University Blog on Academic Tenure in Ireland

How many universities is too many?

2012-01-22T18:02:00.000-08:00

Readers with little time on their hands can simply read this first sentence take-home message; all the Irish universities should, as matter of urgency, be rolled into a revamped National university, and all degrees awarded to date by DCU and UL should be validated by that body. This protects the 100k or so graduates of UL and DCU, while acknowledging that both institutions were given far too much autonomy, and university status way too early. Now, of course, they are rushing to pull up the ladder after them, and deny university status to Waterford/ Carlow;

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/ireland/2012/0123/1224310627145.html

There is also a strong case for selling off both UL and DCU, and indeed many of the state-owned “third level” sites in the country. The reason; while this unseemly row is going on, the provisional tallies for Stanford's upcoming course enrollment has just been announced; the new diet of free courses has an average enrollment of over 40k, and MIT is about to enter the fray. By years' end, there will be over a million enrolled at both Stanford and MIT; in fact, Stanford has just about hit the million mark already with 17 courses in 2011-2012. There is no reason to try and put forward any competition; in this case, resistance indeed is futile. Full disclosure; I have worked at Stanford since 2002.

The smart thing for the Irish government to do would be to get ahead of the curve, and acknowledge that tertiary education changed irrevocably once Norvig, Thrun and Ng of Stanford demonstrated that classes of hundred of thousands in engineering subjects were technologically feasible. The minor cavil offered – that correction of computer programming assignments is coarse grained – simply amplifies the critical point that, desperate for ranking points, Ireland moved away a decade ago from TEACHING at its universities. Specifically, resources hitherto put into hiring tutors to help students learn skills like programming were redeployed into "research".

In fact, as repeatedly pointed out, Ireland's universities were to be a neoliberal experiment in unfettered use of state power to pursue a rony capitalist agenda. the levels of abuse of staff and students allowed are what motivated this blog. The Stanford/MITX initiatives put power back where it should be; in the hands of scholars, teachers and students alike.

Oh, the rankings! In fact, none of the Irish universities are in the top 200 in the only one that should matter – the shanghai. DCU is not even in the top 500. Why? Essentially, because the Chinese know that the number of Nobel laureates happy to work at a university is a better index to quality than the percentage of foreign students and foreign lecturers. Consider this; the Irish taxpayer is asked to pay for a very expensive system which bows to a rating system that values foreign scholars over ones genetically related to that taxpayer. The people for whom this charade is presumably created – the Chinese – are not in the slightest bit impressed.

Anyway, grab a bag of popcorn and enjoy the show as the 7 presidents who refused to cut their pay to 200k battle it out with the Labour party, The many sincere people in the Irish provinces who want a college should look at how the world is changing and adapt

Seán O Nualláin Ph.D. Stanford
Stanford University 22u Eanair 2012

PS 25 Ean 2012; Two recent events are probably not unrelated -

1. Those of us auditing some of the new Stanford mass courses (In my case, NLP) were told the courses were delayed;

2. Sebastian Thrun announced he was resigning from his tenured position at Stanford to set up a private university

udacity.com

The syllabi look - yes! - thrun together in 10 minutes, as we would say in West Clare. But udacity lays claim to ownership of the AI course, as you find in the intricate legal document you need to assent to get access to the "free" courses.

The connection? I went to the Comp Sci dept at Stanford last week to be told they had NOTHING to do with the mass courses. Can it be that there has been a row and that Thrun has refused to allow Stanford to use his correction software, fomenting a "resign or be fired" moment? In that case, expect Stanford to write their own asap

The "zero power and selflessness" paper

2012-01-10T20:57:00.000-08:00

I published this some years ago; it has been referenced a lot, and cited a few times. Its publishers have failed to make it available on the web, and the contract I signed with them allows me to post the following selected pages;

Seán O Nualláin Ph.D. Stanford
Stanford University 11-12u Eanair 2012

PS 15 u Eanair 2012

Much ink and indeed many petabytes have been consumed in an attempt to work out physical mechanisms for quantum coherent states in biology. Ironically, this reached a crescendo in consciousness studies in the 1990's - as if we didn't have enough problems of our own! It was hypothesised that consciousness involved microtubules, or perhaps laying down of dendritic spines in a way reminiscent of quasiperiodic crystals - even before Steinhardt found the first attested quasiperiodic crystal in nature in 2011. Clearly, phase-synchronized gamma would be conducive to coherence

Maybe it's simpler. Maybe all we need is coherence due to entanglement as is hpothesised for birds' magnetic navigation - and entanglement has been demonstrated for relatively macroscopic objects. The framework of the paper above still remains intact. I will give a paper on this and other issues Feb 1 2012 at UC Berkeley

So what was all that about, then?

2012-01-05T09:04:00.000-08:00

There will be few, if any, disciplinary procedures against staff at the Irish universities for the remainder of our lives. In short, we won. The legal issues were always clearcut, and management together with their legal advisers should be punished; it is the political dimension that I will focus on here.

The 1997 act creates a “chief officer' at the Irish universities in whom all aspects of the universities converge. Whether such a role has any place in a democratic society is a moot point; yet a succession of Irish “chief officers”, egged on by the government, acted outside the law for over a decade, with dreadful consequences for people's lives. Now that the neoliberal dispensation of which this was apart has failed, there will be hell to pay for this violation of the social contract

This writer must confess that he oscillates between anger at the Irish Times for creating VP as a media figure, and relief. The relief arises because this cast VP out with the other bullshitters who expostulate on our national media. Unlike the rest of them, VP had actual power; yet he failed to use it, and we are all the better for this. However, there is a more fundamental point.

Academic freedom will henceforth primarily be a function of how the state chooses to police the internet. The Irish tradition is MacSwiney's; intellectual freedom is about our choice in our lives. The main significance of what went on at the Irish universities 1999-2011 is the attempt to create an entity, funded by te taxpayer, that could function outside the law. It is in many ways incidental that it happened at the universities; something similar was going on in the health service.

The effects on students and staff has been documented here. Thanks to some brilliant academics at Stanford (all their course materials are available free) we now have the capacity to say “Nie wieder!” (never again!). Accreditation is now a nonsense; 20,000 students passed the AI course, 6,100 + passes teh databases course and now try and tell your employer that your “accredited' course is better than the Stanford one. What I conceive of is a transfer of credits scenario, and here is how it would work out for the cog sci course.
_____________________________________________________________
A cognitive science course, reparsed

Stanford courses as credits (coded as *) – we assume an average of 4 credits/units each. 45 credits must be gained, and this will be done over 3-4 years

A sign-off by the lecturer or audited work during course as assessment. It is not insinuated that these are accredited by Stanford. Rather, what is happening is that certain of these courses, offered by Stanford faculty on-line, are acceptable to us as equivalents of our courses if the lecturer at Stanford signs a certificate of satisfactory completion for the student. Alternatively, the student can take only our in-house courses. Stanford courses are marked *; my own, already available online, **

Introductory material – for example, linear algebra – is often reduplicated over several courses (eg ML and AI) and in any case there are many good and free tutorials on the web For several of the courses, my “search for Mind” is used

Year 1

Semester 1
Algorithms * http://www.algo-class.org/
CS 101 ( may be an essential for the computing stream) *http://www.cs101-class.org/
Cog sci ; chapters 1 and 2 of “search”

Semester 2

Software as a service (Berkeley) * http://www.saas-class.org/
Sci and Society – 2 credits **
Cog sci Chapter 3 and 4 of “search”
Irish culture - 2 credits **

Year 2
Semester 1
Databases (encompasses bioinformatics) *http://www.db-class.org/course/class/index
Biosemiotics **
Intro to AI (encompasses some of biosemiotics) *https://www.ai-class.com/

Semester 2
Complex systems *http://www.modelthinker-class.org/
Nat lang proc (encompasses some of biosemiotics also) * http://www.nlp-class.org/
Cog sci; Remainder of “search”
HCI *http://www.hci-class.org/

Year 3
ML * http://www.ml-class.org/course/class/index
Neuroscience and experience **
Specialist projects; work experience; on-line discussions. Likewise for year 4 if this is necessary

Seán O Nualláin Ph.D. Stanford
Stanford University 5u Eanair 2012

The real university will follow the students

2011-12-28T16:48:00.000-08:00

Madness in the method, rather than the other way around: There was nothing mindless about what DCU management have been trying to do since 1995, with a quickening after 2000. Vicious to the point of evil and ultimately failed, yes; but there was method there The following initiatives are documented either on this blog, on national Irish media, or on both;

- Tenure was to be abolished; more precisely, it was to be attenuated to the right of 3 months' wages accompanying a summary dismissal, without cause. Since I did not know what any of this meant until 2008, and indeed I assume that the reader does not (nor should he/she have to know as not all of us should need to be lawyers) here is an explanation; even senior academics could be fired for no reason, and were to be entitled only to 3 months' wages as compensation. As now chief justice Susan Denham said from the Supreme court bench on June 29, 2009, that would be the end of academic freedom.

And, of course, the 1997 Universities act declares that academic freedom is the law. Small wonder that the Supreme Court, after a decent interval to preserve face for DCU, ordered Cahill fully reinstated with costs. Nor did DCU follow up on their threat, uttered through junior barrister Mallon at the Supreme court hearing to sack Paul Cahill again - and immediately - in that eventuality. Finally, UCC, UCD, and TCD have all bitten the bullet and interpreted tenure as a job until 65, leaving only DCU.

- Students and staff alike were to be deprived of even the most basic rights of citizens as “autonomy” was granted to the Irish universities. That includes the right not to be bribed , or intimidated; we know this from repeated parliamentary questions

- Students were to lose their right to choose a career; such choice was to be made by the state, centrally

- Students were to begin to pay fees. In UC Berkeley, to take one example, such fees have risen quickly to $14k per annum, with the funds used for building projects.

- University rankings were to be inflated by the addition of expensive “adjunct” staff, normally based in another university, whose publications could be used to pump up the volume. Since 2008, as these staff have become too expensive for the Irish state, rankings have decreased.

- High-achieving students were to be offered exclusive accommodation on campus as an incentive to attend DCU

- Industrial relations (IR)were to be abandoned as a waste of time. If you can fly in a head of dept from Switzerland to work part-time – as indeed DCU has done for nearly a decade - why bother cultivating decent relationships with staff? Indeed, legal judgements could be disregarded – as in fact they effectively were after the Cahill high court case – as no Irish judge would lightly imprison a university president to “purge his contempt of court' as that wonderful mediaeval phrase goes.

The destruction of IR at DCU is VP's single lasting legacy. DCU has been allowed - indeed, encouraged - to act outside rthe law for over a decade and has succeeded only in destroying the delicate network of trust that all too briefly made it a place of outstanding promise. The withdrawal of resources from teaching is a disaster.

It is worthwhile looking at a larger context as well. The Irish were to become an ethnic minority in their own country, with the Chinese becoming the biggest minority ethnic group; the universities were to be moved out of the department of education; and illegal statutes could be replaced by more such illegal statutes.In fact, power was to be decoupled from any kind of legal framework.

So where do we now stand? Well, as I predicted earlier, the first attempt to use the new statute no 5 on a staff member will be met with a High court injunction. The statute will then be declared illegal, and the cycle 2002-2011 will start again. However, it is doubtful that DCU will survive this.

Let us be clear about this; the way DCU was run 1995-2010 is, in the short term, a highly effective way to run an institution. In the medium and long term, it is a disaster to have the college respond to short-term corporate demands in this fashion. Whether that institution should be called a “university” is a moot point; however, the fact is that the international rankings for universities will include it, and its now higher place there will guarantee more foreign students. That is particularly the case as DCU has a good tradition of technical education.

However, it was not accepted practice to throw people under the steamroller of the state until recently. So here is my current response; I do not think that institutions like DCU deserve to survive the 2012 shakeout as MIT, Stanford and other universities attract millions of students. True, they do not yet issue degrees; yet their certificates of completion of course will soon be worth more than degrees from places like DCU. Moreover, these courses are being offered in exactly the technical areas in which places like DCU got their reputation; software eng, algorithms, and so on.

So, to survive, Irish universities will have to revert to being the small, nurturing places that they eschewed in the 2000's. To repeat; I do not think that DCU will survive the debacle of statute no 5. What is interesting now is what to replace DCU with, how to protect the 50k or so graduates (less than the number on a single Stanford course in a month;s time), and how to use the land grant universities in Ireland for the betterment of the Irish people. In a recent post, I even suggested a reversion even to the notion of knowledge as edification; it seems to be the case that the market will provide a better mechanism.

A little about myself. My paternal grandfather returned to Kilkee from the USA almost exactly a century ago and proceeded to become the dominant business force in the area; his counterpart in Kilrush was my maternal grandfather. We were wealthy - even in international terms - before the Irish state was founded, and the advent of a German “aristocrat” in our life was not a particularly smart move by the state that attempted to get our allegiance by invoking republican principles, where titles are an embarrassment. Like many Irish people, I can trace my heritage back to a local “king” (and indeed a Norman baron from Lille) and repudiate all this in the name of participation in Irish society, as all of us do.

This blog started in 2008 as an attempt to protect what we considered was a vital locus of free speech. However, the campaign started in mid-May 2002 when I refused to answer a summons to a meeting that I - in apparent paradox discussed elsewhere - was also to "arrange" (thus vitiating my rights). I revealed elsewhere that this was also the example that inspired Paul Cahill - and I initially advised him in 2006, getting him the barrister for the injunction. After that, Paul's was a better case than mine for the Supreme court as I had not had the benefit of a decade in the USA to pursue research. Our colleagues responded magnificently in 2002-2003, and this would all have been over by March, 2003, but for SIPTU's corruption. The country hyas lost at least tens of millions, and oceans of goodwill as a result.

Since then, we have had Bradley Manning, wikileaks, the Occupy movement and the rise of the Megaversity. Students have a wide variety of choice outside the “universities”and can now get top technical education, and certification, without engaging in scams like U Phoenix, or DCU.

The real university will follow the students, not the other way around

Seán O Nualláin Ph.D. Stanford
Stanford University 28u Nollag 2011

PS Anseo, fis gur fiu e a fheiceail;

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CL4X5fTw9DI&feature=related

PPS A few minor points as this is now all over but the shouting. First of all, it was VITALLY important that DCU never scored a victory at any stage - Labour court, rights comm, High and Supreme Courts, EAT. Had they scored one, it is as certain as one can be about these things that hundreds of staff would have been dismissed within month.

Secondly, at no point was I going to accept a settlement - which would have been tantamount to accepting that statute no 3 was fair, and would have resulted in dismissals as above. I may not come across on this blog as particularly likeable at times, but I ask the reader to remember what the stakes were, and how much I sacrificed.

DCU's mysterous new disciplinary statute

2011-12-22T12:43:00.000-08:00

Yesterday, DCU sent a team to the circuit court to attempt to overturn the ruling that I was unfairly dismissed under statute no. 3. That illegal statute is still on the web on the DCU server and can be accessed by anyone;

http://www.dcu.ie/info/statutes/statute3.shtml

The new statute, on the other hand, cannot be accessed by any member of the public who pays for DCU, a public university, to assess its conformity with Irish law, as he will see if he tries to access it;

http://www.dcu.ie/info/policies/suspension_and_dismissal_employees.pdf

(26 Dec 2011 - we are told that statute no3 was "superseded" in 2010

Luckily the internet archive keeps track of such things and can confirm that this is not the case;

http://web.archive.org/web/20110611202122/http://www.dcu.ie/info/statutes/index.shtml

So, by June 11 2011 there still is NO mention of statute no 5 - nor is there one on Dec 14 2010;

http://wayback.archive.org/web/20101015000000*/http://www.dcu.ie/info/statutes/index.shtml

So DCU did NOT supersede the statute in 2010 - unless it takes a year for Niall O'Leary, their web guy, to do very basic stuff.

Incidentally, the "new statute" is probably this illegal one;

http://academictenure.blogspot.com/2011/03/dcus-illegal-disciplinary-statute-still.html

I can confirm that Ruairi Quinn has been lobbied on this issue from inside the Labour party and that may have caused the change. For me, this is mission accomplished; and I can also confirm that it was I who initially advised Paul Cahill in 2006, and who got him the barrister for his successful injunction case which started everything)

DCU has refused to settle my case in any way that does justice to the dignity of scholarship. It has spent several millions of taxpayers' money in attempting to destroy my life, and that of my two daughters and long-time partner, the esteemed broadcaster and brilliant jazz artist Melanie O'Reilly. Not only that; through their legal firm, Arthur Cox, they had refused to reschedule the case, and were insisting that I risk my work visa here in the USA to return in Jan 2012.

Readers will remember that my case went into limbo in 2004 - 2009 because of a wholly specious and legally incorrect argument made by Cox that a High Court summons, drawn up by Justice Minister Alan Shatter's firm, pre-empted the case. We shall bring Ms O'Mahony of the EAT back to explain this in due course. Moreover, my case had already been delayed because IBEC refused to represent DCU from 2003, when the IBEC rep Graham Fagan got disgusted at DCU's refusal to put witnesses on the stand.

Yesterday - 21 December 2011 - the circuit court judge laughed DCU out of court, seeing their behaviour for the bullying and victimization that it is. This is of course not the first time that Cox and Mallon for DCU have been laughed out of court, and our learned friends must be wondering whether they are some kind of perverse and highly taxpayer-toxic standup act

Of course, the world is moving on as the Irish state focuses on its specialty; diverting public money from workers (and their descendents) to large law firms and grossly incompetent bureaucrats. For, gentle readers, the Fall 2011 Stanford AI course with its 120,00o students was a success; the sister course in machine learning had a sign-up of 80,000, and Stanford will have 16 courses, with perhaps a million registered, by next spring as the bottom of the ML page promises;

http://jan2012.ml-class.org/

MIT have responded in panic with a vaporware announcement that indicates they too realize that this is the future;

http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2011/mitx-faq-1219.html

Ironically, of course, I have been at Stanford for a decade, have had courses accredited there, and these courses could attract massive revenue for Ireland. It may be better, however, if the state continues its current suicidal trajectory until it collapses sufficiently that we can rebuild using the innate genius of Irish civil society.

Seán O Nualláin Ph.D. Stanford
Stanford University 22u Nollag 2011

PS I posted what I think is the "new" statute at http://academictenure.blogspot.com/2011/01/dcus-new-illegal-statute.html and this is the last page;

Truth, the academy, blogs and journals

2011-12-14T06:16:00.000-08:00

The academy as we know it today derives much of its status from its claim to a pursuit of truth. The process whereby the state usurped the academy from the Church is not one that I will go into here; historically, it may eventually be judged that the accompanying superimposition on the community of scholars that constitute the academy (including the university) of an administration which usurps most of the power is a very serious error.

There are several counter-moves that we as scholars can make. Several of them have been cited over and again on this blog; the use of open-source resources like MIT;s open courseware for pedagogy and the open science movement. It is clear to regular readers that I consider taxpayer funding of science wasteful in the extreme, particularly in a country like Ireland that cannot afford it and in which it is simply used as yet another mechanism for an elephantine state apparatus to usurp another thread in civil society. Instead of science,both pure and applied, emerging from the ground up in the proper hands, it becomes established by central diktat. The lack of breakthrough Irish science and technology since the state quickened its level of interference around 2000 is conspicuous; and, no, generation of a few more hundred papers in the febrile field of immunology does not compensate for the lack of new native tech firms and the marginalization of free thought in public universities.

At UC Berkeley, faced with fee increases and a dimunition of the intellectual commons, the students protest, and the cops riot, every year. Chancellor Birgenau recently received a 90% vote of no confidence by the faculty. Absent a legislative overhaul that attenuates the role of the regents – in particular their power to set the content of syllabi – the situation there is hopeless. In Ireland, the destruction of intellectual life must be seen in the context of our colonial history, in which the years 1921-1998 now look like a brief interlude.

So what can be done? A few things; first of all, the PI/public funding model has broken down as a way of divining truth. There is a strong case for limited taxpayer funding in areas that would otherwise wither on the vine, or in which there is a strong national tradition. As I have written before, Ireland is in a strong position to set up a Bell/ Schroedinger center for the study of quantum coherence in biological systems, one of the cutting edges of current science. The rigour demanded by the academy arises naturally where there is competition and respect for scholarship, as does excellence in pedagogy as soon as students are given clear options.

“Cosmos and history” was founded by Arran Gare, scion of a distinguished Australian family, Unlike the much-vaunted PLOS, it does not demand thousands in money upfront to initiate the review process. It strikes this writer as precisely the way forward for truth-seeking in a schooled context; yet it functions - as far as I can see – with a volunteer crew. Nor does it require copyright assignment, which i am no longer preapred to do.

I occasionally use the “tenure” blog to do pre-prints, and the following paper is an example. There is much going on in it, but a central theme is what happens if we move learning back to a spiritual context, one in which the search for truth is a moral imperative. As before, I have made no attempt to format it here; it will appear, duly formatted, in “Cosmos and history” in 2012

Seán O Nualláin Ph.D. Stanford
Stanford University 14u Nollag 2011

_____________________________________________________________________________________

God's unlikely comeback; evolution, emanation, and ecology.

Seán O Nualláin Ph.D. Room 28, Ventura Hall, CSLI Stanford University, CA 94305

Abstract

This paper has three contrasting sections. The first starts with a description of the academic context that has led researchers like Stuart Kauffman to introduce "God" into respectable discourse. It then goes on to juxtapose his schema with similar others that his work does not reference. It is proposed that, since humanity is the cutting edge-for good and evil-of emanation/revolution, it is human development that we must focus on. This, in turn cannot properly be discussed without reference to first person descriptions and their contrast with third person descriptions. Likewise the role of those contrasting accounts within and outside the academy, which is currently under threat, must be referred to.

Accordingly, the second section begins with the delineation of subjectivity suggested by current neuroscience. It is argued that the cluster sampling of EEG will yield significantly more meaningful results than other competing methods.
This paper makes the admittedly radical contention that it may be intellectually responsible to engage in forms of thought and practice that engage the whole of life in a manner heretofore addressed by “religions”. Such forms of life cannot responsibly emerge from an insight into the nature of physical reality, which is the province of the academy. Rather, these forms emerge from consideration of the human psychophysical unity as it engages with a succession of different contexts and attempts to reflect on and refine its responses to them.
The nature of the academy early in the 21st century is a confounding factor. The corporate pressure to attenuate academic freedom is real, as is the fact that academic freedom in liberal democracies would immediately migrate to other, initially unfunded structures in civil society with the internet offering myriad opportunities for dissemination and immediate critique of ideas. Orthogonal to this is the attempt to specify and refine one's psychological life, the bane of academic psychology from 19th century German research onwards. It is argued that academic psychology has an asymptote at this point; better to distinguish between the “academy” and the “real world” in a way that best does justice to both, and allows the layperson to participate in a genuine attempt to seek knowledge by providing him with a veridical cosmology and psychology, than risk a new absurdity rivaling ontological behaviourism. Many salient facts about human psychology can be discovered by oneself in the “real world”, if only because the imperatives there will always be more compelling.

Finally, a synthetic narrative is proposed, one in which the evolutionary ethos of the first section is interrelated with the signs of the second section. This final section may yet be read independently of its predecessors. Kauffman’s imperative “reinventing the sacred” indicates something is awry in our conceptual and political systems; it is argued that historically authentic religious movements have preserved something they considered divine, and done so on the margins of society. In fact, this marginalization may be the essence of the religious impulse.

Keywords; Evolution, emanation, emergence, anthropic principle, neuroscience, consciousness, subjectivity

0. Prefatory comments
The first point relates to the context of this contribution. Were it fully committed to the academic process, certain things are lost and gained. What is lost is its obligation to base itself in forces in the larger society, as these are set aside in the academic context to afford intellectuals a sharper focus. Intellectuals in academia have no obligation to be comprehensible to the masses, and are asked in return to address current topical issues with increased precision; the state has been happy to provide them with the gain of financial and indeed physical security for this – at least up to recently. If the state continues to withdraw from this role in providing a venue for free inquiry, it is likely that other entities (including an initially “hedge school” coalition of scholars) will fill the vacuum – and historically resources have followed

This paper addresses many current issues, some directly, and others more obliquely. In the first section, starting from Kauffman's recent expedition in the area, we consider how the immanence of order has caused even “hard” science – indeed, particularly “hard” science – to consider schemes so outlandish for explanation of the anthropic thrust of the constants of nature that the old saw “God does it on Tuesdays” now seems like a relatively reasonable explanation. This paper is paradoxically being written at a time when believers in “evolution” (limited to an outdated NeoDarwinian ethos) are at odds, politically as well as epistemologically, with “Creationists”. It is argued that the first group need to familiarize themselves with the emanationism that Darwin only dimly grasped; for the latter, it is argued that a suitably modified emanationism/evolution is actually their best hope for retrieving the ethos of positive psychological transformation in the context of an over-arching sense of the cosmos in which that transformation is meaningful. This process has led to many of humanity's finest moments. We find a recent effort in this direction in the work of Gurdjieff.

But wait! Surely we are not going to countenance a worldview incompatible with modern science in order to generate an emotional frenzy that we then called sacred, the intensity of which will increase as it is contradicted by the facts? Of course not; but neither are we going to commit to a worldview that – in the past century – has variously and absurdly outlawed talk of mental process, trivialized biological inheritance, and announced that some stars are older than the universe. Thus, the paper ends with a tentative cosmogony in which the next step in evolution is seen in a larger context. Moreover, it is proposed that if it is granted that the unfolding of the cosmos, as Paul Davies concluded in his book on the subject, can be seen to point toward humans interacting with it and each other in a meaningful way, we do not need the gear supplied by the Abrahamic religions to transcend ourselves in the manner that the religious have done. In fact, we can work toward preservation of that which we see as sacred. In our case, it is argued that enacting legislation preserving the environment and human well-being in general, fighting corruption, preserving freedom of inquiry and speech, as well as action preserving true methods of inquiry into the real in science and art are examples of such work.

Sankara, Ramanuja, Milarepa in the East as well as Marcus Aurelius, Eckhart, John of the Cross and others in the West and scores of others have indicated a state of being in which the transcendent somehow exemplifies itself in a suitably transformed human psyche. This state of Being was available also to those in the active life; as the founder of the Vincentian order put it, pray that its recipients do not experience giving as mere charity. Religious formation, unlike academic formation, is mainly about the transformation of the subject; selflessness is induced, by greater (Mahayana) or lesser (Hinayana) vehicles. Yet this is done in the context of a cosmology and cosmogony; the fact that religions in general currently teach absurd cosmologies and cosmogonies as “truth” needs to be rectified, and that is one of the goals of this paper. We hope to preserve the self-transcendence of religion without eschewing the truth-seeking of academia.

The paper thus attempts to specify a role in society for what we currently call “the academy” and what we call “religion”. Academic ideas, like all others, are eventually processed by the brain, and this is the beginning of my analysis which is outlined in the following section. It sees a progression from mere attention, the capacity to evaluate salience of signals in a multi-sensory environment, to that stream of narration to oneself that we commonly identify as “consciousness”. In particular, it argues that this “consciousness” indeed may be related to phase synchrony of gamma oscillations in the brain. These gamma oscillations, in turn, decrease the metabolic demand of the brain on the rest of the organism. Meditators have learned how voluntarily to improve their health by increasing the amplitude and synchrony of their gamma oscillations.

In evolutionary terms, gamma oscillations provide extra metabolic energy and may explain why homo sapiens with its massive, metabolically expensive brain managed to survive. It is not excessively academically controversial to suggest that our experience of “consciousness” is fundamentally the result of imposing a largely self-serving narrative on a sketchily sampled series of instances of gamma onset with the brain put in a “null state” wherein it is maximally sensitive to incoming stimuli. Nor does it defy best academic practice to hypothesize that our experience of “selfhood” originates from an information-compression imperative; selfhood fundamentally springs from a cognitive immune requirement, the necessity to filter out irrelevant data often by labeling them as “ego alien” or in fact simply ignoring a huge amount of material that we should be aware of.

This means that our “consciousness” , self and will are largely fictitious. Again, this is not outré in current academic discourse and this author – among others - has published peer-reviewed material supporting this hypothesis. That said, it is surely natural to want a more veridical (true to the facts) “consciousness” , self and will. One would have to become aware of the formative influences in one's developmental environment and indeed current culture, and much else in order to do so.

Yet that is not my principal point here; that stems from the brute realization that, outside a well-appointed tenured office at a well-endowed university, the more urgent imperatives that impinge on one, moment to moment, come from the forces in the larger society identified by sociologists like Durkheim, not from nuances of academic discourse. In particular, the ancient cultural reservoir variously termed “common sense” and “folk psychology” provides algorithmic compressions of complex social interactions that are indispensable in the “real world”. To reject these tools would be folly on a personal level; on a state level, it would require a misguided totalitarianism compared to which Stalinism would seem a libertarian utopia.

And yet, as we talk about “common sense”, we refer to items processed by the brain. Otherwise put, reality is relative to consciousness in one sense, but transcends it in a more important sense. Alternatively, the most phenomenologically pressing facts will always be about being-in-the-world (Dasein), not being-in-the-academy.

So far, the above might read as yet another lifelong academic desperately trying to reassure himself that his work has some consequence. However, I believe that I may be making a more important point; the hypothesizing of a realm of knowledge that relates to our lives, moment to moment, and yet is consistent with our best current academic guess about our nature. To refuse to countenance this hypothesis is to yield acres of critical ground to the “new age” and to charlatans of all stripes. The two extremes of “eliminative materialism” (accepting only the science, however incomplete and uninformative in the millenniar hope of enlightenment in the future ) and irrationalism are both unacceptable.

What I propose, then, is that we should continue to insist that the academy continues to pursue objective knowledge with rigor and honesty; we are, after all, paying for it with our taxes. Every single modern attempt to ask the modern academy to do more, by delineating the nature of subjectivity in a fine-grained and yet comprehensive way, has failed or been diverted from psychology to philosophy, a classical way of kicking the troublesome upstairs where one cannot hear it complain. It seems appropriate to suggest that, outside the finer achievements of the the humanities which need to lose their postx obsessions, it is not appropriate to ask the academy to go this extra kilometer. In particular, no academic psychology, whether neurally based or not, will get us very far, though it is appropriate to mention the existence of more advanced subjective states than “consciousness”.

Where then? Let us return to our notion that “consciousness” reflects gamma synchrony. Surely we wish to hone our “consciousness”, moment to moment, life situation to life situation? It seems to be that the first step is to observe oneself in these different life situations. Is one lying? Being inappropriately deferential, contemptuous, afraid, confident, angry, and so on? What is left of oneself from this wrenching analysis?

Because many true religious thinkers would argue that this is really the beginning of the religious quest; those on the perennialist school would argue that traditionally religions are a codified set of practices to allow one to acquire being for the remnant of selfhood left over from this excruciating self-examination. The fact that religions today are in general merely debauched versions of what was created by their founders is irrelevant; in fact, each religion was set up as a response to a similarly debauched situation.

Why indeed call this path a religion? I would prefer another name; however, I can think of no other that suggests that the task of integrating oneself across many contexts is sacred and immensely difficult, as self-serving narrative begins immediately even in those few of us who have performed feats of great courage and charity. For the remainder of this section, I will outline the metaphysical background consistent with some current scientific best guesses. It will be re-iterated in the course of this paper.

As of 2011, it is known that coherent quantum states can exist in biological systems (Ball, 2011); while their spatial extent is literally minuscule, it does seem to be the case that they would persist better under a regime of gamma phase coherence than its opposite. Consider then this hypothesis; the flight that Plotinus and others describe from the alone back to the alone is the reinstatement of a non-classical probability regime in the cortex. This can be sustained by practices that we call meditation, having been initially attained by the practices of action, thought and love described in the religious literature. The unspeakably faster and more complex urban lives that the majority of humanity now live require that self-integration requires some discipline.

This too may help the physical environment; instead of a “vertical” attempt to realize ourselves through exploitation of the biosphere in new products, the notion that our subjectivity is more veridically experienced through a reflective path should be institutionalized through whatever means are appropriate in politics and/or civil society. The new millennium generation is as compelled by imperatives about the physical environment (recycling etc) as they are by texting and Facebook.

Section 1

1.0 Introduction

It is not unfair to say that "religious" and "theological" are epithets in our contemporary rational discourse, a good-natured step above "racist" and "bigoted", but a warning shot below "woolly” and "hand waving". Stuart Kauffman (2008) has boldly entered this cockpit and attempts a remarkable rehabilitation of God considered as the creative ethos of the cosmos. Not a personal, omnipotent, omniscient God, mind you; yet Kauffman is not insensitive to the charms of the Semitic God's presence. In fact, Kauffman has arguably opened a veritable Pandora's Box, and this first section will look at the consequences.

For Kauffman's eminence has meant that many reviewers have come out as long-term closet theists; otherwise put - and Kauffman comes close-we advocates of evolution should no more cede exclusive use of the word "God" to fundamentalists than liberals should cede "freedom" to the Tea Party. That said, it is the view of this writer that Kauffman would have benefited from a non-British philosophical formation, one that found correlates in what he was attempting in Hegel or in Plotinus. This first section is largely an attempt to create such an infrastructure, and proposes consideration of subjectivity in the context that Kauffman's brandishing of quantum coherence prohibited.

Kauffman sees his work as an essay at the "reinvention of the sacred". Of course, as Durkheim pointed out long go, the sacred is reinvented continually, and the numinous objects change from consecrated hosts to taboo crop circles – and indeed Monty Python’s famous “holy hand grenade”. What is needed, in these terms, is a specification of the sacred that does not offend our reason, and is socially salutary. Given the complex power relations in our contemporary society, self transcendence is often achieved by repealing laws that are man-made, as by - to take one example of emotional education -the distinction Needleman (2011) makes between being "humbled" and "humiliated", with only the former leading to God. Of course, Needleman has been attempting to do the same as Kauffman for some time, but in a religious context. Needleman argues that his mentor Gurdjieff, like Kauffman, introduced to the world a new concept of God.

Similarly, as Facebook regularly reminds us all, Kauffman has more friends than he knows. The mystical traditions in the discrete religious histories that Baha'ullah perceptibly called the Semitic and the Aryan converge on the concept of ultimate reality (Stace, 1960) that represents the formless quantum vacuum that quantum physicists and their new colleagues in cosmology deal with daily. Thus, to take one example of many, the late mediaeval Rhenish mystic Meister Eckhart has been written about, without qualification, both as Hindu and Buddhist (ibid). Problems arose when God became Yahweh, a projection of the social order, as Joseph Campbell correctly hypothesised; the reaction from the contemporary esoteric Judaism was apparently to ask whether this new manifestation was equivalent to the old manifestation labelled "nothing" (Ayin - Exodus 17:7), a higher manifestation that believers in our quantum vacuum at the root of the nature of things would find congenial.

The first port of call for a historically minded Kauffman might have been Plotinus as we shall see below. As it happens Kauffman instead at least implicitly proposes the following schema :

I the physical II the biological III the mental IV the social

He is at pains to argue against any type of reductionism from one level to another. In fact he argues that his schema is not an inventory, but an ontology, as well as an epistemological schema. So each category is ontologically as well as epistemologically distinct from the category below it and has new laws which apply to it as well as inheriting restrictions from the categories below. To those of us with training in computer science, this is not "ontology" as we meant it, which would simply be inventories with hierarchy in Kauffman's conceptual framework.

Kauffman refers rather to different qualities of being, the emanation of a transcendent yet immanent evolutionary "creative spirit" which he calls "God". And so we have a reinstatement of the ancient concept of a great chain of being but with no process of emanation. In fact Kauffman - insofar he addresses the issue - is an emergentist who thinks also that the laws of chaoplexity cut across all levels of his ontology. Yet he is explicitly anti-reductionist. The self-confessed failure of the great Stanford polymath Patrick Suppes (2002) to produce a single reduction to set theory of the diverse scientific phenomena treated in his vast book would not surprise.Kauffman.

With Plotinus (Stace, 1960) we get the following emanationist schema, one that proposes a descending from the absolute. Plotinus was undoubtedly inspired by Indian thought and his schema also shows parallels with the Tao Te Ching;

I absolute II Nous III world soul IV matter

In fact, in a move that we will see again soon, Plotinus claims that we as matter can again ascend to the absolute, the alone to the alone. Hegel may be interpreted as an emanationist with a focus on political organisation, and Marx as one with a focus on economic relations.

In this context, the poverty of emanation in Charles Darwin is noticeable;

I Biosphere ------ natural selection------> II conscious organisms

However much we dress Darwin up, we really cannot take him out. As I analyzed in my (2004) treatment, Dennett claims that Darwin's theory is an emphasis on the algorithmic, and immanent order can be explained by world-trying until a world in which order arises emerges. This is a rather generous reading of the Victorian's work. Margulis et al (2002) point to the huge role in evolution of endosymbiosis – the capture of one organism by another, with our mitochondria the classic example, enslaved to become an energy provider for the cell. Other mechanisms include Hox genes, alternative splicing and so on, well beyond the reach of Darwin’s ethos of small, incremental changes as I previously (2008) pointed out.

Likewise, Margulis et al. (ibid) claim that our current earth shows signs of far-from-equilibrium dynamics conducive to macroscopic life that they follow William Golding in terming “Gaia”; the biosphere without Gaia is capable of harbouring little more than bacteria.

There is a more substantial point to be made. Kauffman is proposing an ontology and evolution without any emanation of spirit. I believe his insistence on ontology, as distinct from epistemology, to basically be well motivated, and in this he follows that other neo-Gurdjieffian Fritz Schumacher (1977). What Kauffman does not make explicit is that the actual emergence of something new (like life) with new laws should be made distinct from situations where the human mind must change its construals (like quantum mechanics). This in turn should be distinguished from situations that I call "anthropisms" where, for example, the resonant reactions involving beryllium that give rise to carbon were predicted. This prediction was made by Fred Hoyle, - ironically a proponent of the "steady-state" universe and a debunker of his own neologism "big bang" - on the basis of anthropocentric data; the very fact that we are here means that carbon must somehow have been produced. Let us label these E, C, and A. If an advance recapitulates a previous advance, we call it "R". To anticipate much of the argument of this paper, what we humans can hope for now is a set of R's and C's on our own psyches and societies as the next, intrinsically sacred, step in evolution. We are not in a position to know whether something truly new thus emerges.

