[KB] Deacon's Neo-Aristotelian Complication of Simple Action/Motion

Payne, David dpayne at usf.edu
Thu Aug 14 15:36:13 EDT 2014


On  this general topic, I took note of this review of the re-release of Jared Diamond's The Third Chimpanzee a few months ago:

>From the perspective of genetics, we are clearly the third species of chimpanzee. Our DNA is only 1.6 percent different from that of either chimps or pygmy chimpanzees (today more commonly called bonobos). "The reason why you and I are talking, and we're not locked up in cages—whereas chimpanzees are not talking, and are locked up in cages—all that lies in 2 percent of our DNA," explained Diamond on Inquiring Minds.

In fact, as Diamond emphasizes in his book, we are more genetically similar to chimps than many other closely related species are to one another. Gorillas and chimps, for instance, are 2.3 percent different, which means that chimps are considerably closer to us than to their other nearest primate relatives. Or, consider two very closely related songbird species: the red-eyed and white-eyed vireo. They are 2.9 percent different, notes Diamond.

So what makes humans so seemingly special? Until pretty recently, we weren't. All the way up to 80,000 years ago, we were just "glorified chimpanzees," in Diamond's words. But then, something changed. Diamond calls it the "Great Leap Forward." ........Diamond's hypothesis is that it was the development and perfection of spoken language that catapulted us forward, making possible teamwork, collaboration, planning, long-distance trade, and much more. Whether for lack of vocal capacity, brain development, or some other reason, chimps never made this leap. "A baby chimpanzee that was brought up in the home of a clinical psychologist couple, along with their baby, by age two, the chimpanzee could pronounce only four consonants and vowels, and it never got better," says Diamond. "But if all you can say is, bi, ba, di, do, that doesn't get you Shakespeare, and it also doesn't let you discuss how to construct atomic bombs and bows and arrows."
7 Stories.

In this view, the downstream consequences of language acquisition are, basically, everything that stands out about human civilization. That ranges from the highly beneficial—the dramatic growth in life expectancy—to the mixed: technologies that have significant benefits but also huge costs (like, say, devices to exploit fossil fuels for energy). And most of all, it includes environmental despoilment and resource depletion. "At present, we, humans, are operating worldwide on a nonsustainable economy," Diamond says. "We're exploiting resources, water, energy sources, fisheries, forests at a rate such that most of these resources will get seriously depleted within a few decades.

http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2014/04/jared-diamond-inquiring-minds-humanity-survival



________________________________________
From: kb-bounces at kbjournal.org <kb-bounces at kbjournal.org> on behalf of de gava <wblakesx at yahoo.com>
Sent: Thursday, August 14, 2014 3:18 PM
To: wessr at onid.orst.edu; Edward C Appel
Cc: kb at kbjournal.org
Subject: Re: [KB]       Deacon's        Neo-Aristotelian        Complication    of      Simple  Action/Motion

Apparently Animal Sybolicum is Cassirer's. Perhaps you are more familiar w/Susan Langer. https://www.google.com/search?num=100&client=opera&hs=2v1&q=renaissance+animal+symbolicum&oq=renaissance+animal+symbolicum&gs_l=serp.12...265909.268950.0.271250.7.7.0.0.0.0.241.889.2j4j1.7.0....0...1c.1.51.serp..7.0.0.8JjXhela5TU  .   Perhaps you are more familiar w/Susan Langer  I'll guess the idea goes back to the renaissance.

