#cartesian

[the-ephemeral-ethereal]

Those who proceed but very slowly can make much greater progress, if they always follow the right path, than those who hurry and stray from it.

from Discourse on the Method by René Descartes 

[mary-of-faust]

On Knowledge

Do the Colours Make the Rainbow?: Knowledge as impropriated fragments of universal absolutes and mathematics as atomic truths

If knowledge is based on a truth, and truth (as we "know" it) is defined as being a universal absolute that we can reach and/or experience through our limited senses and neurocognitive capabilities, then our understanding truth is ultimately limited to how much we can possibly perceive and hence interpret it. The moment an individual reaches a truth, they absorb it, complete it with their apriori, and make it "theirs". This sense of posessiveness is where belief is formed, because it is based on the personalisation of a universal absolute. One person's knowledge of a truth, while based on the same universal absolute, cannot be the same as anybody else's simply because it passes through the filter of their minds as they have been formed with the unique combinations of synaptic nervous tissue. One could debate that there are such simple, undividable atoms of truth that they cannot be fragmented to a smaller piece to be corrupted with the individuality of other people. Perhaps we already found it through mathematics.

My contribution to the discussion of what knowledge is, what it could be, and how much we can have it.

Even then one could debate that the labels we have assigned to things and the concepts of things, be it mathematics of logic and language, can convey only a sliver of the truth that is trying to be captured. By assigning the noun "pen" to a pen, we have chosen one possibility out of the nigh infinite possible combinations of letters that can form logically sensible morphemes. If the infinite potentiality of an object is not captured, can one say that we have truly defined that object?

[rawjeev]

"For several thousand years, the concepts of sacred, holy, and divine have referred increasingly to something separate from nature, the world, and the flesh. Three or four thousand years ago the gods began a migration from the lakes, forests, rivers, and mountains into the sky, becoming the imperial overlords of nature rather than its essence. As divinity separated from nature, so also it became unholy to involve oneself too deeply in the affairs of the world. The human being changed from a living embodied soul into its profane envelope, a mere receptacle of spirit, culminating in the Cartesian mode of consciousness observing the world but not participating in it, and the Newtonian watchmaker-God doing the same. To be divine was to be supernatural, nonmaterial. If God participated in the world at all, it was through miracles — divine intercessions violating or superceding nature's laws."

— Charles Eisenstein, Sacred Economics.

[godsgodnogods]

"Being does not consist in our observing beings."

- Introduction to Metaphysics by Martin Heidegger, page 37, published by Yale University Press

Heidegger writes this stance in other books & essays but here it is in the shortest & simplest words possible. It is very smooth, to the point, & quickly simply solves a problem one hears of all the time. It solves a problem that is repeated so often it's assumed to be a truth: 'How can I know something is real if I've never seen it?', or other variations of this question. I can't exactly recall it but both my teen brothers recently have asked me this question.

It's a nonesense question. This question, consciously or unconsciously, assumes the Human Mind is the bedrock & pinnacle of Being. This question can only blossom from a worldview that begins with: 'I think, therefore I Am.' (Cogito, ergo sum). This is a worldview rooted in doubt: 'I doubt, therefore I am - or what is the same - I think, therefore I am." (Dubito, ergo sum, vel, quod idem est, cogito, ergo sum). This worldview is nonesense. It is good & wonderful to be thinking thoughtfully & to be thoughtfully thinking...but it is horrible that this seed is the one that has blossomed forth into so many minds. At very least it is a worrying worldview I run into all to often.

We must return to the quote quoted above. The two sentences that follow it are: 'The building stands there even if we do not observe it. We can come across it only because it already is.' The editor italicized the last word, "is", to further stress what Heidegger means. Beings & Things either are or they are not. Whether beings & things are or are-not is for them to decide & only them. Being & Things are or are-not regardless of how we encounter them. It is not our observations (& therefore our Thoughts, our "Cogito") that makes reality real. We can remove that worrisome weight off our shoulders. Thinking (Cogito) is a part of us beings & it is how we handle the other beings & things around us, but, it is Being (Sum) itself that sets the state for Thinking (Cogito). We must flip the script.