Kauffman correctly points out that many of the elements for life are available in the physical world, before life’s attested emergence; organic molecules (including alcohol) in interstellar clouds, membranes, self-replication before DNA, and so on. What Kauffman fails to acknowledge is the possibility that subjectivity should be part of the worldview, which is now a Weltanschauung as I argued in 2004, because it is no longer simply a third person description.

The difficulties we are about to encounter are in this writer’s experience best exemplified by sources such as the distinguished scholar, Huston Smith (1992). Smith inveighs against the fact that for science there is only “one realm of being”, the third person “objective “ description, then proceeds to give precisely such a description of how he sees things REALLY are; it is a classic third person account. It seems to this writer that we must honour science’s descriptions, but that this indeed allows space for delineation of subjective experience, and indeed the role of that experience in Nature, that does violence neither to science nor to the millennia of cultural formation that each interaction we have with another human being exemplifies.

Similarly Kauffman’s view of the social is indeed chaotic, with English common law his ideal and order emerging naturally from it. This notoriously did not work very well in Iraq where the New World Order attempted to supplant a civil law system with English common law. Hammurabi may still be revolving in his grave.

Moreover, people are capable of establishing astounding moral heights, even absent an explicit legal framework, perhaps indicating that something in reality resonates with them. The single positive consequence that emerged from the slaughter of seven Trappist monks at Tibhirine monastery, depicted in the movie "Of gods and men" and in Kiser's (2002) book, was the coming into public awareness of the work of the physician monk, brother Luc, who at 80 years old and severely asthmatic was still seeing over 100 patients a day free of charge. Moreover he had given up wealth as well as a very promising career in hospital medicine, and is depicted - presumably accurately – as an exemplar of what Christians call a "sign of contradiction", one that will resonate through the ages to young people seeking a direction in life.

The effects of appointing a too young conservative to the Papacy in the late 1970's will not be undone in our lifetime; yet the fact remains that the life led by Luc and the search conducted by Thomas Merton within Cistercian spirituality (Mott, 1993) forever will resonate. While the prior of Tibhirine, Christian de Cherge, might indeed be appropriately described as the kind of general that only the idly curious would follow into battle (Kiser, ibid.), the goal of the monks in staying in war-torn Algeria was not to seek conversions, but to atone for France’s colonial past in a show of love for the neighbors that their presence was protecting. That two groups of followers of the same, Abrahamic God should be at daggers drawn is indeed an indication of how vicious religious sectarianism and colonialism both are. It is worth saying that only religious practices that lead to silence, rather than more words and song, are worth even considering, let alone practicing.

The scheme which most comprehensively addresses all these issues is due to a Greek-Armenian, born around 1870, who became known "Gurdjieff". Moore (1990) writes beautifully about Gurdjieff's ecological concerns (20-21, 343-344). What he does not mention is that in the Gurdjieff system both environmental destruction and human lack of development are inevitable without massive effort. The premise of "the work" - as it is known - is that we are already functioning as nature intended. Unconscious automata, we are warming the Earth sufficiently for it to become like the sun. It would be anachronistic to point out that Gurdjieff would perhaps use the planet Venus as his endpoint for the current trajectory of earth, as many environmental scientists are proposing, had he lived later.

Recoiling in shock at revolutionary excesses, post-enlightenment French thinkers sought cosmologies and forms of life that closely resemble what is about to be proposed in this paper. For example, the apparently scientistic Comte produced an evolutionary schema that did indeed propose a “positivistic' age; and then suggested that we recapitulate to an age of cult, of emotional fervor in worship. The Saint-Simonian movement attempted to reform society along lines being proposed here, before withdrawing to become an apparently risible monastic community. The evolutionary schema and withdrawal from the world was echoed by Gurdjieff, and it is his exemplification of these ideas that we shall consider here.

Gurdjieff mixed with this some sub-Joycean neologisms, bizarre behaviour, and occasional manic humour. Yet the central idea is very powerful; emanation proceeds from the nexus of possible worlds to earth in the manner of the sending of that of major scale. Where a semitone interval is required, a shock - which we call E or A in our schema - is needed to allow its traversal. Remarkably, Gurdjieff proposed - at least in his interpreters - that ours was one of many universes that could exist, a multiverse theory before its time. This is a rough outline of Gurdjieff's schema;

Do Si La Sol Fa Mi Re

I God (All worlds) ....shock ...> II Universe ..> III Milky way >IVSun.> V Planets .shock> VI Earth . organic life >Moon

Gurdjieff, as interpreted by Moore (1990) puts it simply; "In order to fill the interval...a special apparatus is created...organic life on earth". Otherwise put, we are on earth to serve the purposes of the moon, a kind of “The matrix” situation as I pointed out previously (2004)!

In this schema, we are unconscious automata who only fantasise that we have consciousness, will, and selfhood. Gurdjieff provides techniques to develop these three processes within ourselves. He argues that in doing so we are actually contradicting the requirements of nature. In the next section, we are going to see evidence that Gurdjieff's grim analysis of our inner life -such as it is – seems quite close to the mark. The hypothesis that humanity is doomed to destroy the biosphere simply by following dictates of nature also seems to be reinforced by the fact that even before China and India come to Western levels of industrialization and environmental destruction, we are already in deep trouble.

Had Gurdjieff lived in the late 20th century, it is likely indeed that he would use the concept of Gaia, an attested mechanism within the biosphere which keeps atmospheric gases at far from equilibrium level while also keeping the seas at an alkaline level. This mechanism has failed before during the "Snowball Earth" period 600 million years ago and there is every likelihood that it will fail again. Likewise, the coincidences explained (away) by the anthropic principle that facilitate our existence have yet been insufficient to prevent millennia of human suffering, due both to moral evil and design flaws in human biology; there will always be work to do, and any religion that proclaims a God that is omnipotent and omni-benevolent will spend a a lot of its time repeating this absurdity - my 2004 book discusses various approaches in theodicy, of which outright antinomialism makes as much sense as any other. So therefore the efforts at full human development as a protection of the environment are moral imperatives, and need an institution for their continued fostering. Somehow, constructive and positive moral action seems to put us in touch with the Good, true and beautiful, and the idea that we are somehow completing creation has a certain resonance.

McBay et al (2011) give an indication of just how high the stakes are here. Their book is a “how to” and indeed “why to” manual for destruction of the entity they see at the core of our current environmental Holocaust. That they call this entity "civilisation" and that it is equated with the historical consequents of its Tigris Euphrates forebear must give pause.

I do not wish to give this book any more respect than deserves; it comes close to glorifying violence, has an almost fascist obsession with death, and supplies no techniques even for the basis of contemporary activism; monitoring changes to one's IP address, detecting spyware, and encryption/decryption. Secondly, as someone who was rather closer to the IRA than they ever were, I must comment that their upholding of Sinn Fein/IRA as an exemplar (180-182) is both laughably naive and deeply troubling. Alternatively put, Terrence MacSwiney's hunger strike to death compromised British rule in Ireland more than any military action against British rule; the practical recission of the instruments of British common law(so beloved of Kauffman, and such an invitation to make things up as they go along, absent a written constitution) was completed by public rejection of the colonial court system and the creation of autochthonous courts; the use of force by Michael Collins was pointed at ensuring that "normalcy" could not return, as there was no chance of victory in pitched battle. Far from destroying civilisation, we need to emphasise civilised values and human development in a way that is environmentally sustainable.

1.1 A flawed emanationist/evolutionary dynamic

There are certain things Gurdjieff got absolutely right;

1.A realistic, if apparently radical, appraisal of the relative importance of “worldly”
and “spiritual” issues for those who have reached a certain stage of questioning. In
brief, the worldly is treated as a set of random events with human automata as their
agents. Until this state of questioning has been reached, this prescription is dangerous.
2. An evolutionary dynamic - which yet stresses that human development past a certain point
is rare.
3.The provision of the prospect of a spiritual home; cosmopolitan, yet gendered,
welcoming and alluring, for seekers.
4.A cosmology, inconsistent with modern science though it is, as we shall see.
5.A “greater psychology”, starting from an already intuited sense of what one's abiding
identity actually is
6.An insistence on scientific verification, if honoured quite as often in the breach as
in the observance.
7.A hierarchy of value, though phrased in chemical terminology inconsistent with modern science.
8.A sense of the sacred, though his occasionally shocking public behaviour and his use of
the “way of blame” and desire to put off dilettantes belied this.
9.The notion that states of the body, including health, could be felt and altered through
a properly attuned consciousness.
10.Similarly, the old heysechast idea that the cosmos could reveal itself to sensation.

A salutary reconstruction of Gurdjieff would make clear the limits of scientific investigation,
and in particular its inability, even in principle, to educate subjectivity. Subjectivity, it would argue as before, is elucidated in interaction with the world in all its forms; business, the arts, ordinary social experience. It would use Goedel and latter day quantum mechanics to explicate the limits of cognition. It would dispense with the nonsense about the inferiority of “Western” art, and elevate the likes of Beethoven and Brunelleschi appropriately.
Gurdjieff's system rightly emphasises;
- an evolutionary cosmology, which needs to be restated in the context of current knowledge.

- a hierarchy of art, in which pride of place is given to “conscious” art that is technically accomplished, self-aware, and capable of emotional range. He erred in excluding “Western” art.
- authenticity in one's dealings with oneself and thus with others. His psychological system is good if one assumes that there are indeed higher states of subjectivity possible.
- the possibility of conscious access to healing processes in oneself and others, which is current cutting-edge science and a useful complement to the biomedical model.
Let us begin with the cosmology. Gurdjieff borrows liberally from Kepler, as well as Plotinus and other forebears, with the sun's being identified with “God the father” in the latter and the organic theory of planet-creation in the former bordering on the delusional. Classic Greek culture, by contrast, already had a relatively veridical model of the solar system, and stunningly accurate estimates using elementary geometry of the circumference of our Earth, as well as the Earth's distance from the sun and moon. It is quite remarkable that otherwise sophisticated intellectuals (Frank Lloyd Wright, Jacob Needleman, Peter Brook, A.R. Orage, P.D. Ouspensky, and EF Schumacher, inter alia) from the early 20th century from now have publicly identified themselves with the Gurdjieff system, which is mercilessly and hilariously dissected by Peter Washington (1993). Alternatively put, the public intellectual self-immolation of these great figures speaks volumes about the urgency of the issues that Gurdjieff's system, if clumsily and bizarrely at times, deals with.
The emphasis on art that is accomplished, self-aware, and capable of emotional range gives a hint about the appeal of his teaching. The corruption and degradation of culture that have accompanied the advent of mechanically reproducible art is, at this point in history, the stuff of legend. Yet Gurdjieff's “Asian” (read Orientalist in the Saidian sense) aesthetic is as wrong as his 19th century biochemistry is muddled, to put it kindly. Yet his emphases on the fragmentation of self, and the fact that he anticipated the links between the nervous and immune system that are now accepted as received wisdom, again indicate why his ideas received quite a welcome from major figures, while undergoing the mockery of Washington (1993). What is unassailable in Gurdjieff, like Merton, Brother Luc and Charles de Foucauld, is the ripples set in motion by the intensity of his search.
Washington (ibid) is similarly scathing about Madame Blavatsky and the entire theosophical movement, with the single exception of J. Krishnamurti. The religious, intellectual, and emotional ascesis of J. Krishnamurti's work is redolent of Gautama. It might be argued that J. Krishnamurti goes several stages further even than the Buddha. Yet many of the moves he makes have not been made explicit. While Gautama eschewed the authority of community, church and state – and in doing so renounced the hold that religions like Catholicism claim on all of these – there still remains the notion of a single, unified self with which he, Gautama, can enter into dialogue and eventually bring to enlightenment. (However, later Buddhist philosophy renounces this “self”)
J. Krishnamurti brackets even this self; in fact, the enemy within is what he calls “thought”. Where this writer lives in Berkeley, California, there is a humorous bumper-sticker that reads “do not believe everything you think”; J. Krishnamurti's (1979, P. 1) message is, essentially, “do not believe anything you think”:
“A meditative mind is silent.....it is the silence when thought – with all its images, its words and perceptions – has entirely ceased. The meditative mind is the religious mind – the religion that is not touched by the church, the temples or by chants”.
The connection with Advaita Vedanta is admitted by J. Krishnamurti himself; indeed, it could responsibly be stated that this is the root of the current teachings of Deepak Chopra, inter alia. Yet to denigrate thought will never do; what J. Krishnamurti surely meant was the “empirical” self, the self that comes and goes. However, what worked in the mainly pastoral societies when the Vedas were being written is unlikely to work in our current chaos. And with that we can return to the science.

SECTION 2 Meditation, consciousness, and the next step in human evolution

2.0 Introduction
This section builds on previous published work in theoretical biology and experimental neuroscience by its author. Specifically, it is taken as established that the impact of evolutionary dynamics in phenomenology is experienced primarily through the computational artifacts that we call our “selves”, and that such selves are multiple in each individual. These selves reflect above all the cognitive immune reaction, a reaction that breaks down in such syndromes as autism and schizophrenia, and attribution of often fictional agency to oneself with which nature has endowed us for engineering purposes. Yet in meditation, as in moments of undivided consciousness, this self-system break down to be replaced by a single coherent observer.
This section starts with a short comment on the current state of neuroscience, with remarks on the often exaggerated claims made by practitioners of various techniques. It goes on briefly to examine what phenomenology would seem to require of the data, and whether these requirements can actually be met.
It is cautiously proposed that techniques which reveal discontinuities occurring in the order of tenths of seconds may be most fruitful, and recent ECOG work by the author is, again briefly, summarised. While selves might be said to be manifest in the “dark energy” that comprises the great majority of the brain's 20% metabolic demand on the organism's total energy, the meditative state's benefits are perhaps partly due to the often sustained reduction of this demand. The paper continues by speculating on what evolution might want to achieve by this phenomenologically “selfless” and metabolically “zero power” state, and what social structures and experiential disciplines are appropriate to engender this state.
To do so is to infringe on the area traditionally occupied by religion. It is argued that the human religious impulse will survive the most robust attack by scientism, including eliminative materialism, and it is better if we can find ways of channeling this impulse into streams that are non-contradictive of fact, non-dogmatic, and inclusive of the many domains of human existence that we ourselves negotiate on a daily basis.

2.1 Neuroscience, logical atomism, and the new phrenology.
Vul et al. (2010) recently published a paper arguing that many fmri “findings” are premised on inappropriate statistical models and/or analysis. In that they are in tune with a new trend of skepticism about data-driven science
Fmri's new phrenologists are also logical atomists, over a half-century after Wittgenstein refuted this earlier position of his once and - one suspects – for all (O Nualláin et al., 2007). The frontal lobes are increasingly being mapped out for voluntary action under various regimes, and indeed feelings of awe; the idea that the locations chosen might be at best hubs (a la Dallas Airport) seems to have escaped the functionalists in their rush to publication. More troublingly, the project itself seems absurd beyond words; to catalogue a variety of experienced dispositions and look for cortical locations for them without first coming clean that this is what's happening is to risk scientific malpractice of the worst sort. Moreover, the really causal mental phenomena that constitute the innards of our mental machinery may be using not just time-tolerances in the thousandths of seconds, but tensor and category theory operations as described by Hoffman and Kime in (O Nualláin, et al., eds., 1997). They could not be further from the verbal projections of unschooled phenomenology that constitutes much current fmri interpretation.

Other current fads exploit, for example, the recent discovery that there do exist, after all, neural stem cells. So the prescription is to go exercise and generate new cells. There is no question that exercise can alleviate depression, and the notion that depression is primarily a resource-conservation strategy by the brain, one in which new neurons are not being formed, seems to this writer plausible. As we shall see, the kind of techniques used resemble those of Gurdjieff (Ouspensky, 1977); exercise, dance, and so on. Yet the time scales involved are in the order of weeks and months for any noticeable change.
It is uncontroversial in the extreme to suggest we need time sensitivity that is one or two orders of magnitude greater; it does seem to be the case that consciousness can be causal in the tenths of seconds, and that many critical neural events require only hundredths or thousandths of seconds. Specifically, work on microgestures (O Nualláin, 2010) indicates that a facial expression sustained for only 0.04 of a second, well below the sampling rate of consciousness, can affect our evaluation of a person. In turn, the sampling rate of consciousness can be assessed by examining what experimental subjects can actually report; to eschew pseudo-precision, and to anticipate some of the discussion below, it seems to be about a tenth of a second.
Let us now follow the later Husserl and examine some salient phenomena of experienced mental life. It is established from consciousness studies as certainly as any other fact within that disciple that a great deal of our mental life is the result of “change blindness” and other forms of projection and filling in the blanks. We are constituted of legions of “selves” that are experts in particular micro-contexts; remarkably, each one claims sovereignty over the entire organism while it is active (O Nualláin, 2010 ) . Alternatively put, the feeling of selfhood itself is an artifact of immunological cognition; when we are engaged in any cognition, we consciously sample a wave packet as it transitions through the basins of attraction that constitute its states.
So what does the transmission of a wave packet, a progression of the reaction incited by an incoming stimulus in our work (Freeman et al, 2008) involve subjectively? For a start, work on microgestures indicates that we process data that do not enter focal consciousness. I hypothesize that the transmission of a wave packet involves tacit experiences of self as particular contexts are
visited. The attractor landscape requires several preset trajectories, which we label modus ponens, story structure, and so on. Other, more gravitational influences on our cognition involve us predicating agency and moral rectitude of ourselves, often wholly inaccurately.

We master many cognitive domains and, barring disasters like Alzheimer's, manage to keep a lot of this knowledge intact. Whatever brain processes preserve this knowledge, they are remarkably robust. Following Piaget, Polanyi et al., many of us have outlined a model for the development of consciousness which see us exploring a domain by initially being overwhelmed by data. Think of the classical example of arriving at a new airport, where it takes some time to orient ourselves. Contrariwise, the child may assimilate all this data to an inauthentic notion of self and will begin to differentiate subject from object only under pressure. As we all know to our cost, many people (pace, Piaget) fail to differentiate subject and object in many contexts, and become bores, or worse.

In any case, both the child and the traveler need to develop a more veridical notion of the subject-object relation. The eureka moment achieved, it is preserved by a marking of self versus non-self for that particular context. Our cognition is structured by tens of thousands of these markings, and we have archaeological layers of them in our psyches. Their working has recently been attested by the fact that we can process microgestures (Pease, 1988); indeed, a technology of identification of suspects is now developing based on these tacit cognitions – whether for good or ill only time can tell.

Essentially, then, the content of our consciousness is a runaway train. What many authentic mystical traditions do is alert us to this, and in particular ask us to witness the process of selves coming and going in our psyches (Ouspensky, 1977; Krishnamurti, 1979). The eventual aim is to be able to identify ourselves as pure observation at a level higher than these empirical selves. Yet the cost of this is one that few feel like paying; total renunciation of those needful identifications to family, profession, and belief that we need to function in the world.

What I have argued for (2006) is the possibility of the development of a spiritual path that uses this most immediate and paradoxical fact about ourselves as a starting-point. It would see the role of the path as alerting the subjects to their intrinsic subjectivity through logical paradoxes exemplified by Goedel, where the careful observer can see himself believe two mutually incompatible facts in quick succession, and certain types of movement which free the subject from blocking behaviour by the organism. Dogmatic beliefs aside, it is likely that higher human function would result from identifying as pure awareness for some time each day. It can be argued that in his highly verbal way, this is what J. Krishnamurti (1979)was trying to achieve; and, of course, the here is also the starting-point for the Gurdjieffian Work, which is far more broadly based, and, perhaps inevitably, far more incorrect in its details (Ouspensky, 1977).

The discipline of meditation involves identification with a level of observation at which this fragmentation becomes salient; the religious infrastructure of church and sangha allows a space, both ontological and physical, within society's hubbub wherein this state can be realized. This state is devoid of worldly ambition and concerns. Yet the question remains; what role can it have in evolution? If, as suggested in O Nualláin (2007), selves are themselves a form of “code”, why dissolve them in this way? And what is the role of the kind of Weltanschauungen that religions exemplify?

O Nualláin et al (2011) hypothesize that consciousness, as we experience it, may be a “spandrel”, an accidental consequence of the necessity to attenuate the brain’s metabolic demand on the organism. For this attenuation, the brain began to operate with a “shutter” a few times a second (Freeman et al, 2008) wherein the cortex went into a “zero power” (O Nualláin, 2009) phase of miniscule metabolic demand, if for a very brief period.
Gregory Bateson (1972, 318) famously commented on what he considered the absurd notion that there is a delimited thing called the “self” that cuts down a tree. Indeed, that narrative self IS an artifact of a tenaciously-maintained narrative that puts oneself at the center of the universe and attributes agency and consistency to oneself, often wholly inappropriately. Nevertheless, the tree is just as felled afterward as it would be, had the self sprung from the ground like mushrooms. In fact, the engineering ability bequeathed by this narrative self is exactly what can destroy the biosphere’s ability to support macroscopic life (Gaia) – or alternatively, preserve it.

One of the themes of this paper, therefore, is that our evolution, as the preservation of Gaia, is now in our own hands. There will be no stone tablets, or twitter feeds, on how to save the conditions for intelligent and sustainable life on this planet. We ourselves must create the resources - moral, intellectual, and technological – to do so. That is what Gurdjieff began to attempt to say a century ago in his cryptic and marginalized way.
2.2 A brief comment on evolution and religion

Evolutionism and creationism are slugging it out in the US; the latter has taken the alias of “intelligent design”. Indeed, one of the critical document discoveries in the recent Dover trial was one wherein it was found that the “intelligent design” moniker was indeed used consciously by the creationists as a cover. It can, this writer believes, consistently be argued that the heat of the debate is due to the necessity of maintaining a “moral” basis for the expropriation of the northern part of the American continent from its autochtones, which keeps the impulse behind fundamentalist Christianity alive. The impulse gains further traction from the genetics illiteracy of Darwin himself, and the unassailable fact that his supporters fail to appreciate the many explanatory gaps in their arguments.

O Nualláin (2008) suggests some new foundations for biology, and evolutionary theory in particular, inter alia the following;
1. Darwin must be sacrificed for the sake of the stupendous theory of evolution which is emerging, which draws its evidence from the subatomic as from Hox genes.

2. Some kind of anthropic principle will always be invokable to explain the origin of life, of multicellularity and all the other major transitions as it is for apparent coincidences like the value of the fine structure constant
In the beginning, as envisaged in that paper (ibid.) are the laws constraining nature (particularly thermodynamics, and probably network theory), the laws allowing it unexpected creativity (handled by chaoplexity including catastrophe theory), the biosemiotic laws of syntax, consciousness without subject/object differentiation, unlimited energy, the possibility of time/space,

Evolution, in this scenario, occurs first in the physical world, where phase transitions allow the creation of planets, laws including stochastic resonance help in describing their mutual gravitation, and eventually chemistry describes the metabolic cycles created. At some point, the metabolic cycles become transcended by the entrance of codemakers, and the possibility of DNA-RNA replication enters nature. Once codes acquire metabolic power, a new possibility enters nature – that of deception, of lying when recreated at the human level. Now life and biochemistry emerge. Several billion years later, humans emerge, and the relevant code for their social interaction is a “socius”, a social self. The human task is to realise after sustained interaction with the world, which will beget a multitude of pseudo-”selves” in one, that one's real nature is observation. That realisation is the essence of soul. In the meantime, a life that increases recursive ability, conscious control of metabolism, and emotional stability will also facilitate success in the world.
There is a vast space left open to new religious movements by a combination of an immoral society, the linked issues of ethical, aesthetic and moral relativism, and the refusal of science both to engage reality with the whole psyche and, much more mundanely, exclude from its ambit much data and styles of thought. Thus, aspiring gurus can point to the fragmentation of the self, and use this as a lever to undermine the whole psyche for their own benefit; conversely, religious traditionalists can point to the moral chaos in our society and, with some moral force, argue for old time religion. As a group, a religious entity can convene to help to turn the ordering principles in nature toward good, insofar as they can with their limited resources.
On a positive note, questions like;
“Where and how did the cosmos originate?”
“Where and how did life originate?”
“Where and how did humans originate?”
“How does the biosphere self-regulate to support life?”
produce wonder in most people. Indeed, it takes a process akin to metaphysical censorship to stop this access of wonder, a refined emotion that historically has been just as much central to religion as social control.
The psychic reality of our fragmentation is dealt with in opposite ways by the two Krishnamurtis (Jiddah and UG). Gurdjieff steers a path between the two ; his genius is the certainty with which he posits the universality of his system, as in his range of data. We quite definitely need a cosmology, psychology, ethics, aesthetics, and epistemology and he provides all, if in at times utterly nonsensical form, as in his science. His aesthetics incorrectly ignores and indeed denigrates the monumental achievements of European civilization.
The finer aspects of the arts, sciences, and social relationships need to be defended with moral force. We need to defend Beethoven and Mingus against our contemporary trash, just as the tendency of science to jump on the next big thing like the human genome project and effectively disenfranchise biochemistry needs to be resisted. Thus, there is a role for an organisation, international in scope and originating in civil society, which preserves salutary impulses within the arts, sciences, and indeed politics in the name of authentic human development. The early 21st century attack on US democracy from within in the name of an enemy without needs further to be resisted. As the success of popular science has shown, the central arguments of science are comprehensible to intelligent laypeople.
With respect to subjectivity, it is increasingly clear that there is immense power in concepts from folk psychology, and they seem more like useful compressions of data than societal fiats. In any case, folk psychological description of inner states will always win in the marketplace of ideas. A salutary example is the notion of freedom of conscience, which effectively sets ultimate parameters for one's political being in a free society, and logically precedes any neural data. In the same vein, by prohibiting the imposition of a state religion, the first amendment rightly destroys the possibility of theocracy.
That said, there will always be a market for new religions. Coupled with the imperatives mentioned above toward a substantive ethical, intellectual, and aesthetic engagement with life, there is also a need for something that is environmentally sustainable. The aesthetic impulse should include vectors toward a life that is much more emotionally free and full than what we have. That established, a morally stable society will seem much more natural.

Coming from a strong engineering background ( there is no reason to disbelieve his claims about working on railway engines) Gurdjieff found it useful to talk about humans as machines in a classical Victorian sense. Stimulus-response psychology comes from the same impulse. It talks, it thinks, it cannot do. We can at best catch ourselves in the act.

Several paradoxes are inescapable. In evaluating scientific views of how we function, we compare them with what we know of the real world and our relation to it. It will remain effectively a political, not a scientific decision, to abandon the wisdom of our folk psychology. Concepts like “maturity” and “decency” may perhaps never enter the scientific lexicon, but remain the finest achievements our knowledge of ourselves. Contrariwise, Gurdjieff's system with its cosmology, psychology and detailed analysis of the psyche and organism can perhaps usefully be rephrased using some of the concepts of today's knowledge.
2.3 Neuroscience redux and conclusion
In a set of papers (O Nualláin, 2008, 2009, 2010 and forthcoming and O Nualláin et al 2011) this writer outlines some empirical neurodynamic work, and interprets it with respect to consciousness, selfhood, and meditation. To step back for a moment, what he is doing is mapping some empirical work onto phenomenological facts that have been known for several millennia. To wit; there is no unchanging self, outside some restricted social contexts that can sustain it; this, above all, is the lesson of the wilderness that religious neophytes were sent into. Much of what we experience as self is the result of subliminal processing; specifically, the processing of microgestures can be explained with dynamical systems approaches to the brain, which allow for the fact that an entire cortex can be destabilized by a few photons, a few molecules of scent, or other stimuli lasting only a few milliseconds. To continue; we narrate to ourselves continually, giving us the illusion of a self continuous in time, which is agentive and consistent.
Moreover, we will not ever trust a fully reductionist account of our mental states, which is likely to involve mapping to a Grisha Perelman-like mathematical nexus of topological theory, except more complicated. Folk psychology is here to stay, if only because society, rightly, will not trust neuroscientists to make all decisions for it. The fact that people will remain making sense of their lives, taking a little science, a little family experience, and much personal judgement will forever leave the door open to sense-giving activities like religion. Conversely, the pointlessness of religion's ignoring science is exemplified in a an age-old theatre of autos-da-fe and show trials. In this writer's opinion, it can consistently be argued that Gurdjieff and Ouspensky were on the right track after all; it is their science that needs updating. The ethos of search, and assertion of finer states of being reflected in appropriate art, allows the insights and sense of the divine that they exploited from esoteric Christianity, Vedanta, Sufism, and Tibetan Buddhism to be reconstructed in modern, urban society

In (O Nualláin, 2006), I outlined the notion of an experiential discipline, and how education of subjectivity can be facilitated with such disciplines as Feldenkrais, and indeed application of current modal jazz, the modern mandalas that cubist paintings exemplify, and so on. Yet all this cannot proceed in a vacuum; we need societal constructs as refined as academic tenure, together with the thousands of years of hard-won experience about individual freedoms, state and civil society, representational structures for due process, peace-making and - as has become clear since 2008 – regulation of the market, and possibly a root-and-branch definancialization of aspects of our economy for human progress to continue.

Section 3 A new religious sense
3.1 The third millennium Mind
To assert, veridically, “I am” while remaining non-contradictive of cutting edge science and the other finest achievements of one's culture requires Himalayan efforts. Let us now outline what Ouspensky (1977) might have included in the 21st century edition of his book. First of all, the prospectus for the school might have read as follows;
“Truth

Few “seekers of the truth” are really looking for truth. The end of our exploration is even more banal than arriving back at our starting-point and knowing it for the first time; it is the realization that our fundamental nature rests most securely as the act of observation itself, and cannot ultimately be achieved through anything in the world.

First of all, there are often psychological motivations for their ill-founded “search” - a desire to escape challenges of life that are going to recur anyway, no matter what cult they follow, pure laziness, egomania masquerading as a search for reality but actually a deeply-entrenched desire to subjugate others, using religion as an excuse.

Secondly, there are few real sources of truth in our contemporary world. Alternatively and perhaps better put, the diversity of narratives out there means that certainty will be bought only at the cost of debauching openness and indeed reason itself. Correspondingly, cults like Scientology maintain their hold by the practice of physical and mental violence.

Thirdly, truth is currently dominated by “science”, a word meaning knowledge; again more specifically, its etymology connotes a (presumably correct) cutting of the world into categories. The mathematics associated with the most exciting discoveries in fields like physics are beyond 99% of us; yet they are indispensable tools in the search for physical truth.

Finally, to repeat; few “seekers of the truth” are really looking for truth. What they are looking for instead is a meaningful life in which their aptitudes and self-discipline are recruited toward a self-transcendent goal. Genuine seekers will not willingly give up their skill-set, nor the better part of their natures; they will, on the other hand, renounce money, career, sex, social status and much else if the goal seems worthy.

In the early 21st century, the energy put into fruitive work no longer ends in “fruitive” products; remarkably, people pay billions to create and maintain simulated farms on the internet. An economic collapse in the West led to money being redirected back to the very miscreants who caused the collapse. It is doubtful that popular culture has ever been at a lower ebb. Universities are being colonized by corporations, and research monies are being poured into ever sillier and more fraudulent projects.

The old solutions have lost their lustre. Nationalism has been - rightly or wrongly – publicly discredited to the point that the expression of autochtones in cultural nationalist projects is now viewed as suspicious. Traditional religion has not recovered in the west from the Galileo incident, nor frankly should it be allowed to do so.

Yet there is much hope. The destruction of the biosphere has been slowed by courageous activism. Similar campaigns have ensured that most - perhaps all – scientific knowledge is available free on the web, with for-profit journals hiding only contentious and often evanescent findings True heroism ensured that freedom of speech and the democratic process have withstood a century of serious external threats.

It is possible to live a meaningful life without surrendering to a cult. Trashy popular culture can be avoided. One can forever top up one's knowledge, free of charge, from publicly available sources, as science indeed advances

One first of all needs sufficient resources to leave traditional society. This path has existed as long as monasteries themselves have done so. These resources include money, but also a conscious rejection of the wiles of the world. These wiles must of course first be experienced. They do not include the desire for normal social intercourse with others as a responsible member of society – if one who does not subscribe to current political and indeed epistemological trends.

The day can be spent enjoying the products of tens of thousands of years of high human culture, maintaining one's property (cultiver notre jardin), creating edifying products, and attempting to live an ever more refined and renounced life. One's skill set will be used in full. To call this path “religious” is to say no more than it accepts the necessity of living – if for a brief period – at the margins of society in order to find one's true place in it.

The final goal, of course, is to inspire others to live such an environmentally sustainable and decorous existence – one worthy of the destiny of human beings.

3.2 A new guide for the perplexed

People search, and they naturally call what they're looking for “knowledge”. Yet an effective monopoly on knowledge is claimed, with much justification, by the universities. Moreover, this knowledge is often couched in terms that are very intimidating – mathematical formulae, big words, and so on. This I have discussed immediately above

What we now will focus on is the paradox that reality (as experienced) is relative to consciousness, and yet transcends it. So knowledge is ultimately third person, a set of objective statements – of course! - and yet the external world keeps breaking into all hermetically sealed conceptual systems. In fact, this systems can exist only in the hothouse of the academy; outside the academy, they lose all force. Humans are drawn to belief systems – even spectacularly obviously wrong belief systems like fundamentalist religion – that can somehow inform their every moment.

We are in deep waters. Let's try and clarify one thing; third-person knowledge should be left to the academy, and nothing that we state should contradict the finer, stable achievements of the academy. Fundamentalist religion is epistemologically wrong, pure and simple. Conversely, the academy should be allowed to continue its explorations in total intellectual freedom, and without corporate or state interference. If the “official” academy is interfered with in these ways, there is plenty of space in western civil society for alternative academies, if necessary on the Internet.

Another path in our argument is opened up by the history of formal linguistics. It seemed at one point that a total description of language could be given by a grammar, and that this grammar could be programmed into a computer, which would then understand language. However, it quickly became clear that grammar only gave syntax; and attempts to capture “meaning” with semantic formalisms only led to another complex set of predicates, which also had to be interpreted. In fact, a new level, pragmatics, required the understander actually to have a critical property of consciousness as the literal “meaning” of statements was often incorrect

So far, then, syntax, semantics, pragmatics; but any great literary artist will play on the reader's experience of the world in ways meant to be edifying. The artists will try to recruit the reader's moral sense, and to invoke ever finer types of feeling. We have now left the academy, as it is currently understood; we are in the area of first person knowledge. As instructors, we are trying to transform the being of our students to make them capable of truly selfless acts in order to understand a text.

It is better that way. All third-person knowledge can be acquired most rapidly and effectively by people without a highly developed moral sense. Scientists like Dirac and Newton, who seem to have had Asperger's, got there first precisely because they really did not have a developed sense of their being in society and this freed up processing space. That sense should be inculcated if necessary for everyone's benefit.

One cannot understand the forces in our society without having been subject to then in a very raw form at some point. These forces incarnate themselves in figures who want to own everything, to control through force, or whatever. Conversely, they can authentically be responded to by moral decisions, second to second, a smile at a harried service worker, a donation to a cause, a sit-down in front of a tank, a year with a voluntary organization.

This kind of moral formation involves repressing the “empirical self”, that part of oneself that narrates non-stop in a self-serving way. Its narrations get in the way of veridically apprehending reality. Moral formation has positive epistemological consequences. That is apart from the sense of moral stature we get from figures like Nelson Mandela, who seem genuinely to have forgiven their enemies and in doing so to have caused self-integration through taking of responsibility in some of them.

There are two further problems involved in the search for truth;

1.Consciousness is a relatively slow process, and the great majority (according to Lashley, all) of causal processes have already occurred before an item enters Consciousness. Yet, once it has entered, we can now make a moral decision; as the aphorism has it, we may not have a conscious will, but we have a conscious “won't”.
2.Influences from the academy – which, let us remember, claim to be absolute truth - are competing with primal biological urges, with the demands set by the financial and political systems, and much else for preeminence in our psyche. Ironically, to grant the academy such preeminence would be a political decision, and probably a very bad one.

Again; the world (as experienced) is relative to consciousness, and yet transcends it. Much “education' and indeed formation of all kinds is about molding the billions of years of winding evolution that we represent into something that can perform a specific set of tasks well. That involves forming the preconscious. None of this is controversial.

The preconscious can be formed by stating an ontology, one that distinguishes grades of being from lower to higher, and recruiting the moral sense in impelling the students to the higher. Recent history shows that this can be very powerful, and very evil ; it is possible that many in the SS sincerely believed that they were righteously wiping subhumans from the earth. It is important to note that this is an ontology, not an inventory; that what is taking place is not psychological, but “objective”; external moral and noetic entities are being created that one is encouraged properly to apprehend through an act of self-transcending will. (We could indeed invoke the old concept of hylomorphism, the degree of spiritualization of substance, for the higher realms here, to complement “ontology”)

Of course, nationalism notoriously has provided the ontology, and moral impulse. The fact that “nationalism “is now a bad word doesn't mean that it will not be reused, over and over, in the future as in the present – as anyone looking at emerging countries can see - nor that all great human initiative is always going to emerge from those who see themselves as conforming to the dictates of a higher calling from outside themselves, rather than seeking psychological balance.
To continue with the main theme, then, seekers are looking for knowledge and understanding. The universities and other official academic institutions claim, with much justification, to be the providers and arbiters of knowledge. Yet academia is so full of trendiness and vicious competition that it often leaves alone the big, interesting questions, the ones that impelled Einstein to say that a human being who has lost the ability to wonder is already half-dead. Let us look at a few of these questions from some of the sciences:
PHYSICS
Do the Copenhagen and ontological interpretations of wave-function breakdown reflect different psychological dispositions, or are they in principle formally distinguishable?
Why is there so little progress to a grand unified theory that string theory is starting to be derided?
Is there really an external ordering process in the cosmos, one labeled “God” by proponents of intelligent design?
What have the chaoplexity sciences actually wrought?
BIOLOGY
Why was Darwinian evolutionary theory accepted even before there was a plausible theory of genetics, and is this premature acceptance underlying the intelligent design debate?
Does the very limited success of the human genome project imply that we need a new theory of symbol systems in nature, encompassing gene expression all the way to natural language?
What is the relationship between diet, metabolism, thermodynamics, and biochemical pathway?
THE INFORMATIONAL SCIENCES
Why cannot we parse any complete natural language after a half-century of trying?
Will quantum computing change our notion of computability?
How far can the notion of information be extended as an explanatory tool, or, as in the case of Murray Gell-Mann, a moral imperative?

