6 tweets · June 2019 · 27 likes · 2 retweets · read on Twitter
One model I've found myself dancing with over the past few years is called More than Cool Reason: "Withness-thinking or "systemic thinking" and "thinking *about* systems" Withness and aboutness are two very different modes of thinking! PDF: lchc.ucsd.edu/mca/Mail/xmcam…
When I first read this article, sometime in 2014 probably, I was still pretty hardcore rationalist, and so I found a lot of the remarks in there pretty challenging to engage with because they threatened my rationalist eternalist stance!
Of course, at that time I hadn't read meaningness.com either, and might have found it pretty threatening too. Although in 2016 it was a major factor in allowing me to relax my grip on rationalism as such.
More recently, my grip has been further relaxed by Iain McGilchrist's work on the profound differences in the worldviews of the left & right brain hemispheres. 📖🧠 It's very clear to me that 👉LH is aboutness-oriented 🤝RH is withness-oriented Gripping itself is LH/aboutness!
Seriously, the left hemisphere's denotative language center is right next to the part of the brain that handles hand-action. Moreover (see excerpts) "I've got a grasp on X" = "X is now my tool (in concept-space or physical space) that I can use to manipulate the world."
The last excerpt in previous tweet points at this aboutness/withness distinction in an incredibly pure way: LH-aboutness: "subjects with RH damage tend to grasp anything within reach" RH-withness: "hands [...] seeking not to remain isolated...trying to find companionship"