refried intellects (alternate rationalities)

2010-06-20T12:48:00.001+10:00

Left right brain stuff on All In The Mind. They go past popularized notions on this subject.

Animal Procedures

2009-11-29T13:51:00.004+11:00

Mark Norman from the Museum of Victoria shares his enthusiasm for all sorts of amazing aquatic animal behaviours.From the Science Show on ABC radio national.

Kate Grenville

2009-11-12T22:42:00.006+11:00

I've been meaning to post this for a while. Kate Grenville connects with the zeitgeist in this talk from fora tv. Audio only here, full video here.

Mushroom intelligence

2009-10-16T19:01:00.003+11:00

Forget rhizomes... start thinking through fungi. Mushroom guru Paul Stamets covers a lot of ground in this Ted talk and gives us plenty of food for thought (or should that be decaying matter for mycelium growth) in thinking through the philosophical implications of a fungal becoming.

Militant atheists

2009-10-16T18:41:00.003+11:00

Yes these guys are a bit of a bore... or so I thought until I saw the following talks by two of the leaders of the atheist orthodoxy. These guys are actually very engaging. In this TED talk Richard Dawkins argues that science is much weirder than anything religion can come up with. Look out for his tips on training children to understand quantum phenomena.

Continuing with the atheist fundamentalism Christopher Hitchens discusses his book "God is not Great: Religion Poisons Everything". His views are oddly compatible with the author mentioned in the previous post.

Eagleman's Alternate Afterlives

2009-06-21T11:49:00.004+10:00

In two programs from RN David Eagleman discusses both his neuroscientific work and his recently published collection of short stories. A synesthesia researcher by day and a writer of spiritually themed alternate rationalities by night Eagleman, when asked about his own beliefs regarding what occurs after life, describes himself as "a celebrant of the size of the possibility space". It is this notion that no doubt guided him in his writing of forty different post-death scenarios in which he considers all sorts of permutations, many of which are significantly less appealing, (but no less possible), than those offered to us by mainstream religions.

Michael Pollan

2009-06-17T19:31:00.003+10:00

Michael Pollan is a journalist who has written extensively on food. In this talk from fora tv Pollan discusses deep agriculture. As with most of fora's videos the embedded version below isn't the full presentation (follow the link for that).

You can also get a podcast of Pollan reading from his book The Omnivores Dilemma from Radio National's first person program. All episodes are listed here.

Religion as Art

2009-05-23T20:06:00.004+10:00

In this book show program from the Sydney writer's festival Ramona Koval speaks with Richard Holloway who describes religion as good poetry rather than bad science.

Endangered Languages

2009-05-04T11:59:00.004+10:00

An insight into another dimension of linguistic reality. Daniel Everett's discussion of the language, oral culture and alternate rationality of the Piraha people of Brazil.

Creative non-fiction

2009-05-04T11:55:00.002+10:00

Click here to hear Lee Gutkind discussing creative non-fiction on ABC radio national's book show.

Reinventing the Sacred

2009-03-01T14:03:00.002+11:00

The brief mention of Stuart Kauffman's book Reinventing the Sacred on the Guardian's books blog sent me on a search for interviews and podcasts in order to find out more about what sounded like an particularly interesting alternate rationality. The first podcast-interview with the author that I came across was this one (right click to save). In this interview Kauffman outlines aspects of the argument that he makes in his book. Central to his thesis is a shift away from the deterministic, reductionist approaches that have produced many of the laws and theories associated with modern science towards a study of emergance and creative processes. The sacred referred to in the title of his book also marks a shift but this time in religious thought. Rather than the conception of a creator-god he suggests that we might think of creativity as god. That is creativity in all its manifestations; from the creative capacity of bacteria to respond to their surroundings to the adaptions of fish that produced our auditory system. Beyond the biological Kauffman sees a similar emergent creativity in economics and other cultural spheres. The videos below cover much the same territory as the podcast that I linked to above.

