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Précis of Evolution and Consciousness

To Do Items & Ramblings (Scratch Pad for Ideas)

We need a list of, for lack of a better term, “hooks” that will grab a reader’s attention and persuade them that understanding what Dewart has to say about human nature is as significant and potentially important as are understanding the Gaza conflict, global warming, famine, etc.

Is it true that advanced technologies reveal advanced cultures

Is scientific method and its application an indicator of absent-mindedness (I really hate that phrase Leslie!)

Is Capitalism one of the root causes of the current situation?

Is the unholy marriage of Capitalism with the Scientific Method causal or symptomatic?

Capitalism is not the only economic system threatening global extinction and fuelling global warming

List common terms or areas of concern that would be better or more fully understood, if considered in the light of human consciousness and absent-mindedness: Patriarchy, Capitalism, Science, Evolution, Religion, Speech, Language... Maybe some of these could be added to the Glossary, or this list could be extended from the Glossary?

I would like an explicit statement of what Dewart is arguing against. What is the “received view”? This would be recognizable as “yeah, lots of people think this, but there’s obviously something wrong with it, but I can’t quite put my finger on it.”

Ideas for approaching ideas.

This is a story for a reporter. It's a story about a guy who is an interesting, colorful, charismatic Canadian character.

Rick has anecdotal accounts of Dewart's behavior, including telling people to hold on to their hats before lecture.

Dewart was quite famous in his day made a huge splash in the 60s among Catholics.

The key idea is the complementary self-presence and absent-mindedness. Absent-mindedness is defective self-presence. This understanding of consciousness is relevant in a world increasingly overrun by machines which act like they're conscious but in fact are not. The tie into speech as the cause of consciousness is particularly relevant because what these machines do, both in actual speech and in the generation of text, is speak as if they are people. Again, but they are not.

For the purposes of approaching a reporter, the explanation of what doer was thinking must be kept as brief as possible.

Dewart was not appreciated by his contemporaries. His later work was roundly ignored, but it is of course worth mentioning that he was a contemporary and colleague of Marshall McLuhan.

Rick and Tarver are convinced, maybe even obsessed with the idea, that there's something endured thought that is valuable in explaining the specific nature of humanity. In fact, once this is seen it cannot be unseen and many of the travails and screw-ups and weirdness of our species is basically obvious once you know where to look with this. Of course, seeing this sounds like any other conspiracy theory, but here is a philosopher, a rigorous thinker, somebody who was published by the University of Toronto Press, maybe worth at least a show on ideas.

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Link to backup of original robo-output & the Hume book⁠

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