to what he said about my latest cryptographiku, and my response to those comments:

Conrad DiDiodato said…

Geof,

your reading of Grumman’s ‘cryptographiku’ reminds me of something Derek Attridge once said about reading a work:

“We must not allow the resonances of the term “work” to echo too strongly, however; although we may admire the time and effort that has gone into an invention, what we respond to when we respond creatively and responsibly is the enduring event of invention that the labor made possible, not to the labor as such—to the work as working rather than as worked.” (“The Singularity of Literature”)

9:15 PM, September 18, 2010

John B-R said…

If – if – I consider what you’ve done, Geof, to be translation, then other translations are also possible. Here’s one:

.#####

eagle

epic

eagle

epic

pic

all around the world

color of flags, color of shit

failing fuckedup empire

1:31 PM, September 19, 2010

Anonymous said…

‘good’ quote Conrad

I like-wise “pin it on”
the/an event

however: need that event
(irregardless of the/any punctuation or absence of any other
‘signification’) be an “enduring event” which we can reduce to mere mathematics and mathematical symols?

-K.

1:37 PM, September 19, 2010

VizPo-Central said…

Thanks, Geof, for your second discussion of my cyrptographiku. About the name, when coining terms for use in criticism or like fields, the aim should be clarity, not elegance, though maximizes elegance should be the second aim. When I coined my word, I couldn’t think of any better ones. But at one of my discussion groups, one who interpreted my poems used the word, “cipher.” So I now find “ciphku,” probably a better name for these kinds of poems. So, thanks for sensitizing me to the poor name enough to make me notice a word leading to what I think is a better one.

Thanks for the good comment, Conrad. I think speaking of a poem as a work can have on good side: it reminds the poem’s engagent that it wasn’t just thrown together (although these were!), so he should try not to dismiss it too easily.

Thanks for your thoughts, too, B-R–but your second interpretation is, I’m afraid, wrong. There is, so far as I can see, only one main “solution” for either poem that fits. For instance, in the first, each line should consist of one one-letter word followed by a four-letter word.

One idea I hope to follow up on is some coded text that spells one thing according to one code and another, legitimately, according to another.

Finally, K. I think you’ve hit on a central idea of each of the poems. While I don’t see anything “mere” about mathematics, in these poems, I was trying to show events not enduring–I’d rather say, enduring for only a moment–but dying from letters through numerals to nothingness.

Anyway, I’m happy that thoughts like yours occur to someone encountering my gadgets.

–Bob

Posted in Autobiographica, Grumman coinage, Poetics | No Comments »

Entry 203 — Random Thoughts

Friday, August 27th, 2010

Random thoughts today because I want to get this entry out of the way and work on my dissertation on the evolution of intelligence, or try to do so, since I’m still not out of my null zone, unless I’m slightly out but having trouble keeping from falling back into it.

First, two new Grummanisms: “utilinguist” and “alphasemanticry.” The first is my antonym for a previous coinage of mine, “nullinguist,” for linguist out to make language useless; ergo, a utilinguist is a linguist out to make language useful. By trying to prevent “poetry” from meaning no more than “anything somebody thinks suggests language concerns” instead meaning, to begin with, “something constructed of words,” before getting much more detailed, for example.

“Alphasemanticry” is my word for what”poetry” should mean if the nullinguists win: “highest use of language.” From whence, “Visual Alphasemanticry” for a combination of graphics and words yielding significant aesthetic pleasure that is simultaneously verbal and visual.”

I popped off today against one of Frost’s “dark” poems, or maybe it is a passage from one of them: “. . . A man can’t speak of his own child that’s dead”–the kind academics bring up to show Frost was Important, after all. “Wow,” I said, “Wow, he confronts death! He must be major! “ I then added, “Frost is in my top ten all-time best poets in English that I’ve read but not for his Learic Poems.”