PSYCHOLOGY
Is consciousness best regarded as a property of the cosmos, or an epiphenomenon of mental processing?
Does this also go for emotion?
Is there any physiological basis for meditation?
Are there formal limits to any attempted scientific formalization of mind and/or if such formalization was achieved, would anyone even understand it? Many math theorems are now too complicated to be checked by a person.
SOCIAL SCIENCES
Is there a real progression evident from feudalism to democratic republics?
Is a caliphate-type theocracy desirable, given its undoubted capacity to give stability?
What is the relationship between science, society, and religion that best does justice to all?
Are there objective rules in art, or is it all personal preference?
3.3 CURRICULUM
It is our, hopefully uncontroversial, contention that most of education involves students and teacher reading, discussing, and trying to improve their powers of concentration. If there is indeed some direct connection with the soul of the cosmos that can be achieved by arational initiation – and we have not found any such - the facts remain untouched by it. What we offer, au contraire, is a set of lectures and discussions that penetrate right to the heart of cutting-edge science and arts in a variety of fields.
PHYSICS
Cosmology; the “big bang” and its conceptual origins.
The origins of order; the anthropic principle and our privileged place in the unfolding of the cosmos
From Galilean mechanics through QM and relativity to the search for a grand unified theory
Chaoplexity; what is chaos? What are non-linear effects? Why is this field so important?

BIOLOGY
Health; diet, ageing, exercise, and the limits of the biomedical model.
What is cancer?
The contrast between metabolism and codes; genetic, histone, and other codes
Syntax as an essential part of nature; viruses and other text-editors
Epigenetics; factors that structure the unfolding of the genome in time and space, and the consequences for the nature/nurture debate
SOCIAL SCIENCES
The origins of the normative i.e. rule-based, in human experience
The role of religion in pre-industrial society and the necessity for outsourcing its concerns to other societal structures.
What then is left for religion? - Krishnamurti/Maharshi, Gurdjieff, MLK/Gandhi.
The dangers of fundamentalism
Liberal republican democracy; the individual as microcosm in a self-similar structure
Open source; the Luddites being creative, rather than destructive, this time
PSYCHOLOGY
The classical domain of psychology; methodology and conclusions
A greater psychology; consciousness and the self
Aesthetics; formal complexity, expression and suppression of desire, and self-awareness
Music; Indian rags and other modal musics; the classical period of western music; what next, after jazz?
Art; why did painting lag behind architecture? After post-impressionism and cubism, what next?
Transcending postmodernism “
It is in the context hopefully established by the above discussion that I propose a new evolutionary schema; as stated in the abstract, this is consonant with the schemas produced in 19th century reaction to revolutionary excesses. Let us start with the grades of being. From the bottom, there is an entangled nexus giving rise to matter including advanced properties thereof like, self-preservation even far from thermodynamic equilibrium, dynamics captured in recent discoveries like fractals and chaos, and so on. At some point, the capacity to distinguish self and non-self merges with dynamics to create life. In turn, life becomes social, evolving into multicellular organisms, and allowing sex which will turn out to be critical for regulating chromosome number. The mere detection of stimuli to assay the exterior evolves into consciousness, with the latter allowing tests of salience of signals from many modalities. consciousness combined with symbols and self/nonself distinction creates much of modern man.

We are now up to perhaps 300 million years ago; what is even less certain is when the capacity to embed plans for dealing with the external world within themselves; this is the essence of the human genius arises. It is possible that recursion, the capacity to embed symbols, arises initially in birdsong. Combine recursion with intentionality in symbols, a nascent capacity for them to point to the external world, and the full human technical competence is close to being established. It is this competence that academies should – in total intellectual freedom – study and enhance.

Yet that is only the beginning of our path, as individual and as a species. Moreover, academies function in particular contexts that bias what they teach. The very act of sitting and listening to a lecture – however interactive technology can make this - induces a set of restrictions, and betokens a context of civilization. There are truths concerning race, class, and gender in which context the academy functions; while it can talk about them, they shape its functioning. Likewise, academies work in a context of political freedom, and in an environment in which all can travel practically anywhere in the world, and find out anything from the endless mine of human knowledge.

It is the unconscious presuppositions that religions explore. The goal is less an intellectual grasp – however refined – of various items of knowledge than a state of being that permeates every context of life. That granted, it is fair to suggest that no new religion should ignore science's central findings, nor its methods of exploring reality. This is particularly the case in the early 21st century, as it begins to look like the exponential advance over the previous 3 centuries was low-hanging fruit. The mind has not proved susceptible to this analysis; the “life' sciences as well as economics use baroque mathematical formalisms – much more complex than anything in physics - to find out very little.

The truth of the ontology then, common to the academy and outside, rests on two pillars;

1. The distinction between first and third person knowledge, with the academy concerned only with the latter, but rigorously so;
2.The nature of matter, life, consciousness and self-awareness, with patterns like chaos arising in social systems as in raw matter
3.The permeating through society of race, class, and gender, with certain parts of life been set aside for certain activities, and social structures that should incorporate civil values. Much of this is unconsciously encoded, and religion will sometimes try to bring it into awareness to facilitate the development of mastery of oneself

What can such a new path offer? Ironically, given the debauching in current society both of the arts and sciences, inexpensive efforts in these areas are likely to be more refined and technically better than that produced in the mainstream. Secondly, “he who rests shall reign” locating oneself as the locus of awareness seems physically healthy. Thirdly, increase in empathy in fact broadens one's knowledge and experience of life, through vicarious experience. Fourthly, it is possible to live a life much less environmentally damaging if not subject to the stream of accident. This includes the fact that the insane economic cycle of modern society allows a period in which good physical property is cheap, and will then uphold one's claim on it.

3.4 MASAB; A less evanescent perennial philosophy

(meditation, Arts, sciences, activism, biosphere )

Struck by the absence of interiority in modern life, many writers – and indeed some thinkers – have called for a return to a “perennial philosophy”, however conceived. Energies that might have gone into saving the pacific salmon have instead been diverted into strongly-worded assertions about how many levels of psychic reality there are, and how the geocentric model is really true if we are properly initiated into the true secret knowledge that constitutes its meaning.

The “true secret knowledge “of the cosmos is best considered by Einstein's use of math tensors, a race for truth he won against David Hilbert. It requires initiation; a course in mathematical physics, or at worst a good popular science account. Similarly, the various cosmic and colored psychic models (Holman, 2008) seem destined to suck up energy that should go into the arts.

This is particularly the case as mass popular culture threatens good art, in the same way as corporate encroachment on the university is indeed destroying true knowledge. Assertion of the Arts and sciences in today's society is a positive political act. Likewise, of course, is any act that preserves the biosphere, and human dignity.

The central problem with respect to the thrust of ideas is that their verbal expression, once presented to the individual, is processed by relatively slow and powerless conscious processes. In the meantime, imperatives due to food, shelter, and so on, often mediated by societal structures, gain much greater purchase even at the moments that one may persuade oneself that one is thinking edifying thoughts. These imperatives only become available to consciousness as a result of very severe internal struggle, or much more salutary political struggle

The goal is authentic states of meditation in the middle of a life in the world which is open to the world's diversity and beauty in a realistic way. It is clear that is necessary to have a sense of an external world and of a moral excellence that is possible with requisite effort, usually directed in the context of conforming to the higher achievements of that world. Here indeed we will have an external world, including a cosmology and cosmogony, but the moral effort is going to consist in honing the person's ability to cognize that world, most importantly by getting rid of unwanted ego in proper humility (which is what it is to be in the moment)

3.4.1 A creation reality

In the beginning, an undifferentiated nexus; called “uroboros” by the ancients and currently terms like “quantum vacuum” are used to describe the same concept. Yet it contains within itself the potential for everything, including us

The first differentiation traditionally saw God differentiate from his creation; we now use terms like symmetry-breaking and operators in Hilbert-space. This tendency to differentiate subject and object, which yet have the potential to be linked in a way that allows recreation of unity at a higher level, in turn allows sensation, perception, and intentionality in cognitive systems. A human being in full possession of his faculties and with a stable relationship with the physical world can re-experience uroboros in a controlled way.

Now there is matter, with classical probabilities, and its own laws; yet according to some modern thought baby universes are incessantly being born. The energy in our quantum vacuum is 10**120 times less than the predicted value, and this facilitates our existence. Thousands of such unlikely circumstances beget our existence as intelligent carbon-based life forms, stardust able again to experience the primordial forces of the universe.

There are two sets of objective facts; the physical and the social. The former can be expressed as an ontology buttressed by the authority of science. The latter refers to forces that contextualize every utterance, including every utterance that claims to discuss them objectively. To gain clarity about them requires resources like critical theory – but even that is an artifact of the 20th century academy. Power relations in the society often can best be apprehended by a struggle against them, not through talking about them.

It is simply not good enough after several centuries of modern science to talk about “hidden knowledge”. Any such “hidden knowledge” - where useful in the manipulation of the real world, both physical and social - has long ago been made explicit. Conversely, the modern academy is a dangerous place, with commercial forces assailing even academic freedom, which was the keystone of the set of compromises between scholarship and power that is incarnated in the academy. So what this section is about is an attempt at an ontology that works within and without the academy .

The old chain of being - matter, life, consciousness, self-awareness must be complemented by these notions;
1.“Simple' matter itself arises from some primordial stuff, and one mechanism is through an act of observation.
2.Matter has extraordinarily complex dynamics, which we are currently attempting to comprehend using appropriately skeptical terms like “chaos”.
3.These dynamics rare recreated at each higher level, including human social systems;
4.There are other intrinsic dynamics; for example that which separates subject and object, leading in turn to things (through wave-function-breakdown), membranes, and Brentano's intentionality.
5. Symbols begin with life, and meld with recursion and intentionality to allow humans to talk about the world as if it were objective; on occasion, it in fact is best regarded as objective and we get engineering ability. Of course, symbols - even pre-symbolic signs – allow deception.
6.There is an external ordering force in nature, addressed in science (or explained away; as you prefer) by concepts like the “anthropic principle”. The odds against the existence of intelligent organic beings are literally astronomically high.
7.This principle manifests itself in ordered societies doing complex tasks like waging war, calling on our engineering ability, and these things are often literally insane.
8.To distance oneself from this insanity and to exult in one's being as a free human is a very remote and infinitely joyous achievement.

The restrictions of the human psyche include the following;

1.There is a distinction between sensorimotor and symbolic cognition.
2.Cognitive development involves interiorization of processes previously intermediate between person and world.
3.Cognitive development also involves the related ability to reflect on one's diverse perceptions, and realizing a higher synthesis between them – subject/object differentiation. Pace Piaget, this process of development continues through adulthood.
4.The appropriate behaviours for every stage in life are often encoded in the culture; for childhood, play and obedience; for adolescents, finding the limits of one's competence and power; for young adults, ambition and house holding; for older adults, reflection on the ebb and flow of emotions and sage counsel.
5.There are regnant biases as a result of emotional “cathexes” - positive and negative- and, of course, early experience of family is critical.
6. The schema can best help those who are in the midst of the appropriate stage in their lives for their age, intuit something huge is missing, and are acting on it in some principled way. For example, they may notice that people give utterly inconsistent accounts of their actions and motivations and have sought explanations at cost to themselves s their friends flail about in their explanations of their inconsistency; they may notice the trash music in our culture and have set up a functioning, stable music business with a good Youtube channel at some cost; they may notice that their contemporary socio-economic system essentially facilitates a power-grab by Wall Street using ever more arcane math models and seek to rectify their lives to insulate what is fine in them from this; they may notice that simultaneously the biosphere is being destroyed and work for its conservation. The critical commonality is a moment of observation that transforms everything in one's life. At that point, one can move to the next level.
7.Any accompanying institutions should provide a place of respite and development for those with the foregoing realizations and responses to BE. This should be in a peaceful, preferably rural setting; have Feldenkrais and Yoga sessions; along with depictions of the Buddha should be those of contemporary heroes like MacSwiney and Brouwer; there should be a library full of artistic, spiritual and scientific classics from Beethoven's late Quartets Einstein's/Dirac's popularizations to the Gita. Preferably, there should be a working farm for self-sufficiency. There most above all be courtesy and civility, both in the group and with the neighbours.

3.5 The making of another counter-culture

There is of course ultimately no need for a path; we are already enlightened, have Buddha nature, are non-dual awareness etc. The problem is that, put in these terms, we lose this realization in the hurly-burly of everyday life. In fact, if we don't take care, we can end up so overburdened with stress due to real problems that we have no time to realize anything outside that stress.

Likewise, science indeed gives answers to a wide range of questions. Unfortunately, its areas of success do not include phenomenology – and how could they, given that science works for the objective/quantitative so well! The folk psychology description will always take personal precedence

These facts together allow the creation of a space in society for that consensual experience of the sacred, particularly as manifest in man, that we call religion, It needs a modus vivendi, at all times aware of the needs of others in a range from benign indifference to utmost heroism, a commitment to the search, and emotional maturity

A new counter-culture should address sufficient aspects of one's life in society to become an alternative to living in that society.. It does strike me that, right now, with a new realm of symbolic product opened up in a discredited economic ruling system with an ongoing environmental holocaust, such a counter-culture is imminent. Moreover, this available symbolic product can be used to create narratives more veridical than those in academic “science'

3.6 Weltanschauung

The problem today is NOT that we lack a first person science. It is rather that science has become cognitively impenetrable at its cutting-edge, reliant on baroque (and often false) statistical analysis on the one hand, massive technical apparatus on the other, and an ultimately absurdist narrative based on the math. So take all this away and we indeed end up with a first person narrative a la popular science books, which depend for their impetus of the reader's phenomenology.

Humans can get the best from themselves only in the context of an ontology – not just an inventory – of the external world, one in which their finer actions make sense. Schools like that of Gurdjieff tackle this by conjuring an ontology from thin air in a way inconsistent with attested science and this is both unacceptable and unnecessary. We can produce a Great Chain of Being based on an evolutionary dynamic that is as acceptable within the academy as the church.

The Church deals with the “Sacred” which is in often arbitrary opposition to the “profane”. There are many churches, each with their divisions of Sacred and profane. Where the church's activity ends in silence in contemplation of mystery, the Church is a useful resource, a stepping-stone. Otherwise it is likely to be toxic.

To “invent” a new “sacred” is, in our scientistic culture, an expression of failure. It is a scientific failure in that we have failed to motivate the value by rational means; it is a political failure in that we have failed to muster the material means to make its protection inevitable. We can point to informational complexity in the arts to buttress the more ineffable attributes of self-awareness and emotional expression; we can point to legislative achievement in moral action to buttress the selflessness clear in people like Mandela. So what we mean by separating a space for the sacred and divine is precisely announcing that we are currently on the margins of society; a “religion”?

3.7 DETAILS

In the beginning is a quantum state, beyond state and time. The fully human mystical state can re-achieve this both intellectually and using sensorimotor consciousness.. To attempt to do so without proper preparation is an attempt at integration without conscious de-differentiation and is pathological. Examples are doctrinaire pacifism (Gandhi's childish letter to Hitler) and modern “western” non-dualism that fails to take into account the difference in ours and the Upanishads' relation to nature. Alternatively put, premature re-integration by an organism into the biosphere is death; premature re-integration of Gaia into the biosphere is death of all macroscopic life.

Systems free of their environment will explore the space of all possible configurations of interaction with that environment until it finds its best stable functions. This we call “equilibration”. Thereafter, environment and system co-operate, allowing for example “genetic assimilation” if the environment is stable. True differentiation unites, at a higher level.

The theist believes that our intuitions of a physical source of things and that dynamic leading to the type of self-abnegation and self-integration we call moral excellence converge on “God” who then becomes the fount of all that's good. To understand how little influence this fount has on human history, just take a look at the succession of tyrants who have taken power. To which the theist will respond, presumably, with action that lessens their power, He could continue and argue that the order immanent in the cosmos -and indeed in human affairs - usually explained away by concepts like the anthropic principle, when experienced psychologically, is what he means by “God”. He could continue to argue that the god hypothesis is in no worse shape than string or multiverse theory.
Conventional religions, then, are based on a set of paradoxes; they worship a God who is omnipotent, omniscient, omni-benevolent and universal yet create sectarian institutions wherein they pray to that god to rectify matters. Despite the apparent metaphysical austerity of its founder, Buddhism is little different. Moreover, moral heroes are revered in each religion, though surely they were just obeying orders? The anthropic principle attests that there is something magnificently and mysteriously ordered about creation; our daily existence attests that there is also something cankered within it that leads to downright evil. As we consider ourselves delimited selves, we go bout our daily lives in the context of a creator, even if we call that Nature; as we achieve moral excellence, we become something able to immerse ourselves in the unborn, unoriginated, uncreated, unformed, and the alone returns to the alone.

So we have a notion that the Infinite can be approached with a set of formulaic prayers; moreover, that infinite can give blessings as He (always He) chooses. Obviously, the reason things are not going well is that the guys down the road have different prayers and are displeasing Him. The life of Jesus can be taken as a cautionary tale of what happens when you really try and get him to change the system; the system uses you for its own end for 2k years (and counting). An alternative is necessary, one that makes clear that moral excellence is as difficult as its is rare, and to be praised precisely because it is not really in tune with Nature/God/whatever. Insofar as we understand the most efficient ways to run societies, they seem to be dictatorships; as democrats, we invoke individual freedom as a moral alternative.
It could be argued that what modern theocracy consists of is above all a category error. They attempt to destroy centuries of societal development by invoking the wrath of a personal God. The infinite of course cannot be a person; it can however be noetic and transpersonal as we are in our finest moments. Moreover, its nature is to be on the cutting-edge of subject and object, the cutting-edge of evolution. When we get an unjust law revoked, or get an endangered species legally protected, we participate in this

Evolution is indeed a vitally important concept. Unfortunately is has gotten trapped in a local minimum related to a Victorian gentleman's childlike impressions of an imperial expedition Religions, by contrast, are an attempt to take the forces of immanent order and channel them toward the good is a created community; the channeling is called “intercessionary prayer” -and is directed to God. Yet it could be argued that, in eschewing a personal God who is the foundation of morality, Buddhism is more advanced; this is particularly the case as its founder apparently lived a life of heroic self-sacrifice

3.7.1 SCHEMA

On the left, the substance at a particular stage. At the right, the new dynamics introduced with that stage with an identification of whether it is an anthropism, emergence, construal, or recapitulation(a.e.c.r)

REALITY
Quantum uroboros Quantum fluctuations, subject/object differentiation (a,e)

MATTER

subatomic particles collisions (e)

Atoms (pre Carbon) Fusion, chaotic dynamics(e)

Atoms (post Carbon) self-catalytic organic chemistry (a, e)

Molecules Full chemistry, emergence of new properties (e)

LIFE

Life Membranes(subject/object differentiation) (e,r)
Organismal complexity endosymbiosis, natural selection, Hox genes, co-operation (a,e,c)

Lifeworld Dynamics leading to Gaia (a,e)

Self-replication in DNA/RNA Cells, organisms, symbols ->deceit, recursion (a,e,c)

multicellularity differentiation and integration of function (e,c,r)

ANIMALS

sensorimotor function imitation, egocentrism (e)

consciousnessI detection of salience in multimodality (e)

Use of recursive sets of signs Birdsong (e,c,r)

Social interaction Tribal dynamics (e)

HUMAN

Symbolic development sensorimotor use of logical systems (e, c)

Use of symbols to refer intentionality (subject/object differentiation) (e,c,r)

consciousness2 Symbolic and recursive elements (e,c,r)

Quickened social interaction Societal dynamics, mass war (e)

Refinement of symbols The arts and sciences (e,c)

A socius in network of selves an egocentric narrative (r)

A “self” constant over operations Engineering; environmental change, damage (e,c)

TRANSITIONAL STAGE

Self-modelling Incompleteness intuitions, humour (e)

consciousness3 Subjectivity (integration) (e,c,r)

NEW EVOLUTIONARY DYNAMICS

Self-awareness over several domains control over intentionality (e,c,r)

Biosphere as Gaia Ethical action to protect environment (e,c,)

Refinement of impulses protection of higher arts and sciences (e,c,)

All these final category emergent items also are construals; we are on our own, as the cutting-edge always is on its own. We are attempting to integrate our differentiated selves into one central person, much as differentiated cells came into the ambit of a single organism in endosymbiosis
3.7.2 A slightly embarrassed political sociology
In terms of societal organization, we can detect progress from tribal dynamics (with a ruling principle of loyalty to a tribe) to feudalism (itself a protean concept) with an imposed hierarchy. On a parallel track, the invention of writing led to the possibility of bureaucratic organization. On yet another, since size indeed does matter in realpolitik, the tribal ethos was trumped by the reality of empire, administered by a bureaucracy and with a “dead hand” ethos that we can call an “ecumenism”
In the 19th century, as wonderfully described by Benedict Anderson, inter alia, came the apotheosis of the “nation state” with a tribal identity but a bureaucratic administration that made it almost an ecumenism. The “New world” countries attempt to ape the notion of a nation state in some ways but are by definition multi-ethnic. Clearly, environmental protection will require ecumenical dynamics over several sectors of life; these should offer no dangers to ethnic identity.
Raymond Aron pithily defined political sociology in terms of relationships between part and whole. In that, of course, it echoes processes in biology; moreover, rather famously, Plato discerned a tight analogy between the structure of the ideal psyche and that of the ideal polis. To say that the modern state is still a work in progress is an understatement; nevertheless, we can discern an empowerment of the individual within the state to the point that a citizen in a western democracy has at her disposal –given average financial success – cultural and energetic possibilities beyond the reach of potentates of even three hundred years ago.
Even that is a step down from the heyday of the “mixed economy”; otherwise put, Richard Nixon would look like too liberal a Democrat to be even remotely electable, It is also fair to say that “popular culture”, dimly glimpsed as an approaching threat by early critics like MacDonald, now threatens to steamroll higher forms of human expression.
We can perhaps best detect the differentiations and integration within society that reflect ineluctable processes toward increased autonomy by being what permanent gains people have been willing to struggle and die for; as their heir, we should similarly be ready to struggle. They include an attenuation of the absolute power of the monarch, exemplified by Magna Carta; freedoms of person, thought and property, gained by the Enlightenment revolutions; and universal franchise, gained mainly by suffragettes.
Many other freedoms are being rolled back, often through the ingenious device of granting personhood to corporations. The worker had a much greater share than now in gross profit until the 1980’s, mainly as a result of union activism; that via media between dictatorship of the proletariat and plutocracy may be reinstated, and violently. Until 9/11, privacy was sacrosanct in American and many other Western societies; the current level of state monitoring of private interaction is close to a blasphemy to the intentions of the “founding fathers” US.
We have no Moses to point to stone tablets on which rights to self-expression, economic opportunity, and so on are written; we do however have the evidence of centuries of class struggle, and a palpable sense of the victories gained, still available to us at least in vestigial form, and worth fighting for again if needs be, We can best honour them by adding to our struggle the integrity of Gaia.
3.8 Conclusion
This paper began with Kauffman’s program of “reinventing the sacred”. Kauffman, above all, wishes to rehabilitate God considered as the “creative spirit’ in evolution. We pointed out projects parallel to his from Plotinus to Buddha before focusing on Gurdjieff as a 20th century synthesizer. In Gurdjieff’s system, neither environmental preservation nor human development is by any means guaranteed by evolution/emanation; on the contrary, both these desiderata are in some way against “nature”. Yet in our consciousness, as mystics have argued from Plotinus onward, is a capacity to re-unite ourselves with the absolute, a step that Kauffman might indeed have proposed - particularly given his resolutely ant-algorithmic quantum view of mind. For Kauffman, like Plotinus, the alone could return to the alone considered as a coherent quantum state.
Remarkably, Gurdjieff’s radical insistence that we possess neither consciousness, will, nor a constant self can be maintained in the face of recent neuroscientific evidence. In fact, human consciousness seems like a spandrel, an accident of evolution that has in its wake begotten selfhood and the capacity to perform engineering feats that can both destroy and heal the environment. The “work” focuses on the development and refinement of consciousness among an elite. That is insufficient for sustainability; the good news is that modern “ecumenical” power together with bureaucracy has shown a capacity to legislate appropriately to preserve ecosystems.
Activism to enshrine such legislation into the machinery of the state can be seen as an act of re-enchantment of nature; indeed it can be seen as a re-assertion of the anthropic coincidences which have caused us to be, in the midst of our complex socio-political systems. It can also be seen as a mundane, if morally excellent legal achievement; it will be the job of those with a genuine religious impulse to produce structures and rituals in which political activism can be seen as a participation in the sacred. The references to “the path” are a semi-serious attempt to suggest a prayer and life weekly cycle .
For the moment, writers like Needleman alert us to emotions in which self-transcendence is achieved, as Kauffman. It is clear that modern delineation of the sacred must include the processes that we call Gaia; it is argued here that it should also include the refined parts of the arts and sciences, characterized by informational complexity, self-awareness, and (for the arts) control of emotion. Moreover, we should see ourselves as creating new levels in an ontology, a new form of human being. We should, doubts and all, strive for moral excellence even if we worry that no good deed goes unpunished.
In this schema, the Abrahamic God who legislates directly is an absurdity – or, as the American-Jewish comedian Lewis Black rather brilliantly put it, he was invented to distract the desert wanderers from the realization that there was no air-conditioning. Yet, faced with a clear moral injustice upheld by material force, it is appropriate indeed to act as if God is on our side. A good example is the recent success by the “sea Shepherd” in arresting the annual Japanese whaling season. McBay et al (2011) are right about one thing; globalized corporatism is malignant, as destructive of Gaia as it is of the higher possibilities of humanity. It is a mystery that, absent any “objective” cues, moral heroism – even if failed, from Jesus through to the victims of the GW Bush “Green Scare” – does seem to put us in touch with a Reality that transcends us.
Nature supplies us with a few clues, beyond the clear destruction of the biosphere. As we attempt to become more integrated self-systems, we recapitulate a path that multicellular organisms took when their differentiation into multi-sensory systems required integration as “consciousness1”. Genuine moral achievements supply the kind of existential security that led many whom we consider “great” to ever more austere moral heights. The greater informational complexity and consistency of the more refined arts and sciences is a similar goad to the heights. Finally, the emergence of the internet allows the dissemination and production of fine art and science, and it is by no means impossible that a whole new definition of “livelihood” and “work” is imminent.

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PS 5u eanair 2012

Knowledge and the path

We are entering an age in which conceptual progress in science is slowing noticeably. In fact, it may be possible that this is a new age of “system-builders”. Coincidentally, a new space in civil society has opened up for spirituality as it is clear that subjectivity is inviolate – politically and scientifically. . While there is no going back to a grand narrative that is irrational and sectarian - a la the catholicism of the inquisition and indeed any kind of dogma - the scientistic control of truth has failed to issue any decent prescriptions about who we are as people. That opens a vast new realm of attested experience, a path, particularly in view of the moral/fideistic and environmental crises that accompany the epistemological one. In short, we can begin again to talk of ontology, and the possibility of perfection of being in ourselves through a path.

There is knowing that; knowing how; but also the coming into consciousness of one's role in a system of which one is part, a type of knowledge that will often involve an affective and sensual component, be that system Gaia or a socio political system. This may be because, creatures of clay, we experience deep springs of our unity with the earth that become presented to consciousness before verbal expression. This happens in other sensual activities like dance. For knowledge covered by the academy, within “knowing that” are objective and consensual knowledge, acquaintance and description and so on. The path should not conflict with the higher achievements of the academy; we do not want another Galileo trial.

The path can simply be stated as knowing oneself then knowing god as creator, including God in the creatures (Gaia), then knowing oneself as the infinite. Yet that cannot be done without an absolutely self-transformative excursion through all of the aspects of society one encounters in one's life. Otherwise, one's experience is a set of narratives, inculcated through biological urge and social convention. All these narratives are buttressed by the notion that “I” am in charge. The Path first attempts to help the neophyte archive identification with a center of awareness in himself that allows these narratives to be seen as automatic. This may require many years, and excursions to deal with problems in the real world in order precisely to delineate subjectivity and to identify the self as awareness. .

God can be conceived of as the human effort to wrestle the ordering principle that exists in our part of the cosmos into something positive. It is clear, after 2oth century totalitarianism, that efficient societies can easily be constructed in an age of technological advance by coercive means, using the capacity there exists here for order. It is our duty to fight this. As we do so, we seek strength from outside, often pretending that the force for “good” is omnipotent – thus, “God”. And, as universal mystical experience shows, beyond God there is a ground of Being, beyond subject/object distinction, access to which will be thought of as available to suitably-prepared humans whether or not science allows it. Right now, the notion of a quantum vacuum indeed supports it.

The path I recommend is non-attachment; emphasis on the refined, even if very complex; cordial and normal human relations; spiritual intensity; humour; all 3 centers (mind, body, psyche) nurtured as is easy given the freely available information resources present now; massive struggle for the achievements of our culture when necessary, including freedom and voting franchise (if called upon, as a way of transformations of self). The religious search begins either with very intensive search for oneself, or a demand that one has more being; that one be more integrated (as in classic conversion experiences like those AA catalogs). Then the world is seen as an ontology, with grades of Being, including one;s own possibilities, including a supreme being. The epistemology f the academy is now supplemented by an ontology, and practices for the expansion of being are searched for in religion.

PPS 22/1/12

Here is a apropos for an appropriately non-sectarian office schedule, with an outline at the start being implemented at least to some extent. It unapologetically includes some canonical Irish texts;

Three Offices daily

________________________________

Lauds Monday to Sunday: Theme the glory of creation

Monday Singing from the Upanishads qualities of Brahman

Tuesday from the Pali Canyon "There is an unborn uncreated unoriginated unformed.."

Wednesday from the Psalms " you set the stars in their firmament...

Thursday from the Tao te Ching about the generation of the universe

Friday from the book of Genesis " in the beginning...

Saturday Celtic joy in nature

and Sunday again from the Upanishads

readings can include Einstein on wonder, Kauffman on God and the divine in evolution,Gurdjieff on the generation of the universe, Goodwin on biology and constraints, James Joyce on "mortal beauty"._

____________________________________________________________

None
Monday to Sunday: work and struggle.

The Fire sermon/Battle of Allen in Irish mythology/nonaction from the Tao te Ching /various revolutionaries on necessity for action/Chardin on evolution as way of the cross

Singing; Gita on work,

_______________________________________________________________________________

Vespers

This should emphasise the deep mystery of God and creation as apprehended through non-dual experience
for example Meister Eckhart on godhead, Upanishads on Brahman, Plotinus on the alone meeting the alone

Invocation

“We are stardust, we are consciousness, we are life, we are people. Every breath we breathe, very thought we experience testifies to the miracle of our existence. We came from the stars through the primeval dark to a state of being with enormous potential. Let us not forget that we are perhaps the unique thinking beings that exist on a unique and fragile planet. Let us remember too that we have a duty to perfect our own better angels and ensure that this beautiful and fragile earth endures.”

LAUDS

Monday
SAY I AM YOU I am dust particles in sunlight. I am the round sun. To the bits of dust I say, Stay. To the sun, Keep moving. I am morning mist, and the breathing of evening. I am wind in the top of a grove, and surf on the cliff. Mast, rudder, helmsman, and keel, I am also the coral reef they founder on. I am a tree with a trained parrot in its branches. Silence, thought, and voice. The musical air coming through a flute, a spark of a stone, a flickering in metal. Both candle, and the moth crazy around it. Rose, and the nightingale lost in the fragrance. I am all orders of being, the circling galaxy, the evolutionary intelligence, the lift, and the falling away. What is, and what isn’t. You who know Jelaluddin, You the one in all, say who I am. Say I am You.

Tuesday

The Song of Amergin
I am a stag of seven tines,
I am a wide flood on a plain,
I am a wind on the deep waters,
I am a shining tear of the sun,
I am a hawk on a cliff,
I am fair among flowers,
I am a god who sets the head afire with smoke.
I am a battle waging spear,
I am a salmon in the pool,
I am a hill of poetry,
I am a ruthless boar,
I am a threatening noise of the sea,
I am a wave of the sea,
Who but I knows the secrets of the unhewn dolmen ?

Wednesday
“Thou art the fire, Thou art the sun, Thou art the air, Thou art the moon, Thou art the starry firmament, Thou art Brahman Supreme: Thou art the waters–thou, the creator of all.
“Thou art woman, thou art man, Thou art the youth, thou art the maiden, Thou art the old man tottering with his staff; Thou facest everywhere.
“Thou art the dark butterfly, Thou art the green parrot with red eyes, Thou art the thunder cloud, the seasons, the seas. Without beginning art thou, beyond time, beyond space. Thou art he from whom sprang the three worlds.” (Shvetashvatara Upanishad 4:2-4)
Thurday

Psalm 19(18) Caeli enarrant

.2 The heavens proclaim the glory of God,
and the firmament shows forth the work of his hands.
.3 Day unto day takes up the story
and night unto night makes known the message.

.4 No speech, no word, no voice is heard
.5 yet their span extends through all the earth,
their words to the utmost bounds of the world.

There he has placed a tent for the sun;
.6 it comes forth like a bridegroom coming from his tent,
rejoices like a champion to run its course.

.7 At the end of the sky is the rising of the sun;
to the furthest end of the sky is its course.
There is nothing concealed from its burning heat.

Friday

Psalm 8(8) Domine, Dominus noster

.2 How great is your name, O Lord our God,
through all the earth!

Your majesty is praised above the heavens;
.3 on the lips of children and of babes
you have found praise to foil your enemy,
to silence the foe and the rebel.

.4 When I see the heavens, the work of your hands,
the moon and the stars which you arranged,
.5 what is man that you should keep him in mind,
mortal man that you care for him?

.6 Yet you have made him little less than a god;
with glory and honor you crowned him,
.7 gave him power over the works of your hands,
put all things under his feet.

.8 All of them, sheep and cattle,
yes, even the savage beasts,
.9 birds of the air, and fish
that make their way through the waters.

.10 How great is your name, O Lord our God
through all the earth!

Saturday

The Invocation in Gaelic:
Toghairm na hÉireann
Áiliu íath nÉireann
éarmach muir
mothach sliabh screatach
screatach coill citheach
citheach ab eascach
eascach loch linnmhar
linnmhar tor tiopra
tiopra túath óenach
óemach ríg Teamhrach
Teamhair tor túathach
túathach mac Mhíleadh
Míleadh long libearn
libearn ar nÉirinn
Éireann ard díglas
dícheatal ro gáeth
ro gáeth bán Bhreise
Breise bán buaigne
Bé adhbhul Ériu
Érimon ar dtús
Ir, Éber, áileas
áiliu íath nÉireann

Sunday
The Invocation in English:
Amergin's Invocation of Ireland
I request the land of Ireland (to come forth)
coursed is the wild sea
wild the crying mountains
crying the generous woods
generous in showers (rain/waterfalls)
showers lakes and vast pools
vast pools hosts of well-springs
well-springs of tribes in assembly
assembly of kings of Tara
Tara host of tribes
tribes of the sons of Mil
Mil of boats and ships
ships come to Ireland
Ireland high terribly blue
an incantation on the (same) wind
(which was the) wind empty of Bres
Bres of an empty cup
Ireland be mighty
Ermon at the beginning
Ir, Eber, requested
(now it is) I (who) request the land of Ireland!

NONE

Monday/Wed/Fri/Sun

Psalm 130(129) De profundis

1 Out of the depths I cry to you, O Lord,
2 Lord, hear my voice!
O let your ears be attentive
to the voice of my pleading.

3 If you, O Lord, should mark our guilt,
Lord, who would survive?
4 But with you is found forgiveness:
for this we revere you.

5 My soul is waiting for the Lord.
I count on his word.
6 My soul is longing for the Lord
more than watchman for daybreak.
(Let the watchman count on daybreak
7 and Israel on the Lord.)

Because with the Lord there is mercy
and fullness of redemption,
8 Israel indeed he will redeem
from all its iniquity.

Tuesday/Thurs/Sat

Psalm 132(131) Memento, Domine

1 O Lord, remember David
and all the many hardships he endured,
2 the oath he swore to the Lord,
his vow to the Strong One of Jacob.

3 "I will not enter the house where I live
nor go the bed where I rest.
4 I will give no sleep to my eyes,
to my eyelids I will give no slumber
5 till I find a place for the Lord,
a dwelling for the Strong One of Jacob."

6 At Ephrata we heard of the ark;
we found it in the plains of Yearim.
7 "Let us go to the place of his dwelling;
let us go to kneel at his footstool."

Compline/Vespers
Monday/Wed/Fri/Sun
Christ Be Beside Me

Christ be beside me, Christ be before me,
Christ be behind me, King of my heart.
Christ be within me, Christ be below me,
Christ be above me, never to part.

Christ on my right hand, Christ on my left hand,
Christ all around me, shield in the strife.
Christ in my sleeping, Christ in my sitting,
Christ in my rising, light of my heart.

Christ be in all hearts thinking about me,
Christ be on all tongues telling of me.
Christ be the vision in eyes that see me,
In ears that hear me Christ ever be.

Tuesday/Thurs/Sat

“The Infinite is the source of joy. There is no joy in the finite. Only in the Infinite is there joy. Ask to know of the Infinite.”
“The Infinite is below, above, behind, before, to the right, to the left. I am all this. This Infinite is the Self. The Self is below, above, behind, before, to the right, to the left. I am all this. One who knows, meditates upon, and realizes the truth of the Self–such an one delights in the Self, revels in the Self, rejoices in the Self. He becomes master of himself, and master of all the worlds. Slaves are they who know not this truth.
“He who knows, meditates upon, and realizes this truth of the Self, finds that everything–primal energy, ether, fire, water, and all other elements–mind, will, speech, sacred hymns and scriptures–indeed the whole universe–issues forth from it.

