[dean peterson]

Michael, you reminded me of a great poem by Ronald Koertge (or spellit), titled An Infinite Number of Monkeys

http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/an-in...er-of-monkeys/

The voiceover I think adds to its charm.

[Michael F]

Thank you, Dean. Brilliantly a propos.

[Allen Tice]

--Crackly wireless message, much static and fades.--
-/:;(&@"I'm standing on the -:$@ ground at the tip of Cape ;(()$& Horn /;; Only one hundred forty-five leagues to go. :;(()& Go team! /:&8

[dean peterson]

Just sit right back and you'll hear a tale,
a tale of a fateful trip,
that started from this tropic port
aboard this tiny ship ...

[Norman Ball]

"It strikes me that creativity, as we understand the term in human affairs, involves and implies what we call freedom" post 391, Michael Ferris

You may still be getting through your meal, Michael. So don't feel obliged to get drawn back into this indigestible thread. It's interesting though, your lashing creativity to freedom. I've been reading Christian existentialist Nikolai Berdyaev in an entirely different context. However I ran across this (from his autobiography):

"The creative act of a man requires matter, it cannot be without the material reality, it does not occur in an emptiness, in a vacuum. But the creative act of a man cannot be completely determined by the material which is given by the world; in it there is newness that is not determined by the outside world. This is the element of freedom that comes into any real creative act. This is the mystery of creativity. In this sense, creativity is creation from nothing."

Berdyaev offers a one-foot-in-one-foot-out approach. There is the God-emulating, subjective act of conceptualization. However no sooner do we pick up the pen or paintbrush, than we turn towards the world of men and objectify (curtail) the concept, thus causing the "tragic discrepancy" between "the burning heat of the creative fire in which the artistic image is conceived, and the cold of its formal realization." All art is denouement. At the same time, Berdyaev eschews Pure antiseptic Realms of Ideas. Man is the indispensable hearth for these creative fires. Thus its pointless to ponder a priori's and depersonalized prior realms.

Nothing ranks higher for Berdyaev than freedom (which he pointedly differentiates from individualism and free will). The unbidden thought coming to mind is freedom at its most unfettered or 'free'. At one point he calls freedom creative energy. At another point, he suggests God exists only in freedom. Can I toss in some dime store quantum here and suggest freedom is the infinite wave or field of possibilities --God as some like, consciousness as I like-- out of which we create/select a discrete act?

"Determinist thinking, and so most materialist thinking that I know, can’t explain freedom..." post 391

That's very Berdyaev-esque too. I'd say you're in good company. Enjoy your dessert.


norm

[Michael F]

Norm,

I should thank you publicly: I don’t know Berdyaev at all. I’m very interested to read his work. Thanks very much for the comment and the reference.

Now, yes – I’m signing off for dessert (and hopefully back to writing).

Thanks again, and cheers,

Mike

[Janice D. Soderling]

My hero, one of them.
http://america.aljazeera.com/watch/s...valonline.html

[Mario Pita]

A recent talk given by the professor of Cognitive science Donald Hoffman at TED reminded me of this thread, so I resurrect it from the dead in case anyone might be interested in what I find a fascinating theory with pertinence to a discussion on consciousness and its relation to perceived objects that we call brains. It pertains largely to the interface theory of perception, which roughly is that whatever we perceive is like the icon on a desktop, representational of something deeper, but not to be taken literally...

https://youtu.be/oYp5XuGYqqY

http://journal.frontiersin.org/artic...014.00577/full

[Janice D. Soderling]

Mario, thank you so much. That was mind-boggling, wonderful.

(Besides which it is a relief to know that my living room isn't as messy as I perceive it, and all these books and papers taking up the surfaces are just receptacles for information, icons as it were.)

Seriously, really, really interesting line of reasoning.

[Norman Ball]

Yes indeed, fascinating Mario, thank you and almost worth the resurrected thread lol.

So it turns out the tireless search for truth is an evolutionary cul de sac. No wonder the poets stagger about in a world of pain --compulsively revealing and 'unveiling truth'--until the most committed ones fall extinct before 40 like Lamarck's giraffes with too-long necks. (There's a revealing word from the world of madness: committed).

The video has shades of Bishop Berkeley and Freud's Vital Lie. Healthy egos compromise the self into a belief in existent rooms even as Berkeley assures us the room is a perceptual construction that 'isn't really there'. Meanwhile poets are lashed to the truth like dodo birds, rarely leaving their rooms.

I have to say this thread was one of the most provocative and enduring experiences the Internet has provided me in a long time. I remain greatly appreciative to all the participants. It also tugs at my heart a bit as Mr. Dean Peterson (a slight pseudonym) passed away just a few short months ago. RIP.

norm