James Finnegan then corrected me, stating (I believe) that the poem didn’t confront death but showed its effects. I replied, “Okay, a poem about the effect of death on two people. What I would call a wisdom poem. I’m biased against them. I like poems that enlarge my world, not ones that repeat sentiment about what’s wrong with it, or difficult about it. Frost knew a lot about reg’lar folks, but I never learned anything from him about them that I didn’t already know. In other words, I’m also somewhat biased against people-centered poems. But mostly, I don’t go to poems to learn, I go to them for pleasure.”

I would add that I’m an elitist, believing with Aristotle that the hero of a tragedy needs to be of great consequence, although I disagree with him that political leaders are that, and I would add that narrative literature of any kind requires either a hero or an anti-hero (like Falstaff) of great consequence.

I’m not big on poems of consolation, either.

Posted in Grumman coinage, Nothing Much, Poetics | No Comments »

Entry 146 — Discussing Mathematics and Poetry

Wednesday, June 16th, 2010

Gregory Vincent St. Thomasino has been blogging about mathematics and poetry at his Eratio blog. When he told me about it on the phone yesterday, I said I’d check it out, which I’ve now done. I left my first comment on it. Fortunately, for once I cut what I said before hitting the button telling his blog to accept it, for my post got rejected. I’ll try in a little while to post it again. Meanwhile I want to post it here, to make sure it’s somewhere, and because maybe one of my two regular visitors doesn’t also read Gregory, or misses posts to it because it’s irregular, which is my excuse.

Hi, Gregory. I’ve decided to tear into your commentary on mathematics and poetry Very Slowly, one idea at a time, to facilitate coherence.

I’ll begin with your statement that “Already (‘mathematical sentence’) (you’re) thinking analogically.”

This is where you and I first disagree, for (as revealed in our long & interesting phone conversation of yesterday) I believe numerals and mathematical symbols are part of our verbal language, just as, in my opinion, typographical symbols for punctuation or to abbreviate are. The mathematical symbol, “+,” for instance, is just a different way of writing, “plus,” or “&.” It therefore follows that for me, a mathematical equation is a literal sentence differing from unmathematical sentences only in the words in it. “a – b = c,” for instance, is a very simple sentence and not significantly different from, “Mary cried when she lost her lamb.”

Obviously, it’s just a case of your opinion versus mine, but I think acceptance of my opinion makes more sense, because it keeps thing more simple than your does. I would say that what most people mean by “words” are “general words,” while words like “sineA” or “=” are “specialized words” or mathematical words–like punctuation marks.

I think in my linguistics, these “words” are all called “textemes,” But it’s been a while since I read Grumman on the matter, so I’m not sure.

Hey, I found a glossary in which I define many terms like “texteme.” It’s not a word but a typographical symbol: “any textual symbol, or unified combination of textual symbols–letters, punctuation marks, spaces, etc.–that is smaller than a syllable of two or more letters: e.g., ‘g,’ ‘&h(7:kk,’ ‘GH,’ ‘jd.’” I coined the term for discussion of various odd kinds of symbols and symbol-combinations like some of those among my examples that not infrequently occur in visual or infraverbal poems.

So, I don’t have a special term for word, as I define it. Yet.

To continue my argument in favor of my take on mathematical expression as an extension of verbal expression, not something different in kind, I would saimply ask what is special about mathematical symbols that should require us to think of them as elements of a special kind of expression? They do nothing that ordinary verbalization can’t do, although they do it more clearly, compactly and elegantly.

Graphs would be mathematical expression–a form of visio-conceptual expression, as is written music. Chemical diagrams but not chemical notation. . . .

I don’t see that there’s any difference between the syntax of mathematical expression (other than graphs and probably other similar things I’m not into Math enough to think of right now) and normal verbal expression. There’s no inflection, I don’t think, in mathematical expression. Which is a triviality.

Conclusion: we need a carefully formed taxonomy of human modes of expression.