[europeanorigins]

On Consciousness, Perspective, Constructivism and Morality

On Consciousness, Perspective, Constructivism and Morality

One of the fundamental issues within philosophy is that of human consciousness. What is consciousness, what does it mean to be aware of oneself? In the past it has been identified as a defining trait of humanity to be able to reflect on one’s own thoughts and actions, on that which we call “I” or “the self”. In recent decades in has come to light, however, that at least some animals are…

[suziegallagher]

Breakthrough

It was the language she used that sent me off on a quest; an internal quest. She said “Family of Origin” That’s biological, that’s cells and DNA, sperm & eggs; how I was produced She said “Family of Origin” I don’t do science, I mean I know the basics, but get beyond symbols and combinations and I am a bit lost. It isn’t my subject; CuSO4 is about my limit. She said “Family of Origin” My…

[dearorpheus]

“Your friend, the sheriff, will come soon. Sunup, I believe. He will make a fine first meal for us. His flesh will nurture our body, and your anguish as we consume him will nurture my soul. To say nothing at all of his. [...] as I use your hands to haul forth his smoking entrails, and your mouth to guzzle them down, the repeated orgasms that we will have with your loins will be astounding. You called yourself our livestock, but you’re so much more.”

Cabinet of Curiosities 1.03 | The Autopsy dir. David Prior

[somewhatsentientspellbook]

i feel like the shit quality really enhances the cursed-ness of what i've created

[asaxophony]

I wish I could've recorded our collective screams.

[the-ephemeral-ethereal]

René Descartes on Epicureanism & Stoicism

from Discourse on the Method (1637) 

"I admit that it takes long practice and repeated meditation to become accustomed to seeing everything in this light. In this, I believe, lay the secret of those philosophers who in earlier times were able to escape from the dominion of fortune and, despite suffering and poverty, rival their gods in happiness. Through constant reflection upon the limits prescribed for them by nature, they became perfectly convinced that nothing was in their power but their thoughts, and this alone was sufficient to prevent them from being attracted to other things. Their mastery over their thoughts was so absolute that they had reason to count themselves richer, more powerful, freer and happier than other men who, because they lack this philosophy, never achieve such mastery over all their desires, however favored by nature and fortune they may be.” 

[tofu-bento-box]

alright everyone back at it again. RB for reach if you wouldn’t mind (:

to clarify, this is about how you feel instinctually. i’ve done both too much and too little neuroscience reading to turn this into a scientific debate

[disabledunitypunk]

If a community disability term, such as neurodivergence, contains diagnoses that in your experience are too different to be related, you can opt out of the term, but you do not get to disagree that the term still includes both for other people with those diagnoses.

I don't actually care what the coiner's intentions with a word were that much, beyond, "if even one person finds a wider or more inclusive definition meaningful, the definition expands to encompass their usage of it".

That's descriptivism, the idea that words only exist to be useful to us and that we shape their meaning to that end. It is the counterpart to prescriptivism, the idea that words have concrete, strict, static definitions and that we have to use the right words as accurately as possible and can't use words if they fit badly enough.

"Words have meanings" is a prescriptivist take, but so is "I don't feel neurodivergence includes xyz".

I mean this in a way less aggressive than it sounds, but quite simply, neurodivergence doesn't revolve around your experience of it.

I also find it symptomatic of the extreme cartesian dualist bias most people haven't actually examined that "physical disability" can include everything from neurogenic pain to irritable bowel disease to limb deformities to cardiac issues to asthma to paralysis to visual impairment and more, but neurodivergence and neurodisabilities are often limited to, if not the more palatable and less disordered forms, even just things that are primarily cognitive or emotional in nature.

To explain, cartesian dualism is the idea that there is a separate, nonphysical "mind" from the physical neurological structure of your brain and body - and that therefore essentially mental illness and neurodivergence are sicknesses and differences of an abstract consciousness that is little more than a different word for the idea of a "soul".

It's very disturbing to me that people think that, because we don't fully understand how bioelectrical and chemical processes or neurophysical structure inform the phenotypical presentation of disorders and neurodivergence with an array of cognitive-emotional symptoms, that we can simply just say "eh, it's not physical in the same way physical neurological symptoms are.

Okay, that's a mouthful, but basically, our entire consciousness - emotions, thoughts, the places in our physical bodies we feel our emotions (and store trauma), the physical symptoms of our mental illnesses, and so forth - they all are caused by one of essentially three categories of things.

Either the electrical signals passing between neurons in a certain order and direction, hormones and enzymes and proteins being chemically processed by receptors in brain and other bodily cells (which, it's important to note, mental illness and neurodivergence exist as a conversation between brain cells and other bodily cells), or the actual physical shape of the brain.

From what little we do understand, we know that electrical activity, chemical activity, and physical differences in the brain are responsible in some way for the psychological phenomena we study. We mostly just don't understand exactly HOW.

The similarities between primarily physical neurological conditions and primarily mental neurological conditions is that they are both a result of what is occurring in the neurological system (and to a lesser extent, in where the neurological system interfaces and communicates with other systems).

