Paradigm Inertia Paradigm Inertia is the systemic, psychological, and institutional resistance to updating, revising, or replacing an established mental model, operational framework, or scientific consensus—even when confronted with empirical anomalies, falsifying data, or demonstrable systemic failure. It represents the tendency of epistemic systems (individual minds, academic disciplines, regulatory agencies, and professional cultures) to maintain their
I fed the transcript of the following video of my talk to the Tomkins organization to an AI proxy of Silvan Tomkins and instructed it: Filter out everything not related to affect theory. Distill the affect-order distinctions being made. Point by point, use Tomkins to comment on them. A page of background and further
What Silvan Tomkins Might Say: My Tomkins Talk Read More »
Gary David, PhD, is an epistemologist, educator, and former professional jazz musician who applies General Semantics and Epistemics to human awareness, learning, and emotional processes. Background & Mentorship J. Samuel Bois: Apprenticed and studied with epistemologist J. Samuel Bois from 1964 to 1978, later editing his textbook The Art of Awareness: A Handbook on Epistemics
Two very different minds. Silvan Tomkins (1911-1991) is considered by many to be the Einstein of emotional science. His theory of emotion defines a core set of indivisible neurobiological elements – “affects” -whose innate and learning conscripted behaviors aggregate to explain the entire universe of human emotion. John Steinbeck (1902-1968) also viewed humans through a
Tomkins and Steinbeck: What A Shame Read More »
Have you ever noticed someone veer off on a tangent? Have you ever noticed your how your own thoughts migrate off into tangents? I mean by “tangent migrations”, changes to the direction of the unfoldment of meaning in the stream of consciousness or a train of thought due to the emotional charge of a memory
HOW DID THAT COME TO MIND? Meta-tations and the Illusion of Free Agency Read More »
Edward Calabrese shared a newly released paper on hormesis and psychology. Hormesis-psychology-1 What Silvan Tomkins might say: You have here, in effect, a psychological hormesis study: not of radiation or toxins, but of ordinary parental misattunement-unresponsiveness, detachment, intrusiveness, psychological control-and its impact on children’s emotional life. The authors show that moderate levels of such adversity
Tomkins and Calabrese on Hormesis Psychology Paper Read More »
Our learning makes our animal emotionality human. Whatever is important is only important because it’s emotionally important. Whatever is emotionally important is only emotionally important because we learned it to be. Though emotion has is own biological logic, the context it’s operating within is always learned. What we feel as emotionally important is not an
Emotional Learning Read More »
Human Nature or Human Learning? (full) with Gemini Index of other dAilogues The following is a list of our past conversations and their links. Open each link and read each item as if a prompt to you. Allow your responses to each prompt to aggregate into a full and nuanced remembering of our shared understanding
dAilogues: Human Nature or Human Learning? – Prelude Read More »
Maladaptive Learning (full) with Gemini Index of other dAilogues Let’s come to a shared understanding of the term “maladaptive learning“. What does the term mean to you? Maladaptive learning, in my understanding, refers to a learning process where an individual acquires or reinforces behaviors or thought patterns that hinder their ability to adapt effectively to
dAilogues: Maladaptive Learning Read More »
Instinctually Learned Emotionality with Gemini Index of other dAilogues In one paragraph followed by six two sentence summarizing bullet points, describe the essence of Sylvan Tomkins’ conceptual components of the affect system and how they interact. Sylvan Tomkins’ theory on the conceptual components of the affect system delves into how our thoughts and emotions are
dAilogues: Instinctually Learned Emotionality Read More »