Consilience 5 & 6

We had a special guest today in our dialogue, Chris Lingle. We started out by telling him what the MPC is all about and our rubrics, amongst other stuff.

We mostly talked about chapter 6. Starting out by how consciousness works as a spontaneous order. None of us really had a choice to have a  consciousness or not, and if there is an actual purpose for it?

We also talked about how we are hard-wired with preferences, so we really don't have free will. We believe that we are really choosing things, but we are really not because all of those inclinations and preferences come with us. So do we really have free will? Wilson says that because he mind can't be fully known and predicted, one believes that we have free will. Wilson also believes that if we find the truth about the mind, it will deteriorate us and slow us down.

The last thing we talked about was memory. If one has no memory, one is not capable of making decisions. What are the limits to human action without memory? Without memory we wouldn't really be able to tell reality.

A Not So Morning Meeting

Todays morning meeting was different. We didn't assign a facilitator so no one led it, but I still think it was one of the best ones we have had so far. We started by saying some announcements and then moved on to other topics. There were 6 people missing, so we talked about ideas to implement ways or to talk to them in order for them to stop missing morning meetings. I made the comment that I feel like our culture is actually becoming worse. I wonder if it is because we are all tired or people just don't take it seriously.
For agora we followed up on our family time. Instead of talking 30 seconds we started asking questions. We ended up talking about the security that the university brings us, with its morals and everything.

3D Illusions

Todays morning meeting was led by Javier Tabush. He had planned for us some optical illusions, that when you don't really focus on the picture, you can see a  3D image. I found this activity very interesting, although I didn't really quite get it at first. It took me while (until the 3rd image) to see the 3D object.

After todays morning meeting, we decided that we were going to get to know each other a bit more, so we had 30 seconds to tell something about ourselves that no one else really knew. I said where and when I was born, that I traveled a lot as a kid, that I am missing 5 states to have seen them all and that I am afraid of crickets.
Some of the stuff that the rest told that I found interesting are these:
-Alejo likes to snowboard.
-Javiers Tabush´s last name was changed.
-Mabe´s family was escaping the mafia.
-Lucia is afraid of frogs.

I really liked this activity because although we have been with each other for 40 or more hours a week for two months, we dont really know anything about each other. I think getting to know everybody more personally is a step that we can take to make us feel like a real family.

Arne Dietrich

Today we had a surprise visit from Arne, the lecturer from last weeks conference Nailing Jelly To The Wall. Arne is a neuroscientist who specializes in creativity and consciousness. He is also a professor of theoretical neuroscience at the American University in Beirut, Lebanon.

We started out by talking about the MPC. We went over our rubrics, our books, our essays and our curriculum, amongst many other things. We were all impressed because he was the first visiting professor who actually commented specifically about our rubrics.

We then started talking about his career and how we came to study neuroscience. He told us that he had always had an interest for human behavior and he has always had a scientific mind. He ended up  in neuroscience because it is the most scientific area in psychology. He got interested in creativity because it is the highest of all cognitive functions. It is what makes us higher  and smarter that the rest of the animals and also because human beings barely know anything about creativity and consciousness.

We later started talking of how neuroscience and told us a few spoilers of what might happen in the future (such as people control in our brain).

Apology 1.

Our classical studies dialogue today was The Apology by Plato. It is the text that follows Euthyphro. We spent most of the dialogue trying to figure out what Socrates was doing in these first couple of pages (until page 5). We agreed that in these first couple of pages Socrates is establishing the backgorund and context of his accusations in order to start his defence. He is making a claim that what he is saying is true and what the rest are saying is untrue. 

More specifically he agreed that these where the things he was doing during his opening.

• -Separating accusations into two. (defense structure).
• -Stating his accusations
• -This is a debate, not a dialogue. 
• -Trying to put everyone on the same page.
• -Making a case that the whole event that they´re going to have is illegitimate. (parragraph 18 b)
• -He is stating that he is not eloquent and is not trying to impress people with facny words. He says that he is only eloquent if eloquent means speaking the truth. 
• -Socrates says that we need to see him as a stranger. 
• -Brings us to a notion of justice. 
• -People were raised on storys and rumors about him, so they are arguing against their conception of him, not really on their experience with them.  Same think kant is telling us.... Why is it so easy for others to set themselves up as guardians? Because we are in nonage. We are unable to use our own understanding so we rely on the understanding of others. 
• -He tells us what a proper teacher is. "what is a good teacher?"

Advices Socrates give:
1. do not speak ornamented, speak the truth, speak what you really know.
2. when you are  really listening to someone, listen to him as if he were a stranger. (because they become blind to what people are really trying to say).
3. What we think we know will be an obstacle to hearing the truth.

Is the truth automatically just?
the first thing for good judgement is that you need the truth, though he gives no standard for justice.
So socrates job is to tell the truth.

Claim socrates makes: he is a human.
He is a human being. The only wisdom he can have is the wisdom a human being can have. So what is human wisdom?

Classical Music

Todays morning meeting was led by Johan. At the beginning I was kind of frustrated because Johan wasn't really ready, he didn't check the sound when he came in, and of course it didn't work, so we had agora first and then we had the morning meeting.
Once we got the sound working, Johan showed us a TED talk about classical music. I have to say, this has been my favorite video so  far. I really enjoyed it. The main point of the video was how people don't really know how to appreciate classical music. Personally, I love classical music so I think I enjoyed it even more.

Nailing Jelly To The Wall

On reposition friday we went to a conference by Arne Dietrich, who is a neuroscientist. The name of his conference was Trying to nail jelly to the wall, where in the brain is  creativity? 
This is an investigation he has been working on, hunting for cognitive and emotional mechanisms. and how creativity distinguishes human beings from other animals. He divided his presentation into parts: theoretical duds, the evidence and the 4-fold path. 

Theoretical duds:
Creative people are not only those who can paint, compose music or create new things. In economics, technology, history and many other fields, creative people made things happen and made advances and discovery. 
As commonly believed, creativity is not on the right side of the brain. One can´t actually locate creativity in the brain, it is a holistic brain function. 

The evidence: 

• Divergent thinking: generating as many answers as one can. The problem with divergent thinking is that one isolates the process that generates the creativity process. 
• Artistic creativity: design, music and painting. What makes these creative? There are no findings that they come from creativity. 
• Insight events: active and passive insight. Understanding the problem.

The 4-fold pass:

The same neural networks that compute non.novel information are also those that compute variation or novel combinations of that information. Creativity is embedded in every neuro circuit. Everything generates novelty, that is why we cant locate creativity in the brain. 

There are two criteria for creativity: novelty and usefulness. 

There are two ways to have creative ideas: deliberate and spontaneous.