First Thoughts

… HCR meeter pointing slightly up…

• full FDA approval of Pfizer COVID19 vaccine… the stock market rallied in anticipation of more shots in arms as the vaccine hesitant come forward to get them and as local and federal governments and corporations begin to mandate vaccination…
• Florida rates of COVID19 are accelerating, hospitalizations and deaths have surpassed previous highest levels, Governor DeSantis doubles down on executive orders that there be no mask and vaccine mandates… large school districts ignoring him… i travel to Florida in a little less than two weeks…
• evacuation of Americans and Afghans proceeding smoothly and unmolested… Pentagon says they can be finished by end of month, president suggests he might extend to Sep 11 if necessary, Taliban suggests they might not be tolerant of that…

… diner with friends last night… managed to avoid having too much wine… delicious dinner of African mint sausage and grapes, with a side of puréed celery root… celery root was especially delicious… felt the sausage was a little overcooked, dried out… company was great…

… Chas began whining at 3 AM… just my luck on a morning i want to sleep in a little…

… today begins back stair reconstruction… going to be hot next few days, but no rain predicted… demolition of existing stairs today… take stock of existing conditions and make final decisions of how to proceed… hopefully i have the right materials in place… if not, i will have to get untreated lumber as i won’t have time to let it dry out at all…

… as i get more organized about my reading, i wonder about organizing it to the point that i might start writing organized and thoroughly edited posts on the rabbit holes i am exploring… that is something that i have never mustered the determination to do… could i even get to the place where i publish a book?…

… do i need to or could carefully considered and edited posts suffice?… i think i am more likely to head in that direction…

… my copy of Bertrand Russell’s Analysis of Matter has arrived… i sloughed my way through it before and during the pandemic… i am contemplating reading it again with extensive note taking…

Conscious, Annaka Harris

… i bought this book after reading a Brain Pickings post… the subject of consciousness is one of my rabbit hole topics… panpsychism is an exciting rabbit hole within the rabbit hole that i have read a number of books and articles about, including the very dense and, in lots of places (because you need to comprehend high level mathematics), incomprehensible book by Bertrand Russell, The Analysis of Matter… i began reading it before the pandemic broke out… it took months to get through and i can’t claim to have fully understood it because of the aforementioned mathematical content… Russell himself says you can’t fully understand the topic if you can’t fully understand the mathematics, but he minimizes the mathematics for those who don’t…

… for a very thorough treatment of Panpsychism, see the entry in Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy…

… back to Conscious, by Annaka Harris…

… i am 25 pages in and it is clear to me that in 100 pages i am going to get a truly “popular” account of the subject… the initial chapters have been a little frustrating as she presents foundational concepts almost as sufficient arguments and definitions which i know are going to be undermined by a discussion of panpsychism which is, i believe, the main target of the book…

… i did finally realized that she is setting her readers up for an “aha!” moment as the weaknesses and inconsistencies in the earlier part of the book come to a point of breaking, cue the entry of our hero, panpsychism!…

… this approach was found by reviewers on Amazon to be either annoying or successful, and i suspect it has to do with ones prior knowledge of the concepts of panpsychism… mine is, I am guessing, deep relative to the average target audience, though i am at best an advanced beginner… i know her initial development of the subject is problematic, but i believe it will turn out to be intentionally so…

… it will be interesting to see how effective the “aha” moment is when i get to it…