Greetings Economists, On Sep 11, 2007, at 3:40 PM, Jim Devine wrote:
By the way, the valid, dialectical, kind of maintenance of "two contradictory ideas" simultaneously represents a strong ability to resist the unease arising from cognitive dissonance.
Doyle; That sounds like Sartre on nausea or anxiety at nothingness. The problem with a speculation about holding contradictions in mind is most of this is said outside of knowing what the brain does. For example, To some degree the brain has a bunch of patches laid out in various areas. It's sort of established the frontal cortex can tap into patches elsewhere to 'think'. So where are these contradictions housed? The patches of brain real estate operate so that knowledge passes through them altering the connections so that patterns are the most likely thing thought. A patch can respond to a plethora of patterns. Is a contradiction a specific descriptions of these patches put together in the frontal lobe? It's an abstraction at best by Orwell about 'think'. We can understand some verbal statement contradicts someone else's statement. But I suspect anything about thinking from Orwell is just hot air. Doyle
