Cosmos Café: Season 1 [November, 2017 – March, 2018]

Thanks for sorting this. You have to know that as an old guy, I get really confused really easily. :confounded:

I’d be up for it. Synchronistically, I’ve been plowing through my reading program on this very text. (I’m about halfway through the last chapter.) I must say, I’m rather impressed by the professionalism of Kelley and his co-authors and with the sobriety and clarity with which they approaches their subjects. I also think that some engagement with Myers’ notion of the Subliminal Self would not be out of place, also (or especially) in light of our impending engagement of Aurobindo.

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I agree. The Subliminal Self is crucial to understanding what the heck the paranormal is all about. Which chapter works best? Shall we start at the beginning?

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It does lay the groundwork for what is being explored in the rest of the book. That’d work for me, but what does everyone else think?

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So that would be:

Irreducible Mind, Chapter 1: A View from the Mainstream: Contemporary Cognitive Neuroscience and the Consciousness Debates

?

I could do that. I have a still-shiny new copy of the book right here beside me.

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Let’s make it happen. I gather we are all agreed?

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3 posts were merged into an existing topic: Cosmos Café: Irreducible Mind [2/6]

Oh, BTW, I took the liberty of creating a session page for our planned get-together on Tuesday. I hope no one minds too much. It’s editable, so feel free to mold it however you feel is necessary.

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Excellent. Thanks, Ed!

In turn, I’ve taken the liberty of moving @Geoffreyjen_Edwards’s post, and your reply, over that new dedicated topic: Cosmos Café: Irreducible Mind [2/6]

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@johnnydavis54: I just took at look at Lisa Maroski’s paper, and would love to review it with the crew. Would Lisa like to join us for an upcoming Café?

Also, @Technoshaman has offered to facilitate a “performative experiment in cooperative intelligence,” which I believe would be of real interest.

I am also quite interested in hearing more about @Geoffreyjen_Edwards 20 year plans!

Finally, @Douggins and I have been discussing a session on Metamodernism, which we could consider for an upcoming session.

A note on scheduling: I am planning to ta take 3/27 off as a Rest week / Spring break. But of course, if others want to get together, you are free to use the Zoom line.

After 3/27, I would like to open up scheduling for another cycle…which I hope will gives us a chance to return to Irreducible Mind and other topics on our list / TBD. And of course, we will have Aurobindo coming up. Not a bad 2018 program, if I do say so myself!

I also would like to invite whomever might have the time, skill, and desire to begin serving in a Coordinator role for these happenings. This person would be responsible, not for content, but for stewarding the scheduling, production, and publishing processes.

I think we also need a Media Assistant to manage our our files, archives, and feeds. @care_save I have been discussing how these roles might be paid in “LitCoin,” and could also be decomposed into more discreet tasks that any member could pick up in exchange for LitCoin.

But that’s another conversation, for another thread…just making a note of it here, to get our Moebius gears turning.

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I’d love to introduce Lisa to our group! She has already said she would join us so perhaps we can set up a date soon? And we can coordinate. She knows lots about topo-dimensions and Lou Kauffman’s work and she has interviewed the Mereon leadership ( Ed might be interested in that). She is a genius at making impossible stuff understandable.

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I downloaded the paper - I haven’t read it yet, but it looks really interesting. Count me in on a Cafe session on this topic!

I am still a bit too busy to organise this one, Marco @madrush , but I won’t forget. I had some idea I might like to do a podcast first on it, and then build the Cafe session out of the podcast, but I’ll need a little time to get it organized.

Also, I have been thinking about setting up a reading group to read my colleague and friend, Erin Manning’s book called “The Minor Gesture”. It would involve some colleagues but if anyone here was interested in taking part, that would be super, too. Erin is a Deleuzian/Whiteheadian thinker - she introduced me to Whitehead, and she is also a prolific writer, all of her books are fascinating. Before becoming a philosopher, she was a professional dancer and also she is a fashion designer (like me… :slight_smile: ). It won’t be right away, along around end of March I expect, before I get the ball rolling.

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I love Erin Manning’s work and look forward to this new development. This is a very good direction to go in.

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I performed an @achronon “pre-examination” of the book (front/back cover; table of contents; quick “feel” for the work) by Erin Manning and am quite fascinated.

The Preface’s first paragraph sold me!

There’s something about writing books that is out of time. As though the
writing only really knows what it’s after once it has begun to make its way
into the world. For me, thinking too has always had this quality: thinking
thickens in its encounter with the futurity that orients it. This futurity
in thinking’s presentness is part of what keeps thinking lithe: thinking is
always out of sync with itself.

Reminds me of Kerri Welsh. Keep us posted @Geoffreyjen_Edwards.

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Lisa Maroski can join us on the Cafe 3/6. She will make available a new paper based on her last presentation at the Gebser Society. Shall we make this happen?

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That sounds great to me. If there are no objections, let’s add it to the calendar.

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Great. That is settled then.

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Would anyone have issue with an Open Cafe Session, in which we come in with no pre-meditated topic or reading for 2/27?

Perhaps (contradicting the above statement) we could rein in some of the questions you all have from last excellent “my pretties” Cafe (which seem to be bridging together various threads) and pose a few seed questions to center the discussion. I like where our minds are going.

EDIT: Just read @madrush’s post here, which essentially states the same, with much more oomph.

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I’m open to open. Might be a good thing to do once in a while…

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Cosmos Café folk: I’d like to reserve ou time slot on 3/27 for our first Cosmos Plenum meeting, which I imagine will be a quarterly event for all people involved with or interested in Cosmos to get a progress report on the state of the co-op as a whole; report on their own projects; ask questions; and coordinate around shared goals.

I would like to make an announcement and send an email to our list; invite comments and questions in a dedicated forum topic; and determine our format and agenda ahead of time. (Of course it will also be recorded and shared.) Is there any objection to using this time slot for this purpose, since it’s already somewhat ingrained and likely that most of you can show up?

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Here is an interesting review of The Minor Gesture that should give a foretaste for the book.

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09687599.2017.1414323

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