2009-02-22T15:04:00.002+11:00

Uma's famous dad Robert Thurman spoke at UBC in April last year. He is a Buddhist scholar and a particularly entertaining speaker. A healthy dose of humor in this one.

Massey Lectures

2009-02-21T12:11:00.005+11:00

Debt and the shadow side of wealth is the title of Margaret Atwood's Massey lectures. In this series of lectures Atwood gives us an at-times-humorous historical overview of the way we think about debt through myths, stories and language generally. Nouveau Scrooge's spiritual journeys in the final lecture are particularly entertaining.

Unwritten Books

2009-02-01T14:32:00.003+11:00

The book show, (one of my favorite radio nation programs), is back from the summer break with the new programs. My pick of the first week's shows would have to be this recording (right click to save) featuring George Steiner discussing his unwritten books. Steiner covers many themes including the varying rationalities of sexual intimacy across different languages. This stuff is great inspiration for those wanting to learn another language or fully engage with the art of memory.

Dark Matter

2009-01-21T23:02:00.007+11:00

This video doesn't quite have the same humor and flair as Neil DeGrasse Tyson's explanations of back hole death but it is very clear explanation of the evidence that suggests the existence of dark matter and dark energy.

Not So Rational...

2009-01-14T16:49:00.003+11:00

In this video Dan Ariely, a behavioral economist from Duke University, demonstrates how and why our decision making is often less than rational. There are some obvious connections to be made between this presentation and the aspects of Lakoff's work that deal with what he sees as the out-dated notion of enlightenment reason. Aside from the intellectual content this is worth watching for its entertainment value. Who would have thought an economist could be this funny.

Black hole death

2009-01-08T18:09:00.007+11:00

In this hilarious, entertaining and informative discussion writer and astrophysicist Neil DeGrasse Tyson discusses death by astrophysical phenomena including being sucked into a black hole and being wiped out by an asteroid-impact tsunami. Discussing the possibility of avoiding a specific asteroid impact that may occur in 2036 by blowing the thing out of the sky Tyson says "We, particularly Americans, are very good at blowing stuff up... we're less good at understanding where the pieces go after it blows up." So much insight in so few words. The other interesting fact about the larger asteroid impacts (like the one that wiped out the dinosaurs) is that subterranean bacterias are in the best place to survive them, perhaps another reason to think of those bacterias as "the most intelligent organisms on earth". Here's the link to the full program (well worth it for the extra five minutes of this gem).

Free Markets?

2009-01-05T22:57:00.008+11:00

In the current climate a title like "free speech, free minds, free markets" suggests that we're in for a last ditch effort by the right to deploy democratic ideals in a bid to avoid tighter regulation of the financial system. So I was pleasantly surprised to find out that in this case it referred to a presentation by Jimmy Wales (founder of Wikipedia) talking about the ideals of the organization and his plan for an open source search engine. His plan definitely represents an alternative rationality to the advertising driven search-engines that dominate our current use of the internet. If you have some listening time I recommend the full program rather than the excerpt I've posted below.

Fake Memoirs

2009-01-03T17:45:00.005+11:00

From the book show on radio national an excellent program on the proliferation of faked memoirs recently re-aired as part of the summer series of repeats. Presenter Ramona Koval talks to a film-maker, a journalist/editor/academic and a publisher about people who fake it. There are some interesting answers in here to the question of why these people don't just write fiction.

James Frey author of A million little pieces

the "memoir" famously endorsed by Oprah Winfrey.

Alternate Rationalities Part III

2008-12-23T10:14:00.006+11:00

If we follow a thread from the non-rational to our emotional rationality the next step may well be the rational intelligence of bacteria. A few months back All in the Mind aired a fascinating program on the intelligence of bacteria. If we work with the notion that that "being reasonable" is like singing in tune with who you are and what the universe is like, then this program would seem to suggest that bacteria are very reasonable and perhaps even rational creatures.

myxococcus xanthus "the primate of the bacterial world".