Migraines, nerve pain, epilepsy, bell's palsy, Parkinson's, tremors, stroke, lateral sclerosis - these are very different from things like bipolar, anxiety, OCD, NPD, AvPD, SzPD, PTSD, DID, autism, schizophrenia, ID, and so on, for many people.

It's why you can opt out of labels like neurodivergence for conditions you don't feel it fits.

But, crucially, you don't get to make that decision and universally define the word for others. The most inclusive definition of the word prevails, because there are people who do find that their experiences with things in each of those category are similar, or so closely related they can't be separated, or simply worth grouping together for the fact they occur in the same bodily system via the same or similar mechanisms.

For me, my chronic pain, my gut health issues, my MCAS, my autism, my anxiety, my PTSD, my DID, my chronic fatigue, my brain fog, my schizophrenia, my ADHD, my tremor, my dysautonomia, my balance issues and struggles with spacial awareness and lack of awareness of my physical body, the alexithymia that I've worked so hard to manage, my language and sensory processing disorders... it's all closely and heavily interrelated.

Some of it causes or worsens other parts (or in some cases is minimally suspected to, but I'm mainly focusing on the ones that inarguably directly cause the others here). My anxiety and PTSD trigger my gut issues. Inflammation from my MCAS triggers my chronic pain and brain fog and POTS and makes my anxiety, depression, and DID worse. My dyspraxia and sensory processing are worse when I'm brain foggy or in pain. Getting excited about special interests can make my tremor worse than anxiety can. This is kind of a weird one, but self-injury from BPD has caused nerve damage. Autism and ADHD cause a large portion of my chronic fatigue.

That's without even getting into where the symptom sets overlap.

Anxiety comes with tachycardia, shortness of breath, feelings of dread/doom, stomach upset, tremors, dysregulation of my sense of temperature, flushing, and more.

POTS comes with... tachycardia, shortness of breath, stomach upset, tremors, dysregulation of my sense of temperature, flushing, and more. And MCAS covers the "feelings of dread/doom", so when they are flaring up together...

Chronic pain is a symptom of depression and PTSD as well as fibromyalgia and nerve damage. Chronic fatigue is a symptom of just about every disability that exists.

Food sensitivities are as likely to be from neurodivergence as from eating disorders (which can be considered neurodivergent) as from GI issues. I see an allergist for my condition which is caused by dysregulation of gastrointestinal cells, which is suspected to potentially be related to trauma, which is also suspected as having a relationship with the dysautonomia present in my POTS, trauma for me which is as much a result of my neurodivergence and the casual ignorant and often nonmalicious ableism ingrained into every facet of society I faced as the abuse I went through. (And some of the abuse was a result of my disabilities, both primarily physical and primarily mental!)

There is no separating it for me. They are not different enough to deny myself a label that acknowledges that and never will be. Neurodivergence and neurodisability (a term I coined) as well are as much for people like me as people who have fully discrete separate symptoms.

I even find the separation of disabilities into "physical" and "psychological" to be a bit of a misdirection. Psychological disabilities are physical. They manifest through physical symptoms. Even emotional symptoms are experienced by the body on a physical level, though a lot of us neurodivergent folks struggle with awareness of that (I know I did and often still do).

Anxiety is often a rapid heart rate and sweating and shortness of breath. Depression is pain and appetite suppression and often low blood pressure. Sadness can be chest pain and throat tightness. Excitement often has near identical physical manifestations as anxiety. Happiness is usually felt throughout the whole body. Sensations of different temperatures, breathing, pulse, and gut functions are most primarily associated with emotion.

"Trust your gut" even means "trust your intuition", meaning your subconscious mental sense of safety vs danger, for this reason.

"My heart plummeted."

"My heart was in my throat."

"My stomach was roiling with nerves."

"I felt a cold sweat on my neck."

"I knew in my gut I could trust her."

These are how people describe emotions.

Even where the symptoms are either not identifiably physical or not experienced as physical in the consciousness (such as thought patterns), they are caused by physical processes in an actual physical organ. Their cause is the same at a fundamental level as a primarily physical symptom such as pain - while they may occur in different locations in the neurological system, or may be triggered by different sets of chemicals, at a basic level they are both physically occurring in the same bodily system.

Even separating out the brain as an organ from the rest of the body has actively limited scientific progress. It's only as modern science has actually been analyzing it in concert with the other bodily systems that it is responsible for both controlling and processing feedback from that large advancements in our understanding of neurology have been made.

The organ responsible for telling every other organ what to do and understanding what happens in every other organ cannot be compartmentalized and analyzed on its own. At least, not if we want any actual useful data.

I often wonder, for people who do have discrete symptom sets, is there a reason other than simply "it doesn't make sense to group it with my other neurodivergence" for saying they "disagree" with the definitions of neurodivergence and neurodisability that they are allowed not to use for themselves?