Posted in Gregory Vincent St. Thomasino, Grumman coinage, Mathematical Poetry, Poetics | No Comments »

Entry 115 — The Knowleplex

Saturday, February 27th, 2010

The knowleplex is simply a chain of related memories–A.B.C.D.E., say–or a knowledge-chain. It is what we remember whenever we are taught anything, either formally at school (when our teacher tells us Washington is the capital of the United States, for instance) or informally during day-to-day experience (when we see our friend Sam has a pet cat).

There are three kinds: rigiplexes, flexiplexes and feebliplexes, the name depending on the strength of the knowleplex. One is too strong, one too weak, and the other just right. If we let A.B.C.D.E. stand for “one plus two is three,” then a person with a rigiplex “inscribed” with that, asked what one plus two is, will quickly answer, “three.” But if asked what one plus four is, he will give the same answer, because his rigiplex will be so strong it will become wholly active due only to “one plus.”

On the other hand, a person with a feebliplex “inscribed” with “one plus two is three,” asked what one plus two is, will answer “I dunno,” because his feebliplex will be so weak, even “one plus two is” won’t be enough for his knowlplex to become active. Ditto when asked what one plus four is. But the person whose knowleplex is just right–whose knowleplex is a flexiplex, that is–will answer the first question, “three,” and the second, “I dunno.”

Needless to say, this overview is extremely simplified. Even “one plus two is three” will form a vastly more complicated knowleplex than A.B.C.D.E. The strength of a given knowleplex will vary, too, sometimes a lot, depending on the circumstances when it is activated. And each kind of knowleplex will vary in strength, some feebliplexes being almost as strong as a flexiplex, for example. In fact, a feebliplex can, in time, become a rigiplex. For the purposes of this introduction to knowleplexes, however, all this can be ignored.

Tags: theoretical psychology
Posted in Grumman coinage, theoretical psychology | No Comments »

Entry 110 — The Three Varieties of Rhyme

Wednesday, February 17th, 2010

I’ve come up with new terms for two of the three kinds of rhyme in my poetics. One is Chyme-Rhyme for standard rhyme (e.g., “bat/cat”). The other is Rhyle-Rhyme for the kind of rhyme I’ve called various names, “Backward Rhyme,” being the most frequent (e.g. “bat/badge”). My name for the third kind of rhyme in my poetics is Rim-Rhyme, the perfect name coined many years ago for it (e.g. “bat/bet”).

The new names follow the logic of “Rim-Rhyme” by demonstrating the sound of the kind of rhyme they name, but not the construction, as “Rim-Rhyme” does. The “Chyme” of regular rhyme seems fitting, too. As for “Rhyle,” well, it’s a kind of rhyme that riles traditionalists, and I couldn’t come up with a better “rhy-consonant” word to use.

I should haven’t to explain why I consider all three of my kinds of rhyme valid rhymes, but while some accept rim-rhyme because of Wilfred Owen, I think no one has accepted rhyle-rhyme. But it seems sensible to call such a combination a rhyme rather than an alliteration/assonance. And it seems sensible to call any pair or great number of unidentical syllables sharing two sounds to be rhymes.

Posted in Grumman coinage, Poetics | No Comments »

Michael Shermer « POETICKS

Posts Tagged ‘Michael Shermer’

Entry 479 — The Believing Brain

Monday, August 8th, 2011

What follows as a review for Amazon I just wrote.

I bought a copy of Michael Shermer’s The Believing Brain in hopes that it would help me improve my own theory of how people come to believe in nonsense. As a rival of his in the field, I was also curious as to how his theory of that compared with mine. It doesn’t. I would love to be able to spend several thousand words to say why, but this is just an Amazon review, so I will have to be brief and superficial.

The main difference between his theory and mine is that his doesn’t go very deeply into brain structure. We find out from him what parts of the brain are involved with the patterns he hypothesizes we all form in our attempts to make sense of the world, and discusses dopamine, which scientists have long held to be active in Skinnerian reinforcement. It seems to Shermer to contribute much to some persons’ being more likely to find patterns in noise than others’. Which is clearly akin to seeing conspirational patterns where there are none. That, alas, is as far as
he goes.