READINGS

Monday
Lauds

The authorities teach that next to the first emanation, which is the Son coming out of the Father, the angels are most like God. And it may well be true, for the soul at its highest is formed like God, but an angel gives a closer idea of Him. That is all an angel is: an idea of God. For this reason the angel was sent to the soul, so that the soul might be re-formed by it, to be the divine idea by which it was first conceived. Knowledge comes through likeness. And so because the soul may know everything, it is never at rest until it comes to the original idea, in which all things are one. And there it comes to rest in God.
Sermon 9, as translated in The Reading and Preaching of the Scriptures in the Worship of the Christian Church (1999) by Hughes Oliphant Old, Ch. 9 : The German Mystics, p. 449
Tuesday

Pali Canon

"There exists, monks, that which is unborn, that which is unbecome, that which is uncreated, that which is unconditioned.
"For if there were not, monks, that which is uncreated, that which is unconditioned, there would not be made known here the escape from that which is born, from that which is become, from that which is created, from that which is conditioned.
"Yet since there exists, monks, that which is unborn, that which is unbecome, that which is uncreated, that which is unconditioned, there is therefore made known the escape from that which is born, from that which is become, from that which is created, from that which is conditioned."

AVADHUTA GITA

(Translated by Hari Prasad Shastri)

Chapter I

1. By the grace of God the Brahmins above all men are inspired with the disposition to non-duality (unity of the Self with God), which relieves them of the great fear.

2. How can I salute the Self, which is indestructible, which is all Bliss, which in Itself and by Itself pervades everything, and which is inseparable from Itself?

3. I alone am, ever free from all taint. The world exists like a mirage within me. To whom shall I bow?

4. Verily the one Self is all, free from differentiation and non-differentiation. Neither can it be said, "It is" nor "It is not." What a great mystery.

5. This is the whole substance of Vedanta; this is the essence of all knowledge, theoretical and intuitional. I am the Atman, by nature impersonal and all-pervasive.

6. That God who is the Self in all, impersonal and changeless, like unto space, by nature purity itself, verily, verily, that I am.

7. I am pure knowledge, imperishable, infinite. I know neither joy nor pain; whom can they touch?

8. The actions of the mind, good and evil, the actions of the body, good and evil, the actions of the voice, good and evil, exist not in me (Atman). I am the nectar which is knowledge absolute; beyond the range of the senses I am.

9. The mind is as space, embracing all. I am beyond mind. In Reality the mind has no independent existence.
Wednesday
10. How can it be said that the Self is manifest? How can it be said that the self is limited? I alone am existence; all this objective world am I. More subtle than space itself am I.

11. Know the Self to be infinite consciousness, self-evident, beyond destruction, enlightening all bodies equally, ever shining. In It is neither day nor night.

12. Know Atman to be one, ever the same, changeless. How canst though say: "I am the meditator, and this is the object of meditation?" How can perfection be divided?

13. Thou, O Atman, wast never born, nor didst thou ever die. The body was never thine. The Shruti (revealed Scriptures) has often said: "This is all Brahman."

14. Thou art all Brahman, free from all change, the same within and without, absolute bliss. Run not to and from like a ghost.

15. Neither unity nor separation exist in thee nor in me. All is Atman alone. "I" and "thou" and the world have no real being.

16. The subtle faculties of touch, taste, smell, form and sound which constitute the world without are not thyself, nor are they within thee. Thou art the great all-transcending Reality.

17. Birth and death exist not in the mind, not in thee, as do also bondage and liberation. Good and evil are in the mind, and not in thee. O Beloved, why dost thou cry? Name and form are neither in thee nor in me.

18. Oh my mind, why dost thou range in delusion like a ghost? Know Atman to be above duality and be happy.
Thursday
19. Thou art the essence of knowledge, indomitable, eternal, ever free from modifications. Neither is there in thee attachment nor indifference. Let not thyself suffer from desires.

20. All the Shrutis speak of Atman as without attributes, ever pure, imperishable, without a body, the eternal Truth. That know to be thyself.

21. Know all forms, physical and subtle, as illusion. The Reality underlying them is eternal. By living this Truth one passes beyond birth and death.

22. The sages call Atman the "ever-same." By giving up attachment the mind sees neither duality nor unity.

23. Concentration is not possible either on perishable objects, on account of their mutability, nor on Atman. "Is" and "is not" do not apply to Atman either. In Atman, freedom absolute, how is Samadhi possible?

24. Birthless, pure, bodiless, equable, imperishable Atman thou knowest thyself to be. How then canst thou say: "I know Atman," or "I know not Atman."
Friday
25. Thus has the Shruti spoken of Atman; "That Thou art." Of the illusory world, born of the five physical elements, the Shruti says: "Neti, neti" (not this, not this).

26. All this is ever pervaded by thee as Atman. In thee is neither the meditator nor the object of meditation. Why, O mind, dost thou shamelessly meditate"

27. I know not Shiva, How can I speak of Him? Who Shiva is I know not, How can I worship Him?

28. I am Shiva, the only reality, Like unto space absolute is my nature. In me is neither unity nor variety, The cause of imagination also is absent in me.
29. Free from subject and object am I, How can I be self-realizable? Endless is my nature, naught else exists. Truth absolute is my nature, naught else exists.

30. Atman by nature, the supreme Reality am I, Neither am I slayer nor the slain.

31. On the destruction of a jar, the space therein unites with all space. In myself and Shiva I see no difference when the mind is purified.

32. Brahman alone is, as pure consciousness. In truth there is no jar, and no jar-space, no embodied soul, nor its nature.

Saturday

LXI

A large state should be the estuary of a river,
Where all the streams of the world come together.
In the coming together of the world
The female overcomes the male by weakness.
Being weak she takes the lower position.
So a large state taking the lower position
Allies itself with a small state.
A small state taking the lower position
Is allied with a large state.
One by taking the lower position allies itself,
The other by taking the lower position is allied.
All the large state wishes
Is to join with and nourish the other.
All the small state wishes
Is for its services to be accepted by the other.
In order to achieve what they wish
The great adopt the lower position.
LXII

The Way is the myriad creatures’ refuge.
It is that which the good extend,
And that which defends the bad.
Eloquent words can win promotion.
Eloquent actions can elevate.
Even if a person is bad, should one reject them?
When the ruler is installed
And the three great ministers appointed,
Though jade disks
And four-horse teams are offered,
It’s better to grant the gift of the Way
Without stirring from one’s place.
Why was the Way valued of old?
Was it not said it brought achievement,
And mitigated the punishment of the guilty.
So it was prized by the realm.
Sunday

THE HERMIT'S SONG
(See EHu, vol. x, p. 39, where the Irish text will be found. It dates from the ninth century)
I Long, O Son of the living God,
Ancient, eternal King,
For a hidden hut on the wilds untrod,
Where Thy praises I might sing;
A little, lithe lark of plumage grey
To be singing still beside it,
Pure waters to wash my sin away,
When Thy Spirit has sanctified it.
Hard by it a beautiful, whispering wood
Should stretch, upon either hand,
To nurse the many-voiced fluttering brood
In its shelter green and bland.
Southward, for warmth, should my hermitage face,
With a runnel across its floor,
In a choice land gifted with every grace,
And good for all manner of store.
A few true comrades I next would seek
To mingle with me in prayer,
Men of wisdom, submissive, meek;
Their number I now declare,
Four times three and three times four,
For every want expedient,
Sixes two within God's Church door,
To north and south obedient;
Twelve to mingle their voices with mine
At prayer, whate'er the weather,
To Him Who bids His dear sun shine
On the good and ill together.
Pleasant the Church with fair Mass cloth,
No dwelling for Christ's declining
To its crystal candles, of bees-wax both,
On the pure, white Scriptures shining.
Beside it a hostel for all to frequent,
Warm with a welcome for each,
Where mouths, free of boasting and ribaldry, vent
But modest and innocent speech.
These aids to support us my husbandry seeks,
I name them now without hiding—
Salmon and trout and hens and leeks,
And the honey-bees' sweet providing. Raiment and food enow will be mine
From the King of all gifts and all graces; And I to be kneeling, in rain or shine,
Praying to God in all places.

None
Monday

echhart

The most powerful prayer, one wellnigh omnipotent, and the worthiest work of all is the outcome of a quiet mind. The quieter it is the more powerful, the worthier, the deeper, the more telling and more perfect the prayer is. To the quiet mind all things are possible. What is a quiet mind? A quiet mind is one which nothing weighs on, nothing worries, which, free from ties and from all self-seeking, is wholly merged into the will of God and dead to its own.
As translated in A Dazzling Darknesss: An Anthology of Western Mysticism (1985) by Patrick Grant

eriugena on reason

Cum ergo audimus, Deum omnia facere, nil aliud debemus intelligere, quam Deum in omnibus esse, hoc est, essentiam omnium subsistere.
When we are told that God is the maker of all things, we are simply to understand that God is in all things – that He is the substantial essence of all things.
De Divisione Naturae, Bk. 1, ch. 72; translation from Hugh Fraser Stewart Boethius: An Essay (London: William Blackwood, 1891) p. 255.
Auctoritas siquidem ex vera ratione processit, ratio vero nequaquam ex auctoritate. Omnis enim auctoritas, quae vera ratione non approbatur, infirma videtur esse. Vera autem ratio, quum virtutibus suis rata atque immutabilis munitur, nullius auctoritatis adstipulatione roborari indigent.
For authority proceeds from true reason, but reason certainly does not proceed from authority. For every authority which is not upheld by true reason is seen to be weak, whereas true reason is kept firm and immutable by her own powers and does not require to be confirmed by the assent of any authority.
De Divisione Naturae, Bk. 1, ch. 69; translation by I. P. Sheldon-Williams, cited from Peter Dronke (ed.) A History of Twelfth-Century Western Philosophy (Cambridge: CUP, 1988) p. 2.
Quid est aliud de philosophia tractare, nisi verae religionis, qua summa et principalis omnium rerum causa, Deus, et humiliter colitur, et rationabiliter investigatur, regulas exponere? Conficitur inde, veram esse philosophiam veram religionem, conversimque veram religionem esse veram philosophiam.
What, then, is it to treat of philosophy, unless to lay down the rules of the true religion by which we seek rationally and adore humbly God, who is the first and sovereign cause of all things? Hence it follows that the true philosophy is the true religion, and reciprocally that the true religion is the true philosophy.
De Divina Praedestinatione, ch. 1; translation from Kenelm Henry Digby Mores Catholici, vol. 8 (London: Booker & Dolman, 1837) p. 198.
Nemo intrat in caelum nisi per philosophiam.
No one enters heaven except through philosophy.
Annotationes in Marciam, no. 64; translation from John Joseph O’Meara Eriugena (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988) p. 30.
Tuesday
Einstein;

The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion that stands at the cradle of true art and true science. Whoever does not know it and can no longer wonder, no longer marvel, is as good as dead, and his eyes are dimmed. It was the experience of mystery — even if mixed with fear — that engendered religion. A knowledge of the existence of something we cannot penetrate, our perceptions of the profoundest reason and the most radiant beauty, which only in their most primitive forms are accessible to our minds: it is this knowledge and this emotion that constitute true religiosity. In this sense, and only this sense, I am a deeply religious man.

Einstein on reason, religion etc

Our time is distinguished by wonderful achievements in the fields of scientific understanding and the technical application of those insights. Who would not be cheered by this? But let us not forget that human knowledge and skills alone cannot lead humanity to a happy and dignified life. Humanity has every reason to place the proclaimers of high moral standards and values above the discoverers of objective truth. What humanity owes to personalities like Buddha, Moses, and Jesus ranks for me higher than all the achievements of the enquiring and constructive mind.
What these blessed men have given us we must guard and try to keep alive with all our strength if humanity is not to lose its dignity, the security of its existence, and its joy in living.
Written statement (September 1937)

All religions, arts and sciences are branches of the same tree. All these aspirations are directed toward ennobling man's life, lifting it from the sphere of mere physical existence and leading the individual towards freedom. It is no mere chance that our older universities developed from clerical schools. Both churches and universities — insofar as they live up to their true function — serve the ennoblement of the individual. They seek to fulfill this great task by spreading moral and cultural understanding, renouncing the use of brute force.
The essential unity of ecclesiastical and secular institutions was lost during the 19th century, to the point of senseless hostility. Yet there was never any doubt as to the striving for culture. No one doubted the sacredness of the goal. It was the approach that was disputed.
"Moral Decay" (1937);
Wednesday
I believe, indeed, that overemphasis on the purely intellectual attitude, often directed solely to the practical and factual, in our education, has led directly to the impairment of ethical values. I am not thinking so much of the dangers with which technical progress has directly confronted mankind, as of the stifling of mutual human considerations by a "matter-of-fact" habit of thought which has come to lie like a killing frost upon human relations. ... The frightful dilemma of the political world situation has much to do with this sin of omission on the part of our civilization. Without "ethical culture," there is no salvation for humanity.
"The Need for Ethical Culture" celebrating the seventy-fifth anniversary of the Ethical Culture Society, founded by Felix Adler (5 January 1951).
Science is a wonderful thing if one does not have to earn one's living at it.
Letter to California student E. Holzapfel (March 1951) Einstein Archive 59-1013, quoted in Albert Einstein, the Human Side (1979) by Helen Dukas and Banesh Hoffman, and in The New Quotable Einstein (2005) by Alice Calaprice
One thing I have learned in a long life: that all our science, measured against reality, is primitive and childlike—and yet it is the most precious thing we have.
Letter to Hans Muehsam (9 July 1951), Einstein Archives 38-408, quoted in The Ultimate Quotable Einstein (2010) by Alice Calaprice, p. 404
I have no special talents. I am only passionately curious.
Letter to Carl Seelig (11 March 1952)

Thursday

Macswiney

We fight for
freedom--not for the vanity of the world, not to have a fine conceit of
ourselves, not to be as bad--or if we prefer to put it so, as big as our
neighbours. The inspiration is drawn from a deeper element of our being.
We stifle for self-development individually and as a nation. If we don't
go forward we must go down. It is a matter of life and death; it is out
soul's salvation. If the whole nation stand for it, we are happy; we
shall be grandly victorious. If only a few are faithful found they must
be the more steadfast for being but a few. They stand for an individual
right that is inalienable. A majority has no right to annul it, and no
power to destroy it. Tyrannies may persecute, slay, or banish those who
defend it; the thing is indestructible. It does not need legions to
protect it nor genius to proclaim it, though the poets have always
glorified it, and the legions will ultimately acknowledge it. One man
alone may vindicate it, and because that one man has never failed it has
never died. Not, indeed, that Ireland has ever been reduced to a single
loyal son. She never will be. We have not survived the centuries to be
conquered now. But the profound significance of the struggle, of its
deep spiritual appeal, of the imperative need for a motive force as
lofty and beautiful, of the consciousness that worthy winning of freedom
is a labour for human brotherhood; the significance of it all is seen in
the obligation it imposes on everyone to be true, the majority
notwithstanding. He is called to a grave charge who is called to resist
the majority. But he will resist, knowing his victory will lead them to
a dearer dream than they had ever known. He will fight for that ideal in
obscurity, little heeded--in the open, misunderstood; in humble places,
still undaunted; in high places, seizing every vantage point, never
crushed, never silent, never despairing, cheering a few comrades with
hope for the morrow. And should these few sink in the struggle the
greatness of the ideal is proven in the last hour; as they fall their
country awakens to their dream, and he who inspired and sustained them
is justified; justified against the whole race, he who once stood alone
against them. In the hour he falls he is the saviour of his race.

Needleamn on MA and action:

“Throughout the meditations, while Marcus is communicating his struggle not to attach himself to his emotional judgements and thought associations, he speaks of the fundamental wish to open himself to the Mind of the Whole....He is speaking of a palpable force that has material effects on his thinking, his feeling and his action in the world....the capacity to obey and transmit the Mind of the Whole into the bones and muscles of his own human body. Does he succeed..?.Perhaps , perhaps not, in this or that case”
Friday
ON THE FLIGHTINESS OF THOUGHT

Shame to my thoughts, how they stray from me !
I fear great danger from it on the day of eternal Doom.

During the psalms they wander on a path that is not right :
They fash, they fret, they misbehave before the eyes of great God.

Through eager crowds, through companies of wanton women.
Through woods, through cities — swifter they are than the wind.

Now through paths of love anon of riotous shame !
Without a ferry or ever missing a step they go across every sea :
Swiftly they leap in one bound from earth to heaven.

They run a race of folly anear and afar :
After a course of giddiness they return to their home.

Though one should try to bind them or put shackles on their feet,
They are neither constant nor mindful to take a spell of rest.

Neither sword-edge nor crack of whip will keep them down strongly :
As slippery as an eel's tail they glide out of my grasp.

Neither lock nor firm-Vaulted dungeon nor any fetter on earth,
Stronghold nor sea nor bleak fastness restrains them from their course.

Saturday
Non-action from Tao te Ching
XLIII

The softest thing in the world
Subdues the hardest thing in the world.
Non-being enters impenetrable space.
That is why I know the power of non-action.
Very few people in the world
Know how to teach without words
And profit from non-action.

XLVIII

In pursuing one’s studies
Something’s added each day.
In practising the Way
Something’s subtracted each day.
It grows less and less
Until one reaches non-action.
When one reaches non-action
Nothing is left undone.
It’s always through not interfering
That one can control the realm.
Whoever loves to interfere
Will never control the people.

Non-action from Matthew

Matthew 6:24-34 (Luke 12:24-27)
24 "No one can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon. 25 "Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you shall eat or what you shall drink, nor about your body, what you shall put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? 26 Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? 27 And which of you by being anxious can add one cubit to his span of life? 28 And why are you anxious about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin; 29 yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. 30 But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is alive and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you, O men of little faith? 31 Therefore do not be anxious, saying, `What shall we eat?' or `What shall we drink?' or `What shall we wear?' 32 For the Gentiles seek all these things; and your heavenly Father knows that you need them all. 33 But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things shall be yours as well. 34 "Therefore do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Let the day's own trouble be sufficient for the day.

Sunday
“Being, clinging and craving” from Pali canon

(BEING)
28. Saying, “Good, friend,” the bhikkhus delighted and rejoiced in the venerable Sāriputta’s words. Then they asked him a further question: “But, friend, might there be another way in which a noble disciple is one of right view… and has arrived at this true Dhamma?” -- “There might be, friends.
29. “When, friends, a noble disciple understands being, the origin of being, the cessation of being, and the way leading to the cessation of being, in that way he is one of right view… and has arrived at this true Dhamma.
30. “And what is being, what is the origin of being, what is the cessation of being, what is the way leading to the cessation of being? There are these three kinds of being: sense-sphere being, fine-material being, and immaterial being. With the arising of clinging there is the arising of being. With the cessation of clinging there is the cessation of being. The way leading to the cessation of being is just this Noble Eightfold Path; that is, right view…right concentration.
31. “When a noble disciple has thus understood being, the origin of being, the cessation of being, and the way leading to the cessation of being… he here and now makes an end of suffering. In that way too a noble disciple is one of right view… and has arrived at this true Dhamma.”
(CLINGING)
32. Saying, “Good, friend,” the bhikkhus delighted and rejoiced in the venerable Sāriputta’s words. Then they asked him a further question: “But, friend, might there be another way in which a noble disciple is one of right view… and has arrived at this true Dhamma?” -- “There might be, friends.
33. “When, friends, a noble disciple understands clinging, the origin of clinging, the cessation of clinging, and the way leading to the cessation of clinging, in that way he is one of right view… and has arrived at this true Dhamma.
34. “And what is clinging, what is the origin of clinging, what is the cessation of clinging, what is the way leading to the cessation of clinging? There are these four kinds of clinging: clinging to sensual pleasures, clinging to views, clinging to rules and observances, and clinging to a doctrine of self. With the arising of craving there is the arising of clinging. With the cessation of craving there is the cessation of clinging. The way leading to the cessation of clinging is just this Noble Eightfold Path; that is, right view…right concentration.
35. “When a noble disciple has thus understood clinging, the origin of clinging, the cessation of clinging, and the way leading to the cessation of clinging… he here and now makes an end of suffering. In that way too a noble disciple is one of right view… and has arrived at this true Dhamma.”
(CRAVING)
36. Saying, “Good, friend,” the bhikkhus delighted and rejoiced in the venerable Sāriputta’s words. Then they asked him a further question: “But, friend, might there be another way in which a noble disciple is one of right view… and has arrived at this true Dhamma?” -- “There might be, friends.
37. “When, friends, a noble disciple understands craving, the origin of craving, the cessation of craving, and the way leading to the cessation of craving, in that way he is one of right view… and has arrived at this true Dhamma.
38. “And what is craving, what is the origin of craving, what is the cessation of craving, what is the way leading to the cessation of craving? There are these six classes of craving: craving for forms, craving for sounds, craving for odors, craving for flavors, craving for tangibles, craving for mind-objects. With the arising of feeling there is the arising of craving. With the cessation of feeling there is the cessation of craving. The way leading to the cessation of craving is just this Noble Eightfold Path; that is, right view…right concentration.
39.“When a noble disciple has thus understood craving, the origin of craving, the cessation of craving, and the way leading to the cessation of craving… he here and now makes an end of suffering. In that way too a noble disciple is one of right view… and has arrived at this true Dhamma.”

Vespers

Monday
Chapter VI - avadhut

1. The whole universe is a projection of the mind; therefore it is a mode of the mind. The true nature of the mind is bliss, and when the mind is stilled, bliss absolute is revealed.

2. Consciousness absolute, being unknowable by the mind, how can speech explain it?

3. The Self is free from day and night, and therefore the conception of its pilgrimage in time and space is no true one.

4. No sun illumines Atman; the fire and the moon cannot shine therein. It is not equanimity or even desirelessness; how then can action exist in it?

5. Neither can it be said that It is to be known by the absence of action. It is neither within or without. It is naught but bliss absolute.

6. How can it be said that It is the first or that It is the last, since It is neither element or compound, nor emptiness nor fullness? Eternal, ever the same, the essence of all is Shiva.

7. The statement that Atman is describable or indescribable cannot stand. Neither is It the knower nor the known. It cannot be imagined or defined. How can we say that It has a mind or any of the senses?

8. Space, time, water, fire, earth, constituting the world, are a mere mirage. In truth the One, imperishable, ever blissful, alone exists. There is neither cloud nor water in It.
9. As there is no possibility of birth and death in It, so no conception of duty nor dereliction of duty can be applied to It. That undifferentiated, eternal, all-pervasive Shiva alone is.

10. The modifications of primordial matter and of individualized consciousness are in the realm of cause and effect. When there is eternal all-pervasive Shiva alone, how can there be matter or spirit therein?

11. There is in It no suffering, and no possibility of suffering, because It is free from all attributes.

12. There is no duality in It. How can there be age, or youth, or childhood in that One eternal principle?

13. Atman is dependent on nothing and is unlimited. The law of cause and effect touches It not. How can the buddhi, which operates only in duality, and which is perishable, discern It?

14. It grasps not, nor is It grasped. It is not born nor does It bring forth. We can only say that in It there is no destruction.

15. In Atman there is neither manhood nor womanhood, because such conceptions cannot exist in eternity.

16. There is no pleasure in It, and no faculty of enjoying pleasure, since It is free from such defects as attachment. Equally free from doubts and suffering, one and eternal is Shiva; thus the conception of "I" and "mine" do not apply to It.

17. Neither is there Brahman in It, nor the absence of Brahman. Since It alone exists and is eternity, it must follow that It is free from pain, and also from freedom from pain.

18. There is no gain and there is no loss. Infatuation and worldly wisdom have no place therein. When the eternal consciousness alone exists, how can discrimination or wisdom, or any such thing be contained in It?

19. In It there is no "thou" and no "I", therefore family and caste exist not therein. It is neither true nor untrue. Neither is It of this world nor of the next. How then can one pray to It?

20. Illusory is the connection of the learner and the teacher. Teaching and contemplation, when thus beheld, are not admissible. "Verily, I am Shiva." This alone is the whole Truth. How then can I pray to It, or worship It?
Tuesday
21. The body itself is imagined in Atman, as is the whole universe. Atman is free from all differentiations. Then since I am Shiva, there can be no idea of prayer or worship.

22. Consciousness absolute has no body. It cannot be said that It is without a body or attributes. All that can be said is that It is bliss absolute, and that bliss am I. This is the height of worship, and this is the culmination of all prayer.

23. The Avadhut who has realized this mystery of all mysteries, and has risen to the state of unceasing and perfect bliss, moves about in the crowds unconcerned, radiating bliss and higher knowledge.

24. He is clothed in a habit of old and worn. He walks in a path that is free from religious merit or sin. He lives in the temple of absolute emptiness. His soul is naked, and free from all taints and modifications of maya.
25. The Avadhut has no ideal, neither strives he after the attainment of an ideal. Having lost his identity in Atman, free from the limitations of maya, free also from the perfections of Yoga, thus walks the Avadhut. He argues with no one, he is not concerned with any object or person.

26. Free from the snares of expectations and hopes, he has cast off the worn-out garments of purity, righteousness, and all ideals. His path is free from any such consideration. It can only be said about him that he is purity absolute, and is far, far above the clouds of maya and ignorance.

27. He has no such thoughts as "I am not in the body," or "I am not the body." He has no aversion, attachment or infatuation towards any object or person. Pure as space he walks, immersed in the immaculate bliss of his natural state.

28. The Avadhut may be compared to immeasurable space. He is eternity. In him is neither purity nor impurity. There is no variety nor unity in him; no bondage nor absence of bondage.

29. Free from separation and union, free from enjoyment or absence of enjoyment, he moves calm and unhurried through the world. Having given up all activity of the mind, he is in his normal state of indescribable bliss.

30. Atman, with which the Avadhut has found natural unity, is limitless and inconceivable. It is unknowable by the mind. It is neither a part nor is It divided. It cannot be said, "So far is its province and no farther." Verily, it is hard to describe and hard to obtain.
Wednesday
31. The Avadhut is not concerned with the things of the world, because the natural state of Self-realization renders all else insignificant. Death and birth have no meaning; he meditates not, neither does he worship.

32. All this world is a magic show, like a mirage in the desert. Concentrated bliss, alone and secondless, is Shiva and that is the Avadhut.

33. The wise man strives not for anything, not even for Dharma or liberation. He is free from all actions and movements, and also from desire and renunciation.

34. What do they, the pundits, know of him? Even the Vedas cannot speak of him perfectly. That bliss absolute, ever indestructible, but a source of bliss to all, is the Avadhut.

Berkeley

.. we are under an invincible blindness as to the true and real nature of things. .. Hence a great number of dark and ambiguous terms presumed to stand for abstract notions, have been introduced into metaphysics and morality, and from these have grown infinite distractions and disputes amongst the learned. (George Berkeley, 1710)
Thursday
Dionysus

Dionysius,
endeavouring to treat of God in Himself, apart
from man and nature, is obliged to use terms of
the purest negation J . Thus he says : ' He is neither
soul nor mind ; He has neither imagination, nor
opinion, nor word, nor thought ; nor is He word
or thought ; He uttereth no word and thinketh no
thought; neither is He number, nor order, nor
greatness, nor littleness, nor equality, nor inequality,
nor likeness, nor difference ; He standeth not, nor
moveth He, neither doth He take rest ; He hath
not power, nor is He power, nor light ; He liveth
not, neither is He life ; He is not being, nor
eternity, nor time ; neither is He within touch of
reason; He is not skill, nor is He truth, nor
dominion, nor wisdom ; neither one, nor unity, nor
divinity, nor goodness, nor yet spirit, as known
to us ; neither sonship nor fatherhood, nor any-
thing that is known to us or to any other beings ;
neither is He of the things that are, nor of those
that are not ; neither do the things that are know
Him in that He is, nor doth He know the things
that are in that they are ; neither doth any word
pertain to Him, nor name, nor thought ; He is
neither darkness nor light, neither error nor truth ;
neither is there for Him any place nor any removal ;
for when we place and when we remove those that
come after Him, we do not so with Him ; for the
perfect and unifying Cause is beyond any place,
and the excellent Simplicity withdrawn from all
things is beyond any taking away, and stands
apart from all things.'
Friday
Erigena - from John Draper
“In a letter to Charles the Bald, Anastasius expresses his astonishment “how such a barbarian man, coming from the very ends of the earth, and remote from human conversation, could comprehend things so clearly, and transfer them into another language so well.” The general intention of his writings was, as we have said, to unite philosophy with religion, but his treatment of these subjects brought him under ecclesiastical censure, and some of his works were adjudged to the flames. His most important book is entitled “De Divisione Nature.”
Erigena’s philosophy rests upon the observed and admitted fact that every living thing comes from something that had previously lived. The visible world, being a world of life, has therefore emanated necessarily from some primordial existence, and that existence is God, who is thus the originator and conservator of all. Whatever we see maintains itself as a visible thing through force derived from him, and, were that force withdrawn, it must necessarily disappear. Erigena thus conceives of the Deity as an unceasing participator in Nature, being its preserver, maintainer, upholder, and in that respect answering to the soul of the world of the Greeks. The particular life of individuals is therefore a part of general existence, that is, of the mundane soul.
If ever there were a withdrawal of the maintaining power, all things must return to the source from which they issued — that is, they must return to God, and be absorbed in him. All visible Nature must thus pass back into “the Intellect” at last. “The death of the flesh is the auspices of the restitution of things, and of a return to their ancient conservation. So sounds revert back to the air in which they were born, and by which they were maintained, and they are heard no more; no man knows what has become of them. In that final absorption which, after a lapse of time, must necessarily come, God will be all in all, and nothing exist but him alone.” “I contemplate him as the beginning and cause of all things; all things that are and those that have been, but now are not, were created from him, and by him, and in him. I also view him as the end and intransgressible term of all things.... There is a fourfold conception of universal Nature — two views of divine Nature, as origin and end; two also of framed Nature, causes and effects. There is nothing eternal but God.”
The return of the soul to the universal Intellect is designated by Erigena as Theosis, or Deification. In that final absorption all remembrance of its past experiences is lost. The soul reverts to the condition in which it was before it animated the body. Necessarily, therefore, Erigena fell under the displeasure of the Church.”

quotes

the divine
mind, on the one hand, is capable of selfmovement
and of movement in the same [way]
(for it is immutable), the human [mind], on the
other hand, is capable of self-movement but not
of movement in the same [way] (for it is
mutable)

Saturday
Berkeley

Three Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous (1713)
I entirely agree with you, as to the ill tendency of the affected doubts of some philosophers, and fantastical conceit of others. I am even so far gone of late in this way of think, that I have quitted several of the sublime notions I had got in their schools for vulgar opinions. And I give it you on my word, since this revolt from metaphysical notions to the plain dictates of nature and common sense, I find my understanding strangely enlightened, so that I can now easily comprehend a great many thing which before were all mystery and riddle.
Said by Philonous (Berkeley) to Hylas in the opening of dialog 1 with reference to the recent surge philosophic endeavors (Locke, Newton, et al) that seemed to lead to skepticism about the existence of the world
That there is no such thing as what philosophers call material substance, I am seriously persuaded: but if I were made to see any thing absurd or skeptical in this, I should then have the same reason to renounce this, that I imagine I have now to reject the contrary opinion.
Philonous to Hylas
Doth the reality of sensible things consist in being perceived? or, is it something distinct from their being perceived, and that bears no relation to the mind?
Philonous to Hylas
Seeing therefore they are both [heat and pain] immediately perceived at the same time, and the fire affects you only with one simple, or uncompounded idea, it follows that this same simple idea is both the intense heat immediately perceived, and the pain;and consequently, that the intense heat immediately perceived, is nothing distinct from a particular sort of pain.
Philonous to Hylas
Since therefore, as well those degrees of heat that are not painful, as those that are, can exist in a thinking substance; may we not conclude that external bodies are absolutely incapable of any degree of heat whatsoever?
Philonous to Hylas. Hylas replies with, "So it seems."

Sunday
Einstein

Religion and Science (1930)
Originally written for the New York Times Magazine (9 November 1930). A version with altered wording appeared in Ideas and Opinions (1954)

Everything that the human race has done and thought is concerned with the satisfaction of deeply felt needs and the assuagement of pain.

it is precisely among the heretics of every age that we find men who were filled with this highest kind of religious feeling and were in many cases regarded by their contemporaries as atheists, sometimes also as saints.
Everything that men do or think concerns the satisfaction of the needs they feel or the escape from pain. This must be kept in mind when we seek to understand spiritual or intellectual movements and the way in which they develop. For feelings and longings are the motive forces of all human striving and productivity—however nobly these latter may display themselves to us.

The longing for guidance, for love and succor, provides the stimulus for the growth of a social or moral conception of God. This is the God of Providence, who protects, decides, rewards and punishes. This is the God who, according to man's widening horizon, loves and provides for the life of the race, or of mankind, or who even loves life itself. He is the comforter in unhappiness and in unsatisfied longing, the protector of the souls of the dead. This is the social or moral idea of God.

It is easy to follow in the sacred writings of the Jewish people the development of the religion of fear into the moral religion, which is carried further in the New Testament. The religions of all civilized peoples, especially those of the Orient, are principally moral religions. An important advance in the life of a people is the transformation of the religion of fear into the moral religion. But one must avoid the prejudice that regards the religions of primitive peoples as pure fear religions and those of the civilized races as pure moral religions. All are mixed forms, though the moral element predominates in the higher levels of social life.

Common to all these types is the anthropomorphic character of the idea of God. Only exceptionally gifted individuals or especially noble communities rise essentially above this level; in these there is found a third level of religious experience, even if it is seldom found in a pure form. I will call it the cosmic religious sense. This is hard to make clear to those who do not experience it, since it does not involve an anthropomorphic idea of God; the individual feels the vanity of human desires and aims, and the nobility and marvelous order which are revealed in nature and in the world of thought. He feels the individual destiny as an imprisonment and seeks to experience the totality of existence as a unity full of significance. Indications of this cosmic religious sense can be found even on earlier levels of development—for example, in the Psalms of David and in the Prophets. The cosmic element is much stronger in Buddhism, as, in particular, Schopenhauer's magnificent essays have shown us. The religious geniuses of all times have been distinguished by this cosmic religious sense, which recognizes neither dogmas nor God made in man's image. Consequently there cannot be a church whose chief doctrines are based on the cosmic religious experience. It comes about, therefore, that we find precisely among the heretics of all ages men who were inspired by this highest religious experience; often they appeared to their contemporaries as atheists, but sometimes also as saints. Viewed from this angle, men like Democritus, Francis of Assisi, and Spinoza are near to one another.

It is the most important function of art and science to awaken this feeling and keep it alive in those who are receptive to it.
How can this cosmic religious experience be communicated from man to man, if it cannot lead to a definite conception of God or to a theology? It seems to me that the most important function of art and of science is to arouse and keep alive this feeling in those who are receptive.

For any one who is pervaded with the sense of causal law in all that happens, who accepts in real earnest the assumption of causality, the idea of Being who interferes with the sequence of events in the world is absolutely impossible. Neither the religion of fear nor the social-moral religion can have any hold on him. A God who rewards and punishes is for him unthinkable, because man acts in accordance with an inner and outer necessity, and would, in the eyes of God, be as little responsible as an inanimate object is for the movements which it makes. Science, in consequence, has been accused of undermining morals—but wrongly. The ethical behavior of man is better based on sympathy, education and social relationships, and requires no support from religion. Man's plight would, indeed, be sad if he had to be kept in order through fear of punishment and hope of rewards after death.

It is, therefore, quite natural that the churches have always fought against science and have persecuted its supporters. But, on the other hand, I assert that the cosmic religious experience is the strongest and noblest driving force behind scientific research. No one who does not appreciate the terrific exertions, and, above all, the devotion without which pioneer creations in scientific thought cannot come into being, can judge the strength of the feeling out of which alone such work, turned away as it is from immediate practical life, can grow. What a deep faith in the rationality of the structure of the world and what a longing to understand even a small glimpse of the reason revealed in the world there must have been in Kepler and Newton to enable them to unravel the mechanism of the heavens in long years of lonely work! Any one who only knows scientific research in its practical applications may easily come to a wrong interpretation of the state of mind of the men who, surrounded by skeptical contemporaries, have shown the way to kindred spirits scattered over all countries in all centuries. Only those who have dedicated their lives to similar ends can have a living conception of the inspiration which gave these men the power to remain loyal to their purpose in spite of countless failures. It is the cosmic religious sense which grants this power. A contemporary has rightly said that the only deeply religious people of our largely materialistic age are the earnest men of research.

sankara

"in the deepest sense of the highest truth is that which vedins call the inexhaustible, beyond Being as beyond non-Being. It is reality alone, nothing else

Eckhart

“I alone take all creatures out of their sense into my mind and make them one in me. When I go back into the ground, into the depths, into the well-spring of the Godhead, no one will ask me from where I came or where I went. No one will miss me, for there God unbecomes.”

“had I a good whom I could understand, I would no longer hold him for god” "

\ “There is more in this unknowing knowledge than in any ordinary understanding, for this unknowing lures you away from all understood things and from yourself. This is what Christ meant when he said: ‘Whoever does not deny himself and leave father and mother and is not estranged from all these, is not worthy of me.’ That is as though to say: whoever does not abandon creaturely externals can neither be conceived or born in this divine birth.” Entering into this unknowing might also be called a kind of gnosis, or inner spiritual knowledge, though as Eckhart has it, “the height of gnosis is to know in agnosia.”

“In unknowing knowing we know God, in forgetfulness of ourselves and all things up to the naked essence of the Godhead,

\

Myths and legends of the Irish legal system

2011-11-19T07:17:00.001-08:00

This was the week that official Ireland finally revealed the colonial status that many of us had suspected for years, with national budgets being submitted to Germany years before being proposed to Ireland's own parliament. According to official Ireland, this is not a failure; we have actually progressed into this multicultural nirvana as a fiefdom of the world's most aggressive nation (see, for example Goldhagen "Hitler's willing Executioners - Vintage, 1997 - it is also a matter of public record that Ireland's Minister of finance has personal investments in German state bonds, to mature in 2020). What I'm going to look at here is the various mechanisms that substituted for responsible administration to lead us to this pass.

