The double look on complex dimension
Abstract: Continuation of the article on placebos, healers and patasciences. Empathy is given to us. Impossible to pump but easy to fake, with no more guilt than administering a placebo. The end is the benefit for the other, and not the satisfaction of a false ideal of righteousness in oneself. To simulate well is to … Read more
Abstract: We have always loved good stories, says Aristotle Array to reconnect us with conspiracy theorists. The problem, I retorted, is that today we no longer know how to differentiate the real good stories from the fake ones, under the pressure of relativism and a certain weakening of the level of education. “I don’t understand … Read more
Abstract: The placebo astonishes by working even in those informed that it has no biological effect. Jane Risen, a researcher from Chicago, explains it by taking Daniel Kahneman’s 2-system model of thought: the rational system 2 detects the superstitious error of the intuitive system 1 but does not correct it. This produces acquiescence, a wobbly … Read more
Abstract: The scientist, equipped only with an ontological method, is not prepared for the teleological battlefield. To face it he must choose a philosophical method. Example with the paradox of gender equality. The Monastery of Science Science is a methodology. Not a policy, not a philosophy, not even a power in itself. Its power only … Read more
Abstract: Genetic sex and cultural gender are not competitors in the study of our behaviors, except when a cultural a priori seeks to manipulate the studies. An example with Ellie Anderson, an American philosopher and gender activist, who sees the woman always alone cleaning, that of the couple’s story this time… Of the kind that … Read more
The line of anti stretch racism to everyone Anti-anti-anti… When you see a long line of ants surrounding a word like this, it means that it is dying, after too many contradictory uses. This is indeed the case for the cadaverous ‘racism’, a victim of its (semantic) popularity. Each of us has heard it so … Read more
Philippe Ratte explains in ‘Tintin or access to the self’ that Hergé’s comics hero appeared out of nowhere, suddenly, in 1929, in ‘Tintin in the Land of the Soviets’. No past, no family, not even from an egg. Hergé is his father but has not put a single sperm in it. Tintin is the epitome … Read more
Abstract: An activated synaptic configuration, as meaning, is a given distribution of probabilities among all its possible meaningful states. It thus emancipates itself from its constitution and represents a qualitative leap. New mental experience. The mind is constructed from these tiers of meanings, a vertical complexity that makes up its intelligence. To begin this definition, … Read more
The It War Death wish and death drive are mistakenly confused. Very badly named in addition because they are neither desire nor impulse but solutions. Shockingly poor solutions, yes, but when you’re on a devastated battlefield, sometimes you liquidate the last opponent standing, which is yourself. A battle, that’s what it is. Battle between unconscious … Read more
‘Nothing’ is an oxymoron Let us return to the metaphysical questions mentioned at the beginning of the previous article. What is the relationship between the real per se and the mental image we construct of it? Why is there something rather than nothing? Do we have free will? Are mathematical objects invented or discovered? These … Read more