Compare that to my theory, and you’ll see the problem. My theory involves not just a few different areas of the bain and neuro-transmitters, but what the areas contain, to wit: collection of brain-cells whose activation is experienced as an understanding of some fairly significant aspect of reality, say the biology of housecats, or of the human eye, or of all mammals. I show in detail how one (entirely hypothetical) element oversees the organization of the connections made between each of the brain-cells, and how endocrines (like dopamine) reinforce or weaken these connections–due to other elements’ judgement of their effectiveness (which has to do, basically, with their ability to keep a person’s ratio of pleasure to pain as high as possible).

I also show what happens when the person involved encounters new information, in particular new information that contradicts the person’s understanding. I posit that people have different temperaments that have a great deal to do with how sensitive they are to contradictions–
how susceptible to confirmation bias. I show in detail why, neurophysiologically, one temperament will make a person gullible, another resistant to unhappy facts, and another . . . scientific. That is, I show what I think happens to individ ual cells as a result of a
person’s temperament that determines how believing his mind is.

Shermer doesn’t begin to do anything like this, preferring references to trivial psychological experiments having to do with things like whether people engaged in a game will notice a gorilla who walks nonchalantly through their play area or not. Interesting anecdotes, and not entirely
irrelevant, just not of much help to someone like me. My ideas may make far less sense than his, but my attempt is far more worth making than his.

I also feel that Shermer jumps around too much. He sometimes seems more intent on arguing for some outlook of his–on religion or politics, mainly–than on providing an in-depth portrait of a believing brain.

Among my other problems with him is his assertion that you can’t prove a negative. No doubt I’m missing something, but surely if I prove I’m a human being, I prove I’m not a chimpanzee.

He loses me, too, when he claims that a person’s consciousness is just a bunch of brain-cells firing. Nowhere does he seem to realize that consciousness, the inexplicable Me inside all of us (it seems to me although I have no way of knowing whether or not any consciousness but
mine exists), is something wholly different from matter. How it can simply arise when some creature’s nervous system becomes complex enough somehow to form it seems to me as absurd as the idea that a universe can simply arise when some deity’s nervous system becomes complex enough to form it.

I have a question for Shermer, and those as committed to his idea of consciousnesses as he: if I use a blackjack to knock you unconscious, how can you tell whether I’ve rendered your consciousness effectually dead, or merely rendered it empty by blocking its access to data, as
well as its access to wherever it is that memories are formed? My wonder in this area goes alarmingly further, to the belief that I can’t feel certain a stone lacks consciousness.

Despite all my criticisms, I would certainly not call Shermer’s book worthless. He’s a clear writer, and more clear a thinker than many are on the subject his book is about, which is not an easy one. I’d call The Believing Brain superior (and mostly entertaining) journalism. It’s just not serious science. (But there aren’t that many scientists doing what I’d call serious science.)

Tags: Michael Shermer
Posted in Knowlecular Psychology | 3 Comments »

Entry 350 — Re: the Value of Taxonomy « POETICKS

Entry 350 — Re: the Value of Taxonomy

My good friend Geof Huth has challenged me to demonstrate why taxonomization is of value. At first, I was somewhat dumbfounded by his belief that it was, if not useless, not of major importance. Able occasionally to illuminate but not able to do so well enough for one to make a life-long project of, as I have. I have always taken it as a given that an effective taxonomy is of value–of crucial value–in all fields. Linnaeus’s Taxonomy, Mendeleyev’s Periodic Table of Elements, Euclid’s Geometry . . . I termed it “the basis of the conceptual appreciation of art” (in a slightly different arrangement of those words), in the introductory defense of it in my A Preliminary Taxonomy of Poetry. I also mentioned “the clarification of discussion that an effective taxonomy can accomplish.” Later, I may have gone off the lyrico-mystical deep end when I said, “At their best, taxonomies (and analysis in general) reveal ever-smaller mysteries, and ever-vaster interconnections to discover down or up to–while allowing us a vocabulary greater than ‘oooh’ and ‘ahhh’ with which to share our pleasure with others.” Granted, the idea that without taxonomy’s help, our vocabulary would be limited to ooohs and ahhhs is absurdly exaggerated. Still, as I hope to show, only a taxonomy-based vocabulary is of maximal usefulness in the search for significant truths.