One of the more astounding ideas that comes up in this program is the notion that certain bacteria can process 1 000 000 000 bits of information per second. This is probably one of the facts that leads Jeffry Stock, a molecular biologist to quote Koshland who says "that there's no question that bacteria are the most intelligent organisms on earth, at least on a per gram weight basis". Stock also says that "the real question is why they wouldn't be the most sophisticated intelligent organism on earth because they've been around a lot longer than animals, and they have evolved extremely rapidly, and they are very, very competitive with one another. So why wouldn't they be as intelligent as an organism could possibly be? There's an incredible selection pressure for intelligence." Download the audio here (you may need to right click and "save link as..." from the fly-out menu on this one).

The Value of Property Rights

2008-12-20T15:05:00.007+11:00

In this forum on the global economic crisis Hernando de Soto (a Peruvian economist) makes the point that one of the principal causes of this crisis is a lack of clarity in terms of property rights. From what I understand of de Soto's argument the problem with the trading in dodgy loans is that no one actually knows who "owns" the debt or how many times its been packaged and resold, so there is no correspondence between property and the pieces of paper that have been traded. de Soto and the other panelists (Naomi Klein and Joseph Stiglitz) then discuss examples of property rights issues including those from the third world where a lack of clarity in terms of who owns what has led to some of the poorest people being thrown off there land in all sorts of different circumstances (including immediately after the tsunami of 2004). We might then see how the framing of the global warming issue that George Lakoff gives toward the end of the video posted below can be seen as granting everyone property rights over the air. Those who put carbon into it must then pay us, as the owners of the air, for the right to do so. Download the audio here.

Lakoff: Reason, Emotion and Politics

2008-12-19T22:48:00.013+11:00

In this video George Lakoff suggests that many of the failings of 'progressive' politicians stem from their lack of understanding about the way we make decisions and how the mind functions. He argues that the typical approach of 'focusing on the issues' and making a rational argument for the introduction of particular policies is one that draws on an 18th century understanding of the brain and our decision making processes. He cites research that demonstrates the importance of emotions in our ability to make choices while also speaking about how empathy is crucial when we decide who to vote for. Lakoff suggests that running a campaign based on emotion and empathy is not irrational but that rather that "the old notion of rationality is false". We might link this to the previous post and our thoughts about alternative rationalities by thinking of what Lakoff is describing as a kind of emotional rationality. The other key idea that Lakoff draws on is the notion that language is not neutral and that progressive thinkers need to actively-seek-to-disseminate ways of framing issues through language that allow even the more conservative-minded amongst us to support progressive policy. He points to the success of conservative 'think tanks' in disseminating their own framings of contemporary events ("the war on terror" etc) and suggests that progressives need similar institutions to be able to move forward on issues such as global warming. Download the audio of Lakoff's talk here.

Chris Hedges on the religious right and new atheists

2008-12-19T20:30:00.009+11:00

In this video journalist and writer Chris Hedges identifies certain parallels in the ideologies of the religious right in the US and a group of people that he calls "new atheists". One of the points that has stuck with me from his discussion is the notion that both religion and art are ways of engaging with the non-rational. He makes it clear that the non-rational is not to be thought of as synonymous with the irrational. This reminded me of a contribution by Rowan Williams to an issue of New Scientist that considered the question of reason. Williams writes;

Until the early Middle Ages, being "reasonable" was primarily a matter of being aware of where you belonged in the cosmos... Being reasonable was like singing in tune (an analogy the Stoic philosophers of ancient Greece and Rome loved to use) with who you were and what the universe was like.

From these ideas we can draw a link between reason and rationality and perhaps start to think about rationality as a kind of "singing in tune with who you are and what the universe is like". The idea here is to start to imagine and define alternative rationalities that might cover some of the ground that lies beyond the way science approaches the rational.