He partially relied on Jakob von Uexküll and his concept of Umwelt
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jakob_von_Uexküll

In parallel Hans Selye ('the father of Stress Theory') relied on Claude Bernard ('milieau interior') and  Walter Bradford Cannon (Homeostasis). qv
--------------------------------------------


On Thu, 8/14/14, Edward C Appel <edwardcappel at frontier.com> wrote:

 Subject: Re: [KB] Deacon's     Neo-Aristotelian        Complication    of      Simple  Action/Motion
 To: "wessr at onid.orst.edu" <wessr at onid.orst.edu>
 Cc: "kb at kbjournal.org" <kb at kbjournal.org>
 Date: Thursday, August 14, 2014, 11:07 AM

 Another quick point of comparison
 between Terrence Deacon and Kenneth Burke (Deacon does,
 after all, have another book, entitled The Symbolic
 Species):

 In Incomplete Nature, Deacon takes issue with both Noam
 Chomsky and Steven Pinker in respect to their "universal
 grammar" approach to the origins of language.  These
 theorists reduce language and its origins to a kind of
 computer-like algorithm that stints on the
 "neuro-behavioral-intentional process" that is its very
 essence.  A sort of mechanical "mentalese"---Pinker's
 term---pre-exists any natural language and gets translated,
 so to speak, into that particular argot.  "Here,"
 Deacon says, "the problem to be explained has found its way
 into the explanation," homuncular-style.

 Burke's placement of the origin of language in "negative"
 intuition, the precise analogue to Deacon's "absential
 feature" that infuses and superintends the "intentionality"
 and "purpose" that contemporary materialisms try to explain
 away, but so often include in their explanations as
 unacknowledged "placeholders," reinforces Deachon's take,
 and vice versa.



 Ed


 --------------------------------------------
 On Tue, 8/12/14, Edward C Appel <edwardcappel at frontier.com>
 wrote:

  Subject: Re: [KB] Deacon's
 Neo-Aristotelian
 Complication    of
 Simple    Action/Motion
  To: "wessr at onid.orst.edu"
 <wessr at onid.orst.edu>
  Cc: "kb at kbjournal.org"
 <kb at kbjournal.org>
  Date: Tuesday, August 12, 2014, 12:09 PM

  Burkophiles,

      Before I start beating this horse again,
  I want to call attention to a new book based on Burke I
 just
  received in the mail.  It’s entitled, The
  Continuation War 1941-1944 as a Metanoic Moment: A Burkean
  Reading of Finnish Clerical Rhetoric.  The study is the
  doctoral dissertation of Jouni Tilli, done at a university
  in Finland the name of which escapes me.  Published by
  Peter Lang in Frankfort, it’s a really neat tome.  I
  read Jouni’s dissertation and made some comments before
 he
  defended it in front of Clarke Rountree, Jouni’s
 examiner
  at the oral.  Jouni’s handle on Burke was so deft and
  broad, I thought surely he had had some mentor along the
  way, steeped in Burke .  Not so.  Jouni had picked
  up dramatism on his own, via his wide reading in the
  originals and in North American secondary scholarship.
  I was impressed, and still am.

      Jouni attended the conference in St.
  Louis.  He and his estimable dissertation/book add to
  the ever-widening influence Burke studies are having in
  Europe.

      Back, I hope briefly, to Deacon, Bateson,
  Burke, and action/motion.  Burke’s “agent-minus”
  serves well enough as an overall bridging term for
 nonverbal
  biological “organisms” as intermediate between
 insensate
  physical materials and forces, and us symbolizing gals and
  guys.  But it is an airy abstraction.  How does it
  address the action/motion quandary?

          No doubt a “blink” is
  motion, Burke style.  It surely involves a “because
  of,” and only a “because of.”  We don’t even
  realize it’s happening.  A “wink,” on the other
  hand, is dramatic action.  It manifests an “in order
  to” that’s not only a raw purpose of some kind.  A
  wink is an end-seeking act that also places the
  “winker,” however marginally or precariously, in a
  socially rule-governed context that could bring him a
 rebuke
  of some kind, a “cold shoulder,” a mild moral
  ego-hurtful setback, exiguous “passion” of a sort that
  so often results from such “action.”