I soon admitted that I had not done much more than assert the worth of taxonomy, although it still seems to me that anyone who has done serious work in any kind of verosophy (i.e., field of significant material knowledge) would find plenty of support in his experiences for those assertions. Ergo, I now must present a detailed case for taxonomy. Not easy, for that requires a discussion of knowledge, a main contention of mine being that taxonomies are either necessary or hard to do without in all attempts significantly to understand a discipline. Here I ought to stop, for the possibility that I could convince anyone that my understanding of what knowledge is, and how we acquire and use it is valid is less than point oh one percent. Nevertheless, I’ll try. If I can figure out how to.

Warning: I’m now going to think out loud. I will be hard to follow as I will probably jump around. My logic will at times be very lax, and I’ll use coinages of mine unfamiliar to all but me. Don’t expect too much in the way of articulateness, either.

I’m going to start with the knowleplex. That’s what I call the complex of knowlecules (bits of knowledge) that a person’s brain forms when learning his way around a portion of reality containing interrelated matter–one’s neighborhood, for instance, or marine biology, or the study of the photon. There are many kinds of knowleplexes. The most effective, for verosophers, is the verosoplex. That’s because it is systematically organized. Not perfectly, but always aiming for maximal systemization.

I would claim that one reason many plenty dislike taxonomy (and reductive thinking and everything else having to do with science and related fields) is that they are incapable of forming verosoplexes. Some whom I call “milyoops, tend because of their innate temperaments, mainly to form sloppy clumps of knowlecules some of which interrelate with some of the others in the knowleplex but few of which interrelate to all or even a majority of the others in it. The milyooplexes, as I call these, lack a unifying principle, something that makes a big picture possible. An effective taxonomy is the ultimate such unifying principle.

It’s just like a city: an ideal system of streets will get you with maximal efficiency wherever you want to go; streets designed merely to connect one building to one or two others, will be worthless outside a give neighborhood. Similarly, a city with an effective system of streets will tend to fill up with building at eay to find and get-to locations. A really well-organized city (impossible because Nature must make it so) would have a center from which the whole of the center would be in view.

Another kind of knowleplex is the rigidniplex. It’s formed by people I term rigidniks whose innate temperament compels them to create unsound unifying principles–conceptual skeletons, so to speak–that are too inflexible to form a unifying basis for sufficient knowledge to provide a rational understanding of a field. They over-unify too little data.

Milyoops are satisfied by their milyooplexes because they allow pleasurable short-term connections–the pleasure of vaudeville versus the pleasure of a well-written full-length play. Or pop songs versus classical symph0nies. They can’t experience long-term pleasure or be other than bored by anything aimed to provide that, so they oppose it. They love to learn small facts, but avoid systematic knowledge. Another way of putting it is that a milyoop lacks much of an attention span–a pop song’s immediate variation on its initial theme will give them pleasure, but forget a second movement of a symphony’s providing a (probably more complicated) variation on a (probably more complicated) theme played ten minutes previously. They can’t use a taxonomy, which does, basically, what a fine symphony does, so they reject it.

The whole idea is that a small understanding of some small portion of a knowleplex will give pleasure, but if one also can connect it to some other portion of the knowleplex, one can enjoy the second portion at the same time, and if one can also–do to one or more such connections, intuite something of the way everything in the knowleplex interrelate, one can enjoy a truly superior pleasure. Indeed, such an understanding can suggest the sense of the oneness of all things that religions hype as the ultimate happiness–and which I believe all verosophers experience in their best moments, and have spoken of. Artists, too–although not by means of a verosoplex, but by means of (this is a new idea of mine) an intuiplex–a knowleplex whose unifying principle is protoceptual rather than reducticeptual. Or sensual rather than conceptual.

