Reply to comment

Lots of interesting thoughts from last week, from continuing conversations in the corridors, and from below.  Is helpful to be challenged on why certain things interest me, why I think others might be interested as well.  In this case, I came away with a better sense of why Gödel/Turing/Chatin might not on the face of it seem interesting to a variety of other people, and an enhanced sense of why I think its significant, both for myself and for others.  We all have a bit of formal systems (Enlightenment positivism) in us, whether we want to admit it or not, and we all, in the same way, have a bit of inconsistency and drive for completeness.  Whichever we're more comfortable and familiar with, it behooves each of us to enhance our recognition of not only the limitations but also the strengths of the other.  By doing so we can not only more effectively resist advocates of either approach as the exclusive foundation of inquiry but enhance our own capabilities as inquirers, and as participants in communities of inquiry.

That "we all have a bit of ... in us" has a platitudinous ring to it.  Its the sort of thing one might say with some regret about one's interest in something one doesn't really think one ought to be interested in.  But I actually mean something more significant.  The brain is actually organized to process information in two quite different ways, logically/rationally/positivistically and "intuitively," and to achieve and test understandings not by the exclusive use of one or the other but rather by "looping" back and forth between them (see Making sense of understanding).   We may each of us try to live by one and ignore the other but that leads to inconsistencies of the kind pointed out in the discussion and to a compromised use of brains that actually have richer capabilities.  We are all better off recognizing and accepting both the limitations and the strengths of both ways of processing information.

And that in turn relates to some of the broader issues that have surfaced in one way or another in these conversations from the outset as well as more recently.  People have a tendency to see an interest in randomness as antithetical to an interest in "properties and rules."  And an interest in inconsistency/irrationality as antithetical to an interest in rationality/order.  The turf I'm interested in exploring is not one of trying to decide which of these is "better" than the other (or to defend existing decisions of this sort) but rather one of asking how they fit together, and what one can do with the combination of them that one can't do with either alone.

Along these lines, Wil and I have been going back and forth over the issue of whether "rationality" is the best/only defense against "Evil," ie dogmatism, fundamentalism, Holocaust/global warming denial and the like.  I don't certainly want myself to be identified with the latter, but I don't think its time to recognize (contra Enlightenment thinking and logical positivism) that "rationality" has already proven not in fact to be a very good defence against such things, that its time to try something different, and that a blended approach is promising in this regard.  As well as in teaching. 

I'm also, like Anne, struck by how easily we all assume a "check out" mentality about our activity as inquirers.  Maybe a blended approach would provide a better model for inquiry (and life?) in general, one that positions us not as completers of any set of explorations but rather as contributors to continuing exploration?