Two-Minute Zen: Your Big Bang

Can you remember when the universe was only a 1 inch cube, and time was timeless?  I do not mean the big bang - I mean your big bang - your birth.  At this moment the universe for you was tiny beyond measurement.  You received inputs to your senses but had not yet mapped them into the world beyond your mind.  Had you heard the song of a bird, the notes would have rang as if the bird was right next to your head, for that is exactly where the sound was (and is) registered.  You had not yet learned to distinguish far or near.  Your universe, was you.

The bird is in the tree, all on its own.  But the bird is also in the tree because we put it there.  It is both in the world and constructed in our mind.

If we put the bird in the tree - what else do we put in that scene?  Everything.  Down to the very birdness of birds.  And beyond to judgements.

In meditation, we can strip our universes of all their essence, all our judgements.  We can even strip the universe of space and time.

So go.  Hear birds.  Hear the birds in the world.  Hear the birds in your mind.  Even if just for a moment, reverse your big bang, and unlearn far and near.  Unlearn the universe.  Unlearn yourself.

The Phenomenology of Animal Tracking

What is the relevance of Phenomenology in elucidating mind in the 21st century, when elucidating mind is increasingly accomplished via neuroscience and artificial intelligence? I will compare Merleau-Ponty’s World War II era work to a modern attempt at modeling the mind (Hierarchical Temporal Memory) and show that Merleau-Ponty anticipates, albeit roughly, some of its key findings. In doing so, I will also contribute to Philosophy of Mind by offering a plausible evolutionary pathway and mechanism for the production of consciousness (maps-of-maps hypothesis). An additional thread running throughout will be animal tracking as a type of Phenomenological exercise with a surprise impact on cognitive evolution.

[reading time: 20 minutes]

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