This is a good moment for me. Due to the taxonomical thinking I always do when working with my theory of psychology. I classify artistic temperaments as different from scientific temperaments on the basis of their brain make-up, which I won’t go into here. And suddenly perceived how I could be nice to artists with this intuiplex, which I genuinely see can be a route to large truths equal to the verosoplex. But also what causes the two cultures C. P. Snow wrote about, and which I fully accept.

The intuiplex much more than the verosoplex aids the pursuit of beauty, which I hold to be as important as the search for truth, but probably hinders the latter–except when used by someone who also is capable of verosoplexes. Similarly, verosoplexes tend to get in the way of the pursuit and appreciation of beauty.

Again, I yield to the temptation of using my present reasoning to support the value of taxonomy. Only because of taxonomy have I been able on the spur of the moment to hypothesize an intuiplex–because it is based on the knowleplex, which is only a taxonomical level one step above it, and the verosoplex, which it is recognizably identical to (to me) except for one thing, its being an arrangement of primarily protoceptual knowlecules (think of the somatic knowledge that some highly unintellectual highly effective athletes have) instead of reducticeptual knowlecules–which, by the way, is taxonomically very similar, and in the same taxon as protoceptual knowlecules, differing from them only in that their ultimate source is the data conveyed to the brain more or less directly from the senses rather than extracted from the senses pre-cerebralling and converted to reducticepts (or conceptual knowledge, like words, numbers or geometrical shapes).

An important point to recognize is that the validity of my theory of psychology is irrelevant so far as the value of its taxonomy is concerned: its taxonomy greatly facilitates my navigation of it, and ability to understand it–and find gaps worth trying to fill I’d never find without it,

I really think I know what I’m talking about, however little it may seem so. I hope someone somewhere in time and space gets something out of this installment of my adventure in Advanced Thought. More, I hope, tomorrow.

This entry was posted on Monday, January 17th, 2011 at 12:00 AM and is filed under Grumman coinage, Knowlecular Psychology, Taxonomy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

The Human Instincts « POETICKS

Archive for the ‘The Human Instincts’ Category

Entry 1328 — My Stupidest Idea?

Thursday, January 2nd, 2014

About a month ago I had an idea so stupid I never wrote it down. But somehow I more than half believe in it! In any case, it may be entertaining, and I need something for today, so here it is: when we struggle to answer some problem and fail, our brain will eventually connect it to–here’s my idea–a False Solution. Here’s what makes it wacko: we know it’s false but accept it as our solution, anyway! And it explains nothing, it just says to you, you got it without telling you why.

Here’s what I tentatively think happens: a mechanism recognizing great puzzlement sticks this false solution to our thinking about the problem, with it clearly labeled “crap”; but the mechanism also lowers the pain that failed solutions generally cause, and which make us keep struggling with the problems causing them. So we accept it. It keeps us from ever solving the problem BUT makes up for that by keeping us from wasting too much time and energy trying to solve a problem we can’t solve, because we’re too inept, or have no likelihood of acquiring sufficient data to solve it, or it’s unsolvable (e.g., why iz we here).

To cast a better light on it, I could call it the Unsolvability Urceptual Knowlecule (UUK). A form of x is x because.

The alert amongst you may well see how such a thing may just explain . . . You-Know-Who, Almighty. In fact, I think certain things some find animistic vague answers to may connect to the UUK, which strengthens and personifies them. In other words, if it exists, it would be the basis of a human instinct to form and believe in religions. Always in tension with the instinct to be rational, even–I suspect–for the most devout. And, in reverse, for the least devout.
.

Fun Friends

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Entry 946 — Pronouncements & Blither, Part 7

Saturday, December 8th, 2012

This entry was to consist of two paragraphs I wrote yesterday in which I tried to get a start on something major about the definition of “definition”–as a first step toward my final attempt at definitive book on poetry. Except that I soon realized my first step should be about names. Anyway, according to my diary, I thought my efforts lame. I still thought them worth posting here–but somehow they got deleted. So, instead, the beginning of something I threw together earlier today after getting a yen to list all the major human instincts I could think of:

1. The Fundaceptual Awareness

None I can think of.

