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 »
We are describing two realities. A tale of two language systems. One is the inside-out real life learned auditory discriminations that children non consciously make in order to bootstrap their participation in their real world language environment. The other is the outside-in abstractly analytical set of phonemic conventions linguists and orthographists have developed and reading
Organic Phonemes and Invented Spellings Read More »
In your meaning, people cannot participate in consciousness, think, choose, decide, interpret, react, resist, comply, manipulate, or adapt without learning. Thinking and choosing are not activities outside learning; they are modalities of it. Learning is the process through which consciousness is continuously differentiated and changed—not a synonym for education, knowledge acquisition, wisdom, or improvement. Learning
Our Quarter Millennium of Learning? Read More »
Cells adapt > brains learn > species evolve. These three considered distinct dynamics are all different temporal/dimensional extensional expressions of the same underlying central dynamic: to differentially extend living presence. Yes. That is a strong unification. It treats adaptation, learning, and evolution not as three fundamentally different kinds of process, but as the same basic
Adapt, Learn, Evolve – Same Dynamic, Different Mechanisms and Timescales Read More »
What are feelings? What is the difference between a feeling and a feeling we recognize? Can a feeling have meaning without prior learning? Feelings are changes in the lived state of an organism. They are not, first of all, ideas about experience. They are the experience becoming different from within: tightening, opening, dread, ease, hurt,
What’s The Role of Learning In The Meanings of Feelings? Read More »
My “Happy Easter” post became the starting point of a very interesting dialogue between myself and my friend Doug. It’s a fascinating journey into learning and belief in general, and into our beliefs about learning in particular. The following is a review of our dialogue that begins with a (ChatGpt) summary of the dialogue with
Is Spiritual Knowing Learned? Read More »
The word “Israel” means striving with god. Does the original use imply that God was a constant that Israel is striving to be near or that Israel and God are striving together? Striving describes purposefully directing change. God striving with humans means God purposefully changing with humans. God IS learning. Is God an autonomous self-aware
One Who Strives with God Read More »
There is no ethically legitimate shortcut to population-scale change that bypasses population-scale learning. Ideas that posit change propagating from a small enlightened subset to transform the many—whether framed as morphogenetic fields, 100th Monkey transference, spiritual awakenings, or “miracles”—share a common flaw: they erase agency. They imagine that human transformation can happen without participation, consent, or
Lessons in Pluribus Read More »
I had been sharing images of the latest U.S. reading scores since 2003. Usually in the form of stop signs, like these from 2003, 2017, and 2023. Watching these scores remain so close to flatline for 20 years led me to create a video called “A Brief Tour Through Decades of U.S. Reading Scores“.
After Decades of Literacy Improficiency… Read More »
End summary: This considers learning a self-renewing participation in meaning, not the acquisition of information. This aligns with Bohm, Varela, Piaget, but goes beyond each by adding: • a geometry (parabola) • a mechanism (co-implication density) • an apex (inflection) • a cycle (wingbeat) • a unifying scope (micro → macro) Advantages of this definition
The Beating Wings of Learning Read More »