Winter, Please God, Winter
The heat, best friend to sleep, is on my head,
and down and down my eyelids fall like lead,
and who shall say
that bright-crowned day
is not a better time than night to be abed?
Let the breezes try to cool me. They shall fail
to 'bate the Texas heat; for damned souls wail
when Texas air
increases care
by chasing out the cooler winds of hell.
Facetious souls may think me like them here.
I will not know until my thinking clears
from heatful winds
that, hateful, send
these curses, flames that boil, broil, roast, and sear.
Wednesday, September 05, 2012
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Anonymous
0 points
13 years ago
What would it mean to "think with one's body"?
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branemrys
0 points
13 years ago
The real question is what it would mean not to think with one's body. Some ways in which we do:
- We estimate heights relative to eye-level.
- Goal-directed movement involves constant kinaesthetic feedback -- it's not a mere brain-to-hand thing, for instance, but a complex interaction.
- We develop motor learning skills.
- We count with our fingers, thus using our bodies directly as cognitive instruments.
- When trying to rotate imaginary shapes, we can use our hands to simulate the rotation, thus keeping track of the sides.
- When trying to understand what someone else's feelings are, it often helps to go physically through the same motions and facial expressions.
- We make use of 'gut feelings'.
- We analogize things to our bodies (Roger Scruton has some good discussion of this, if I recall correctly, in the context of music).
In other words, we measure with our bodies, simulate with our bodies, train our bodies to give the right solutions to problems, use our bodies as metaphors, not to mention sense with them. The list could be made very long. Despite the fact that we do this a lot, we don't do it very systematically, nor do we take full advantage of the potential. And despite that only very specific kinds of cognitive activity, a much smaller number than our full cognitive panoply, can be located wholly in the brain, we still tend to think of ourselves as stuck inside our skulls somehow. But when I am counting with my fingers, my cognitive act of counting is not in the brain; it's a brain-nervous system-muscular system interaction involving brain, arm, and hand.
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branemrys
0 points
13 years ago
Hmm. MrsDarwin had a comment, but it seems to have bypassed Disqus somehow. Here it is:
I was going to protest "Love is drama", but on further consideration this makes sense. Drama is change, and love (at least human love) requires constant change and alteration to thrive. Even an externally happy, peaceful love demands constant internal self-abegnation and readjustment of priorities on the part of the individual lovers - "dying to self" is the traditional religious description of the drama of love.
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Anonymous
0 points
13 years ago
For research purposes: sent that comment from my cell phone.