2. The Behavraceptual Awareness

None I can think of.

3. The Evaluceptual Awareness

The Pleasure-Seeking Instinct

The Pain-Avoidance Instinct

The Evaluative Instinct

4. The Cartoceptual Awareness

The Self-Location Instinct

5. The Objecticeptual Awareness

None I can think of.

6. The Reducticeptual Awareness

The Analytic Instinct

7. The Sagaceptual Awareness

The Reproductive Instinct

The Hunting Instinct

The Escape Instinct

The Heroic-Self Instinct

8. The Anthroceptual Awareness

The Love Instinct

The Friendship Instinct

The Maternal Instinct

The Hostility Instinct

The Dominance Instinct

The Servility Instinct

The Individualism Instinct?

The Collectivism Instinct?

9. The Scienceptual Awareness

The Cause and Effect Instinct

10. The Combiceptual Awareness

None.

I’m trying to arrange them by which of my Knowlecular Psychology’s ten kinds of major awarenesses they belong in. The list, of course, is almost entirely for me–to give me something to look at and think about. It’s already given me ideas: the possibility of an instinct causing us to seek solitude and/or be different from others, and an opposite one to seek a herd to be part of and/or avoid being or seeming different occurred to me for the first time.

I know there are omissions, probably important ones. But it’s a start.

Las Vegas Travel

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Entry 346 — The Definition of Visual Poetry, Yet Again « POETICKS

Entry 346 — The Definition of Visual Poetry, Yet Again

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 13th, 2011 at 5:17 PM and is filed under Knowlecular Psychology, Poetics, Taxonomy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

9 Responses to “Entry 346 — The Definition of Visual Poetry, Yet Again”

karl kempton says:

14 January 11 at 5:51 AM

the word ‘poetry’ within the two word term ‘visual poetry’ frames the discussion. we are not saying visual calligraphy nor graphics poetry, nor comix poetry etc.

as long as you focus on your self centered lexicon rather than seek an universal point of viewing, all this is perhaps a talking passed each other.

to continue: because of the steady decline since its peak in the early 1990′s, and because the term visual poetry was coined circa 1965 to break away from the limits of what became concrete poetry, i now prefer the use of sound illumination or illuminated language/s to cover all the visual (must see to fully grasp) use of language that can be composed. the best visual poetry is but a small subset as a result of what took place in the 1990’s. the following is a very abridged outline as to my shift.

just as concrete became cliché, what has become american vizpo/vispo (a term i used since the late 1970′s onward in my correspondence as an abbreviation for visual poetry), much american vispo, since the mid 1990’s attempted take over by a certain click of the language poets, has become neo/retro concrete. many american visual poets aloud themselves to be hypnotized (or consciously gave themselves over) by a perceived center of power of the moment to serve in order to gain recognition and or power, rather than serve the eternal muse of poetry.

vispo is now a cliché. it is no wonder the title of a forthcoming anthology is called the last vispo anthology. the editors themselves not only unconsciously have announced its death but also date its birth as 1950’s concrete movement (: “The Last Vispo Anthology extends the dialectic between art and literature that began with the concrete poetry movement fifty years ago.”) they themselves and those within this particular group consciousness admit they work in a temporal moment without homage to the eternal muse.

visual poetry roots are many thousands of years deep. illuminated language and its ancestral pictorial pictographic petroglyphic images even deeper. those not knowing history are condemned to repeat it. that is obviously true for those cutting history of this form off at 1950.
Bob Grumman says:

14 January 11 at 11:38 AM

Interesting entirely unself-centered take on the history of visual poetry, Karl. But, as I point out, your definition of visual poetry is too general. If you disagree with that, you need to present an argument against it. You need to show, for instance, either that poems like “cropse” are visual poems, or why such poems need not be considered visual poems by your definition.