          The operation of “negative
  entropy” in nonverbal biological life Bateson talks
 about,
  the “absential feature” Deacon vouchsafes in respect
  even to “simple life forms,” cognizance of a
  “difference” that “makes a difference” in respect
 to
  “trial and error”-type changed behavior that leads to
  “teleodynamic” (Deacon) “preference” and
  “correctiveness” (Batesaon), looks very much like an
  “in order to,” not a mere “because
  of.”   It’s a nondramatic “in order
  to.”  No moral aggrandizement beckons, no moral
  jeopardy threatens---or motivates---whatsoever.

          But that Bateson/Deacon
  nonverbal animal “activity” looks very much like an
  “in order to,” a raw, morally innocent “in order
  to,” but an “in order to” still. And Burke’s
  disquisition on the “fish” in P&C would seem to
  corroborate.

      I just reiterate here.

      The question stands as something of a
  theoretical probe.


      Ed



  --------------------------------------------
  On Mon, 8/11/14, Edward C Appel <edwardcappel at frontier.com>
  wrote:

   Subject: Re: [KB] Deacon's Neo-Aristotelian
  Complication    of
  Simple    Action/Motion
   To: "wessr at onid.orst.edu"
  <wessr at onid.orst.edu>
   Cc: "kb at kbjournal.org"
  <kb at kbjournal.org>
   Date: Monday, August 11, 2014, 8:11 PM

   Thanks a bunch for calling attention
   to that passage, Bob.  I've got it underlined in my
   ancient and tattered copy of GM, but forgot about it
 long
   since.  "Agent-minus" is a very serviceable
 descriptive
   for the beings that stand between the more
 unambiguously
   inanimate materials moved by insensate physical
 forces,
  and
   the marginally "free," we think, guilt-obsessed
  symbolizers
   we are.  What's noted by the "minus" is the absence
 of
   moral drama, "interference" (RM) with more
 spontaneous
   causes in nature, spontaneous animal impulses,
 spontaneous
   tendencies and inclinations generic to, say, primates
 in
   general.

   It's an entitlement to build on.



   Ed
   --------------------------------------------
   On Mon, 8/11/14, wessr at onid.orst.edu
   <wessr at onid.orst.edu>
   wrote:

    Subject: Re: [KB] Deacon's Neo-Aristotelian
  Complication
   of    Simple    Action/Motion
    To: "Edward C Appel" <edwardcappel at frontier.com>
    Cc: "Carrol Cox" <cbcox at ilstu.edu>,
   "Herbert W. Simons" <hsimons at temple.edu>,
   "DavidPayne" <dpayne at usf.edu>,
   "kb at kbjournal.org"
   <kb at kbjournal.org>
    Date: Monday, August 11, 2014, 6:20 PM

    Ed, perhaps add another passage to
    those under consideration, this one
    from the Grammar, page 157:

    "In reducing all phenomena to terms of motion,
  biology is
    as
    unambiguously scenic as physics. But as soon as it
    encounters the
    subject of self-movement, it makes claims upon the
  areas
    covered by
    our term agent. We have improvised a solution, for
  our
    purposes, by
    deciding that the biologist's word, "organism," is
    Grammatically the
    equivalent of `agent-minus.'"

    Bob

    Quoting Edward C Appel <edwardcappel at frontier.com>:

    > But the question I am asking, David, is not the
  one
    that has to do
    > with what Burke says here in "Terministic
  Screens"
    concerning the
    > difference between "persons" and "things," in
  regard
   to
    possible
    > "negative intuition" of some kind.  The
  question
    has to do with the
    > difference between us symbolizers and nonverbal
    animals, in respect
    > to negative intuition of some kind, and the
  possible
    difference
    > between the so-called "motion" of those life
  forms
   and
    that of
    > inanimate matter.  That's the focal problem, if
  we
    are to credit
    > both Deacon and Bateson---and I would say, too,
  the
    Burke of the
    > opening of P&C---on the subject of
  negativity, a
    possible "absential
    > feature," trial and error, self-correctiveness
  of a
    sort, can we say
    > "purpose"?
    >
    > And by the way, we don't treat dogs and chimps
  and
   some
    other
    > pets/work animals exactly like ocean waves,
   electrical
    impulses, the
    > wind or the rain.  I'm surely not saying the
    symbolic dislocations
    > of 200,000 years ago ware not profound.  I'll
    reference Chapter 6 in
    > my book on the "Anthropology of Dramatic
  Action." 
    I'm asking
    > whether Deacon and Bateson are on to something
  in
    respect to our
    > doctrinaire labeling of the "activity" of
  animals,
    particularly the
    > "higher" ones, as "motion" not to be
  distinguished
   from
    the
    > "motions" of the cosmos.
    >
    >
    >
    > Ed
    > --------------------------------------------
    > On Mon, 8/11/14, Payne, David <dpayne at usf.edu>
    wrote:
    >
    >  Subject: RE: [KB] Deacon's Neo-Aristotelian
    Complication
    > of    Simple
    Action/Motion
    >  To: "Edward C Appel" <edwardcappel at frontier.com>,
    "Carrol Cox" 
    > <cbcox at ilstu.edu>,
    "Herbert W. Simons" <hsimons at temple.edu>
    >  Cc: "kb at kbjournal.org"
    <kb at kbjournal.org>
    >  Date: Monday, August 11, 2014, 2:21 PM
    >
    >  As far as
    >  "elaboration of its meaning" goes, I submit
    >  Burke's own explanation  in Terministic
  Screens
    (LAS p.
    >  53):
    >
    >  I should make it
    >  clear: I am not pronouncing on the metaphysics
  of
    the
    >  controversy. Maybe we are but things in
  motion.
    I don’t
    >  have to haggle about that possibility. I need
  but
    point out
    >  that whether or not we are just things in
  motion,
    we think
    >  of one another (and especially of those with
  whom
    we are
    >  intimate) as persons. And the difference
  between
    a thing and
    >  a person is that one moves whereas the other
    acts.  For the
    >  sake of the argument, I’m even willing to
  grant
    that the
    >  distinction between things moving and persons
    acting is but
    >  an illusion.  All I would claim is that,
    illusion or not,
    >  the human race could not get along with itself
  on
    the basis
    >  of any other kind of intuition.  The human
    animal, as we
    >  know it, emerges into personality by first
    mastering
    >  whatever tribal speech happens to be its
    particular symbolic
    >  environment.
    >
    >  David
    >  Payne
    >
    >
    >  ________________________________________
    >  From:
    >  kb-bounces at kbjournal.org
    >  <kb-bounces at kbjournal.org>
    >  on behalf of Edward C Appel <edwardcappel at frontier.com>
    >  Sent: Monday, August 11, 2014 1:24 PM
    >  To: Carrol Cox; Herbert W. Simons
    >  Cc: kb at kbjournal.org
    >  Subject: Re: [KB] Deacon's Neo-Aristotelian
    >  Complication of     Simple
  Action/Motion
    >
    >  Burkophiles,
    >
    >          Actually, it’s
    >  not a gloss on the blink and the wink
  distinction
    that may
    >  be called for.  It’s modification of
    Burke’s
    >  action/motion pair, or a needed elaboration
  of
    its
    >  meaning.
    >
    >          So way
    >  back when, Jim Chesebro criticized Burke’s
