Dear Jinan,

From time to time, you post notes to the list in which you offer sweeping claims for propositions suggesting that reasoning and literacy are a major cause of problems in the world today.

Your recent post made 18 positive truth claims on such issues across a wide range of fields. In a massive series of claims, you addressed issues and questions studied in social anthropology, cultural anthropology, physical anthropology, sociology, political science, education, physiology, neurophysiology, psychology, psychiatry, cognitive science, neuroscience, and philosophy. In a copy of your post, below, I marked these claims with Arabic numerals in brackets.

You also made some interpretative claims, proposals, and suggestions. I marked these with lower-case Roman numerals in brackets.

My purpose in writing this note is neither to agree with you nor to disagree. It is to state that these kinds of claims must involve some form of evidence beyond your own statements. When you speak of “my study,” you don’t clarify whether “my study” means your own reflections or something else. If by “my study,” you mean research of the kind you refer to in the work on digestion, then you would help us by pointing to the publications and papers that allow us to review for ourselves the work on which you base these 18 claims.

You write: “In order to understand cognition it needs to be studied the way digestive system has been studied.” Cognition has been studied as digestion has across many fields. These include social anthropology, cultural anthropology, physical anthropology, sociology, political science, education, physiology, neurophysiology, psychology, psychiatry, cognitive science, neuroscience, and philosophy.

Researchers, scientists, scholars, philosophers, and thinkers in these fields have worked on these issues for the past twenty-five centuries. Many have written research reports, books, and monographs. Since the late 1800s, they have also published millions of journal articles. There is an extensive body of literature on each of your 18 claims, and there is reason to question many of your statements.

Without some basis for your statements, there is no basis for accepting what you state. Anyone can state anything. This does not make statements true. Unless you provide evidence, a statement such as “my study of almost 25 years” resembles those long-ago cigarette advertisements claiming “9 out of 10 doctors recommend Lucky Strike.”

History suggests that the intuitive decisions and actions of non-literate people create problems as difficult as those of literate people. The intuitions of the non-literate also give rise to war and murder, along with ineffective medicine, tribal rivalries, and the belief in witchcraft and sorcery. Even today, accusations of witchcraft based on intuition serve to justify killing people whom the illiterate and superstitious label as witches and sorcerers.

Yours,

Ken

Ken Friedman, PhD, DSc (hc), FDRS | University Distinguished Professor | Swinburne University of Technology | Melbourne, Australia | University email [log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]> | Private email [log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]> | Mobile +61 404 830 462 | Academia Page http://swinburne.academia.edu/KenFriedman About Me Page http://about.me/ken_friedman

Guest Professor | College of Design and Innovation | Tongji University | Shanghai, China

Guest Professor | College of Design and Innovation | Tongji University | Shanghai, China

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Jinan wrote:

[1] Reasoning short circuits comprehension.

[2] Reasoning is part of behavioral change that has happened due to dependence on ‘knowledge’. [3] What is known can only be understood using reasoning. [4] Among the literate cultures language becomes the cognitive source or source of ‘knowledge’.

[i] My study of almost 25 years has been on the difference in ‘BEING’ between the literates and non literates. [5] Non literates should be re named as sense literates and literates the text literates.

[6] The fundamental difference between these two are that among literates reasoning is the frame work with which intuition is used and non literates use intuition as the frame work and reasoning becomes an integral aspect.

[7] The alienation of modern man is precisely due to the fragmentation of mind and body caused by conscious reasoning. [ii] Reasoning is an embodied aspect of being. [8] The child in the womb follows an internal logic, develop itself autonomously responding to mother’s activities.

[9] Among non literate communities the child is left free to understand the world. [10] Modernity treats ‘freedom’ as something that can be given or taken away where as among non literates freedom is an existential reality. [iii] Like a dog on the street or a tree it grows in autonomy, responding to the context, making sense of what the world is about.

[iv] Autonomy is not same as individuality. [v] Individuality is the corrupted form of autonomy. [11, vi] Individuality is driven by conscious or fragmented reasoning.

[vii – entire paragraph is a proposition] In order to understand cognition it needs to be studied the way digestive system has been studied. The moment we shift this to its total phenomenon or we study as cognitive system we are able to see how the source influences what is understood. we need to explore comprehension the way we studied digestive system. Looking at all aspects related to food and digestion- from why we eat, what we eat, how we eat, when we eat, how it changes with age, how does the body regulate out likes and dislikes, how does the mind interfere in the likes and dislikes of the body, what happens after we eat, what gets eliminated, what gets ingested, what transformation takes place and what we become in terms of not only physical health but also mental health and so on. So cognitive inputs also needs to be studied in depth in this manner and looking at how cognitive input effects the body. We need to ask the same questions.

[12] Among non literates the process begins with observation and this by and by leads to understanding. [viii] The unknown can only be observed with open ness. [13] In fact designers unlike people from other professions tend to use this as designers have to ‘observe’.

[ix] It is interesting that the subject is ‘engineering and culture conflicts’.

[14] In fact this is so accurate to describe literates and non literates if we change this a little and re write as ‘engineered minds and cultured minds’. [15] What we are experiencing in the modern world is nothing but engineering the mind of people. [x] This is natural outcome of the modern beingness which is to plan and control.

[xi] At this juncture it will be interesting to do a study on the three paradigms which are experiential, literate and digital. [16, xii] One can see the structure and nature of the cognitive source in the structure and nature of human beings that fall in to the respective paradigms. [17] The structure of language - linear, sequential, fragmented is the structure of the literate minds. [18] The integral nature of the real world is totally missing in the digital world even though it is being claimed as new orality. [xiii] The two are worlds apart.

See the video of Prof Iain Mcgrilchrist The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SbUHxC4wiWk&noredirect=1

Jinan



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