The critical mechanisms arise from the strange congeries of English common law and a theocratic constitution that passes for a “legal” system in Ireland. The latter allows a dearth of individual rights; the former– paradoxically developed in the absence of a written constitution - accentuates the adversarial ethos . Specifically, a common mechanism is for the state to refuse to prosecute an offense, leaving an unfunded individual alone against the gargantuan law firms in which Ireland abounds. This trick is the “statute of limitations”; the complaint resides on a bureaucrat's desk until it's too late and the individual has to seek redress through the civil courts for what was actually a criminal offense

Nor is there any search for “justice”. In fact, the paradigmatic event is one in which the plaintiff ends up with a placard outside the Irish parliament as the complaint grinds through the courts. The plaintiff's life is now effectively over; the Irish “state” has gained a new scapegoat. Outside Leinster house in the cold, the scapegoat plays the same role for the state as the nuns of the perpetual adoration play for the Catholic church as they gaze at the empty tabernacle. Jesus will have returned well before anything like a real democracy obtains in Ireland. Ireland urgently needs a civil law code ( a la Code Napoleon) to replace the current bewigged farce in which law is used as an instrument to buttress the privileges of the now small minority who constitute the ruling class. .

The structure of what was planned from the mid-90's is now clear, as the tide goes out and as Warren Buffet put it, we find out who's naked. Civil society was to be assimilated to the state and the more lucrative parts in turn assigned to scum close to government. The classical example of this is IMRO, which has done far more damage to Ireland's musical culture even than Cromwell by over-charging venues and stealing copyrights.

Copyright law is not applied in Ireland;

http://www.lindascales.com/publications/

IMRO used this to create perhaps the greatest haven of dummy bank accounts in Europe (see below). Scum close to Bertie Ahern were allowed a field day. DCU is the converse whereby a state institution was allowed to behave outside the law independently of any accountability.

In all, there is no enforcement for white-collar crime in Ireland; this is the main reason why the criminals at Anglo and the other banks so blithely engaged in money-laundering for the mafia in Austria, inter alia. The “double Irish” is a tax scam to ensure that multinationals could cook their books to avail of low Irish corporation tax. Here are a few others;

The “beef tribunal”

A journalist (Susan O'Keefe) points out irregularities in Ireland's biggest industry that clearly require a criminal investigation and remedy. Instead, a tribunal is convened, with massive payouts for Ireland's troglodyte legal profession. Everyone is exonerated, except Susan O'Keefe, who undergoes prosecution. Eventually, at least one of the wronged beef processors successfully sues the department of agriculture. Larry Goodman, the main offender, is soon back in pole position. The “beef tribunal” has proved very useful and was later reduplicated in the Moriarty and Flood tribunals. When one of the protagonists got too antsy, he died in a mysterious Moscow car crash.

The “IMRO”

In this case, on foot of complaints from a number of musicians, Gardai find a trove of dummy song registrations (almost certainly used to launder money), and theft of copyright by IMRO's chair, the Ahern camp-follower Shay Hennessy, whose job it is to protect them (admittedly a minor sin in this fetid context). A nexus of already dissolved companies (including one owned by U2) is allowed to continue to trade, both in Ireland and internationally, for over a decade past dissolution. This license is given directly by Paul Appleby, head of corp. enforcement in Ireland,who indeed gives evidence for the losing side in a US federal court case

http://docs.justia.com/cases/federal/district-courts/california/candce/4:2009cv03580/228656/68/0.pdf

In this case, we got close; the Sunday Independent was compelled by the government to run a story saying there were to be no prosecutions. As an afterthought, the Gardai were so informed several weeks later. We since forced the sindo to remove the story;

http://www.independent.ie/national-news/imro-to-be-cleared-after-fraud-squad-investigates-491006.html

Yes – we 404ed it. See also

http://seanonuallain.com/id2.html

The “Brendan Smyth”

Again, this is one of the less subtle mechanisms, involving as it does kicking a book of evidence under the table for so long that a coalition government fell. It is the “statute of limitations” applied just a little too unsubtly. It is,likely that a similar misapplication will bring down the current awful government within a year, as it seems hellbound on covering up the scams of its predecessor – probably on the advice of the “senior” and fantastically wealthy apparat of the Irish state.

The Hanrahan/Arthur Cox

This is described in a brilliant little document called “The Red book”;

http://www.amazon.com/Red-Book-Hanrahan-Against-Merck/dp/1853711675

In this case, a Tipperary farmer was having his livelihood destroyed by discharges from a Merck outlet. He won a supreme court case; Arthur Cox, on the losing side, cashed in handsomely. This probably led Cox to their crowning mechanism, the DCU, in which they lose EVERYTHING – except money!

The “DCU”

This is legal criminality approaching brilliance, with money being generated by a mafia law firm directly in proportion to its incompetence. Asked by the state to perform the austere and solemn task of writing contracts and a disciplinary code for a state university, you would of course take pains to get it right? STUPID! - there is far more money in screwing up every step of the way. If the disciplinary code is legally wrong, it will be appealed all the way to the supreme court with lucrative paydays for Cox, even in defeat. If the contracts are illegal, bribe SIPTU and offer a “Make my day” game face to the hapless staff.

Above all, keep the illegal disciplinary code up on the web, a Vlad the impaler type move; yes, it is illegal, but - in quick succession - and ex-attorney general and the consort of the ex-president are standing over it.

http://www.dcu.ie/info/statutes/statute3.shtml

The Employment appeal (“EAT”)

The MO of the EAT is simply this; a barrister is chosen (Tom Mallon in this case) to refuse senior counsel status so that he can continue to act there. He calls from a playbook and the chair of the EAT implements the plays. Colleagues, do not go near this forum

-
This blog is not a call for help, or sympathy. I have refused several lucrative settlements, just as I am refusing this “judgement” by the criminal EAT and anything apart from what my DCU colleagues voted for. I will continue to press my case for however long it takes, right up to the European court, until justice is served. The initial delay in my case from DCU's frivolous appeal (2003) the further delay arose from IBEC's withdrawal after DCU's main witnesses (Morris and P) refused to give evidence (Oct 2003). Morris and P then received assurances that the EAT would do whatever the fantastically obese and filthy Tom Mallon would ask it to do. In Feb 2004, the EAT adjourned for 5 years on Mallon;s say-so using a spurious legal argument – one of 3 such calls by the corrupt chair of the EAT, Kate O'Mahony, that my legal team had to rescind in 2009.

Having overruled herself on the first 2, O'Mahony attempted to invent a supreme court precedent to explain the delay before admitting it didn't exist ((Jan 2010). It is on record that I publicly repudiated the EAT at this point, not caring about their “judgement” as they are clearly corrupt, and will call Kate back to explain herself in open court;

http://academictenure.blogspot.com/2010/06/corruption-at-employment-appeals.html

Finally, it is my belief that we actually have won. While tenure is gone as a legal construct – and of course the 1997 act refused to define it, leading Chief Justice Denham to say in public court that her court refused to do so as that would be “legislating” - the fact is that university “managements” in Ireland are now scared to go to court; that is the effect I intended. (The reverse Vlad, if you will ) Keep it up; take a high court injunction wen one of these scum varies a millimeter from your contract. Remember what end of the moral spectrum this filth is from

Seán O Nualláin Ph.D. Stanford
19u Samhain 2011

Universities, society, and the law

2011-11-13T10:52:00.001-08:00

The essentially mediaeval structure of universities has yet to address the existence of the printing press, let alone confront the revolution in power-sharing that the internet inevitably brings along. It has also missed out on the spectacular success of what have consequently become to be known as the “exact” sconces – physics and chemistry – and the relative failure of everything else, including biology, which has unsuccessfully tried to tie itself in to the “hard” sciences for about a century now.

The humanities and social sciences have fared even worse. The former have seen their funding reduced to the point that – in supreme irony – they often end up subsidizing the huge science laboratories across campus. For example, as I write, the well-attended English department at UC Berkeley subsidizes the “hard sciences”. The various trendy postx gimics have assailed the very basis on which the humanities operate, in that postmodernism will argue for an equality of narratives in a situation wherein the goal of the education is to refine the students' thinking and feeling, a move that requires discipline and reverence for the possibilities of the human psyche.

The social sciences are gradually being reduced to adjacency matrices in Facebook analysis. This will never do. Likewise, economics has lost itself in baroque and meaningless math formalisms that are really ultimately oriented to persuading us that, yes, the very rich do indeed deserve to take more of our money.

The very legal status of universities, which are ALL (public and “private”) very highly taxpayer-costly, is itself problematic. Since 2002, successive ministers have baldly stated in the Irish parliament that Irish universities can act outside the law of the land, if they so choose. Yet in that, the Irish “state” is simply following an American precedent, exemplified by three recent incidents, two of which bear witness to the malign influence of over-funded sports teams;

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/12/us/on-college-campuses-athletes-often-get-off-easy.html

What then is the solution? There are several options. First of all, ignore universities entirely – when asked what he would do were he very wealthy, Frank Lloyd Wright stated that he would buy universities up to close them down. He had a point; it needs to be said that the current configuration of academia is superb for entrenching absurdities (think “ontological behaviourism”, Freudianism, neo-Darwinism with its glorious “central dogma”!), brain-washing talented students, and buttressing a scientist-publisher-funder scam that has led us to the point that billions spent on “applied” science produces nothing of any benefit whatsoever. It is left to the likes of Larry Page to dig up obscure 1950's algorithms to create what is effectively a gargantuan ad. company with a misspelled brand name (It should of coursebe googol)

In the above scenario, “hedge” universities would use the brilliant lectures already available under various open source licenses to create centers of excellence in a manner I have already outlined on this blog. This is very 2011, and by no means the worst-case scenario. This move involves giving up completely on state engagement with superior tertiary education; the “private” universities would hobble along on alumni donations for a while as centers for the 1% to meet and interbreed, but “research” – such as it is – would dry up, absent taxpayers' subsidy. Some of this funding, in turn, could be transferred into highly costly and risky projects like drug-testing that are beyond the reach of most private companies, and given their role as a public good, might well be nationalized

It goes without saying that this scenario involves absolute academic freedom, reflected in the anarchic structure of the internet itself – outside China. But can we do better? In Ireland, very clearly, we cannot – even elementary corporate enforcement has proven beyond the scope of the “state”., and the current scenario whereby $ billions are stolen from the taxpayer to pay off non-secured “bondholders” while similar amounts are being lopped off social protection speak for itself. However, Ireland is an anomalous case, a colonial project, with a pampered elite still being paid extravagant salaries, mainly as administrators of this spectacularly failed new dispensation. In the meantime, immigration is still actively encouraged, and we have recently seen a case wherein a Nigerian woman was jailed for pimping out a 15-year-old girl. Ireland is due a new revolution; the last one failed to take.

To return to the nominal subject of this blog, it is my belief that – if the state is to be involved - tenure should NOT be given before 40 (effectively what happens in the USA), and should be reserved for a single academic in each undergraduate program. Of course, there should also be permanent lecturers; "tenure" refers to the fact that the employee cannot involuntarily be made redundant. The 30 or so tenured academics at each university, together with s student from each program, should constitute academic council, in turn the ultimate locus of power in the university. These degree programs may indeed include subjects that were previously taught by a private-sector college, and found to have legs, as I previously outlined

The temptations due to extravagant research funding, in mine and others' experience, are what turn collegial, effective departments into maelstroms of vicious competition. Research is indeed part of the task of a state university; so is schooled debate on issues of public concern, and the provision of sports and cultural facilities both for the university community and the nation. In particular, activists and artists should be encouraged to seek respite for a year or more with residential status at universities.

What of graduate students? The current paths available to them limit them to micro-specialization as an extension of a professor's ego, and spending 15 years in professional limbo as their peers learn in the real world how to deal with people and money. Graduate students should indeed have a year of full-time, absolutely unstructured research, state-subsidized; thereafter they should be encouraged to teach, to interact with people, to hone their skills. The market for teaching should be structured so that the better students can compete to make a living as teachers; precisely what young artists are encouraged to do.

What happened in Ireland 1995-2011 was no more and no less than an aggressive move by globalized corporatism on a critical part of the infrastructure of the state. It did not have to be so aggressive; as the immediately preceding post points out, the essentially fascist nature of the Irish “state” allowed the initiative, sans aggression. It has been left to writers to Naomi Klein to point out that this viciousness is part of the neoliberal dispensation. As of 2011, that dispensation is no longer in control, and there are interesting times ahead. In the meantime, all the information we need to advance our knowledge is available free, on the web and - thank to Mario Savio et al – in the few institutions that are still really public and really universities

Seán O Nualláin
13 u Samhain 2011 Stanford

The attack on tenure in Ireland; Timeline

2011-10-29T13:26:00.000-07:00

A few prefatory comments before the timeline. First of all, the decision to end academic tenure is one that states have a right to make. Secondly, current universities are highly inefficient entities, particularly in an age when the Internet allows diffusion of information and facilitation of communication in a way ideally geared to education. Thirdly, in general academics in Ireland are grossly overpaid, under-qualified and underworked – like most of the non-frontline civil service there.

Nevertheless, what we have just witnessed in Ireland is sinister in the extreme, which is why I have remained so exercised about it. If the state wants to curtail academic freedom at its institutions, the loss is the state's; truly independent academies will spring up like mushrooms as talented students refuse to kowtow to nonsense backed by arbitrary authority. For example, globalrevolution.tv operates on a volunteer basis, and has been causative in all recent movements since Tahrir square, and is now livecasting the “occupy” protests. Taking the current MIT opencourseware and other creative commons documents to create “universities” is a piece of cake by comparison.

So why is the Irish situation worth writing about, let alone writing about in the rage which indeed has often possessed me? Essentially, because everything that happened there was illegal, and betokened a very dark future in the relation between power and citizen in Ireland. It is one thing to invoke procedures that have been biased irrevocably in the employer's favour since 1990; it is quite another to issue thousands of illegal employment contracts, keep an illegal statute on the books for over 10% of the lifetime of the Irish “state”, continually to insist in Parliament that the universities can act outside the law, cause the suicide of a foreign guest academic (anticipating Princeton), and in a final, Kafkaeque move, drop documents containing a summons to an illegal meeting into an academic's house late one Friday evening – all of which happened. Let me be clear; Ireland is again a joke internationally in any case; however, it is worth saying that we put up a fierce resistance to an MO that would have been sure to travel

We put this resistance up to the point of repeatedly and successfully suing Ireland's “paper of record”, the Irish Times, which – after for some reason joining the yellow press in a crusade against academic freedom – repeatedly had to issue retractions and apologies. The IT's participation is perhaps the best index of how deep this conspiracy was

Timeline

1985 The NIHE Dublin (NIHED)signs a closed-shop agreement with the FWUI union. Disciplinary procedures are specified, academic freedom is enshrined, and tenure is defined as a job until 65

1980's; Thatcher abolishes tenure, which has never been reinstated in Britain. In U hull, a case involving Edgar Page extends the destruction of tenure to academics tenured BEFORE Thatcher

Mid 1980's; an accreditation commission, headed by Michael Gleeson, repeatedly visits NIHED.

(By) 1987 Gleeson has accepted a job at NIHED

1989 The accreditation commission's report is submitted to Parliament, which transforms NIHED into DCU, with Senator Murphy among others issuing loud misgivings

1990 the effective end of tenure, or any permanency in any job in Ireland, is heralded with new legislation forbidding strikes for “single dismissals” which basically means – no employment rights whatsoever. Employees can summarily be terminated and either take their chances with utterly corrupt EAT and watch their savings be eked away as their erstwhile employer appeals or - if a state employee - can try to get a High Court Injunction. In the latter case, the state employs any one of the 3 gargantuan law firms in Ireland - all in the EU's top 20 biggest law firms as of 2009 - to crush him or her. The Irish state is violently in violation of EU law by not offering resources to the complainant

Mid 1990's An unsolicited tranche of cash in he tens of millions arrives at DCU, ostensibly from chuck Feeney, who claims to have given away all his money beforehand.

1995; DCU publishes a new closed-shop agreement with SIPTU. It abolishes academic freedom and tenure, and specifies that academics cannot work from their homes. In fact, SIPTU to this day has never agreed these terms, and the signatures were copied from the 1985 agreement .At least one of the “signers”, Pat Cullen, had left permanently for Australia 4 years beforehand. Hundreds of workers at DCU have signed these illegal contracts, which would not survive a court challenge

1997; A new universities act is passed by the outgoing government; it enshrines academic freedom and tenure, but refuses to say what the latter is. It also requires new disciplinary procedures to be enacted, subject to union consultation

2000; DCU governing authority refuses to pass a disciplinary procedure presented to it, condemning it as “draconian”

2000; Prondzz#@, third choice for the job and head of hull's law dept, is made President of DCU

2001; DCU's disciplinary procedure is made even more draconian, with a new clause, seized on later by Judge Clarke, allowing summary dismissal of all staff. Tom Mallon BL is called on to declare it kosher (his opinion is appended)

2001 DCU passes this new disciplinary procedure procedure, despite protest by SIPTU

2002 DCU is taken by SIPTU to the labour court and given 3 months to rectify the statute. 10 years after its being passed , it is still on the books

2007 Judge Clarke at Ireland's high court declares the statute incompatible with the 1997 act in its specification of tenure.

2011 Clarke's view is upheld by the supreme court's chosen remedy of full reinstatement with back pay in DCU's appeal, and their statement that there was an ILLEGAL, not an unfair dismissal at play

A personal epilogue

To a large extent, I do not have a dog in this fight. The Irish state has behaved in the antinomial and indeed criminal way that many of us expect it to do. I was fool enough to believe it would honor a contract with me; and in emigrating, I am simply returning to the home of my paternal grandfather. Yet
the experience of someone of non-Irish ethnicity stuffing letters in my door late at night in the name of the Irish state summoning me to an illegally-convened meeting (Edgar Page II) is something I will not tolerate nor easily forget. We have (perhaps overly-liberal) gun laws here in the USA to prevent such behavior by the state.

Finally, lest there be any doubt ; DCU was to be a proof of concept for direct corporate control of universities. In general, they have gotten away with it.

Seán O Nualláin Ph.D. Stanford
29u Deireadh fomhair 2011

My last copyright assignment

2011-10-25T21:14:00.000-07:00

One of the truly appalling consequences of DCU's criminality is that many of my graduate students were (and are) brilliant - yet none of them has had an academic career because of DCU's abuse and crime. And so I hold my nose and submit to conventional academic publishers to keep my ex-students publishing, including assigning copyright to the publishers(I can't afford the 3k or so they ask as a price not to do so). I will never do so again, and will restrict my submissions to open-source media for reasons hopefully about to be made clear

On this blog, I announced a set of findings about metabolism and consciousness over the past 2 years. Last week, they finally got published in a peer-reviewed and indexed (etc) journal and I included one of the brilliant students shafted by DCU as an author - and deservedly, for he used his expertise in stats (he is a quant) to explode a myth about neural synchrony in epilepsy

The editing process simply added mistakes from my original document, which I append. They somehow assigned me to UCD, which I remember only as a source of hashish in its bar in the late 1970's; the great thing was that the dope expunged the garbage one was exposed to at the lectures. The one thing I share with Iar-Taoiseach Brian
Cowen is a vivid memory of NUI's Dublin drug emporium.

In any case, the paper with Springer's errors after a 3 month delay is at

http://www.springerlink.com/content/x10063878485504n/

and I append the original

Received 12 July 2011

Consciousness is cheap, even if symbols are expensive;
Metabolism and the brain’s dark energy

Seán O Nualláin
Lecturer, Symbolic Systems, Stanford
Ventura Hall, Stanford Ca 94305 USA
***@stanford.edu

and ***

Abstract

Use of symbols, the key to the biosemiotics field as to many others, required bigger brains which implied a promissory note for greater energy consumption; symbols are obviously expensive. A score years before the current estimate of 18-20% for the human brain’s metabolic demand on the organism, it was known that neural tissue is metabolically dear.

This paper first discusses two evolutionary responses to this demand, on both of which there is some consensus. The first, assigning care of altricial infants with burgeoning brains (and in human infants the metabolic demand peaks at 65% of the total) to “allomothers” is not unique to humans. The second, using relatively small neurons as primates do, risks misfires past a certain minimization. Moreover, in apparent paradox, there is an increasing consensus that large “Von Economo” neurons are critical for communication

This paper’s main original contribution is the discussion of two further evolutionary tricks. The first is the use of self-similarity in the cortex, both in structure and process, to allow the cortex readily - and in energetic terms, parsimoniously - to shift between states in a high-dimensional space. This leads to discussion of the kind of formalism appropriate to model these shifts, a formalism which – it is tentatively suggested – may do double duty for the modeling of symbolic thought.

The second trick is the superimposition on the background “white noise” of neural firing of EEG-detected waves like gamma. The paper describes a method, using the Hilbert transform, of calculating the dips in energy consumption as the brain is transitioned by gamma waves. It is hypothesized that consciousness may be a spandrel, the incidental result of a neurodynamic imperative that the brain enter a maximally sensitive (in sensory terms) “zero power” state a few times a second. If that is the case, then there are obvious benefits for health in meditation, which can be viewed as a state of consciousness extended over time by limiting afferent stimuli.

Keywords

Neurodynamics, thermodynamics, evolution, consciousness, biosemiotics

1 Introduction

We are destined, perhaps doomed, to project models from our current science on the phenomenal space of our minds. Currently, there is immensely exciting analysis going on at UC Berkeley (Freeman et al, 2008)using concepts from chaos theory, fractals, and many-body quantum theory to explain EEG data. This follows an equally exciting 1990's obsession with Bose-Einstein condensates, Renaissance viewsof the mind as a mill, Burton's being satisfied in 17th century “The anatomy of Melancholy” with mere gravity as a dynamo of neural exchange, Descartes and his famous hydraulics, and so on. The UC Berkeley work outlined here stresses the notion of a neural “wave packet, which is discussed below
It is cautiously proposed here that techniques which reveal discontinuities occurring in the order of tenths of seconds may be most fruitful, and recent ECOG work by the author and others will briefly be summarised. Phrenology, by contrast, was and remains an infamous 19th century fad. Bumps for covetousness, licentiousness, knowledge, and so on have a disturbingly medieval resonance, with the witch-hunt for supernumerary nipples to suckle incubi surely only a small distance away, both anatomically and politically, from Gall's crackpot activities. Yet the current obsession in neuroscience with fmri data is not much better. These data manifest statistical assumptions that are normally 10 years' study beyond the knowledge of the functionalist psychologists who presume to interpret them, are obtained in absurdly artificial environments, and - most of all- have a time sensitivity measurable in gross seconds.
Indeed, Vul et al (2009) suggest that many of the results obtained are dubious in their statistical reasoning. Vul et al’s meta-analysis has not been credibly questioned; including the word “voodoo” in the original title to describe the work of other scientists was an unfortunate borrowing from GHW Bush and perhaps diminished the paper’s impact.
It is uncontroversial in the extreme to suggest we need time sensitivity that is one or two orders of magnitude greater than fmri; it does seem to be the case that consciousness can be detected in the tenths of seconds, and that many critical neural events require only hundredths or thousandths of seconds. Specifically, work on microgestures (O Nualláin, 2010) indicates that a facial expression sustained for only 0.04 of a second, well below the sampling rate of consciousness, can affect our evaluation of a person. In turn, the sampling rate of consciousness can be assessed by examining what experimental subjects can actually report; to eschew pseudo-precision, and to anticipate some of the discussion below, it seems to be about a tenth of a second.

EEG and ECOG data (with the latter featuring electrodes attached directly to the cortex), on the other hand, as we have seen, can be sampled at appropriate intervals; indeed, precision well beyond the thousandth of the second level is possible. In our recent work (Freeman et al, 2008; O Nualláin, 2009), we have shown that superimposition of high-frequency gamma waves on the background “dark energy” of the cortex leads to momentary power dips therein, at a rate of several per second. The latter paper postulates that these dips constitute consciousness – perhaps to say “facilitate individual experience of consciousness” may be more precise - which is physically a discrete process and phenomenologically seamless only to a naïve experiencer. These gamma waves are precisely the ones emitted by trained meditators at very high levels.

On the other hand,, issues relating to the trades-off between increased brain size and consequent organismal metabolic demands are among the most fiercely contested in contemporary science ( Isler et al, 2006, 2009 a and b, Isler 2011). Consensus exists on relatively coarse-grained relations, like the positive ones between brain size, the relative altriciality of species, and the degree to which that species tolerates allomothers along with the biological mothers for child-care, a period in which the metabolic demand by the brain is around 65%(Fox, 2011) . Yet even that calculus needs nuance; the necessity of monitoring a much larger body means that a cow with its much larger brain is not necessarily any more “intelligent’ than a rodent. Conversely, humans reflect an evolutionary decision not to increase the size of individual neurons, even though the result may be ion channel misfires.
.
Animals with larger social networks, such as humans, inflict a large metabolic demand on the organism with 18-20% emerging as the consensus figure for humans for this “dark energy”. In this paper, we consider the extent to which brain waves like gamma attenuate the metabolic demand by the brain. It is hypothesized that consciousness itself, as we experience it, may be an artifact of metabolic demand minimization by the brain. While efficient representation algorithms like “sparse coding” free up such energy to some extent, it does seem plausible that synchronized gamma frees energy in excess of normal homeostasis to be used, perhaps, for healing as well as essential maintenance.
We begin with a brief review of the well-travelled evolutionary controversies, but with a twist; information theory predicts that the human brain may have reached certain constraints on the size of individual neurons. Evidence from the Freeman lab suggests that this energy demand may also be attenuated by the brain’s fractal architecture. It may change from one state to another in a high-dimensional space with utmost rapidity. Not incidentally, this fits in with the tensor approach to symbolic brain function pioneered by Smolensky and his colleagues, and we briefly consider the consequences for symbolic function.
The paper goes on to describe the functioning of the Hilbert transform, the data-analysis tool used here. Examples are given of its analysis both of simulated and real data. Then, it is noted that the synchronized gamma that is a signature both of meditation and consciousness has been found to attenuate the brain’s metabolic demand on the organism by a factor of 4. We then discuss the thorny issue of what consciousness actually is. We speculate on some essential maintenance tasks that may become possible due to this access of energy before – in further speculation – remarking that consciousness may after all be a spandrel, the result of a metabolic requirement. Finally, in an appropriately humble spirit, we consider possible consequences for symbolic functioning.

2 Metabolism and evolution

Given that many organisms found stable ecological niches scores of millions of years ago, the quickening of the evolution of symbolic intelligence that homo sapiens sapiens exemplifies with its inevitable metabolic cost requires explanation. One can hardly ask a more critical question for human Biosemiotics. Indeed, it has reasonably been asked whether the human brain is not an optimal vehicle for intelligence; to reach the human level of neurons per body weight, a rodent would have to carry around a 45kg brain, stopping any other salutary process (Fox, 2011) . Conversely , some animals like the koala bear have made an evolutionary decision to keep their brain size extremely small, and indeed reduce metabolic demand even further by sleeping 80% of the time. The route to big brains and symbols is not an inevitable one.

The battleground in evolutionary psychology (Isler et al, 2006, 2009 a and b, Isler 2011) ) is fully as contested as that neural communications theory (ibid. There is consensus in the former field on certain relations, like the positive ones between brain size, the relative altriciality of species, and the degree to which that species tolerates allomothers along with the biological mothers for child-care with marsupials being an exception explicable by a longer nursing phase. ( Isler et al (2006) were unaware of the current 18-20% “dark energy” estimate and simply cite work from a quarter-century before concerning the energetics of neural tissue)
Yet brute brain size does not correlate particularly well with intelligence, as larger mammals need bigger brains to maintain standard homeostatic functions. A better index plots body weight versus brain weight and here humans indeed are outliers with high relative brain size and cattle are outliers with low such.Moreover, the requirement for communicating across a large brain exerts its own discipline. Axonal mass increases faster than gray matter as brain size increases; a strategy that primates seem to have used is to grow with small neurons ( A possible exception involves Von Economo neurons, as noted below). Yet these smaller neurons and axons result in another bottleneck; the axons will become faulty below about 150 nanometers because of consequential misfires in ion channels, just as transistors below 10 nanometers fall prey to faults with the absence or presence of single atoms of boron causing misfires.
Much of the context for production of our experimental work is the well-attested finding that meditators show sustained brain activity in the “Gamma oscillation” category, which goes roughly from 25 to 80 hz (Freeman et al, 2008) with beta approximately from 12.5 up to 25Hz (ibid). Remarkably, there are solid indications that such gamma activity, particularly if synchronized over large areas of the brain, is a signature also of conscious states (O Nuallain, 2009). There is also at least provisional evidence that meditation leads to improved health, and indeed a thickening of cortex (ibid).
The work we did at Walter Freeman's lab at UC Berkeley (Freeman et al, 2008) indicates that there may be a unifying explanation for the beneficial health effects of meditation (or indeed conscious states). Very simply, the brain normally demands 18-20% of the total energy of the human organism (as distinct from 3% in the mouse). Synchronized gamma would briefly attenuate this demand by a factor on 10,000, and do so a few times a second. This frees up energy for many metabolic processes. Put in standard units, an average human consumes 100Watts; of this, the brain consumes 20W. Briefly to attenuate brain demand results in 20W energy being freed up.
It is worth pointing out that there is an assumption here that the extra energy freed up is "usable" for homeostatic functions. For example, the body can autonomously drive up its own heat to fight off infections in fevers. In that case, however, "normal" homeostasis in lost; indeed, the extra energy available to the brain causes hallucinations. This is speculative in our current state of knowledge
Famously, Gary Kasparov using 20w almost beat a computer using several thousand watts (Montague, 2008; of course, a laptop using a few hundred watts could beat most of us while multitasking). The efficiency of human cognition is indeed a marvel; Friston (2010) provides a good summary paper. However, part of the contribution of the present paper is to question and extend some of Friston’s arguments. Confusingly, Friston’s core concept is “free energy”, a term used also in biochemistry, on which he imposes a purely informational meaning. Even granted this latitude, we believe his scenario to evince premature closure, as described below. The brain is far from thermodynamic equilibrium; similarly, it wishes to process high-entropy data and, in order to do so, allows limit cycles. Finally, it is fair to say that Friston inevitably takes his schema into informational territory with remarks about issues like the thermodynamic efficacy of the related notion of “efficient coding” (Friston, 2010, 131)
There is one exception to humans’ preference for smaller neurons; von Economo neurons are inventions of large social animals, and abnormalities in their density in autistic brains relative to controls is attributed to the social deficits. In large social animals the von Economo neurons may regulate that higher social sense required to keep track of up to 150 different individuals in your social group, the Dunbar number (Dunbar, 2003) If that is the case, they are the exception that proves the rule to the generalization that primates use small neurons.
It is speculated in the framework of this paper that consciousness may not be causal. Cognitive resources may be directed to various tasks; conscious moments are replete with retrospective recreations of traces in the brain after these tasks are accomplished. In fact, attempting to become conscious of skilled performance (playing piano, driving) results in a deterioration of that performance. Similarly, establishing and nurturing bonds with the 150 will not necessarily require consciousness.

3 Brain architecture, symbols, and energy consumption

Friston (2010) and Carhart-Harris and Friston (2011) champion two major paradigms in neural processing of information; the “free energy” approach which constrains the new information presented by afferent stimuli to values tolerable in bit terms, and the “default” mode of neural functioning, which they have indeed used to rehabilitate Freud’s psychodynamics. The “default mode” posits brain waves at about 0.1Hz as its signature; “free energy” paradigms depend on a system in thermodynamic equilibrium with its environment. The “default mode” will not be a consideration of ours here, beyond the consensus that the metabolic demand by the brain does not evince any significant upsurge when the brain is “busy” (ie non-default), indicating that symbolic thought seems to exploit an already prepared system.
Our work (Freeman, 2008;Freeman et al, 2008) contrary to Friston’s (2010), proposes that the brain functions far from thermodynamic equilibrium. We suggest that the brain moves in an extremely high-dimensional state space in a manner facilitated by the fact that it is permeated with self-similarity, both spatial and temporal. At the spatial level, self-similarity ensures that, in fractal fashion, each neuron changes in step with the cortex as a whole. In temporal fashion, self-similarity results in the power spectrum of much slower theta waves traversing the brain being identical to, if slower than, much faster gamma waves. Several times a second, the brain enters a limit cycle in which it becomes extremely sensitive to incoming stimuli. Therefore, even without mechanisms like stochastic resonance, we humans can detect stimuli as weak as a few photons, or a few parts per billion of scent. The brain is geared to process novelty as it is to process low entropy information.
Our UC Berkeley work (Freeman et al, 2008) stresses the notion of a neural “wave packet”, which is not to be confused with its quantum mechanics synonym. In essence, a neural wave packet is a trajectory of successive states in the cortex begotten by a stimulus, either incoming or the result of internal processing. The trajectory flows through states which are local basins of attraction; subjectively, the sampling rate of consciousness is such that we consciously apprehend only a very sketchy sample of the perhaps trillions of individual computations that are ongoing.
EEG and ECOG data (with the latter featuring electrodes attached directly to the cortex), can be sampled at appropriate intervals; indeed, precision well beyond the thousandth of the second level is possible. In our recent work (Freeman et al, 2008; O Nualláin, 2009), we have shown that superimposition of high-frequency gamma waves on the background “dark energy” of the cortex leads to momentary power dips therein, at a rate of several per second. The latter paper postulates that these dips constitute consciousness – perhaps to say “facilitate individual experience of consciousness” may be more precise - which is physically a discrete process and phenomenologically seamless only to a naïve experiencer. These gamma waves are precisely the ones emitted by trained meditators at very high levels.
Moreover, it seems to be the case that the meditative state is devoid of cognitive content to a great degree. Finally (O Nualláin, 2009), gamma synchrony, the most attested concomitant of consciousness, may be significant only insofar as gamma is normally localized in specific brain regions; what (experience of) consciousness may consist of, in this scenario, is the result of resonant gamma over the cortex and its effect on the background noise/energy. We describe the methodology used below.
Smolensky et al (2011) suggest that the high-dimensional states that characterize the brain’s transitions need higher-order tensor calculus for their modeling. Smolensky was initially stung into action by the goading of Fodor and others who argued that neural network systems lacked “systematicity”, the capacity to handle certain syntactic relations normal in language. Thus, if “Fionn loves Grainne” is a syntactically valid sentence , syntactically (if not pragmatically) the system should be able to determine that “Grainne loves Fionn” is similarly valid. It was the failure of connectionist systems to do this that motivated Smolensky to develop a tensor theory in which neutrally plausible mechanisms could be adduced for each level of the Chomsky hierarchy.

The Chomsky hierarchy famously describes formal automata of ever-increasing power from finite state, through context-free and context-sensitive automata that are historically associated with natural language and finally to type 0 and type I automata that may or may not be recursively enumerable ( O Nuallain 2003, 2008). Finite state automata can most naturally generate sentences resembling a child's pivot grammar (daddy guess, mummy bad); suitably tortured, they can generate natural language. The consensus for natural language is somewhere between context free and context sensitive and below the type 0 grammars.

Chomskyan linguistics has historically seen its task as the formal characterisation of a grammar (syntax alone) or Grammar (incorporating all of language). No complete grammar for any natural language has yet been written; as for Grammar, the failure in this realm is best attested by the primitive natural language systems on the web, despite massive investment by companies like Google, as this is being written in 2011.

Similarly, the papers by William Hoffman and Ken Aizawa in our 1997 collection (O Nualláin et al 1997) propose that Lie groups and the formally equivalent tensors, should be used in cognitive modeling. Lie groups are the brainchild of the Norwegian Marius Sophius Lie whose work on symmetry extends the earlier opera of his brilliant and doomed compatriot Niels Abel and that of Abel's near contemporary, the similarly doomed Evariste Galois. Both Abel and Galois attacked the issue of why radical solutions to equations involving the quintic were impossible. Cardano and other brilliant Italian mathematicians had incidentally invented complex numbers in their successful search for solutions to equations involving the cubic.

The colourful details of the lives of these brilliant mathematicians need not concern us here, nor should their sometimes impenetrable formalisms. What is important is that Galois worked out that groups of permutation of the roots of an equation had properties that could constrain whether the equation in fact was soluble. Lie systematised Galois’ insight in a general theory of groups that turned out to provide a lingua franca with differentiable, locally Euclidean "manifolds" in space.Lie groups dominate current cutting edge thought in quantum theory, a further example of John Wheelers "unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics in the natural sciences"

Tensors, by contrast refer to a meta-formalism in which scalars (like the numbers “one, two”) are tensors of rank zero, vectors are tensors of rank one, and so on. Higher order tensors are possibly necessary for modelling brains function in the high dimensional space opened up by Freeman's neurodynamics. In any case, tensor calculus allows elegant modelling of the "cued reaching movements" described in Friston(2010, 134) . In particular, a single point in four dimensions must be targeted by a nervous system working in a much higher-dimensional space to catch a ball. Tensors, and thus Lie groups, afford a parsimonious way of approaching this problem.

Kime’s article in the same collection (O Nuallain et al, 1997) goes a few stages further - in what now seems a rather prescient move, he argues that the whole enterprise of cognitive science is inappropriately rooted in a belief that the data it deals with are the product of a linear system. Kime argues, following the seminal work of Pellionisz and Llinas (1979), that the space is in fact curves to varying degrees.
While Kime, following Pellionisz and Llinas (ibid), uses their contravariant/covariant terminology, the point is still the same; we may need a completely different paradigm to handle human use of symbols. In fact, the lacunae thrown up by the HGP may similarly thus be explicable. It may be the case that symbolic functioning proceeds over a high-dimensional state-space, with curvature actually changing as the interpretation of the symbol proceeds (O Nualláin et al 2007, p. 257) .
This hypothesis is tentative in the extreme; it suggests that symbolic functioning involves separate phases of “analysis” and “interpretation”. In the former phase, the organism finds out what the general context actually is. Interpretation involves a gradual restriction of this context and a change in the curvature of the system ( O Nualláin 2003, O Nualláin et al 2007). A good analogy is the warping of space-time by a massive object.
What this section has (very) tentatively proposed, therefore, is a different paradigm of brain function due to the attested work of Freeman and his colleagues. It implies a tensorial (or another mathematically equivalent) approach to cognitive function. It eschews Friston’s (2010) “free energy” paradigm as incomplete. Next, let us look at an attested mechanism for reducing metabolic demand.