    stinting on
    >  nonverbal motivations, and I did not, at the
    time, think
    >  through the full implications of that
  caveat.
    Deacon’s
    >  tour de force points up that possible problem
    with a sharper
    >  differentiation between mechanistic causation
  and
    the
    >  dynamical dislocations that came with
  nonverbal
    living
    >  beings and the possibly teleological,
    “absential”
    >  dimensions of process they introduced to the
    ecology of
    >  planet earth.
    >
    >          I
    >  label Deacon’s analysis
    “Neo-Aristotelian.”  As Burke
    >  emphasizes (Appendix A, Dramatism and
    Development, p. 58),
    >  “Aristotle’s concept of the entelechy . .
  .
    could be
    >  applied to any being or ‘substance,’ such
  as
    an amoeba
    >  or tree . . . .  In these pages . . . we are
    concerned
    >  solely with a ‘logological’ tendency
    intrinsic to the
    >  resources of SYMBOLIC ACTION.”
    >
    >          But can we usefully and uniformly
    >  conflate the “nonsymbolic motion” of
  stars,
    planets,
    >  oceans, and atoms, on the one hand, and
  whatever
    it is
    >  living animals in the wild are capable of, on
  the
    other?
    >  Are there some attributes these “lower”
    creatures share
    >  with us symbolizers that Burke’s dramatism
    deflects
    >  attention from, terministic screen that it
  is,
    and that
    >  Burke acknowledges (PLF, 124; LASA, 44-62).
    >
    >          Burke surely hints
    >  at a chasmic difference between the
    “motions,” if we can
    >  still call them that, of fish, and the motions
  of
    stars,
    >  planets, and moons.  He describes fish,
  indeed
    “All
    >  Living Things,” as “critics” of their
    environment,
    >  capable of “the changed behavior that goes
  with
    a new
    >  meaning” (P&C, p. 5).  The “new
    meaning” in the
    >  experience of the fish he talks about is
    “’jaw-ripping
    >  food’” in the form of a fisherman’s
  bait.
    Fish might
    >  steer clear of a lure like that after such a
    trauma.
    >  Nonverbal animals can thus learn, can strive,
  so
    to speak,
    >  in a different direction than they did in the
    past.  The
    >  “absential feature,” Deacon’s term, the
    >  “difference” in future experience that
    “makes a
    >  difference,” will be some “preferred
  state”
    which will
    >  “activate the corrective response,”
  namely, a
    bite into
    >  fish food that doesn’t have the hook.
    >
    >          I quote in that last sentence
  from
    >  Steps to an Ecology of Mind, by Gregory
  Bateson
    (Ballantine,
    >  1972, 381).  That “difference” that
  “makes
    a
    >  difference” in generating
  “preference”
    is
    >  “information” derived via “negative
    entropy,”
    >  according to Bateson, “information” an
    important term
    >  for Deacon in respect to the “absential
    feature,” or
    >  absential “functioning.”  Bateson’s
    “negative
    >  entropy” results, one presumes, in a
  “lack
    of
    >  predictability” of the kind that
  characterizes
    a
    >  mechanistic system (see “entropy” in the
    Shorter O.E.D.,
    >  6th Edition, Vol. 1).
    >
    > 
    >      “Let me list,” Bateson says,
  “what
    seem to me to
    >  be those essential minimal characteristics of
  a
    system,
    >  which I will accept as characteristics of
    mind”:
    >  (1)     A “system” operating
    >  “with and upon DIFFERENCES.”
    >  (2)
    >  “Closed loops or networks of pathways”
    transmitting
    >  “news of a difference.”
    >  (3)
    >  “Many events within the system . . .
  energized
    by the
    >  respondent part,” not just the
  “triggering
    part.”
    >  (4)      The system “showing
    >  self-correctiveness,” self-correctiveness
    implying
    >  “trial and error” (482).
    >
    >          Borrowing terms from something
  Carl
    >  Jung wrote, who in turn got
    >  these notions
    >  from the second-century Gnostic Basilides,