Is it possibly that neuroableism is so rampant in our society and even in disabled spaces that they simply haven't examined their own internalized biases and bigotry and they don't take neurodisabilities, including their own, as seriously as disabilities they consider more physical?

Is the idea that they have been as physical as their other disabilities all along scary or threatening because it means that in shoving them off into the realm of "mental" disability they've been pushing themselves past their limits to "overcome" something that is just as painful, just as harmful, and just as concretely, profoundly disabling as their other disabilities? That they were just as unable to do the things their disability prevented them from doing and hurting themselves just as much by trying to and then blaming themselves on top of it for the ways they "fell short" due to said disability?

This is not meant as an attack. I sometimes have the people who say this stuff unintentionally stumble on trauma triggers, but I don't dislike them. I wish I was more capable of having these conversations without really essentially running and hiding. I try to use this blog for that because I'm able to ignore it more easily than my main blog when I'm in a heightened state, and because it's more of a controlled environment where these conversations are intended to take place.

These are questions I'm asking specifically from analyzing past attitudes of mine. I didn't necessarily share them publicly, but there was a time where I felt similarly. I'm not asking out of some concern-trolling, either. I acknowledge that what I talked about is only one possible explanation for that belief, and if that is the case, I'd simply encourage the people for whom it's true to be patient with themselves and let themselves be disabled, whatever that means for them.

I don't even think it's necessarily a super harmful belief, although I think it crosses a line when the belief goes from "that's not how I use neurodivergent for myself" to "I don't think it's useful for neurodivergence to be defined that way in general". I think it's one we should all interrogate, sure. Providing a possible explanation is my way of trying to open up a conversation about that. Eliminating a possibility as wrong still gets us closer to a more accurate understanding, even at an individual level.

I think put quite simply though, if that is the case, I don't feel condescending and patronizing pity. I'm angry on all of our behalf that we live in a society that so deeply ingrains those ideas into us in order to uphold the oppression of all disabled people, and especially to sow disunity between us to disrupt our efforts at organization and liberation. I'm angry that we've been taught to hurt ourselves in this way. I'm furious that we've been convinced that this is the right way of understanding and dealing with disability.

So, to loop back around and neatly tie this post off with my original point: I would like to motivate people to examine WHY they label certain diagnoses as neurodivergent/neurodisabilities and others as not. I would encourage them to remember that an umbrella label including diagnoses of theirs that they don't want to use that label for doesn't make the definition wrong. I'd remind them that they are absolutely welcome to use a more restrictive definition individually without challenging the general definition, because words can mean multiple things.

And I'd say that the most important thing is just to remember when discussing this is that other people may consider a shared diagnosis to be neurodivergent where you don't, and that "disagreeing" with them is fundamentally "disagreeing" with their identity and how they experience it, which however well-intentioned is still bigotry. It doesn't make you a bad person, but it is a harmful action and the right thing to do is whatever needs to be done to not continue to harm others. Whether it's as simple as just stopping or as complex as analyzing the entire lens through which you view neurodivergence, the important thing is respecting that neurodivergent identity means different things for different people.

And after all, at least in English, 95 percent of the 3000 most frequently used words have multiple meanings, as do 100 percent of the top 1000 most used words. Words like go and set have upwards of 300-400 definitions! Rather than treating definitions like a math problem, right or wrong, let's treat them as interpretive, and facilitate communication by asking people which they mean.

[fragmentedblade]

This seems to be a reference to Lorentz transformations? The first formula is apparently a derivation, and seems to be the inverse of the time part of the transformation (there's a space part too), for what I've been able to find.

The second formula is Newton's second law.

[greetings-inferiors]

Something cool that only just clicked is that when you convert the vector equation for a 3D line into Cartesian form, the x, y, and z parts are all equal to lambda!

For a visual:

That’s so cool!

Don’t know why that never sunk in, as that’s literally how you’re taught to convert between the two, b it it’s cool that I know it now nonetheless.

[the-mouse-joust]

ROUND 1 SIDE B: FIGHTING FOR FAMILY

LEFT: Cartesian from The Underland Chronicles (Books 4 & 5) Description: "he's one of the most important specific mice in the series." He is the uncle of the baby mice found in a basket in the fourth book, and fights valiantly to protect the mouse nursery in the fifth book.

RIGHT: Poppy from Poppy and Ragweed (The Tales Of Dimwood Forest) Description: "Poppy is very brave and smart and saves the forest from owls and all kinds of things." In the book Poppy, Poppy takes revenge on the owl that had not only ruled over her family but also had killed her boyfriend.