4 The Hilbert Transform and dips in metabolic demand

An application of the Hilbert transform to both real and simulated ECOG data is described here. Readers with an aversion to technical detail can safely skip to 4.2
The Hilbert transform overcomes limitations in the Fourier Transform partly by repeatedly applying it to a changing signal. The Hilbert transform calculates attributes of a time series, especially the amplitude and instantaneous phase and frequency, before summarizing all of them in an “analytic signal”. Now we can calculate crucial attributes of the cortical activity, both real and simulated, like power. The investigation here confirmed the existence of “lulls” several times a second in the background activity of the brain which may have a central role in sensory processing.
The analytic signal is useful in the area of communications, particularly in bandpass signal processing, where it can be utilised for the minimisation of “aliasing” or “jagging” in graphics applications. The analytic signal has a real part corresponding to the original data, and an imaginary part which contains the Hilbert transform. The imaginary part is a version of the original real sequence with a 90° phase shift. Sines are therefore transformed to cosines and vice versa.
As described in any reliable source like the matlab manual, for a pure sinusoid, the instantaneous amplitude and frequency are constant. The instantaneous phase, however, is a sawtooth, reflecting the way in which the local phase angle varies linearly over a single cycle..
Briefly, we can write

a = Hilbert (b)

where the real part of a is the original real data and the imaginary part is the actual Hilbert transform. a is sometimes called the analytic signal, in reference to the continuous-time analytic signal.
The Hilbert transformed series has the same amplitude and frequency content as the original real data and includes phase information that depends on the phase of the original data. The instantaneous amplitude is the amplitude of the complex Hilbert transform; the instantaneous frequency is the time rate of change of the instantaneous phase angle. What is most critical for the purposes here is that with the Hilbert transform we can calculate the power of all activity in the brain, instant to instant. The reader is referred to Walter Freeman’s (2007) description of the Hilbert in Scholarpedia for further detail

4-1 Methodology

The plan, then, was first to simulate bandpass-filtered brown noise by filtering pseudo-white noise with a filter equivalent to running-summing followed by filtration with a finite-impulse-response bandpass filter such as can be generated in Matlab by fir1. Judicious choice of the order of the filter depends on the digitising step; with our step of 2ms, we found that 500 was an appropriate order, as numerical errors emerged with other choices.
We now choose bottom end and top end of the band of frequencies to be retained by the bandpass filter, expressing these as fractions of the Nyquist frequency. Essentially, the band at 1/80 to 1/40 of the Nyquist frequency was considered theta range; at 1/40 to 1/20 of the Nyquist frequency, alpha range; at 1/20 to 1/10 of the Nyquist frequency, beta range; and finally, at 1/10 to 1/5 of the Nyquist frequency, gamma range.
In each case we proceeded as follows;

1. We computed the corresponding analytic signal by taking the Hilbert transform of the filtered brown noise.
2. We computed the corresponding analytic amplitude (pointwise modulus), analytic phase (pointwise arg), analytic power (pointwise squared modulus), "unwrapped" analytic phase, and analytic frequency (the differenced analytic-phase series divided by the "digitizing step"). We then proceeded to plot analytic power against time, and analytic frequency against time.

For each of the bands we produced an example of the bandpass—filtered brown noise, a longitudinal histogram of the bandpass-filtered brown noise , a corresponding example of the analytic power series, a longitudinal log-log histogram of the analytic power, a corresponding example of the analytic frequency series, and a longitudinal log-log histogram of the analytic frequency. (Naturally, most of these graphs are surplus to the requirements here and only some are shown.) The bandpass simulates local inhibitory feedback; as we hypothesize, a short delay and feedback corresponds to gamma and long such to beta.
In the second stage, we used real data, as described below.

4-2 Results

In our work, the first diagram (fig 1) shows power consumption decreases with gamma first with simulated data, then with real data (fig 2), both of which have appeared in various forms in our previous work. The simulated data looked on neuron firing as random, as white noise with refractory periods. (Without refractory periods, epileptic seizure sets in, with the very clear and tragic consumption of metabolic energy that involves.) We then used the Hilbert transform to calculate how power consumption would vary if the “white noise” signal was convolved with gamma waves.
Several aspects of the results are discussed in O Nualláin (2009). Many immediately striking findings emerge from this use of the Hilbert transform. In the first place, we seem to have “lulls” in the power spectrum of the brain under gamma a few times per second (Freeman historically has argued for 3-7 times per second). In these lulls, the power consumption of the brain decreases by a factor of ten thousand. Let us look first of all at an idealization, in which the power reaches zero in a simulated case;

Figure 1 simulated data

The above is simulated data, derived as described above. We can compare the real data, which also shows “null spikes” occurring 3-7 times a second. Fig 2 uses data acquired, with her consent, from an 8*8 electrode array applied directly to the inferior temporal lobe of a woman undergoing surgery for epilepsy (Incidentally, we also found that epileptic seizures – contra the official wisdom – do NOT involve any special correlation of activity between discrete brain regions). In this case, the “white noise” is actual neural firing as clinically. recorded and the remaining steps to calculate to calculate power are as described above; let us note that energy consumption is power*time, so our power dips attenuate the energy consumption.

Fig 2 real data

As we pointed out (Freeman et al, 2008), the “null spikes” correspond to extremes in the instantaneous frequency, as depicted in figure 3;

Figure 3

Moreover, the power distribution shows that power consumption decreases by an order of 4 during the “null spikes”;

Fig 4

4-3 Seizure and energy

Epileptic seizure is the limit case, wherein the refractory periods in which neurons do not fire are abolished, and the brain’s demand on the organism becomes maximal – and tragically so. Moreover, in our view (Freeman et al, 2008), gamma and beta waves are caused by feedback from inhibitory neurons, and these obviously are drowned out in the case of seizure.
While there does seem to be a marked qualitative difference – and it is worth noting that all of our samples of epileptic patients show this monotonic increase during seizure – it will obviously be interesting to tease these data out more. In any case, it is clear that seizure is not an evolutionarily stable strategy!
So, for example, we can apply the Hilbert transform to the seizure data, and get a sense that gamma would provoke a massive reduction in the power consumption of the brain
This would rather seem to suggest that the absence of gamma and beta is one of the reasons that the brain's consumption of energy becomes so massive in the case of seizure. Refractory periods stabilize the gross activity occurring in the cortices; both these and the salutary effects of inhibition, which incidentally produce both gamma and beta, are now missing
Let it be made clear that the energy that we propose is saved from beta/gamma superposition is many orders of magnitude greater than that from more economical representations like “sparse” coding. If it is correct to interpret our original published work (Freeman et al, 2008) in the evolutionary context, as proposed here, this is an unprecedented energetic difference.

5 And so, what is Consciousness?

It is not controversial to suggest that there is no consensual definition of consciousness. By way of an anti-definition; consciousness reflects the operation of global dissemination and integration of information in the brain. It seems to be the case that it facilitates certain cognitive acts, like processing irregular past tenses; yet these can perhaps be just as easily explained by attention, without any phenomenology

We tend to view ourselves as initiating action having previously decided on it; however, the available data suggests otherwiseIn particular, classic work by Libet ( O Nuallain 2003)suggests that motor neurons show preparation to initiate action tenths of seconds before we are aware that we intend to do so. It is not a stretch to propose that we continually narrate to ourselves a “stream of consciousness” about our actions that is little more than what a sports commentator does about a game he is calling

If we accept that much of our conscious experience is simply an a posteriori commentary, biased to predicate virtue, consistency and potency of ourselves, none of this is surprising. So does consciousness do anything at all? The thesis here; perhaps consciousness does nothing, but is a handmaiden to attention. Alternatively put, we will ourselves to do things, and as an epiphenomenal result become aware of these actions late

I have covered these themes at some length in my books ; “The search for Mind” (1995, 2003), “Being human “ (2002, 2004), “Two sciences of mind” (1997), various papers (Eg 1994) and am going to deal only with two at any length here. The others I respect include L-dice, Global Workspace models, and Damasio's work.

Consciousness has a phenomenology in that humans use consciousness scan internal "space" in the same manner as they scan external objects and relations. In my current work (forthcoming) I point out that as a cognitive science object of study, consciousness is likely to remain at sensorimotor level. Of course as a political phenomenon it is multifarious. Those of us in the West have been encouraged some centuries to view consciousness is everything we are, disregarding the fact that the cells we hold so inviolate are partly the result of social construction as of Manufacturing consent.

The degree to which we view our individual consciousness as important varies between political systems, and with the amount of social control that obtains; the speculations are of course beyond the scope of this paper .( In previous work (1994) I discussed this kind of issue in detail ). Similarly I have discussed elsewhere (2006) the "experiential disciplines" which seek to reroute the "stream of consciousness" from Joycean machine, with an often self serving narrative, to being beads on a string with some wholeness

There are numerous phenomena, both in external world and interior space, identified with consciousness. Consciousness has been implicated by researchers like Stapp and Von Neumann in the act of observation in QM, absent some “objective reduction” principle (O Nualláin 2004). It has also been identified by researchers like Hameroff and Penrose as supervening on Bose-Einstein condensates somehow exteding over decimeters in the brain’s febrile environment. (ibid). Quantum coherence in biological systems is indeed being observed, but at a minute fraction of the scale required by Hameroff and Penrose.Yet, there is clear conceptual compatibiilty between gamma synhrony, so-called” zero power” and the desideratum of Quantum coherence, to be explored in a forum other than “Biosemiotics”.

There is also a seductive neo-Hegelian story that sees consciousness as ultimate reality, and the progress of human society as reflecting a path in which consciousness will repossess itself after the supreme act of alienation that comprised creation of the cosmos. Tweak this story to stress economic activity, and revolutionary Utopian socialism emerges as a consequence.
In internal space, the word “consciousness” has sometimes been reserved for moments in which the self can be identified as the locus of observation. This is the beginning restriction for thinkers such as Gurdjieff ; to do so requires prior work in acting authentically in the world, and self-integration. (Ouspensky, 1977; in my 2010 paper for this journal, I have attempted to bring this work into dialogue with contemporary science) Confusingly, Gurdjieff and his ilk identify the human search as being one for “consciousness”. In fact, it is likely that what the neophytes are looking for resembles rather a state of being in which they have command of all their faculties, including professional skills and abilities, and can function in a stable way within the society in a manner that does no violence to their reason. Neither Gurdjieff nor his later followers went even close to providing that kind of nexus. That said, it is indeed possible that the current configuration of our society, with tax being redirected into financial speculation (as distinct from deserving causes) that self-destructs regularly, and the increasingly violent encroachment of many of those self-same interests on both academia and the arts, is not optimal for human development
Conversely, consciousness has been misidentified as mere waking (versus sleep), as attention, and intentionality, the fact that it seems “pointed at' an object in the external world. . Researchers like Jason Brown (O Nualláin, 2003) have correctly pointed out the intricate links with selfhood and will, identifying will as a heightened sense of self with respect to an action (or inaction).
The neo-Piagetian view sees consciousness as constructed from many incidents of subject-object differentiation, a view that I made explicit in this journal (2008,2010), Pace John Ralston Saul and fulminations about “The unconscious civilization”, it can equally be argued that civilization involves the making unconscious/automatic of many processes, the better to indwell on what is important to us, to accord real decisions the greatest number of degrees of freedom as possible while needs lower in Maslow's hierarchy are offshored to the state and civil society. Similarly we are not aware (nor should we be), moment to moment, of how the sewage systems run or – until recently – how whole countries are financed.
Likewise, for each individual, we note skills like cycling a bike becoming unconscious/automatic, and then indwell on avoiding boy racers on the road. What we normally experience as “self” is a dynamic shifting of the subject/object boundary; achieving some stability here results in the person having the option of identifying self with the locus of awareness.

Moreover, it seems to be the case that the meditative state is devoid of cognitive content to a great degree. Finally (O Nualláin, 2009), gamma synchrony, the most attested concomitant of consciousness, may be significant only insofar as gamma is normally localized in specific brain regions; what (experience of) consciousness may consist of, in this scenario, is the result of resonant gamma over the cortex and its effect on the background noise/energy.

Of recent theories, Logie and Pearson's work in my 2000 collection describes consciousness as a mode of access to working memory. Tonoi's recent work(Zimmer, 2010), which sees consciousness as an epiphenomenon of ordered information, has the advantage of being wrong;

"He began to think of consciousness in a different way, as a particularly rich form of information...Consciousness is not simply about quantity of information, he says. Simply combining a lot of photodiodes is not enough to create human consciousness. ...Dr. Tononi argues that his Integrated Information Theory sidesteps a lot of the problems that previous models of consciousness have faced. It neatly explains, for example, why epileptic seizures cause unconsciousness. A seizure forces many neurons to turn on and off together. Their synchrony reduces the number of possible states the brain can be in, lowering its phi. ..."

Finally

“Dr. Tononi sees serious problems in these models. When people lose consciousness from epileptic seizures for instance, their brain waves become more synchronized. If synchronization were the key to consciousness, you would expect the seizures to make people hyperconscious instead of unconscious, he said. “

Jouny et al (2010) would suggest that this is premature closure, with an INCREASE in signal complexity - that is, decline in synchrony - associated with seizure. We (Doris et al, in preparation) looked at ECOG data from the inferior temporal lobe of a patient in the states of sleep, seizure and awake (resting brain) using principal component analysis (PCA) and dynamic time warping (DTW) and found that our results support Jouny, rather than Tononi;

Sleep signal is least complex/disordered under PCA, first component explains 97%, awake is next, with 93% explained by the first component, while seizure has just 63% explained by first component.

This is supported by the DTW result, which indicates that the mean distance is less in sleep than waking than seizure;
> mean(seizure.dtw.mat)
[1] 6.731411
> mean(awake.dtw.mat)
[1] 5.580975
> mean(sleep.dtw.mat)
[1] 4.204780
The PCA for sleep shows that there is effectively only one "signal" across the 64 channels. You can easily construct a linear model (through simple ordinary least squares –ols - regression) of any of the individual channels based on a small number ( < 10) of the other channels, and by doing this you will recover 99% of the channel. Awake is similar but less extreme, there is one dominant signal but there is some differentiation, while seizure still has a dominant signal the PCA shows it is much less influential and there are several other signals present in the telemetry. In info-theory terms, sleep has minimum entropy, awake next, and seizure has highest entropy by a long way. In short, if there is an “Integrated Information Theory” theory of consciousness, it already has one noticeable lacuna. In previous work (2004) I have discussed shortcomings in any informational theory of consciousness, in that they fail to pre-empt the spectre of conscious thermostats – and indeed rocks, to adapt Chalmers (ibid).

The viewpoint here, therefore, is that consciousness manifests itself when the cortex acts under the influence of gamma synchrony. At this point, phenomenology is possible, yet consciousness itself is non-causal in immediate terms. The narratives we weave as a result of the ability to reflect on our experience that consciousness affords us are indeed causal, perhaps the most causal factors in evolutionary history, for good and ill.

6 Comments on the biochemistry of metabolism

Energy released for use for the rest of the organism by states of meditation/consciousness can potentially be used for the following purposes as distinct from the obvious growth, and standard maintenance issues. This requires some preliminary discussion, some of which inevitably – given the immature state of the field – will be speculative

Energy production and consumption each take place on multiple time scales. Energy may be conserved in the form of useful energy reservoirs. Cyclical patterns for consuming energy take place at multiple time scales. Glucose is one store convertible on the time scale of seconds; thru the glycolysis cycle it makes ATP; ATP is the main (but not exclusive) energy currency of the cell on a short time scale and thus is very quickly available to build gradients by driving proton and other motors across membranes and to drive other reactions and motors that do other work, like moving cargo along an axon of a neuron along the microtubules; proton gradients are the ultimate, proximate store instantaneously available like battery charge for conducting nervous energy, for sustaining the charge balance across membrane by moving protons and metal ions particular in the energy conversion factories, the mitochondria.
Astrocytes should be interesting since their calcium waves may be related in periodicity, obviously critical here, and their attested role in neural metabolism. Indeed, to get very speculative indeed, the zero energy points on the Hilbert transformed data may be seen as instants that reveal the collapse of a nonlocal wave function; this could appear in spectrally coupled fields of astrocytes and neurons each set coherently coupled thru their respective gap junction networks.

To summarize, then, here are some effects beyong the glaringly obvious that the extra energy freed up by gamma waves, and incidentally facilitating consciousness, could be used for in the organism;

1. Getting glucose into cells, lessening the need for insulin. Insulin is only a signaling/gating molecule, it doesn’t have inherent toxicity except in excess relative to its native receptors when it starts working too much on it night jobs (cotransporting drugs, metabolites, and so on, and this is what we are trying to avoid). Dogs with their pancreases removed – if fit – do not become diabetic. Thus, conserving energy by managing an appropriate physiological state can reduce the need for insulin.
2. NAD+ and NADH are used as intermediates in producing ATP and the energy saved by gamma may easily be stored in these forms. They contribute to lots of other reactions too, like those involved in biosynthetic machinery making proteins that may or may not be involved in gene expression. They have a role in regulating post translational modification of histones, a process that is intimate with the management of gene expression and of great interest in the study of aging.
3. Gene expression varies with a lot of things. In changing environments it’s primarily controlled by nuclear and other receptors that sense the internal and external environmental changes of the cell by sensing molecules, temperature, etc. In particular, gene expression varies with the ratio of NAD+ to NADH which informs of the metabolic state and health of the cells. This will vary with the energy available .
4. Finally, there is preliminary evidence from the Blascovich lab that conscious experience focussed on an external target can dull pain perception - and indeed increase blood flow

7 Conclusion

The current debate on brain size and evolution is in some ways misguided. Sheer brain size does not guarantee intelligence. It is equally important to have fast communication in the cortex. However, that in turn leads to a set of trades-off between size of neurons, and indeed width of axons
Remarkably, it may be the case that consciousness is an opportunistic consequence of the necessity to curtail energy use by the human brain. The synchronized gamma associated with consciousness decreases by an order of four (if briefly) the metabolic demand by the brain on the organism. Such energy can be used for a variety of essential healing and maintenance functions. In this scenario, meditation is viewed as an extended, content-free, state of consciousness. At the other extreme, epileptic seizure involves massive consumption of energy without gamma to stabilize matters
Humility becomes us at this point. While I have in the past (O Nualláin 2008) proposed a tutorial in biosyntax, it is possible that our models are hopelessly naïve. It is as well to reiterate the ambiguity of the term “free energy” as we head to closure. Informationally, Friston and his school use it to privilege – uncontroversially – an account of neural functioning that stresses that the brain is a machine that works on hypotheses. The argument here, however, contends that this school fails to take into account the fact that the brain is a far-from-equilibrium system, both informationally and thermodynamically.
The dynamical systems notion of the brain here sees it as both protean and deeply self-similar. This led naturally to a discussion about the sort of models appropriate to encompass the symbolic functioning of the brain. It does seem to be the case that tensors and the formally equivalent Lie groups will soon be part of the neuroscientists’ diet. It may even be expedient methodologically to dispense with consciousness outside the social sciences – apart from the sensorimotor area that seems to be yielding its secrets to a cognitive science approach.

Acknowledgements

Many thanks to Marcello Barbieri for his encouragement, and to Tom Doris and Hal Cox for fruitful discussions

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The real cost of these filthy criminals

2011-10-23T20:25:00.000-07:00

Today, “60 minutes” ran a feature on a tool for autistic kids that facilitates communication. This is ethically impeccable. Though the mantra “Ipad” indicated that some surreptitious branding was going on – particularly as the rest of the show was an interview with Isaacson about his Steve Jobs bio. Of course, the technology can be implemented on any touch-sensitive pad;

http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=7385686n

In fact, I used the entire inheritance (10k) I got from my father to set up a lab to do this technology. It was impossible to do at DCU; Clare X, the enablement officer there told me that alan smeaton, the outgoing head of computing there, had embezzled 10k from her budget to set up a wireless network that had no relation to enablement. In fact, all our research at DCU was stolen in any case, with research funds also being diverted, and the gardai at Whitehall refusing to investigate

The real cost to the Irish people of the filthy criminals operative since 1997 at DCU and elsewhere is clearly in the hundreds of billions. I hired Declan Kelly, who had been refused a postgrad at DCU, and another spurned programmer and continued our previous Stanford links; the scum at DCU would have cut them off in a day. I paid Declan from my own pocket to work on this project both during summer 2001 and later at a lab set up in my home county of Clare. Eventually., AARTI came through with some funds to pay for a months salary for him

Here is the Sunday Tribune's contemperaneous report (2001), which we sent to DCU president's office to be received with the usual bovine silence;

http://tribune.maithu.com/archive/article/2001/nov/04/new-hand-held-hope-for-autism-sufferers/

I left a copy of the software on a computer in Ireland when I left in 2003.
Apart from the money that could have been made for Irish people, and the good reputation we would have gotten for the country, many Irish parents of autistic kids would have had enormous respite since 2001 but for the filth who took over a “University” in northside Dublin. Eventually, the first installation was in Inagh, Co Clare; we then ran out of funds, as the funds were otherwise occupied (wireless networks etc)

Forgive me and my employees here in the SF area of the USA if we refuse to touch anything emerging from the dark maw of the so-called “Irish state” which certainly was a mafia state for well over a decade. That includes their pathetic consulate and - get this - "Innovation center" in the Bay Area. We hate this filth wandering around what is a healthy and beautiful culture

Seán O Nualláin Ph.D. Stanford
23u Deireadh fomhair 2011

In the end, there may be very few universities

2011-10-08T15:30:00.000-07:00

My home university, Stanford, recently invited off-site registration for a course in AI. It was made clear that off-site participants would NOT receive credits from Stanford for their participation; they would, however, receive an indication of where they might have stood in a Stanford class. As someone who has had two courses accredited by Stanford academic council, and taught them there, I can confirm that this is easy to do.

There are now 130,000 + students enrolled for this course, making its enrollment about an order of magnitude higher than Stanford's entire resident student body;

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/03/opinion/the-university-of-wherever.html?_r=1

The issue, of course arises; why hire very expensive and often poorly-trained management and teaching staff at taxpayers' expense to provide an inferior version of such courses on expensive city real estate, particularly as much of the core content of many such courses has been available under an irrevocable creative commons license for some time, due to MIT's open courseware initiative;

http://ocw.mit.edu/index.htm

Alternatively put, it has been clear for some time that countries like Ireland may not need banks, given the (admittedly morally ambivalent) existence of as Euro zone; that a national airline may similarly be an ego trip; why have universities? There are positive arguments in the context of”student moral development” and “national spirit”; but these are precisely what successive governments have explained to us, at great cost, that Irish universities no longer do;

http://9thlevel.ie/2011/07/21/dangerous-legal-vacuum-at-the-irish-universities/

I have few, if any, illusions about the significance of this blog, or indeed of the very costly struggle that both Paul Cahill and I underwent to ensure that some form of procedure other than summary dismissal obtained at Irish universities – and by extension in the public service in general. One would expect trash like the Sunday Independent and the Daily Mail to join the war against academic freedom on behalf of their corporate masters. What was surprising was that the "paper of record", the Irish Times, joined with great gusto in the fray. All are being sued; the Irish Times has already printed several retractions and one apology, and the Sunday Independent has yet again altered its website's record of events - I had a similar experience with them in 2003, resulting in them removing a webpage. That is not enough.

It also is as well to confirm that IBEC, acting for DCU in 2003 on foot of their appeal to the Fleming judgement, did indeed use a little-known provision in a 1990 IR act that forbade strikes for “single dismissal” and threatened SIPTU with a High Court injunction. SIPTU, of course, then went over to management's side in an egregious act that ended with them losing their “closed shop” status at DCU

What I have learned is that, absent an alternative narrative and claim to sovereignty and jurisdiction such as that provided by the republican movement, the Irish state made it clear that it was perfectly happy to operate in a lawless – indeed in a downright antinomial environment. Who better to call the shots in such an environment than a scion of a WW2 forced labour enterprise?

Time was when we used to sit down as Irish people and work out our differences. The major significance of the past decade is that we have flushed out a certain segment of Irish society, who now are administering a bankrupt state for a colonial body. In the meantime, I am open to privatization of the universities (with the exception of TCD) precisely to bring them under the rule of law. There is no way that a private enterprise would have gotten away with what DCU, among others, has gotten away with over the past decade

I am fully aware that the putative purchasers might decide to shrink the campus size 98%, eventually turning them into server farms with a skeleton administrative staff. It is possible that there will be no need for universities in Ireland at all, and all courses will be run remotely from a few sites in the USA and China. Yet it is clear that, as previously happened in health, the Irish state has proved unable to achieve even the moral stature - let alone technical ability - of the catholic church, against which it now rails so petulantly, in its running of key institutions.

Seán O Nualláin Ph.D. Stanford
8u Deireadh fomhair 2011

DCU: why no responsible parents should send their kids there

2011-08-16T18:25:00.000-07:00

There are many reasons why no responsible parents should send their kids to DCU. My 17-year-old Irish daughter will not EVER go near the place, and will attend college in Southside Dublin - or wherever else she wants that is not DCU.

Let us start with clear illegalities;

1.DCU continues, a full decade after its initial promulgation, to have an illegal disciplinary statute on its books;

http://www.dcu.ie/info/statutes/statute3.shtml

2.DCU continues to intimidate, bribe and otherwise bully students with impunity as the Minister refuses to act;

http://academictenure.blogspot.com/2009_06_01_archive.html

3.DCU was never accredited, and its degrees have the same a priori value as “write-in” degree mills which simply give a degree for $100. This is a shame, as many brilliant faculty and students have passed through DCU;

http://academictenure.blogspot.com/2010/11/who-runs-dcu-who-owns-dcu.html

4.DCU continue to hide its criminality behind a fanciful interpretation of the 1997 universities act

http://9thlevel.ie/2011/07/21/dangerous-legal-vacuum-at-the-irish-universities/

5.The family of the second president of DCU ran a forced labour camp in WW2 as part of Stalag 8

http://www.wartimememories.co.uk/pow/stalag8b.html

Might I respectfully suggest we rename DCU as “Stalag 8c”, abolish it, and start the process of creating a real university in Northside Dublin, one under the control of a statutory body and accountable to the citizens of Ireland as the 1997 act envisages?

Seán O Nualláin Ph.D. Stanford

16u Lunasa 2011

Von Prondzynski; the Nazi connection

2011-07-30T11:16:00.001-07:00

Eanair 15 2012

Just noticed there is a tour of Stalag 8b this year with a stop at the hotel in Opole if anyone wants to check the facts here;

http://www.lamsdorf.com/lamsdorf-tours.html

Let us be clear; the cement factories at Oppole were part of Stalag 8b;

http://www.wartimememories.co.uk/pow/stalag8b.html

The Prondzynski family benefitted from slave labour, which goes some of the way to explain how someone would try and introduce summary dismissal at a university. It does not explain how a supposedly modern democratic constitutional republic would inflict this Nazi scum on us and the HEA needs to be investigated.

DCU should be closed down, with proper protection for students and graduates as was planned for NUI, before further damage is inflicted

____________________________________________________________________

Ferdinand has threatened me, and asked for my home address. This is my response;

He was seen outside a house on Anglesea Road, in Dublin, shoving furniture into a large Removals Van which had "Aberdeen Removals " on it Thurs Aug 18 2011. He caught a plane to Edinburgh ( RyanAir economy) the next day and was seen getting off it.

Of course, it is sheer happenstance that I know this; nevertheless, I encourage him to stop interfering with my life

______________________________________________________________________________

http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Holocaust/germanco1.html

is a list of companies participating in the compensation fund. It includes Dyckerhof. Given their attested history of sharp practise, we can assume this is not a charitable gesture

Secondly, this forced labour document

http://www.wartimememories.co.uk/pow/stalag8b.html

mentions a cement factory

E17 Oppeln. cement factory

is at Oppeln/ Groszowice

http://wikimapia.org/14649443/industrial-area-Groszowice-cement-factory

There was a clear assertion that a cement factory there was owned by the family before and throughout WWII ;

"Konrad, his great-grandfather, started a Silesian cement business in the late 19th century; the town square in the Groszowice is named after him. "

QED ; of course, perhaps they continued to turn out garden gnomes during that period with happy locals working there

There is some superb recent research which works from the currently attested paradigm that forced labour was not just a war crime, but was a central part of the Holocaust;

http://www.c-s-p.org/flyers/978-1-4438-1720-2-sample.pdf
______________________________________________________________________
As of August, 2010, the wikipedia entry for F von P was lengthy and appears quite accurate, and well worth reading. Regarding his paternal side his grandfather Alfred is well documented as being the first person to drop a bomb from an airplane, WWI. It was Alfred who eventually died of his injuries in 1932, not his father, Hans. Again, it appears well documented and not disputed that his father Hans fought on the German side in WWII. There is no claim that Hans died of his injuries, but there is a claim that he suffered injuries and poor health as a result, and that he was arrested for his part in the conspiracy to kill Hitler. Apart from Alfred being the first person to drop a bomb from an airplane, none of the rest of the information regarding what they did during the wars is supported by references. In particular, his father does not feature in the list of conspirators in the "Valkyrie" plot

There was a clear assertion that a cement factory was owned by the family before and throughout WWII ;

"Konrad, his great-grandfather, started a Silesian cement business in the late 19th century; the town square in the Groszowice is named after him. "

(F can correct this by writing to me if he now thinks it untrue); so if it used Nazi slave labour the family is surely implicated, and the question of whether Hans was officially a Nazi somewhat moot - he profited by the use of Nazi-provided slave labour, and presumably the cement produced was put to use in the Nazi industrial war effort; other abhorrent uses naturally come to mind. I don't know how much more one would need to have done for Nazism to be considered a Nazi, so much so it's surprising that this was disputed.

His father then joined Dyckerhoff AG, which was sued in US Federal court for profiting from the work of Nazi-era slave laborers

http://scout.wisc.edu/Projects/PastProjects/net-news/98-10/98-10-19/0015.html

It also lost a case for illegal business practices in Germany

http://www.carteldamageclaims.com/German%20Cement

We can assume that the financial and other assets of the family business were subsumed in Dyckerhoff - the wiki page is unclear about that. The physical plant ended up as described above;

http://wikimapia.org/14649443/industrial-area-Groszowice-cement-factory

Finally, Ferdinand was the first and so far only Irish university president to lose a non-confidence vote by his staff

http://www.thecollegeview.com/2008/12/14/no-confidence-motion-passed-on-college-bosses/

It would not be unfair to conclude that he was sent over to Ireland to destroy tenure as was done in his home institution of Hull through the Edgar Page case

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/law-report-court-cannot-review-lecturers-redundancy-regina-v-visitor-of-the-university-of-hull-ex-parte-page--house-of-lords-lord-keith-of-kinkel-lord-griffiths-lord-brownewilkinson-lord-mustill-and-lord-slynn-of-hadley-3-december-1992-1562448.html

Then he was sent packing back to Britain a decade later with nothing accomplished chaos on the IR front at DCU, and a flea in his ear.

Ferdinand is apparently currently in the USA, and can sue me if any of the above is untrue

Seán O Nualláin Ph.D. Stanford

30 Iuil 2011

PS F's continued insistence on behalf of his father is the classic "Ich war nicht dabei" - I was not part of it.

However, even granted the claim that his father was not in the SS - and none of us have any reason to believe anything F says - there is solid evidence that the "nice" Nazi army, the Wehrmacht, took part in atrocities, and did so with sentiments approaching glee. In particular, the German officers imprisoned at Trent Park in Britain revealed much, and their revelations were dramatized recently;

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00jn0q6

F got very far in Ireland simply by being more aggressive and sneaky - indeed, criminal - than us Irish who had only recently given our loyalty to the state.

PPS Interesting analogy to F's father - Otto Skorzeny, yet another Nazi who took refuge in Ireland, and very close to F's father at almost exactly the same time, buying a very similar estate;

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otto_Skorzeny#Spain_and_Ireland

In many cases, these scum took advantage of the pro-Nazi sympathies of the roman Church

This is a rather indo-type take;

http://www.independent.ie/unsorted/features/scarface-skorzeny-the-hitler-henchman-who-became-a-kildare-farmer-258245.html

Remember that a lot of their money came about as a result of profits from forgery

Any issues of libel can be referred to my solicitors in Ireland, who have already successfully had an article by "The College View' removed because of libelous comments by FvP

PPS...and of course I have imminent legal proceedings, after my solicitor wrote to them in an attempt to resolve things amicably, against the "Irish Times" for comments P made about me and Paul Cahill last summer.

In the meantime, it gets better;

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1538969/Ireland-welcomed-Hitlers-henchmen.html

There is of course a tinfoil hat theory that Skorzeny did not die until 1998 or so, and a much less fanciful one that he was a CIA operative

Let us note that Ferriter argues that Skorzeny and his ilk were told to leave by the IRA; they were made welcome by the Irish state, but Skorzeny would have recognized whom the true soldiers were, and left. Ferdie would never have gotten away with his illegal attempts to ruin the lives of Irish people, announce their ethnic minority status, and so on, pre-1998. No Ferdie - we weren't afraid of violent thugs like your head of "security" Ray Wheatley.

Is as Dun Dealgan do Brian Mac Craith, agus is feasach do ce a mot a oibrionn se.

10 u Lunasa

...and finally my family had a very brief connection with WW2 Germany

Jack O'Reilly, a Kilkeeman who broadcast from Nazi Germany featured Monday night 8/8/11 on "ealu" TG4. The account of his landing was inaccurate as is the one on;

http://www.jstor.org/pss/27725394

So he landed on Moveen and said the Railway was late so he got lost on the way to Kilkee? The railway used to arrive IN Kilkee!!

What happened was that he was injured after the parachute jump; my mother, the local physician, was called. Obeying her Hippocratic oath, she tended to him and to his companion; obeying the law, she reported it to the Gardai in due course so he was arrested .

The disinformation about O'Reilly "meeting farmers" going to the market was put about later as a cover story - any dealing with Nazis was reviled in my home town.

It is fair to say that my mom worked herself into an early grave from her willingness to tend to the sick, free of charge, day and night; she will be dead 35 years on Mon 15 August 2011. To think I had to deal with this scum at DCU!

All I did was work at DCU; now I am stuck in a house with 16 attested breaches of building code, without a salary since 2002, cannot move until my visa gets renewed, and all because civil "servants" were derelict in their duty

Putting the Irish Civil Service on trial

2011-07-25T17:43:00.000-07:00

It may not be widely known that I have received no salary since May, 2002. Nor did I look for any charity/quarter from the "Irish" state; in my view, the response of veteran republicans like Mary MacSwiney and Dan Keating in refusing to grant the Irish state any inroad into their lives, at whatever cost, is an appropriate one;

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dan_Keating

In the meantime, I have received no welfare from the state, did not get my P45 from DCU, emigrated as soon as I could, and at no time sought quarter from an organization that I have experienced as not just criminal and parasitical , but full of useless morons in its administration. In Norway, of course, we've just seen what happens when this degree of alienation goes a few small steps further.

Fear not; shooting people is just reducing oneself to the level of the Irish state, and also strikes me as boring. However, we do have a relatively independent judiciary – which is facing pay cuts as a way of bringing it back into line – and so my case is now returning to the circuit court. It would seem to afford an excellent opportunity to find out what is meant by “autonomous statutory responsibilities “ (ASRs). I have already informed Ronnie Ryan, the senior civil servant involved, that he is to be summonsed to give evidence.

Actually, we already know what he is going to say;

“
14.—(1) A university, in performing its functions shall—
.....(b) be entitled to regulate its affairs in accordance with its independent ethos and traditions
….....
and if, in the interpretation of this Act, there is a doubt regarding the meaning of any provision, a construction that would promote that ethos and those traditions and principles shall be preferred to a construction that would not so promote.”

This was the beginning of “ autonomous statutory responsibilities “ which were then used to justify non-disclosure of public money matters, summary dismissals, abuse of staff and students and much else. Now we come to the punchline; this section 14 is about Academic freedom, and here it is in full;
“

Academic freedom.
14.—(1) A university, in performing its functions shall—
(a) have the right and responsibility to preserve and promote the traditional principles of academic freedom in the conduct of its internal and external affairs, and
(b) be entitled to regulate its affairs in accordance with its independent ethos and traditions and the traditional principles of academic freedom, and in doing so it shall have regard to—
(i) the promotion and preservation of equality of opportunity and access,
(ii) the effective and efficient use of resources, and
(iii) its obligations as to public accountability,
and if, in the interpretation of this Act, there is a doubt regarding the meaning of any provision, a construction that would promote that ethos and those traditions and principles shall be preferred to a construction that would not so promote.”

So this is a section about academic freedom and cannot be construed as the right summarily to dismiss, nor the right to bribe students, nor the right arbitrarily to refuse to give credit for exams – all of which have been documented in Dail exchanges and justified with reference to this section. See links from

http://universitywatchdog.wordpress.com/2009/03/20/the-greens-and-opportunistic-hypocrisy/

In actual fact, the act gives the Minister draconian powers, if he feels laws are being broken a la Statute 3 in DCU, surely exactly the type of situation the act envisages, and which puts DCU currently still in clear violation of the law of the land;

“(2) The Minister may, after a period of 14 days commencing on the day on which he or she gave to the chief officer the report of the Visitor and after considering the observations, if any, of the governing authority or the chief officer on the report—
(a) if the Minister is still of the opinion that the functions are being performed in a manner which constitutes a breach of the laws, statutes or ordinances of or applicable to the university; and
(b) is of the opinion that, because of the report, the governing authority should be suspended and the Visitor concurs,
recommend to the Government the suspension of the governing authority and the termination of the membership of its members.”

ASR) was just an excuse for the theft of hundreds of millions of taxpayers' money. For those non-Irish who read this blog, the truth of the matter is that corrupt morons like Ronnie Ryan are put in the Irish Civil service to deliver the state into the hands of the worst forces in Irish society.

