Re: Pascal's Wager

Zenarchy (jr@shasta.com)
Tue, 8 Dec 1998 17:54:24 -0800

Dana wrote,
>Ah...this caught my attention: "Psychonomy relates to psychology as
astronomy does to astrology." Wow. That's a really strong statement to make. Perhaps you could elaborate?
>Psychology as a field of science seems to contain specific sub-fields
that definately try to get at explaining cognition, general level consciousness, self-awareness, etc. beyond the level of the "mind myth". That is, real world physics are used in the sub-fields to explain what is going on in the brain, rather than global level, "black box" oriented models. Perhaps I am misunderstanding your term "mind myth" and you could elaborate on this as well.

Hi Dana,

I thought of the term /psychonomy/ after reading Francis Crick's _The Astonishing Hypothesis_ (which I highly recommend, even though I haven't read it cover-to-cover).
Ignoring the hubris of the psychonomy/psychology = astronomy/astrology brag, your description of "explaining cognition, general level consciousness, self-awareness, etc. beyond the level of the 'mind myth'" sounds very close to what I had in mind <g> with the term /psychonomy/. Indeed, what *does* go on in the human brain? For more on that, try William Calvert's home page.

As for the mind myth, I recommend the following URL:

http://www.well.com/user/jct/index.html

If you have the time to read _Mind Is A Myth_ (at the site mentioned above), please let me know how it registers with you.

Grok it and rocket,

-zen