    Bateson contrasts
    >  operations in the “PLEROMA” and those in
  the
    >  “CREATURA.”  “The pleroma knows nothing
  of
    difference
    >  and distinction,” Bateson avers.  “It
    contains no
    >  ‘ideas’ in the sense I am using the
    word.”  “In the
    >  creatura, effects are brought about precisely
  by
    >  difference.  In fact, this is the same old
    dichotomy
    >  between mind and substance” (456).
    >
    >          Now, if we’re going to credit
    >  nonverbal animals---let’s soften the blow,
  for
    the sake of
    >  argument, by referencing those on an advanced
    level of
    >  development in particular---if we’re going
  to
    ascribe to
    >  such nonverbals, activity motivated by a sense
  of
    a negative
    >  of some kind, we have to characterize that
    negative
    >  intuition differently.  Those denizens of
  the
    >  “creatura” are not “MORALIZED by the
    negative”
    >  (LASA, 9-13, 16).  Or, as I’ve put it
  (1993a,
    1993b,
    >  2012), nonverbal animals would have no
  conception
    of the
    >  “infinite negative,” the global negative
  that
    confers
    >  guilt and shame upon a weak and finite being
  that
    has nary a
    >  chance of measuring up to its vision of
    “perfection.”
    >
    >          Thus, a second
    >  “dislocation” of chasmic proportions in
  the
    evolution of
    >  beings on planet earth.
    >
    > 
    >        That’s enough to chew on for now,
    except to pose
    >  this question: Do these ruminations suggest a
    need for
    >  modifying Burke’s perhaps simplistic
    action/motion
    >  dialectic in any way?  Is some intermediate
    notion called
    >  for, in respect to the nonverbal
  “creatura”?
    >
    >          I forwarded to
    >  Terrence W. Deacon some of the things I’ve
    posted on his
    >  book.  He has answered back.  He is
  interested
    in dialogue
    >  with us on these matters.  I have asked
    permission to post
    >  his reply on kb, and will do so if granted
  that
    request.
    >  Professor Deacon is on vacation now, and,
    currently, mostly
    >  away from e-mail.
    >
    > 
    >    Have a good day, everyone!
    >
    >
    >          Ed
    >
    >
    >  --------------------------------------------
    >  On Sat, 8/9/14, Edward C Appel <edwardcappel at frontier.com>
    >  wrote:
    >
    >   Subject: Re: [KB]
    >  Deacon's Neo-Aristotelian Complication of
    Simple
    >     Action/Motion
    >   To:
    >  "Carrol Cox" <cbcox at ilstu.edu>,
    >  "Herbert W. Simons" <hsimons at temple.edu>
    >   Cc: kb at kbjournal.org
    >   Date: Saturday, August 9, 2014, 3:48
    PM
    >
    >   Burkophiles,
    >
    >       At a Burke
    >  panel at
    >   ECA, Portland Maine, 1992, Jim
    >  Chesebro raised an objection
    >   to Burke that
    >  is possibly pertinent to the basic
    >
    >  action/motion distinction Herb just
  reiterated,
    and
    >  surely
    >   complicated by Terrence
    >  Deacon.   A lacuna in
    >   dramatism
    >  is the failure to take cognizance of
  nonverbal
    >   motives, Jim offered.  At the time,
    I
    >  surmised that Jim
    >   meant the classic motion
    >  of chemical processes of the kind
    >   Jerome
    >  Kagan (Harvard social scientist) examined in
  his
    >   book, Galen’s Prophecy: Temperament
    in Human
    >  Nature
    >   (BasicBooks, 1994, Kagan’s
    >  research updated in a fairly
    >   recent NYT
    >  Magazine piece).  Kagan homed in on human
    >
    >  anxiety.  It is aggravated by an excess of
    >  norepinephrine,
    >   a neurochemical, in the
    >  baso-lateral area of the amygdala,
    >   and in
    >  its projections to cortical and autonomic
    targets.
    >   From such motions of nature derive
    inhibition,
    >  melancholia,
    >   and neurosis, Kagan
    >  convincingly argues.
    >
    > 
    >     I didn’t much credit Jim’s
  naysaying
    >   at the time.  Burke was a philosopher
    and
    >  critic of the