Last time it was measured, my IQ on the Stanford-Binet scale was 151; my eldest daughter, who finished first nationally in the overall baccalaureate in France in 2007, is slightly higher. I dread what is happening to the Irish gene-line with these scum essentially allowed ride roughshod over those of us who are naturally law-abiding

Finally, everything I have written here falls well within my rights of academic freedom, as incarnated in the 1997 act.

Sean O Nuallain PhD, Ventura Hall, Stanford

25u Iuil, 2011

Dangerous legal vacuum at the Irish universities

2011-07-21T09:25:00.001-07:00

The peculiar phrase “autonomous statutory responsibilities “ keeps coming up in reply to questions about the Irish universities both in the Dail (including questions from Joe Higgins) and as we've seen from civil servants. So they are responsibilities, but autonomous, so effectively not responsibilities; moreover this paradoxical state has been enshrined in statute.

The phrase does not occur at all in the 1997 act, and “independent” itself is NEVER used in this context but usually correctly refers to concerns about academic freedom. The section 25 referred to time and again by the “mandarins” bears no relation to autonomy, and in fact is precisely the section that DCU has been flagrantly in breach of since 1997. Far from being statutory, it is clear that a civil servant (originally Padraic Mellett of the HEA) invented this phrase to allow universities' management do whatever they wanted to staff, students and the taxpayer.

This stinks of “because we can” and only a few months ago the administration which made this its leitmotif and motto sank without trace. Finally, the repeated reference to "day to day' management of the universities is also a civil servant's fabrication, and bears no relation to the legislation. As it happens, that legislation allows the minister to SUSPEND governing authority on foot of a Visitor's report

Sean O Nuallain PhD, Ventura Hall, Stanford

21u Iuil, 2011

PS I just checked the web, and the only reference to the phrase “autonomous statutory responsibilities" other than references as answers to questions in the Dail about the Irish universities is in a murder inquiry in Bradford

Sturart Neilson's similar experiences can be found at

http://www.indymedia.ie/article/78472?comment_order=asc&condense_comments=false&userlanguage=ga&save_prefs=true

PPS One can abdicate a responsibility; delegate a responsibility, or live up to a responsibility. In all these cases, there is the clear implication of accountability (the necessity to answer to a higher authority) once responsibility is in play, so it is by definition not “autonomous”. On the other hand, delegating “autonomous responsibilities “ - if it means anything at all - is surely equivalent to assigning complete discretion, complete freedom of action. So what successive administrations have been doing in answering a range of questions about clear violations of civil and criminal codes with the phrase “autonomous statutory responsibilities “ is saying that the universities are outside the remit of any statutory control.

Of course, none of that is suggested in the 1997 act, which clearly gives an oversight role to the minister. The civil servants who drafted those answers (starting with Ronnie Ryan) should be investigated, prosecuted, and sacked if it turns out that clear criminality ensued – and in my experience it indeed did ensue.

Ruairi Quinn's private secretary continues the criminality

2011-07-19T13:13:00.000-07:00

Many questions have been asked in the Dail about clear violations of the law of the land at DCU and other Irish universities, for example in the links from;

http://universitywatchdog.wordpress.com/2009/03/20/the-greens-and-opportunistic-hypocrisy/

In all cases since 2002, the response has come back that

"The Universities Act, 1997 confers autonomous statutory responsibilities
on universities in relation to the day to day management of their
affairs. The operational management and conduct of staff relations are
matters for each university, in accordance with Section 25 of the Act. "

This is actually wrong, as the act provides provision for the appointment of a high Court judge

" Where the Minister is of the opinion that there are reasonable grounds for contending that the functions of a university are being performed in a manner which prima facie constitutes a breach of the laws, statutes or ordinances applicable to the university, the Minister may, after first advising the governing authority of his or her opinion and considering any explanation given in response, and with the concurrence of the Government, request the Visitor to the university to inquire into any matter giving rise to the Minister's opinion."

This is in keeping with the traditional role of a visitor to handle these issues;

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visitor

I am shocked but not surprised that, as Quinn engages in shadow-boxing with the Church, his private secretary prefers to continue the criminality. I append my recent correspondence with him

"

Ronnie

It is clear that you do know any of the critical legislation so I cite it for you below. In the meantime, statute no 3 of DCU has been thrown out by the High Court in Ireland, in a decision the Supreme court chose to uphold. You seem to be the only person not to have heard of that;

http://www.independent.ie/national-news/courts/836412m-bill-for-taxpayers-as-dcu-loses-dismissal-case-1971284.html

Moreover, the SIPTU official in charge of the negotiations (Carmel Hogan) gave sworn evidence that she was NOT consulted, as required in the act, about statute no 3

So let's look at

http://www.irishstatutebook.ie/1997/en/act/pub/0024/print.html#sec21

“
20.—(1) Where the Minister is of the opinion that there are reasonable grounds for contending that the functions of a university are being performed in a manner which prima facie constitutes a breach of the laws, statutes or ordinances applicable to the university, the Minister may, after first advising the governing authority of his or her opinion and considering any explanation given in response, and with the concurrence of the Government, request the Visitor to the university to inquire into any matter giving rise to the Minister's opinion.
(2) If the Visitor is satisfied that there are reasonable grounds for the Minister's opinion, the Visitor shall inquire into the matters giving rise to that opinion and any related matter and report to the Minister on the results of the inquiry.
(3) A Visitor shall, for the purposes of this section, be entitled at all reasonable times to enter a university to inquire into the academic or other affairs of the university or to conduct an inspection of the university and its buildings, equipment and records where the inspection is, in the opinion of the Visitor, relevant to his or her inquiries.
(4) A Visitor shall be afforded all reasonable co-operation and facility by the university, its employees and its governing authority, including access to such buildings, equipment and records as the Visitor may require, to enable the Visitor to perform his or her functions under this section.”

http://www.irishstatutebook.ie/1997/en/act/pub/0024/sec0019.html#sec19

“19.—(1) Where a university does not have a Visitor, the Government shall from time to time as the occasion requires, following consultation with the President of the High Court, appoint a Judge of the High Court, or a retired Judge of the High Court or the Supreme Court, to be the Visitor for the purposes of this Act. “

It is incumbent on Minister Quinn to appoint a visitor to fix this mess, not on me, or any other academic on whom this criminality is visited

Ventura Hall, Stanford University

----- Original Message -----
From: "Minister for Education & Skills"
To: "Sean O'Nuallain"
Sent: Monday, July 18, 2011 6:20:38 AM
Subject: RE: 1101818

Mr. Sean O'Nuallain
xxxx@Stanford.Edu

PLEASE QUOTE REF NUMBER ON ALL CORRESPONDENCE
Our Ref: 1101818

Dear Mr. O'Nuallain

I refer to your email correspondences to the Minister for Education and
Skills, Mr. Ruairi Quinn T.D.

The Universities Act, 1997 confers autonomous statutory responsibilities
on universities in relation to the day to day management of their
affairs. The operational management and conduct of staff relations are
matters for each university, in accordance with Section 25 of the Act.

Dublin City University is one such autonomous body under this
legislation and it has statutory responsibility for both its operational
affairs and the management of its staff.

The Department of Education and Skills therefore has no role in respect
of disciplinary matters relating to this University, nor does it have a
role in matters relating to any grievances which staff may have in
relation to either their intellectual property or their contracts of
employment.

In this context it would not be appropriate for the Minister to comment
upon the individual disciplinary issues raised in your correspondences
relating to Dublin City University.

I trust that this clarifies the matter for you.

Yours sincerely

Ronnie Ryan
Private Secretary"

Sean O Nuallain PhD, Ventura Hall, Stanford

19u Iuil, 2011

PS It turns out that Ryan is a hold-out from the notorious FF/PD 2002-2007 administration ans the perhaps worse FF/"Green" 2007-2011 administration. My senior labour party contact had never heard of him.

Quinn had better get rid of him

Open-source funding for open-source science

2011-07-12T17:10:00.000-07:00

This blog is essentially part of an attempt to persuade the Irish state to obey its own laws. I will not deny that the state's failure to do so enrages me. Moreover, it has stopped attempting to sack academics because we won all the critical battles, and made sure there was a lot of publicity. In the meantime, Dail questions have revealed that the authorities feel that universities indeed can act outside the law of the land, including bribing and threatening students and illegally dismissing academics. For example, the Irish Supreme court ruled that Paul Cahill had been ILLEGALLY, not just unfairly dismissed, and so ordered him unequivocally reinstated.

However, there is another critical issue; that of truth and how it is sought for. After the welcome decline of religious dogma, the state universities began to have an ever more critical role in this endeavor. The brief success of neoliberalism in Ireland – an increasingly faint memory - led to a corporate takeover of the universities. What is insidious here is the destruction of the truth-seeking process as taxpayers' money is used to debauch students' minds and make them into cannon fodder for corporations, while corporations get their R+D done on the cheap through mechanisms like SFI

The problem now is that the academics who prostitute themselves to achieve PI status – and as a Stanford faculty member, I can with credibility state that they produce mainly garbage in the process – hog all the taxpayer resources. This blog has consistently argued that all taxpayer-funded research should be publicly available through open-source mechanisms, rather than locked away in proprietary journals (The kind that gave Robert Maxwell his start)

A rather glaring problem remains; how to fund science outside the corrupt “public sector” mechanisms? Inevitably, scientists have now turned to mechanisms like Kickstarter.com, previously used effectively for the arts;

http://community.nytimes.com/comments/www.nytimes.com/2011/07/12/science/12crowd.html

While this is a non-optimal solution – putting it gently, in that good scientists are still being penalized for refusing to game the corporate system – hopefully the fact that such a bastion of received liberalism lie the NY Times has entered the fray might even wake up a few decision-makers in Ireland?

With a bit more time and talent, perhaps a Swiftian satire could be generated as academics look up Taskrabbit.com every day to find and bid on piecework for themselves like;

Philosopher needed 2 hours to explain Rawls' political theory
Can you come over to the tech and explain in 1 hour what Heidegger meant by “Da-sein?”
$20 to explain the Copenhagen interpretation of QM to an MBA class in 45 minutes

etc

Sean O Nuallain PhD, Ventura Hall, Stanford

12u Iuil, 2011

Consciousness is cheap

2011-07-04T13:34:00.000-07:00

“Consciousness is cheap; organismal metabolism and evolutionary constraints on brain size”

Sean O Nuallain PhD, Room 28, Ventura Hall, Stanford

Location; conference room, Ventura Hall, Stanford 4pm July 6th 2011

Intelligence requires bigger brains. Such brains are metabolically expensive, and make childbirth painful and dangerous for us bipedal animals. It may be the case that humans have reached the limit for brain size, that we have compressed to the furthest point that ion channels are still reliable by keeping neurons small

Consciousness seems to have an ambiguous role in our functioning. In particular, classic work by Libet suggests that motor neurons show preparation to initiate action tenths of seconds before we are aware that we intend to do so It is not a stretch to propose that we continually narrate to ourselves a “stream of consciousness” about our actions that is little more than what a sports commentator does about a game he is calling

However, it does seem to be the case that consciousness coincides with a episode of synchronized gamma, and that such episodes betoken a decrease by 4 orders of magnitude in the metabolic demand by the brain on the rest of the organism. It is now accepted that the brain consumes around 20% of the organism's total metabolic energy. That leads to a hypothesis; perhaps consciousness is fundamentally a “spandrel”, an incidental artifact of the need to keep metabolic costs down

In this talk, the relevant evidence – phenomenological and evolutionary – will be considered, and the state of knowledge about mechanisms of consciousness will be outlined. We will then proceed to examine the justification for what seems a priori a counter-intuitive hypothesis

Sean O Nuallain PhD, Ventura Hall, Stanford

La an neamhspleachais, USA, 2011

PS PS Paper to be published in "Biosemiotics" on-line this fall 2011

Unconscionable waste at the Irish universities

2011-06-19T14:19:00.000-07:00

“I don't teach for visceral reasons – I just dislike it. ....talking to a group of people who don't want to be there is disgusting”

David Deutsch. The “New Yorker” May 2 2011 p 35

“What we have seen instead over the past 40 years in addition to the raising of a reserve army of contingent labour, ia a kind of administrative elephantiasis...From 1976 to 2001, the number of nonfaculty professionals ballooned over 240 %, growing more than 3 times as fast as faculty”

William Derwsiewicz “The Nation” May 23, 2011, P 30

This current government has made no moves to bring the universities back into normal jurisdiction, and the “wild west” scene whereby their management can do whatever it wants has been described earlier;

http://universitywatchdog.wordpress.com/2009/03/20/the-greens-and-opportunistic-hypocrisy/

While this removal from their being answerable to anybody may seem clever to the new Minister for Education, there will be hell to pay, as this post will make clear. For a start, it means that management at Irish state universities can bully, bribe and intimidate both staff and students; a drastic revision of the social contract

Yet such revision has been one of the leitmotiven of the Irish state, in the wake of the domestication of the IRA with its alternative narrative of the Irish state. Paradoxically, the failure of this version of the "official" Irish state (a failure more spectacular than all IRA versions from Sean Lemass as "Minister of Defense" in the 1920s onward to P O'Neill RIP 2005) - a socioeconomic fiasco which is universally clear , will allow us put manners on its replacement

The ancien social contract was clear on a few fundamentals;

1.The Irish state existed for the benefit of the Irish people, who included the Cromwellian settlers as also the diaspora;
2.Irish culture, particularly Gaelic culture, had a privileged place in this status quo;
3.The ethos of the 1916 proclamation, with its insistence on the equitable sharing of the country's wealth was to be enshrined in the maw and sinew of the state;
4.The island of Ireland was home for those who call ourselves Irish;
5.Both the letter and spirit of the law were to be respected

Instead, in a process that has accelerated since the mid-1990's, the goal of the state has been to exemplify the new neoliberal dispensation; an ill-defined “multiculturalism” was to be the guiding cultural touchstone, even if that meant the schools went to pot ( as is now clear) with many kids not able to speak English, let alone Irish; those artists who sough to create within the bounds established by thousands of years of autochtonous creation were to be marginalized; a thoroughly corporatist state was to ignore and indeed deliberately violate the law when deemed expedient (I can attest this)

There are numerous nested Russian Doll “My Daddy is bigger than your daddy” mechanisms to call on when a stitch was dropped. The amorality of the Bar council and law society means that, beyond a slap on the wrist to an occasional solicitor/cowboy developer, there are no checks and balances for Ireland's poorly-trained lawyers. The political system is nowhere near as bad as the e-voting proposal intended for it to be, but – as the link above shows – there is no standard parliamentary answerability ,with a “Because we can” really the fundamental Dail answer

Those of us who attempt to get back to the foundational documents like the 1916 proclamation are shouted down by the nonsense that passes for meaningful media dialogue, and when successful urged to vote again and change our minds (Nice, Lisbon and without doubt the GFA had it not gone through)

Coupled with “Because we can” is, as PB Ahern used to put it so charmingly “We have de money”. As indeed they had. Moreover, they had powerful friends in the EU, and the Anglophone countries as they suppressed any native upsurge. Now their friends do not agree among themselves, except to point out that the Irish taxpayer must pay back money (s)he never borrowed to expiate the sins of a self-appointed elite. The current government do not seem to understand that it is no longer 1997; they are rather in the position of Austin Powers before he takes his crash course on the 1980's and develops a righteous fear of Mrs Thatcher

So they have not made any attempt to bring the universities under the rubric of law, and use grotesquerie like SFI to elevate hereditary politicians. This will never do. Likewise for the high salaries for very little work at universities that Morgan Kelly has rightly outed. The very values that the state universities can inculcate/foster are those that the Irish state has turned its back on in the new technocratic Disneyscape. The burgeoning of administrative staff is simply a waste of money – they have nothing to do with learning.

Derwsiewicz, in the article cited above states that individuals cannot create universities. Indeed; but, with the web, small teams can do so. In fact, they can do so in a way that ensures – pace, Deutsch – that students actually want to be doing what they're doing. The IRA's problem was that it wanted to overthrow by force a state that was violent to its core. It is much more interesting to create an Ireland that is not of this world, but rather incarnate, in symbols, on the web.

Seán O Nualláin Ph.D. Stanford
19 u Meitheamh 2011

SFI: An unspeakable waste of taxpayers' money

2011-06-13T15:17:00.000-07:00

SFI is Ireland's main science funding body. Like others such in the world, it rests on the idea that the economy benefits from large tranches of public funding for science. Again like its peers, the examples of Google, Apple and so on are deemed irrelevant by SFI; in each case, the breakthroughs came from a new business idea applied to a publicly-available technology by college dropouts (Facebook, with even less tech, is similar). Steve Jobs did not just ransack Xerox Park; he simply insisted that the mouse should cost $10 max. Larry Page did not just rip off Leo Katz's ranking algorithm, IBM's clever etc; the lads at Google developed a business model based on scanning the results of searches. In each case, there was no benefit in being there first.

This particularly applies to a country as small as Ireland that can't afford anything like SFI (or PRTLI, etc). It is indeed possible to import "adjunct" faculty and up the ratings of Irish science, as assessed by publications. But wait : Doesn't this mean that the whole world now knows about the "innovation" that the unwitting taxpayer just paid for? Given that a paper achieves credibility by being much-referenced, doesn't his mean we're giving away our secrets to everybody?

No, actually; the taxpayer probably doesn't know, because the research is locked up in pay-per-view journals. (The late Robert Maxwell got his business start in one such, Pergamon press). Open science attempts to redress this, and there is a growing consensus it is correct in insisting that what is paid for by public money should be available to the public. However, our politicians are unwilling to miss out on the chance of seeming all futuristic/visionary for the cameras - and damn the torpedoes (or the cost)

As this is being written, Minister Bruton is being taken through his Potemkin tour of silicon Valley (for once, the usually weak pun “silly con” is indeed appropriate ). On the way, he will be assured of the Irish presence at Stanford, and the great things to be expected from the Irish innovation centre in San Jose. SFI is the second-biggest national scandal after Anglo, and Bruton might use this trip to start its demolition. I am going to restrict myself to two projects in areas in which I have some competence to show why he should do so.

The centre at Stanford first came to public attention with the news that the Deri mother house in Galway had taken to the air;

http://www.independent.ie/national-news/academics-rack-up-euro108000-taxpayer-bill-for-private-jets-2394074.html

So the money was refunded ….but by the taxpayer. I am to my knowledge the only Irish person to have had original courses accredited by Stanford in the past decade, so surely the Stanford Deri should have trumped anything I did with its share of 12 million diverted away from childcare, primary education, and palliative care for cancer sufferers, inter alia;

http://www.deri.us/team/

There is only one Stanford faculty member there, and he has not even given them the link to his normal site (Petrie is not faculty);

http://logic.stanford.edu/people/genesereth/genesereth.html

Note the complete absence of private funding in both Deris;

http://www.deri.ie/

But cui bono? Have a look at the “alumni” of Deri and play “spot the Irish person” (Hint; of the 10% or so, they’re disproportionally in administration);

http://www.deri.ie/about/team/alumni/

Why are we paying for the training of foreign researchers who have NO special skills? Deri – insofar as it does anything – deals with concerns that are so theoretical that NO companies will be formed.

Not so with the other project I am going to mention, software localization, which has no proper role whatsoever on a university campus;

http://www.cngl.ie/index.html

This is again exclusively funded courtesy of the taxpayer;

http://www.cngl.ie/research.html

Software localization is ideal for the R+D departments of corporations. However, they are unlikely to do any of this while they can charge the taxpayer through a mechanism like SFI. Then, when they sell the products, they can hit up the taxpayer again, now in his role as a consumer.

Ireland is increasingly fragmenting into two groups; those who think we can stand on our own two feet and produce worldclass work, and those who believe we should continue to borrow and in doing so sacrifice the autonomy that was so dearly purchased by accepting the restrictions on our autonomy the IMF/ECB (UK/USA...) will impose.

In short, we’re back to where we were 100 years ago. In the meantime, Ireland should focus on open source science.

Seán O Nualláin Ph.D. Stanford
13 u Meitheamh 2011

PS Here is a very truncated list of some of the better open science sites, which give access to research without any cost to the taxpayer;

http://creativecommons.org/science

http://www.openinventionnetwork.com/ - good link to patent attacks

http://daviswiki.org/LUGOD Linux/Gnu fans

http://keionline.org/ “Knowlege ecology” Good, informative

http://www.righttoresearch.org/ for students and very good

http://thirdreviewer.com/ general comments

http://roar.eprints.org/ is reprints free

http://www.eprints.org/openaccess/ similar – Stevan Harnad, who pioneered “skywriting” is here!

http://foresight.org/ as it says on frontier tech with example http://opensourcesensing.org/

http://speakscience.org/ better still includes videos

http://okfn.org/ good = open knowledge, has tools

http://www.biotorrents.net/browse.php loads of data incl astrophysics

http://www.mendeley.com/ soc netw for sci w tools

http://colabscience.com/ collaborations parallel scientific

http://corp.kaltura.com/ video

Biology and Biomedical applications

http://p2pfoundation.net/Product_Hacking Hardware and has real sites as links

http://blog.stodden.net/A pioneer speaks

http://www.mindthehealthgap.org/ great idea neglected diseases

http://openpcr.org/ Good PCR tools

http://www.synthesis.cc/ very good indeed - rob carlson

http://www.yale.edu/macmillan/igh/ seems “open source” pharma?

12 Eanair 2012

9th level Ireland - which has uncritically carried a huge amount of VP's comments, refusing to entertain rebuttals - has censored this comment I posted;

"Just heard an SFI pensioner at a conference in honour of Bill Miller, unannounced to the public and so a very exclusive audience, at UC Berkeley yesterday;

http://www.ucd.ie/physics/staff/academics/davidcoker/

The only reason I knew he was funded by the Irish taxpayer was that very briefly, during the setup, SFI appeared for a few seconds - ok, nanoseconds

He started then with a photo of himself at some cliff scenery. Moher? No, California. It was clear that the pitch was "Hire me - I really really will suck up to you"

At no point was an acknowledgement given to SFI, let alone the numerous Irish taxpayers who sacrifice food, housing and cancer treatment to allow a narcissist make himself pretty

BTW, the talk was absolute crap, a perfunctory run-through of material taught to undergrads at Cal. As he admitted, it was bringing coal to Newcastle

How long more will Irish people be deprived of basic essential services for this insult to our intelligence?"

I now ask Hedley and his gang to stop syndicating my posts ere, as I do NOT want to be associated with them

From terrible beauty to prosaic reality to fatal inevitability

2011-05-10T14:50:00.001-07:00

The epithets used in this blog may have seemed extreme until last weekend; then both the Irish Times and Sindo published an article in which a leading UCD economist effectively accused the Irish central bank governor of treason;

http://www.businessinsider.com/morgan-kelly-irish-default-2011-5

The governor in question will IMO soon return chastened to his sinecure at TCD. However, there is an underlying dynamic exemplified here, which we will again scrutinize, and it relates directly to why DCU has been allowed behave outside the law for more than a decade.

The Irish state was set up as a compromise between irredentist republicans and pragmatists after a nasty, brutish and mercifully short civil war. This compromised nature did not allow the deep analysis of the inherited colonial institutions that the citizenry needed. For example, the state reverted to British common law after a successful experiment with republican courts, and then maintained common law even after a written constitution was adopted. There was surely world enough and time to develop an independent civil code, and that did not happen. Indeed, in the face of reality, UCD students were told until a decade ago (and may still be so told) that in fact some kind of (perhaps god-given) “natural law” obtained in Ireland.

The (deserved) decline of religion has led to a moral vacuum that lawyers have been eager to fill. The canvas afforded them is vast; a dearth of legitimation of authority in general, which they can and do address with casuistry, and a congeries of pure precedent (common law) going back centuries, with a programmatic (imitated in this elsewhere, including south Africa) Catholic nationalist constitution whose human rights protections are too weak to be observed.

So we have ended up with 3 of the top 20 biggest law firms in the EU (as of 2010) in a country which has neither an independent civil code, nor any sense of the individual's rights against the state. Canada, by contrast, funded groups as obscure as Maritimes accountants to take cases asserting their rights. The corporatist version of Ireland which succeeded the republican one from the mid-1980's allows consequential representation only through grain as coarse as unions.

And unions can be ignored; in fact, the size of the biggest law firms meant that law could itself be ignored. When a group around Bertie ahern saw a chance to control and indeed own much of the country, there was no countervailing force, and only the incompetence of the e-voting proposal prevented their carrying through the rest of their coup – as we now know, the money had been transferred to them. The middle-class had been bought off with “negotiated” salaries that Morgan Kelly echoes me in arguing are grotesquely large; there has never been a successful corporate enforcement prosecution in Ireland; the largest union was infected by Fianna Fail; the earlier movement based on a disgust of the low level of the “culture” being peddled by the state, inveighed against by publications like Sean O Faolain's “The Bell” was neutralized by IMRO's policing of public performances, which resulted in great musicians like Louis Stewart losing their gigs.

A new, rather terrible stage was presaged with the attack on tenure, and the removal of the universities from any external supervision. University presidents were free effectively to sell the places off, and this blog is one of many relatively feeble reactions. (Eventually, all we have been able to do is an IWO Jima type warning of how painful it will be to continue the war on tenure. That famously ended with Hiroshima).

Yet it is clear that the state is now worried about its new role as a collection agency for the IMF/EU, with the plan apparently being for peripheral EU countries like Ireland to act from 2013 as permanent debtors, the “assets' of the larger EU commercial banks. What is particularly bothersome about this fatal inevitability is that there are many much better structurings of the society, one of which I will now outline

First of all, Ireland is a country for the Irish; if Poland is allowed to maintain a population base that is 96% Polish (and indeed 95% Catholic), there is no reason that we should be compelled to have over 250k migrant workers taking our jobs. Interestingly, it is clear that the “Blood of the Isles” analysis is nonsense; it seems increasingly clear that this is also part of GFA propaganda, and the one complete Irish DNA analysis done to date indicates 13% of the SNPs are unique.

Secondly, the Irish gene-line is worldwide, with concentrated clusters in places like New Hampshire. Similarly, the culture that the state has tried so hard to extirpate and replace with Westlife (they and the queen deserve each other) is very well-loved by many people of non-Irish ancestry (and, because of the Irish state, not exposed to many "native" Irish). Indeed, the GFA has meant that we as Irish people are like a young woman betrothed to a man who is still allowed to play the field, with all the destruction to our self-confidence implied. We should be able - like the unionists and the many opportunistic northern Catholics who play for whatever team suits them at any given moment – to choose new lifepartners like the independent Scotland that now seems likely, and use our demographic preponderance in NH, Massachusetts and Newfoundland to influence US and Canadian politics in our favour.

The first step is the most important step, and that is the assertion – against the Irish state as we have experienced it for over a decade – of our unique genetic and cultural identity as Irish people. We should be prepared to extend citizenship to anyone with similar ethnicity (defined here as genetic and/or cultural identity). So-called “Northern Ireland” should be encouraged to call a one-off referendum within 3 years to decide to join us or not; if no. we can remove orange from the flag as we really don't need it. This involves accepting a peaceful, partitioned island to stop the hemorrhage of our energy as a nation that “Northern Ireland” forces. Wolfe Tone and indeed Pearse et al wrote at a time when it was not clear how able a group we native Irish are. After the 20th century, we now know that we can excel in every field of human endeavor – if only our state would let us.

This, in turn brings us to the current Irish government, which is the administration the Irish should have elected in 1997. That they did not do so is a tribute to the same forces in Irish society who campaigned so viciously against tenure, and who are exemplified by the Irish Independent's espousal of Bertie Ahern, and Irish times' being successfully sued for libel on the tenure issue. Yet all this government has done so far is attempt to give legitimacy to a deal it did not make. The tensions between the instinctively pro-EU FG and old republicans in Labour are already clear. The dissolution of the second Dail was a near-theological issue compared to taxpayers being asked to pay for Nama and then bad loans by German banks which could well destroy the state.

So, in addition to my proposal of two years ago

http://academictenure.blogspot.com/2009/05/mayday-mayday-or-how-to-save-ireland.html, I propose;

1.Re-emphasise our ethnicity, as the state is supposed to do. This involves first removing the corruption in the Irish entertainment industry, and then supporting talented ethnic artists, as every country does
2.The fiscal crisis has successively produced the recommendation of turning bondholders into share holders and when “Pog mo” honohan rejected that, fixing the EU with half our debt as Kelly suggests. A similar “OK Corral”/nuclear option will eventually have to be taken, and let the chips fall where they may, particularly as the US and Britain are our two main trading partners – not the rest of the EU.
3.Energy resouces an be sourced from many countries outside the Anglophone dominance area like Venezula. (even if Obama has a shot at Chavez, to follow the miss on Qaddhafi)
4.As mentioned above, we need a complete restructure of the institutions of legitimation of power in Irish society, with a new legal system and a new republican view of the relationship between the individual and the state. That done, much of our civil service will be seen for the parasite it is

Seán O Nualláin Ph.D. Stanford
10 u Bealtaine 2011

PS I would never have achieved this status, continuous since 2006, without the criminals at DCU;

Another disciplinary “procedure” suicide

2011-05-02T19:19:00.000-07:00

One of the more interesting aspects of the Faustian pact between the state and independent scholars that modern universities represent is the variety of incursions into the scholar's life available to morons in management. So a cultured, urbane, extremely intelligent scholar might find the following aspects of his/her life subject to the whim of an utterly uneducated and untalented management;

- His income, including that for basic food and lodging;

- His sense of his own worth as a professional in society;

- His status in society;

- His relationship with the students whom he will often regard as surrogate children, to be nurtured and cared for;

- His engagement with his subject, which will be passionate in the case of any real scholar, and which cannot be pursued at the top level outside a well-funded institution, with opportunity to go to conferences, remain seized of current trends, etc;

- Quite simply, some structure to every day.

There is, of course, much else. The response that will increasingly be chosen by the best scholars is that they will work independently of institutions. The Irish state is playing with fire in its meddling with tenure status.

And so we come to the suicide of Antonio Calvo, revisited today in the NY Times after much earlier coverage;

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Antonio_Calvo

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/22/nyregion/after-suicide-firing-of-princeton-lecturer-is-questioned.html

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/04/20/antonio-calvo-princeton-suicide_n_851775.html

We can be absolutely sure that criminal charges against Princeton management will be announced pretty much immediately unless they can produce concrete evidence that their case was bulletproof.

Joshua Howarth (Ex-DCU) committed suicide after an illegal disciplinary procedure was visited on him. I had my career and those activities above that can indeed be called “my life” ruined; Paul Cahill had 5 years taken from a brilliant career.

So why have the people responsible for Howarth's death and much more human misery - O'Dwyer at Arthur Cox, Mallon the fantastically obese idiot barrister (see below), Burns, Contry and Prondyzinski at DCU, indeed Byrne and a succession of governing authorities at DCU – been allowed get away Scotfree?

Does the Irish state really think it can continue to get away with this? I attach Mallon's assessment that the statute was ok, rejected by the courts in Ireland. Why is taxpayers' money still being shoveled at these useless, indeed murderous bastards?

Seán Ó Nualláin Ph.D Stanford 2u Bealtaine 2011

PS I couldn't resist it and looked up Princeton's disciplinary code for harassment;

http://www.princeton.edu/hr/policies/statement/1.0/1.0.2/4-AntiHarassmentPolicyProcedures.pdf

I can't find any procedure facilitating what happened - a DCU-like bullying by a security guard before any due process, and a suspension BEFORE the hearing

So Antonio was illegally removed from campus by the guard and Princeton will pay his relatives $tens of millions

This is all straight from the DCU playbook

A new and disturbing voice

2011-04-27T16:11:00.000-07:00

As Ireland heads toward default, two major and one minor victories will be apparent. We stopped electronic voting; we used frankly Kamikaze tactics to stop a German hack from hull University repeating hull's evisceration of tenure in Britain; and we forced political leaders to debate in Irish. Wrt the second, the damage to mine, Paul Cahill's and Dylan Evan's once brilliant careers is probably irreversible. We all faced losing our houses as well as our careers (I actually lost my house)

It is increasingly clear that the self-appointed elite in Ireland saw a chance after 1998 to distance themselves from us rabble. The 1916 proclamation was to be seen not as the program for national liberation which it is intended to be, but as a franchise belonging to a cabal, centered around bertie ahern. As the EU/IMF makes ever more specific demands, it is clear that the country is again a colony

From 1998, and the increasing closeness with the Anglo-American war efforts, the Irish state increasingly encroached on aspects of civil society that had previously been inviolate, like popular music and indeed science and tech. One of the reasons the country is broke is that a vast, expensive new civil service was required for areas in which Irish people used to excel out of a sense of patriotism. The Cabal was allowed produce its own artists; why not make your kids pop stars (David Kitt) or chick lit novelists (Ahern) even if that means an unworkable copyright act and a taxpayer-funded movie as pathetic “as “PS”?

Then, from 2004, the opportunity to own vast properties overseas presented itself, be the property a $100 million Cap Ferrat house with an underground disco for an obese middle-aged man, or New York's Apthorp. That required restricting the regulations on bond issues by our native banks; it is almost certain that the bond-holders were told they would be bailed out by the taxpayer, even at the cost of national collapse. The 2008 world crash will be seen as a good thing sub specie aeternitatis

With this in mind, it is interesting to see Derry republicanism eschew the shibboleths of Church, the GAA and the cabal/ gombeen class who now leech off the whole island;

http://www.derry32csm.com/2011/04/ira-easter-statement-2011.html

The threat to kill police is exactly the same as Martin McGuinness routinely enunciated in the 1980's, together with his condemnation of the electoral process;

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nzvpMlHuIrs

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ch5u8YbOyIE&NR=1

MM's fantastical idea that voice prints can identify the (admittedly disturbing) speaker is exactly the kind of thinking that caused internment;

http://www.breakingnews.ie/ireland/mcguinness-real-ira-has-limited-but-dangerous-capability-502703.html

The disturbing aspect is that the hatred of the power structure on the island of Ireland will resonate a lot more deeply than ever before. I do not claim to speak for Dylan and Paul -let alone Connell Fanning - but we have all had several millions of taxpayers' money used in an attempt to destroy us. The same procedure was used in the music business, and one assumes in hundreds of other areas of our erstwhile civil society

Seán Ó Nualláin Ph.D , Stanford University

Cinco de Mayo 2011; a few sources

Hull;

http://www.thecollegeview.com/2008/1...ollege-bosses/

David Kitt got his record deal partly 'cos Daddy gave a demo to a record company during negotiations for the 2000 copyright act;;

http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1P1-79370142.html

Now we have an unworkable copyright act and you have to take a US federal court case to stop theft of your music, with 50+ Irish acts affected(as documented here);

27 u Aibrean 2011

PPS Having heard the voice of the Derry 2011 real ira speaker, I contend he sounds exactly like - Martin McGuiness himself! High-pitched and clearly not really used to reading

If we find he is an agent provacateur, I will not be surprised

Metabolism, evolution, consciousness

2011-04-20T15:34:00.000-07:00

Abstract

Animals with larger social networks, such as humans, inflict a large metabolic demand on the organism with 18-20% emerging as the consensus figure for humans for his “dark energy” . Allometric scaling of brain function would require new neurons and new bands to be exploited in large primates and cetaceans to prevent excessive power investment in bands already exploited by smaller brains. It's an essential metabolic issue, managing energy production and use as a function of evolutionary size.

The von Economo neurons are inventions of large social animals, and abnormalities in their density in autistic brains relative to controls is attributed to the social deficits. In large social animals the von Economo neurons regulate that higher social sense required to keep track of up to 100 different individuals in your social group (ref. a well known allometric scaling of brain size versus group size). In a highly significant hypothesis, autism has been correlated with lack of von Economo neurons.

This is particularly significant, as there is an attested positive relationship between animals who care for their young with the use of extended social groups and brain size when the young are born relatively helpless and need extended formation. Obviously, homo sapiens sapiens is a classical example. Yet this extended brain could become a metabolic drag on the organism.

The argument here is that consciousness reflects a trick that large brains have perfected; switching themselves on and off a few times a second, as the theoretical and experimental work I did with Walter Freeman (Freeman et al 2008) indicates. Meditation is extended identification with the process of consciousness; it is relatively content-free. The hypothesis here is that consciousness may not be causal to any real extent; it reflects this on/off process, which in turn increases the sensitivity of the brain, Freeman and I alo showed; there is less need for stochastic resonance, as the “reset' makes the brain exquisitely sensitive, for the tenth or so of a second necessary to process stimuli.

Let's first consider the extent to which brain waves like gamma attenuate the metabolic demand by the brain. Here we have gamma, in its synchronized form an accepted index of consciousness, pushing the brain's metabolic demand down by a factor of ten thousand;

We now consider how this energy, if available as normal “free energy”, would facilitate some essential biochemical processes. Glycolysis, one of the two main energy paths in mammals, uses the free energy at the end to make NADH and ATP, two stores of energy. The gamma process above creates free energy to do exactly this, as to ease the path of glucose into cells, get rid of misfolded proteins, and so on.

While representation algorithms like “sparse coding” free up such energy to some extent, it does seem plausible that synchronized gamma frees more energy in excess of normal homeostasis.