I would add that naming things for political reasons the way you say visual poetry was, retards the search for truth. But “visual poetry” is a good term. It is a good term because it specifies a kind of poetry that is specifically verbal and visual, and not, like concrete poetry, concrete in some other way, such as tactilely. That is why it is in my taxonomy. I would add that almost all concrete poetry is also visual poetry.
serkan isin says:

14 January 11 at 11:42 AM

‘Visual Poetry is a Poetry that has to be seen.’ can be taken as a definition maybe. But lots of problems here, first of all, written poetry can be seen also. There is a form there and it is not always the same, especially after the free verse. Second, we have to ask maybe where a poem happens? This answer has to be relative. If it is in the paper, well, but what if it is in readers mind, relation to these signs (word, punctuation, structure etc)? If we can define where a poem happens, then we can talk about the eye and visual? But usually a poem happens between reader and the paper, reader “completes” the work as Duchamp mentioned.
Bob Grumman says:

14 January 11 at 12:05 PM

Your problem with the definition can be taken care of easily by amending it to “Visual Poetry is a Poetry that has to be seen for full appreciation of its main aesthetic cargo.” The way a conventional poem looks on the page is not part of its main aesthetic cargo. Nor would the calligraphication of its letters be. The problems with it that I point out remain: it would cover too much that is not visual poetry, such as the pwoermd, “cropse,” and illustrated poems (which many artists who make them consider visual poems. A definition should always be as simple as possible, but simplicity rarely works.

As for where a poem happens, it seems clear to me that it happens in the mind. But rationally to define poetry, one needs to consider only what a poem is materially, which is generally word-shaped ink on a page, but which can include visual and other kinds of elements. And, of course, can be in the air as word-shaped sounds.
serkan isin says:

14 January 11 at 2:31 PM

@Grumman; “The way a conventional poem looks on the page is not part of its main aesthetic cargo” How about thinking Mayakovski and other Russian Formalists and Futurists poems? I know these are not “conventional” but in a certain way they are modern now. How about haiku? and how about arabic or persian poetry for ages that has lot to do with the typography or calligraphy, ideograms etc where language or the sign is not just a carrier for meaning, it has the meaning only by itself. In western thinking these are not may be considered or not taken as main-frame but visual poetry has lots of roots with the “graphic-writing” history of the writing. If you are a verbal poet or as Ong say “verbomotor poet” these has minor importance but other way, every structural element has critical importance i guess. And how can we be sure that cargo, can be carried easily by any means and chance of the Language? Is poetry that good at that kind of information (communication)?
Bob Grumman says:

14 January 11 at 3:47 PM

I think it’s a matter of a case by case decision whether a given poem’s aesthetic cargo is visual enough to make the poem a visual poem. I simply subjectively do not feel calligraphy (in most cases) does so. It’s decorative only. Spacing in poems isn’t enough, either, in my subjective view. I don’t see how haiku are visual. Chinese ideagrams may seem very visual to westerners but are essentially composed of symbols that are read, not seen.

As for language’s ability to carry an aesthetic cargo, I assume without the help of its visual arrangement and decoration, I simply subjectively believe that words can carry huge amounts of meaning and that in a good poem that meaning makes things like calligraphy minor.

One has to make subjective decisions like that or give up defining things. It seems to me that you are basically calling for a definition of visual poetry too broad to be useful. What isn’t visual poetry if haiku are or, apparently, any hand-written poem is?
nico says:

15 January 11 at 2:14 AM

i would have to say, the use of the phrase ‘eternal muse of poetry’ seems ridiculous here. taking wide sloppy swings at people you do nothing but miss and waste our time.
huseyin kaya says:

15 January 11 at 1:46 PM

karl kempton sevişelim mi?
Ki Sastro Molotov says:

22 January 11 at 12:23 PM

Concrete poem represents deep feeling

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Entry 346 — The Definition of Visual Poetry, Yet Again

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