Posts filed under 'fields of inquiry'
Coming on the heels of the Third Ratna Ling Conference on First-Person Methodologies, this article makes interesting reading. I can imagine people reacting very differently, depending on their own interests.
The aim of the article is conservative. As they say toward the end [118],
Our ambition has not been to suggest a complete and flawless first-person methodology . . . nor is it an attempt to reinvent or create a ‘new and fundamentally different’ science of consciousness.” Rather, we have sought out an approach that is relatively specific in making suggestions to scientists on how to go about integrating first-person methods in cognitive science. These are suggestions that have already been used in experiments, and therefore should be easy to integrate in the disciplines of cognitive science and neuroscience as they are currently carried out.”
More evidence of their conservative slant comes from this comment on neurophenomenology [106]: “Neurophenomenology would demand a paradigm change in cognitive science in order to have any noticeable impact, and this might be unlikely.”
The article performs a useful function in clarifying the difference between introspection and phenomenological methods. although they note that the key first-person research that has been done so far (mainly the work by Lutz et. al. mentioned below) could be considered to fall in both categories, and could also be considered to exemplify neurophenomenology. So perhaps the distinction is not that helpful after all. They cite Zahavi to the effect that phenomenology is not about private thoughts, but rather about intersubjectively accessible modes of experience [110]; if this is universally agreed upon, I would regard it as a significant limitation on phenomenology.
They also make a useful distinction among three stages at which first-person methods could ‘enrich’ cognitive science: in the pre-experimental design process (by ‘front-loading’ the design of the experiment); in the experimental situation itself (that is, in how data is gathered, and what kind of data), and in post-experiment interviews that can inspire new ways of looking at the data.
When it comes to citing examples, the main one they use is Lutz, et. al.: an experiment on reaction times in which the subjects were trained to be phenomenologically aware of whether they were focused or distracted at the time of a stimulus. It seems to me a pretty modest experiment, but perhaps I’m just an impatient fellow.
I find it interesting that they do not cite Claire’s work; I can’t recall at the moment whether they cite Russ’ work, but if so, they make little of it. Their focus seems to be more on third-person science that is informed by first-person approaches (or even more specifically, “rigorous first-person reports” [104]) than on what might be called ‘pure’ first-person work. And this is to be expected, given their orientation. But I would be especially interested in what others have to say about this.
Jack
May 13th, 2008
The following flash animation is a helpful visual aid for several of the space practices, such as “Containment” or “The Qualities of Space” or perhaps several others:
http://micro.magnet.fsu.edu/primer/java/scienceopticsu/powersof10/
You can make it run in reverse order as well…
Best wishes,
Bruce
February 4th, 2007
This ‘poem’ emerged out of comments by three different participants in the online TSK program, I put them together. The context was reflections on some TSK exercises that ask about moments between moments, and about stepping ‘outside’ the flow of moments:
“What shall I call the transition
from breathing out to breathing in?
Death?”
Giving each moment back to time,
arisings are all time,
the glow of awareness,
a presence that is always now.
Jack
January 21st, 2007
I’m posting this here because it is a little outside the scope of the current week’s topic. I read the remainder of the “Orientation” in SDTS that is assigned for this week’s unit and came across a passage that has fascinated me.
“Could this analysis into levels help us understand some of the obstacles we encounter as human beings? If there are three levels for time, space, and knowledge, this gives nine levels in all, and if these levels can interact with one another in different ways, this gives twenty-seven possible combinations. Could we analyze our own experience in terms of such patternings? For instance, if an individual has a second-level orientation toward space but a first-level way of interacting with time and knowledge, what characteristic issues and attitudes will manifest? What might be a good approach to opening up the patterns that this combination tends to introduce? Studying these patterns, can we see likely places of weakness or confusion? Can we see where experience will be most intensive, or most stuck, and how it might be possible to ‘re-pattern’ a given patterning? If there are twenty-seven patterns, are there also twenty-seven different ways of studying TSK?” (SDTS, p. xxxiv)
Has anyone attempted to build on this suggestion? Do you think such a “mapping” would be useful? As a student of Integral Theory and AQAL (all-quadrants, all-lines), which contains sophisticated ways to map the dynamics of human growth and behavior, I am curious about the potential of this TSK “psychograph” and how it might interface with other similar models. (Recognizing, of course, the limitations of models, while also not discounting their value as luminous gestures of knowledge).
