think feel see

"The wise reject what they think, not what they see."
-- Huang-Po

But who said I am wise or aspire to be or that I think or even see? I get it, what you are saying, H-P. Or at least I think I have the willingness to be willing to get what you're saying, or said, or wrote in masterful brushstrokes of calligraphy, maybe hundreds of years ago. (Who are you, H-P?)

Thinking? What is it? In Descartes' Error, neuroscientist Antonio Damasio makes the case that neurologically speaking thinking is not divorced from thinking; we can't think without the feeling supplied in all those neurons that make up the central nervous system; the popularly believed thinking vs. feeling dichotomy does not exist in anatomy, in our biology.

But I get, or seek to get, what you're getting at, H-P.

See things for what they are feel the world for what it tastes touch the tongue of reality's open secrets lick the corners of the cosmos on the blade of grass smell the earwax of my dumb questions.

It has been said, "you need a meeting." A meeting of mind and matter, not mind over matter; a marriage of true minds and emotions, not divorced or legally separated from out there or in here, from the business of is-ness.

Something like that, but not quite, H-P. Calling H-P.

Psychopathy for Beginners

Just finished an engaging piece about psychopathy in the November 10, 2008, issue of The New Yorker. First, a word about the word "psychopathy" itself. As I was reading the article, "Suffering Souls," by John Seabrook, I more or less assumed that the word was pronounced with the accent on -path, but also wondered it might not be true, because, after all, we don't put the accent on -log in psychology. Sure enough, Merriam-Webster, with its pronunciation thingy-doodle audio device, informs us that the accent is on the -op. But I digress. The article explores how neuroscientists, especally Dr. Kent Kiehl, are studying the functional MRIs of prison inmates, to see if their brains function differently than the brain of, um, normal people. It all provokes fascinating and provocative questions about good, evil, justice, and salami-on-rye sandwiches. Sorry, I digress again. Uh-oh. A diagnostic checklist used to evaluate for psychopathy, the PCL-R, measures, among other things, poor impulse control (not mind-wanderingness, not exactly sort of). We are let off the hook, a bit, with this: "If a biological basis for psychopathy could be establshed and pharmacological treatments developed, the idea that many people have at least a little of the psychopath in them could well become acepted." Relax, will you? This is not making a pitch for the acceptance of antisocial behavior. I'm merely saying how intriguing it is to ponder how the brain works and how we move within very lmited realms, it seems. (On a similar note, NPR today had a bit about brain scans and what they reveal about our shopping and other choices. Buyology. Neuromarketing. Martin Lindstrom. Whew, I love "Mad Men, " but times have changed since Don Draper and his team at Sterling Cooper left the building.)

Seabrook's Q. and A. is here.