    >   human drama, that aspect of
    >  observable behavior that, in one
    >   way or
    >  other, cannot be reduced to the motions of
    nature,
    >   and will boldly manifest its
    uniqueness in
    >  anthropological
    >   terms (see Chapter 6 in the
    >  Primer).  Sure, an
    >   individual’s
    >  characteristic “drama” will be modified,
    >   perhaps radically, by those
    “chemisms,” to
    >  use Theodore
    >   Dreiser’s word.  Burke
    >  gives enough heed to such
    >   influences,
    >  thought I, in his description of the way
    >
    >  different folks will react to the same
  stimuli,
    identical
    >   scenic pressures and circumstances
    (GM).  No
    >  need for
    >   elaborated neurochemistry, however
    >  germane in a scientific
    >   context.
    >
    >       Deacon, I
    >   believe, challenges this chink in
    Burke’s
    >  thought in the
    >   sense of how to handle, what
    >  to call, the kind of
    >   nonsymbolic
    >  “motion”---isn’t that what Burke calls
    >   it?---of what are commonly labeled
    the
    >  “lower”
    >   animals.  In what might be
    >  denominated Neo-Aristotelian
    >   fashion,
    >  Deacon “outline[s] . . . a theory of
  emergent
    >   dynamics that shows how dynamical
    processes
    >  can become
    >   organized around and with
    >  respect to possibilities not
    >   realized.
    >  This is intended to provide the scaffolding
  for
    >   a conceptual bridge from mechanistic
    >  relationships to
    >   end-directed,
    >  informational, and normative relationships
    >
    >  such as are found in simple life forms [and,
  a
    fortiori,
    >  in
    >   primates and mammals in general!].”
    >
    >       Recall that
    >  in my first post on his
    >   book, I emphasized
    >  Deacon’s insistence on two
    >
    >  “dislocations” in earth’s evolutionary
    history, not
    >   just one.   “Natural
    >  teleology,”
    >   “teleodynamics” to use
    >  Deacon’s neologism, would
    >   certainly
    >  characterize the putative transition from
    >
    >  prokaryotic bacteria to eukaryotic bacteria
    around 2.6
    >   billion years ago, at the onset of
    the
    >  Proterozoic Eon.
    >   Something radically new
    >  came to planet earth:
    >   nuclei-possessing,
    >  oxygen-producing, photo-synthesizing
    >
    >  single-celled animals that pumped that oxygen
    into the
    >   oceans and then the atmosphere,
    changed the
    >  color of the
    >   water and likely the sky,
    >  generated the life-sustaining
    >   qualities of
    >  sea, land, and atmosphere, including the
  ozone
    >   shield, indeed transformed earth into
    the
    >  “miracle”
    >   planet nothing we’ve
    >  discovered out there in space likely
    >   comes
    >  close to.  (I think of have this scenario
    roughly
    >   correct,)
    >
    > 
    >     Two
    >   billion years later,
    >  after the hiatus of “Snowball
    >   Earth”
    >  had passed, the “Cambrian Explosion”
  could
    >   begin.
    >
    > 
    >     The Gaia guru
    >   Lovelock said
    >  it was the radically different composition of
    >   earth’s atmosphere---21 percent
    oxygen, 76
    >  percent
    >   nitrogen, 3 percent all the other
    >  stuff, including the
    >   growing concentration
    >  of carbon dioxide---that clued him
    >   into his
    >  notion of a kind of living planet Earth.
  Both
    >   Venus and Mars?  About 97 percent
    carbon
    >  dioxide in both
    >   cases, albeit with
    >  strikingly different concentrations.
    >
    >       Back to Herb’s
    >   blink and one-eyed wink next time,
    with,
    >  perhaps, a gloss
    >   that Deacon’s Incomplete
    >  Nature might suggest.
    >
    >
    >   Ed
    >
    >
    >
    >
    >  --------------------------------------------
    >   On Sat, 8/9/14, Herbert W. Simons
    <hsimons at temple.edu>
    >   wrote:
    >
    > 
    >  Subject: Re: [KB]
    >   (no subject)