Best wishes,
Bruce
December 9th, 2006
I recently came across an interesting discussion of the painting at the right, in a book by H. Peter Steeves, call The Things Themselves: Phenomenology and the Return to the Everyday (SUNY 2006). Here is what Steeves has to say:
The front of the table does not match up on both sides of the rumpled tablecloth. We look into the basket from the right; we look at the biscuits from the left . . . The wine bottle teeters to the left as if we are moving around it counterclockwise. And the backside of the table on the right is far higher than it is on the left. The painting has us moving around; all of the space is filled out.
The point is this: the painting on this analysis sets out to give us more than one temporal moment at the same time. Viewing the painting, we are invited to experience an object in different temporal moments, to merge past-present-future. (You can find more detailed images on the web that may make this point more clear.) Does it work?
Jack P.
November 21st, 2006
This post is based on a report by one of the participants in the TSK online program. She reported on an experience most of us have had: feeling more alive and more present while traveling.
It is easy enough to theorize about why this is, but in general, “why” questions, in the sense of questions that ask after explanations, are not that helpful in TSK. However, they can be quite helpful in terms of pointing us to different possibilities.
Here, the implicit “why” question leads me to wonder: What if we tried to move through our own world as though we were strangers in a foreign culture, eager to learn, open to seeing. What would that be like? Anyone care to try and report back?
Jack P.
November 18th, 2006
“Wonderment is the presence, the presenting, the appreciation of reality as Being. All appearance is sheer art, beautiful beyond all enduring, appealing beyond all possibility of possession. It cannot be possessed but it is entirely accessible. The treasure which our being preserves for us is like an ever-present nectar; it is like an inexhaustible kingdom which is always open to us.” ~ Tarthang Tulku, Time, Space, and Knowledge.
October 16th, 2006
“The capacity of Great Space is never exhausted or compromised by a commitment to one particular trend or world order. Great Space can let anything appear. Great Space supports infinitely many choices of perspective.” (Tarthang Tulku, Time, Space, and Knowledge)
October 15th, 2006
As those of you who attended the 2006 pre-conference workshop that Allan Combs and I led may recall, I have some reservations about the field of Systems Thinking (Systems Science). They have to do with the implicit assumption that the embodied reality of our experience can be modeled, and that meaningful knowledge will come from manipulating or working with such models. I’m not so sure.
I came across a related caveat in an article in the September 2006 Harpers, about education and video games. The topic for the forum was how to use video games to further education. Here is the exchange that interested me, and on which I would welcome comment:
Zengotita: I see how students could learn to write analytically, deeply, about the systems of rules that are embedded in video games, rules that appear in the game to be the way the world actually works. But when the players go out into the real world, I think there’s a real danger . . . of failing to understand not just the complexity of the real world but also its mystery . . .
Koster: I call it gamist thinking, and I strongly agree with you . . . To bring solely a gamist perspective to the world is a really big mistake. But of course this perspective predates video games. It harkens back to behaviorist psychology, and a variety of unsavory political movements as well.
Zengotita: It’s systems-based thinking, model-based thinking. I can’t claim that Donald Rumsfeld or Robert McNamara were products of a video-game education. But they show all the symptoms of it.
September 22nd, 2006
If you have something to say about Time-Space-Knowledge, or if you’d like to suggest a particular Time-Space-Knowledge discussion topic, click the comment link below.
September 16th, 2006
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