    >    To: "Carrol Cox"
    >
    >  <cbcox at ilstu.edu>
    >    Cc: kb at kbjournal.org
    >    Date: Saturday, August 9, 2014, 10:03 AM
    >
    >    A
    >
    >   theoretical explanation provides an
    answer to
    >  a why
    >   question
    >    in a
    >  thought experiment. Example:
    >   Gilbert Ryle
    >  asked the
    >    question: What's
    >   the difference between a wink and a
    >
    >   one-eyed blink? His answer
    >  took him to the mind-brain
    >    distinction
    >  and could have taken KB to
    >   action-motion.
    >  WINKS
    >    ARE DONE IN ORDER TO;
    >   BLINKS TO BECAUSE OF.
    >
    >
    >
    >    On Fri,
    >  Aug 8, 2014 at
    >    10:46 PM, Carrol Cox
    >  <cbcox at ilstu.edu>
    >    wrote:
    >
    > 
    >  (You
    >   need to click "Reply All";
    >  otherwise it goes
    >    to the post's
    >  sender
    >
    >    rather than to
    >  kb.)
    >
    >
    >
    >    I'm
    >   interested in your
    >  somewhat cryptic message because
    >    on
    >  another list I am
    >
    > 
    >  writing on the difference between theory on
    >
    >  the one hand and
    >    "what needs to
    >
    >    be explained" on
    >  the
    >   other. And involved in that is a
    >
    >   differentiation
    >
    >    between
    >
    >  empirical generalization and theoretical
    >
    >   EXPLANATION.
    >
    >
    >
    >    Carrol
    >
    >
    >
    >
    >
    > 
    >  -----Original
    >   Message-----
    >
    >    From: kb-bounces at kbjournal.org
    >    [mailto:kb-bounces at kbjournal.org]
    >    On Behalf
    >
    >
    >   Of de gava
    >
    >    Sent: Friday,
    >   August 08, 2014 9:34 PM
    >
    >
    >   To: kb at kbjournal.org
    >
    >    Subject: [KB] (no
    >   subject)
    >
    >
    >
    >    I think I can add to
    >  this
    >   discussion. In earlier days I
    >    replied to
    >   the
    >
    >    emails I received but
    >   they went to Ed so to kick off I'd
    >    like
    >   to test
    >
    >    kb at kbjournal.org
    >   as
    >    an address to the e-list
    >  and ask if
    >   anyone has looked
    >
    >    closely
    >
    >  into the nature of 'explanations'. More to
    >    follow perhaps.
    >
    >
    >
    >
    >
    > 
  _______________________________________________
    >
    >    KB mailing list
    >
    >    KB at kbjournal.org
    >
    >    http://kbjournal.org/mailman/listinfo/kb_kbjournal.org
    >
    >
    >
    >
    >
    >
    >
    >
    >
    > 
  _______________________________________________
    >
    >    KB mailing list
    >
    >    KB at kbjournal.org
    >
    >    http://kbjournal.org/mailman/listinfo/kb_kbjournal.org
    >
    >
    >
    >
    >    --
    > 
    >  Herbert
    >   W.
    >    Simons,
    >  Ph.D.
    >    Emeritus
    >   Professor
    >  of
    >    Communication
    >
    >   Dep't of  Strategic
    > 
    >  Communication,
    >   Weiss Hall 215
    >    Temple
    >
    >
    >  University, Philadelphia 19122
    >    Home
    >   phone:
    >    215 844 5969
    >
    >    http://astro.temple.edu/~hsimons
    >    Academic Fellow, Center for
    >  Transformative
    >    Strategic Initiatives
    >  (CTSI)
    >
    >
    >
    >
    >
    >   -----Inline
    >  Attachment Follows-----
    >
    >
    >
    > 
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    >
    >
    >
    > 
  _______________________________________________
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    >   http://kbjournal.org/mailman/listinfo/kb_kbjournal.org
    >
    >
    > 
  _______________________________________________
    >  KB mailing list
    >  KB at kbjournal.orghttp://kbjournal.org/mailman/listinfo/kb_kbjournal.org
    >
    >
    > _______________________________________________
    > KB mailing list
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    > http://kbjournal.org/mailman/listinfo/kb_kbjournal.org
    >


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