Seán Ó Nualláin Ph.D , Stanford University

20 u Aibrean 2011

DCU's illegal disciplinary statute, still not replaced

2011-03-20T09:58:00.000-07:00

Incredibly, the illegal disciplinary statute that caused this ruckus and ruined many of our lives is still on the web, 4 years after being ruled illegal by the High court and 9 years after the Labour court demanded revisions “within two months”;

http://www.dcu.ie/info/statutes/statute3.shtml

It is illegal for the following reasons;

1.The 1997 universities act required that it should be drafted after “consultation” with the union. Carmel Hogan, the relevant SIPTU official, gave sworn evidence in 2009 that she was at best informed, and certainly not consulted;

http://www.irishstatutebook.ie/1997/en/act/pub/0024/print.html

2.It does not provide for “tenure” as the 1997 act requires. Judge Clarke commented that “tenure” cannot merely be a length of time, let alone one like 3 months;

http://www.bailii.org/ie/cases/IEHC/2007/H20.html

It is contrary to industrial relations practice for the following reasons;

1.The Labour court commented that representation should be stitched in

http://www.labourcourt.ie/labour/labcourtweb.nsf/185190278967d05380256a01005bb35e/80256a770034a2ab80256c87003c73a4?OpenDocument

2.It interacts with a set of contracts issued after 1995 that excluded tenure and academic freedom, opening the door to definition of tenure as 3 months' notice, and drafted with no reference to the union, despite being billed as a part of a new “comprehensive agreement” with the union

3.Frank Clarke pointed out a subtle trapdoor allowing summary dismissal; since “tenure” was 3 months, and even an internal appeal would take at least that length to convene, the statute is a recipe for summary dismissal - with or without cause. Therefore, even if you don't do anything wrong you can be sacked with no appeal within the university, and must take your chances in the High court, paying for it yourself, as the union cannot strike for an "individual dismissal". If you lose at the high court, DCU will take your house to pay costs. If you win, as we've seen they will appeal to the supreme court, and you will have no income for the 4 years or so the case drags on, with costs in the millions

Then again, of course, that was and is the point - to introduce summary dismissal, without cause, at a state university and to intimidate the staff into following what looks like a corporatist agenda - you are really working for Microsoft, not the Irish people who pay your wages

Seán Ó Nualláin Ph.D , Stanford University

20 u Marta 2011

Open letter to Brian mac Craith

2011-03-16T11:32:00.000-07:00

A Bhriain, a chara

We both, I hope, understand how Ireland works. In 1995, then minister for enterprise, Richard Bruton, was invited by the head of computing at DCU to see the then newfangled worldwide web. Bruton turned up at 7am and left an hour later, suitably impressed. On hearing of what he considered an unauthorized visit to “his” campus – by a government minister -Danny O'Hare went ballistic, rampaging over to the computing department to make his displeasure felt. The head of computing was subsequently dismissed -then reinstated, albeit a broken man, his public humiliation complete.

DCU was set up as a Fianna fail (FF) institution. FF was then able, even in opposition, to exert pressure on government through strategically-placed hacks like O'Hare. Indeed, its penchant for appointing utterly unqualified hacks as judges of both the circuit and High court reached a nadir with the infamous Ahern Mahon tribunal appearance. Among the next two scheduled witnesses after Ahern were the two solicitors who had replaced Ahern's personal attorney, who in turn had killed himself in 1997. Trouble was, they were now, respectively, a circuit and High court judge. So Ahern resigned, saving the Irish public the crash course in the reality of power that I hope you, like I, have undergone. Now nobody gives a damn about FF, except insofar that they have rekindled civil war hatreds after their swansong performance in government.

Kate O'Mahony of the EAT was the last chance you had of a victory in my case. She delivered for FF; recission of a high court action; a 5-year adjournment on similarly illegal grounds (as my legal team demonstrated to her in Jan 2010), another 2-month adjournment on spurious grounds, the resurrection of the “Shaun of the Dead” panel that no-one familiar with the EAT ever expected to see again, and a truly insulting proposed remedy. You will by now have received legal advice even from the cretins at Arthur cox that she totally ignored the law, in a manner that no legal forum will do – even the FF judge nominees will be anxious to keep their noses clean. It is likely that I can successfully sue the EAT over the High court recission – as O'Mahony knew when she invented a precedent on the fly in January 2010, only to confess a minute later that – she made it up!

I have no interest whatsoever in the money involved in this case; I refused several settlements, and you will find that I never sought an increment in my time at DCU. You probably know that I have had serious health problems, and that my two daughters – separated from me so far through no fault of any of ours – are now of an age (17,20) where I must begin to be a bigger presence in their lives.

Yet I cannot, out of principle, accept a verdict that in any way attenuates the principle of tenure, and in particular academic freedom. I regard this insistence as a better inheritance to pass on than anything financial, or anything related to social status. I am therefore proposing the following as a settlement, in a collegial form. We can allow mine and your legal teams work out the details; better to communicate in this form than have you cross-examined in a public court to justify the actions of your predecessor;

1.I am to be reinstated with full teaching duties for the 2011-2012 academic year;

2.DCU can either offer full retrospection of pay, or – better – the chance to work after “official” retirement at 65 to earn the money. At Stanford, to take one example, tenured staff are not asked to retire, and I have lost a decade because of your predecessor's malfeasance;

3.DCU will supply an affidavit in my libel cases against the Daily Mail, Sunday Independent, and Irish times, giving an objective analysis of my work at DCU since 1987;

4.The grievance procedure I brought 2001-2002 will be brought to a conclusion within 10 days, as my contract requires;

5.I will be given research funds – including reimbursement of those unaccounted for – sufficient to bring my lab back to where it was in 2002.

This offer expires May 1, 2011. You are not being rushed into anything

Seán Ó Nualláin Ph.D , Stanford University

15 u Marta 2011

PS Could not help noticing that Brian's e-mail, to which I wrote today as a fellow academic, is STILL being forwarded to Marion Burns, head of HR;

- The following addressees of your message have been processed by the mail server:
Marian.Burns@dcu.ie; Failed; 5.4.6 (routing loop detected)

PPS The above offer is independent of legal action I may take to ensure return of my property

The law 8 Prondzynski 0

2011-03-15T14:14:00.001-07:00

It is worth noting what the outgoing, criminal Irish government visited upon us for a decade at DCU. Many of we academics are in technical areas in which we claim competence, but are careful in the extreme about offering consulting expertise in the “real world” where the imperatives are different.

Prondzynski claimed to know about industrial relations. He lost every case in that area he took on. The so-called “success” of DCU during his tenure (nice word, that) is almost solely due to the fact that the Prime Minister was a local, and that the PM's brother was a member of parliament for the DCU electoral area, The reminder of the success is due to the talented staff and students DCU has, perhaps undeservedly (given its management) attracted; in the meantime, teaching staff have been viciously cut back in areas like computing

Here are references to Prondzynski's eight very costly failures, all of which were frivolous, vexatious and deeply damaging attempts to set in stone by use of law as instrument IR issues that should have been settled internally at no cost to the taxpayer. It is fair to say that none have been settled, and all these issues could re-emerge with only the names changed;

The Horgan case

;
http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Sex+bias+lecturer+gets+EUR10k.-a0147232552

http://www.independent.ie/national-news/woman-lecturer-triumphs-in-sex-bias-court-fight-1166849.html

The Cahill case;

Injunction

http://universitywatchdog.wordpress.com/author/universitywatchdog/page/4/

High court defeat for Prondzynski;

http://www.bailii.org/ie/cases/IEHC/2007/H20.html

Supreme court defeat for Prondzynski

http://www.independent.ie/national-news/courts/836412m-bill-for-taxpayers-as-dcu-loses-dismissal-case-1971284.html

My case;

Labour court defeat for Prondzynski

http://www.labourcourt.ie/labour/labcourtweb.nsf/185190278967d05380256a01005bb35e/80256a770034a2ab80256c87003c73a4?OpenDocument

Rights commissioner defeat for Prondzynski

http://academictenure.blogspot.com/2008/09/dr-sean-o-nuallain-in-his-own-words.html

EAT defeat for Prondzynski

http://www.independent.ie/national-news/courts/dcu-row-lecturer-is-awarded-euro45000-2406866.html

Forgive me, but as an Irishman I am incandescent with rage that the government allowed this foreign dilettante come in and destroy the lives of hundreds of good scholars at massive cost to the taxpayer

So much for the “canny” Scots, who are welcome to this useless and - in my experience – criminal bastard

Seán Ó Nualláin Ph.D , Stanford University

15 u Marta 2011

Tenure; a political, not a legal or IR issue

2011-03-12T10:03:00.000-08:00

With the recent change of government, we are finally in the endgame. The 1997 act required university admin to cater for the “tenure” of officers, without saying what that is; likewise, the supreme court's Susan Denham, when pressed on the issue by DCU's barrister Sreenan, refused to define it on the grounds that she would then be “legislating”. The Labour court declared the attempt to extirpate tenure by DCU contrary to industrial relations (IR) practise.

And yet DCU, NUIG etc are still insisting on their rights to weaken staff contracts, to the point of allowing summary dismissal. Even after all these verdicts, DCU has not amended its statute. The situation admits neither of a legal nor an IR solution.

What to do? One solution – which I favour and am acting on – is for scholars to live a dual existence between the state-created universities (which in reality include "private" ones like my current affiliation)and the ones we can create ourselves on the web. This frees us to teach and research free of the execrable admin staff at Irish universities (they tend to be better elsewhere), the high Court, admin tribunals, and so on.

The other - which will be great if it works out – is for the incoming government to dispel the entire current miasma, appoint visitors to DCU, UCC and NUIG, and indeed grasp the nettle constituted by the fact that all contracts since 1995 at DCU are illegal in any case.

Seán Ó Nualláin Ph.D , Stanford University

12 u Marta 2011

Open letter to the new (deputy) Minister

2011-02-28T13:02:00.000-08:00

I wrote to Fergus O'Dowd, the incoming (deputy) minister, today as follows;

It was a pleasure to talk to you today;congrats again. I think very few people suffered more directly from the corruption of this awful outgoing government than Melanie and myself. Mel was compelled eventually to take a federal court case in the USA , which she won, to stop the theft of her material from continuing. There was a final verdict in her favour on Feb 16, 2011 and hopefully the incoming government will help her and the (literally) dozens of Irish musicians similarly stolen from by Fianna Fail connected “businessmen” to retrieve their money;

http://docs.justia.com/cases/federal/district-courts/california/candce/4:2009cv03580/228656/68/

The DCU case is perhaps even more unforgivable, as it was the result of illegal action by a state body. In 2001, DCU governing authority passed a disciplinary statute that, contrary to the universities act, was not the result of consultation with the union, and - likewise in violation of that act – did not properly construct “tenure” for the officers of the university, as Justice Clarke ruled in the Cahill case in 2007;

http://www.bailii.org/ie/cases/IEHC/2007/H20.html

Literally millions of taxpayers' money were spent both on the Cahill case and on my case, with massive adverse publicity for higher education in Ireland;

http://www.tribune.ie/article/2009/jul/12/lengthy-college-dismissal-case-may-cost-taxpayer-2/

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/ireland/article6689569.ece

What makes matters worse is that there had been a labour court recommendation as far back as 2002 that DCU modify the statute within 2 months. Had that recommendation been complied with, much money and suffering would have been spared, and at least one very talented young man (Josh Howarth) who killed himself after undergoing a disciplinary procedure, would be alive;

http://www.labourcourt.ie/labour/labcourtweb.nsf/185190278967d05380256a01005bb35e/80256a770034a2ab80256c87003c73a4?OpenDocument

Yet the illegal statute is still on the website, and the one slated to replace it is similarly illegal and, if implemented, will undoubtedly cause more legal mayhem;

http://www.dcu.ie/info/statutes/statute3.shtml

http://academictenure.blogspot.com/2011/01/dcus-new-illegal-statute.html

The Clarke recommendation is strengthened by a supreme court judgement and award of all costs, with full reinstatement, to Paul Cahill in a further hearing;

http://www.independent.ie/national-news/courts/836412m-bill-for-taxpayers-as-dcu-loses-dismissal-case-1971284.html

The Procedure that should have been used a decade ago is the appointment of a “visitor” (a high Court judge)to DCU, as the 1997 act demands when the university is acting outside the law. In fact, before their disastrous foray into government, the Green Party correctly demanded this. You can find their Dail questions and the disturbing answers on the links from;

http://universitywatchdog.wordpress.com/2009/03/20/the-greens-and-opportunistic-hypocrisy/

The answers that the state has no role in the “day to day” operations of the universities are wrong, but were repeated over and over to many questions from many sources about the behaviour of Irish universities' management.

You probably know that I have spent most of my time at Stanford since then, and we have had major success in both the academic and artistic fields, including opening the Irish writers' festival Thursday next in Washington DC. Had the Irish state spent a tenth as much resources on supporting us as it did on harassing us, dozens of jobs – perhaps more- would have been created both in Ireland and the USA.

Finally, since this will be available for FoI in any case, I am putting it on my website.

Comhchairdeachas aris

Is mise, le meas

Seán Ó Nualláin Ph.D 28 u Feabhra 2011

PS 10 Marta ; Looks like there was some score-settling from Bruton's attempted coup

Saturday Feb 26; a paradigm shift for tenure?

2011-02-22T18:13:00.000-08:00

The distinction between the two major parties in Ireland used to be difficult to explain; it is likely we are now heading for a standard European left/right dichotomy (and not before time). It is fair to say that FF have historically been the more criminal of the two; that may be simply due to more time in power. Fine Gael never really were able to clean up the many scams FF put in place due to limited time in govt; given that FF are unlikely to be even a majority partner in govt again in our lifetimes, this is about to change. Much of the recent behaviour of SIPTU – to take one example –outrageous as it looks, can be explained by their view that de boys from de Northsoide could govern the country permanently with the corporate unions/government structure established in the 1990s.

The Hunt report (forgive me, I keep thinking of the “Hite report”) is just a little too obvious. Colin Hunt serves as the Division Director of Macquarie Capital which is a recidivist tenderer for educational projects in Ireland. At the very least, FG will want their own boyos in there, irrespective of moral considerations. It is also a good idea for us to spin killing off tenure as a honeypot for FF/Gomgreen-connected law firms. That will help FG become advocates for academic freedom.

For those in science, think of Sat 26 Feb 2011 as a paradigm change. We may replace the Ptolemaic cosmos; we may even get rid of Maxwell's equations. What is for sure is that the organs of the Irish establishment who were previously his most vitriolic critics decided to fall in love with Enda Kenny as the writing on the wall hit critical size last week. We may even see some fairness in the Irish Times approach to the tenure question. I did complain to the Press council, was brushed off, but will re-engage next week as the power structure changes.

The current hit movie in the USA, “Unknown” gives some clue as to the Times's motivation. Without giving away too much, suffice to say that it is about the attempt by a Monsanto-like company to prevent a bioengineering innovation from being released into the public domain. The chair of the Irish Times trust up to May 2010, was a geneticist whose fervour for private participation in universities led to his being nicknamed “Monsanto”

The Times, until stopped by another legal action (forthcoming) will continue its airy rhetorical style;

“While it is true that Mr Qaddhafi (sic) is acting harshly, we cannot envisage the governorship of any country in the hands of people who live outside the small even numbers of Dublin post codes..............”

It is rather simple to find recent examples of this.

Seán Ó Nualláin Ph.D 22u Feabhra 2011

Metabolism and meditation

2011-02-18T17:42:00.001-08:00

While the war for academic tenure has being going on, readers of this blog may note that I am regularly contacted about a paper on meditation and consciousness that got published in 2009. It is not available on-line (not my choice) so I am going to give a summary of its contents here, by way also of attempting an edifying respite from this dreadful, futile, and prolonged war. Since I have been illegally prevented from normal academic activity – it is very expensive for a private citizen to attend conferences – this is a necessary step.

Much of the context for publication of this work is the well-attested finding that meditators show sustained brain activity in the “Gamma oscillation” category, which goes roughly from 40 to 80 hz. Remarkably, there are solid indications that such gamma activity, particularly if synchronized over large areas of the brain, is a signature also of conscious states. There is also at least provisional evidence that meditation leads to improved health, and indeed a thickening of cortex

The work I did at Walter Freeman's lab at UC Berkeley indicates that there may be a unifying explanation for all of this. Very simply, the brain normally demands 18-20% of the total energy of the human organism (as distinct from 3% in th mouse). Synchronized gamma would briefly attenuate this demand by a factor on 10,000, and do so a few times a second. This frees up energy for many metabolic processes.

Several of the steps in glycolysis are endothermic. Energy released for use for the rest of the organism by states of meditation/consciousness can potentially be used for;

1 Getting glucose into cells. Lessening the need for insulin, which is -relatively – toxic. Dogs with their pancrases removed - if fit - do not become diabetic

2.Exploiting energy in ATP involves the endothermic glycolysis steps

3. Gene expression varies with the ratio of NAD+ to NADH which informs of the metabolic state and health of the cells. This will vary with the energy available

4 There also will be other effects like those on astrocytes with beneficial effects on the nervous system itself

5. Finally , there is solid evidence that conscious experience focussed on an external target can dull pain perception - and indeed increase blood flow

In our work,the first diagram shows power consumption decreases with gamma first with simulated, then with real data. The simulated data looked at neuron firing as random, as white noise. We then used the Hilbert transform to calculate how power consumption would vary if the “white noise” signal was convolved with gamma waves.

The second diagram uses data acquired, with her consent, from electrodes applied directly to the cortex of woman undergoing surgery for epilepsy (Incidentally, we also found that epileptic seizures – contra the official wisdom – do NOT involve any special correlation of activity between discrete brain regions). In any case, for the resting brain with gamma, you an see the ebbs in the power consumption.

Back to war next week

Seán Ó Nualláin Ph.D 18u Feabhra 2011

PS It is worth pointing out that there is an assumption here that the extra energy freed up is "usable" for homostatic functions. For example, the body can autonomously drive up its own heat to fight off infections in fevers. In that case, however, "normal" homeostasis in lost; indeed, the extra energy available to the brain causes hallucinations. This is speculative in our current state of knowledge, admittedly.

PPS Paper to be published in "Biosemiotics" on-line this fall 2011

The destruction of academic tenure in Ireland

2011-02-15T18:34:00.000-08:00

Academic tenure is currently gone in Ireland; this post specifies what happened. It was SIPTU's fault, and I'll end with speculation about SIPTU's motives – in particular the cabal of SIPTU officials with extreme left-wing political histories. No names will be mentioned. As for rescuing the situation, good luck to them with dealing with a far more right-wing administration from Sat 26 Feb 2011

As established through long struggle, most recently in the USA and mainly in the 20th century, academic tenure had the following components;

1.Academic freedom. This essentially freed staff and students alike to speak, write and research without any direction from management. It trumps even first amendment rights in the USA in that “academic freedom” neutralizes normal expectations from one's employer that one cannot criticize its policies. Of course, speech is relatively free, outside this context, on the web – as totalitarian administrations like Egypt's are finding to their cost

2.Freedom from threats of involuntary redundancy. A US Tenured professor can get fired – and rightly so – but cannot involuntarily be made redundant. Of course, the imminent new DCU statute has provisions for involuntary redundancy.

3.Retirement at the normal civil service age – 65ish, at which point tenure lapses. However, in Stanford, to take one example, faculty can continue in office as long as they like

Academic tenure is a sophisticated compromise between the state on the one hand and scholars within the society on the other. The scholars gain financial security without their freedom to research and teach being compromised; the state benefits from a forum in which difficult issues can be teased apart in a civilized way. Karl Marx would have been perhaps one of the greatest economists in world history , instead of synonymous with a decayed and violent social order, had he been allowed a university professorship.

The Irish situation has long been an accident waiting to happen. The 1990 industrial relations act prohibited strikes for “single dismissals”; the context was that the EAT could resolve the issue within 4 months. That now takes up to 9 years (as in my case), typically 3, and the EAT very rarely reinstates, instead giving risible financial compensation.

In any case, the university can appeal to ever higher and higher courts should they lose at the EAT. Highly unusually, it is allowed enunciate the same allegations repeatedly, or change them as it wills. Alternatively, the scholar can choose Ireland's stratospherically expensive High court, get an injunction, and run up legal fees of millions. In either case, the normally closed-shop unions refuse to help. Use of these mechanisms by the state is a declaration of war, and that is what we have faced at DCU since 2002.

When we signed contracts at NIHE, and in DCU up to 1995, the contracts explicitly mentioned tenure (see image) as well as academic freedom. These contracts were unilaterally and illegally changed by management in 1995 to exclude tenure, which is what the current trouble is about; staff at many institutions realize they have no permanency. The new contracts - pace IUA - also specified a "place of work" at the university, and the “academic freedom” paragraph was gone.

In 2001 DCU introduced an illegal disciplinary – or rather summary dismissal procedure – or, rather, lack of procedure. In 2002, Ferdie made an attempt to use it on me – as he knew, illegally – and, correctly, I told him where to get off. My colleagues responded courageously and voted 150-0 for my reinstatement. SIPTU instead decided to put me through the mediaeval Labour court/rights comm system in 2002-2003, all of which we won., and all of which management laughed at. In the meantime, I refused to sign various documents given me by management offering money for rescinding the strike action, as well as rejecting 2 very generous severance packages, one offered through John Gormley's office by Ferdie (annual salary until I got a new job), the other offered through SIPTU (two years' salary as starting bid). I was NOT going to be party to the loss of tenure in Ireland.

My colleagues, particularly Paul Cahill, also behaved impeccably, which is why this is such a crying shame; tenure need not have been lost. In fact, a credible strike threat could still reinstate it.

DCU staff were prepared to vote for strike action; the majority would almost certainly have been much higher than the “no confidence” passed in Ferdie. SIPTU misinformed them that a strike about the statute was not possible; in fact the branch sec blatantly lied to my DCU colleagues about that. Had they been allowed to vote, we would have saved EVERY aspect of tenure at the subsequent negotiations. When I confronted the branch sec about her actions, she mentioned the name of two very high SIPTU officials, including its then and current president, as being against a strike. The behaviour of the the DCU section committee chair as she lied to me that the staff had rejected a strike is too awful to get into here.

Instead, DCU continued to laugh at our negotiators, and the statute will indeed have redundancy, and summary dismissal for those employed post 1995. So, cui bono? The only explanation for SIPTU's behaviour is that they were trying to ingratiate the Labour party to the Ahern party machine in North Dublin. On the lunatic fringe, 3 of the SIPTU personnel involved in the statute negotiations are from nutso left wing backgrounds. They are now joined by their fellow-traveller also from the “League”

What has happened since then at DCU, which is the thin end of the wedge, is a rearguard action fought by Paul Cahill and myself. We have managed to bring things almost back to 2003 at truly horrendous cost to our own lives, and no help from our “union”. In fact, with downright hindrance in my case, as it is largely SIPTU's fault that the EAT case was in limbo 2004-2008. (Incidentally, my experience with SIPTU as a co-founder of the musicians' union(MUI) was exactly the same; the critical court cases on copyright had to be taken in the US Federal court after SIPTU refused to act against IMRO, and SIPTU's president bullied the MUI's most effective communicator and activist from his position)

While claiming to be about “academic freedom”, the current movement is in danger of looking like a rearguard attempt to maintain grotesquely high salaries and low workloads. So I support academic freedom, but not the current “ academic freedom” movement until it explicitly decouples freedom from salaries. Third level staff should be treated with respect by the state, but be willing to accept a fraction of their current grotesque salaries as a true index of their international worth. If they think they are worth more, prove it by going elsewhere. The current situation, with perhaps 1,000 university staff earning over 100k a year, is not one that the incoming government can countenance.

The clear danger is that tenure (including academic freedom) will be sacrificed for the current outrageous salaries unless the current movement clearly decouples these issues. The result will, paradoxically, be detrimental to the state as good scholars head to the wild west of the web, a la Karl Marx to the Reading Room of the British Museum.

Seán Ó Nualláin Ph.D 15u Feabhra 2011

PS Good to see someone else deplores SIPTU's closeness to the govt, and particularly B Ahern;

http://www.shane-ross.ie/archives/844/shall-we-storm-liberty-hall/#comment-2910

DCU must get rid of SIPTU before others get sacrificed in defiance of the will of the workers there as I was

A brief catalogue of criminality at DCU

2011-02-13T12:58:00.001-08:00

Michael Lewis and others have publicly mused about the passivity of the Irish in the face of clear criminality from their political masters. They are clueless; Irish public opinion has bounced the government into a snap election to be held 3 months after the IMF's visit, and it is one that the government parties will lose ,resoundingly. This despite Dermot Desmond's Berlusconi-modeled attempt to buy a political party, and install a style of government suitably streamlined for a non-democratic executive.

The incoming government will eviscerate many of the state bodies and quangos that currently seem like part of the natural order, and arguments that currently seem cogent will suddenly lose their impetus and be seen as specious. Moreover, distractions will be needed to avert the public's eyes from the ongoing economic disaster, and it is not inappropriate to begin with the clearly criminal activity sponsored by a generation of maFFia rule. While the music business (particularly IMRO) is not a bad place to continue after the banking sector, DCU is not far behind. My guess is that Mac Craith will be lucky to serve out his term; it is clear that conry, Byrne, Burns, smeaton and Morris have all participated in crimes for which they should be prosecuted.

This is an abbreviated list of clear criminality at DCU;

1.The continued use of an illegal disciplinary statute, which will be in place for over a decade when the new government takes office;

2.Abuse and intimidation both of students and staff, the subject of many parliamentary questions;

3.Theft of research money. This was the subject of a parliamentary question as far back as 2002 on foot of a complaint made at whitehall Garda station to Det tom McCarrick, which tom never followed up. Anyone wishing to follow this up - I have lost faith in the Irish justice system in north-side Dublin - can contact Tom (the last number I have for him is 086 2431206);

4.Creation of useless degrees (“Education and training” prepared the hapless students for – nothing) and cramming 300 into a computing degree in 1999. The 50% or so who dropped out in the latter should know that we tried to help them; I spoke out publicly against this, and several of us protested it. Academic freedom was not honoured, and I faced a disciplinary charge for pointing out the failure rate on a website. Btw, the HEA just accepts DCU's failure rate figures, without checking;

5.The HEA similarly does not check DCU's accounts, and allows blanks in many key fields. Given that GV Wright was treasurer of the DCU trust, one need not say more;

6.All contracts issued by DCU since 1995 are invalid and have to be redrafted. Specifically, they require academic staff to be at DCU in their offices, and rescind academic freedom and tenure;

7.The accreditation of DCU was destroyed by a conflict of interest, as Micheal Gleeson, chair of the accreditation committee had accepted a job at DCU before parliament considered the report. The many brilliant students who went through DCU deserve better.

These and many other issues will provide provender for many a parliamentary committee over the next 5 years as the government seeks some circuses in the absence of bread.

Seán Ó Nualláin Ph.D 13u Feabhra 2011

Academic freedom redux; no more Nacht und Nebel

2011-02-10T15:23:00.000-08:00

In 2009, some of us got together to talk about the veil of silence over the whole academic tenure/ Academic freedom issue in Ireland. Paul Cahill’s case had gone to the Irish Supreme Court on June 29, 2009, without a single Irish academic currently teaching in Ireland there, nor a single journalist to cover the case. The Irish times, which fully deserves to go bankrupt as it soon will, had a senior journalist in the 4 courts that day who did not deign to write about this case. The Times is now scurrying to run article after article about what a great thing academic freedom is; when it mattered, in 2009, they refused even to consider an opinion piece on the subject (when put on the web, the piece got good circulation)

DCU’s strategy indeed was first “Nacht und Nebel”; attacks to be done in night and fog. It is clear that corruption in SIPTU prevented DCU staff from having a strike ballot, as was their right, in 2003. It is likely that they would have chosen to strike, and that would have saved academic tenure – which has been lost in Ireland (more on this later). Future generations, please note – Paul, I and the staff at DCU did everything it took to save academic freedom and its de facto loss is SIPTU’s fault.

The second leg of the strategy was the use of wholly disproportionate legal force to attack single individuals like Paul and myself. Bankrupt Ireland still has 3 of the top 20 biggest law firms in the EU, and the law society makes no attempt whatsoever to control them (I submitted a detailed complaint about Arthur Cox some months ago and have not even gotten an acknowledgment). This use of law as an instrument violates basic human rights. The very fact of the state using these vast resources after SIPTU tied our hands behind our back destroyed all permanency in the civil service, including tenure.

Of course, DCU decided to go the extra kilometer and hired the one Irish barrister who gets such a kick of destroying people whose shoes he is not fit to tie at the EAT that he refuses to become a senior counsel, as this would prevent his carrying on at the EAT - Tom Mallon. Mallon is also the cretin who approved the illegal disciplinary statute at DCU (drawn up by John O'Dwyer of Arthur Cox) and still on the DCU website - a full decade of illegality.

So we decided to involve the media. As could be expected, the Dublin establishment initially rallied around their own, and the Times in particular ran articles on Ferdie so alternately inaccurate and gushing that it had to issue 2 retractions, one apology, and yet is still being sued. See bottom of

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/weekend/2010/0731/1224275874952.html

and

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/opinion/2010/0129/1224263355098.html

Then, academic tenure gone, the state overstepped its mark with the Hunt report. It is now in a fine mess; the previous media coverage has alerted academics that they may indeed lose their jobs.

Taking on isolated individuals like me is easy, particularly with a corrupt union like SIPTU in a closed-shop role; taking on thousands of irate and well-resourced third-level teachers is well outside the competence of this and the incoming government. Better to force nurses to do 3 extra shifts a month, instead.

For the record, I believe that many third level staff in Ireland are grossly overpaid, and often underworked; a great deal of the unpleasantness of their jobs comes from the incredibly incompetent admin staff (who are all tenured, without PhD’s) hired by the likes of Danny O’Hare. Moreover, my experience is that many of us would be prepared to work for less money if afforded a little respect from the state. Instead, the discourse is going to be about “academic freedom” so – let the games begin!

Seán Ó Nualláin Ph.D 10u Feabhra 2011

PS Finally from the Irish times, CHIU got to speak;

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/ireland/2011/0205/1224289077130.html

“Some have suggested that this is to have the effect of physically shackling academics to the university and banning remote working etc. We want to stress that this is categorically not the case. Our concern is fundamentally about accountability for work and, in practice, this provision is simply to consolidate a framework which protects against cases of obvious abuse of the freedoms which currently exist and which we support. Thankfully, those abuses are extremely rare, but it cannot be denied that they have occurred.”

The abuses is question have come almost exclusively from incompetent uni administrators, venal lawyers and incompetent barristers

Rhetoric aside, DCU has issued contracts since 1995 - which claim to be agreed with the closed-shop union but are not - which explicitly set down a "place of work" at the university. This paragraph in NOT in the previous, legal contracts. I know of at least one case in DCU where the academic was compelled to be in his office 9-5pm 5 days a week, apart from meetings.

So CHIU's statement is yet another lie. This debate has to elevate itself beyond lies, or very bad things will happen

PPS I can't keep up with these quangoes; it was actually the "Irish Universities Association" or CHIU's paramilitary wing.

Vincent Browne chickened out of a debate

2011-02-07T10:31:00.001-08:00

Ireland's brief economic success was built largely on the volunteer work of Irish people; its recovery will likewise be our work, and there is no ethnicity I would rather work with when the chips are down. It will be necessary to revoke the work permits of the hordes who were brought in to replace us, not least in the universities. Of course, those who have seen fit to take Irish citizenship can and should stay.

Like many others, I worked long and hard for DCU; one opportunity I saw was the creation of annual conferences in two area; Cog sci and consciousness (the “mind” conferences) and the Cog sci of natural language processing (CSNLP). The former ran annually 1995-1999; the latter annually 1992-1999. we suspended them when the Irish state inflicted Medialb on us, the effective end of cutting-edge software in Ireland

John Benjamins published the “Mind” conferences as books, Kluwer offered to do the CSNLP. They brought revenue into the country to the tune of tens of thousands annually and DCU refused to pay toward either on my watch, leaving me with a financial risk of around five thousand pounds each year, as we flew in high-profile speakers ( of course, I encouraged attendees to take less environmentally damaging means like boats and train )

This kind of initiative is what will get Ireland back on its feet. In 1999, I had a particularly stellar lineup for the “Mind” conference; Stuart Hameroff, Karl Pribram, Jacob Needleman et al. DCU as ever refused to support it, and I had bills to pay; I took an ad out in the Irish Times inviting the public to a day in which consciousness in its relationship with the arts, sciences and religion would be discussed. Those of the public who attended all asked permission, which was given, to stay for the full academic conference afterward.

Then – hallelujah! - after repeated requests, Vincent Browne's producer agreed to feature the conference on their Sunday morning show. Pribram's name in particular rang a bell; he is one of the great neuroscientists of the 20th century. It was Friday before I heard the bad news; VB had vetoed the item, and the producer could not reverse him. Why? As it turned out, said the producer delicately, he likes to look knowledgeable

Seán Ó Nualláin Ph.D 7u Feabhra 2011

Investigate the HEA

2011-02-05T10:34:00.000-08:00

Old habits die hard; I had invited the head of IFUT, the son of a FF TD, to commission someone from IFUT to give evidence at the forthcoming circuit court case. There has been no reply, and I now withdraw the invite; in fact, he did show up for an early EAT meeting, and promptly crossed the room to socialize in amicable – indeed, jocose fashion - with the DCU side for an hour as we waited for the panel's much-delayed appearance.

That was Feb, 2004; 7 years ago. It bears repeating that IFUT never showed up again for any other case; to repeat, I was the only person in the spectators' gallery at the Cahill Supreme Court case on the pro-tenure side, having flown from the USA to do so. SIPTU did not send as much as an observer; TCD sent a well-mannered elderly lawyer with a “watching” brief. I bought him lunch after he ran after me with my PDA which I had dropped; it was clear to him that the court was not buying the DCU side's arguments.

I am fully aware that this blog will be seen as - putting it gently – the more radical side of Irish university debate. It is very hard for me to take people like Paddy Healy, Steve Hedley and so on seriously. There has been a consensus view that surely the government would see sense, and the infinitely moderate debate hosted on the likes of 9th level etc would prevail?

As it happens, that view is after all correct, as FF are about to lose power. We may even have an election debate about something other than TV debates; now there's metadebate! There was one glorious outburst from Colin Coulter before everything settled down into civility;

Coulter's broadside

It is not unfair to say that Coulter believes that Hunt may have had a conflict of interest, in that the consulting firm for which Hunt works as a day job has a financial interest in the future of the Irish colleges that Hunt is attempting to shape. Colin Coulter missed Hunt's earlier career as a McCreevy sidekick and property booster but fingered McWilliams beautifully as part of the same cabal.

So what is the HEA's role? Essentially, it was to let management at colleges like DCU and UCC do whatever they wanted, to staff and students alike. As previously cited here, all Dail questions pointing out serious illegality at colleges were met with guff about “autonomous responsibilities” and a redefinition of “academic freedom” to encompass illegality on the part of management. The notion that “day to day” behavior was outside the remit of government – and how ingenious it is! - was drafted by a HEA hack called Padraic Mellett.

In the meantime, his boss Boland guest-blogged on Ferdie's sewer of consciousness venue, and has allowed DCU keep an illegal disciplinary statute on its books for a decade (and counting) as well as submit accounts with blank spaces in key fields:

https://universitydiary.wordpress.com/2010/05/10/the-view-from-the-hea/

This section from Boland's musings is irresistible;

"For a variety of reasons trust has been lost by a significant number of people in a wide range of important institutions – politics, the broader public service, the Catholic Church, bankers – the list goes on. Such a widespread loss of confidence is probably unprecedented, and certainly very unhealthy for our society. On the other hand, our higher education system continues to enjoy a high level of confidence for its capacity to deliver what people need in their lives and careers."

Not any more, Tom. Mainly thanks to your regime, there is now a national movement for academic freedom, and a rubric in place that says staff and students can be abused at will; and an ethos that there is no need for universities to obey even basic laws. The sooner you crawl back again under the rock where FF found you, the better.

To the incoming government, I say; investigate the HEA!

Seán Ó Nualláin Ph.D 5 Feabhra 2011

Election 2011; the coyote looks down, finally

2011-01-28T20:03:00.000-08:00

When the issue of academic tenure in Ireland was being decided at the EAT – in the absence of the 150 or so who participated in the recent gathering – I had flown over, at my own expense Glynn Custred, a member of the national association of scholars (NAS) in the USA to give expert witness on academic freedom. No Irish “expert” stepped forward for either Paul Cahill's or my cases, with Holborow even defying a high court summons, and it was left up to Justice Susan Denham to declare at Paul's supreme court case that what DCU/the state had in mind was precisely the end of academic freedom by introducing summary dismissal. SIPTU even refused the DCU sections committee's request for a lawyer to equal the DCU representation in my case, a standard jurisprudential request acceded to in all civilized countries.

Glynn was horrified by the treatment accorded Fergus M, the class rep who testified that I had not in fact missed any lectures, the main part of DCU's imaginative set of accusations. It was indeed he who labeled the entire DCU team as “thugs”; neither Glynn nor I withdrew that epithet, even when it became clear that the pathetic EAT – whom I characterized as “corrupt” here even before the verdict in my favor came out - was firmly on DCU's side. What was more interesting was his reaction to the fact that DCU HAS HAD AN ILLEGAL STATUTE ON ITS BOOKS FOR A DECADE, AND HAS USED IT REPEATEDLY (sorry for shouting). In fact, at least one of those subjected to this statute, Josh Howarth, killed himself. Another, called “”Kathleen” here, had to get mental health help – by which I mean a psychiatrist, not a counselor.

In “Road runner” cartoons, the coyote can follow RR over cliffs – until he looks down and realizes that he is defying gravity. DCU's criminal management will have many similar vertiginous moments over the next few weeks, as a decade of Irish political debate that was avoided gets compressed into a month. None of us ever before saw a situation whereby an illegal statute was presided over by a High court Judge and ex-Attorney General – but, of course, they were there precisely to preside over it.

The configuration of Ireland in early 2011 resembles nothing so much as an incomplete coup. The rule of law – which, unlike the Irish state, I respect – was abandoned a decade ago, and a massive transfer of money was effected to a group close to government. Eventually, the Greens – whom I left in 2003, and repeatedly ask to remove my name from their website – were brought in to prolong the scam. Paul Gogarty's concerns about DCU's illegal statute, which he had time and again brought up in the Dail, were forgotten as he became chair of the Dail education committee

(Incidentally, before we return to the death of tenure in Ireland, I recently was a successful party to no less than 3 hearings in US federal court as the Irish jurisdiction proved unable to handle a copyright dispute:

http://dockets.justia.com/docket/california/candce/4:2009cv03580/228656/

The Greens had known about this as well Essentially, IMRO, which like DCU is a pet FF scam, had a hussle going as follows; artists were signed to a FF-controlled label. What they did not know was that their copyright was stolen by the chair of IMRO as a consequence. Enterprise Ireland would facilitate the selling of the artists' material to some of the worst criminals in the music industry:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Clair_Entertainment_Group

After being sued from many quarters, as the wiki site shows, St Clair has now disappeared, vacating not just their physical offices, but their website ; we got a default judgement against them. These are the people the Irish state inflicted on its musicians, with the results we have seen for the music industry.

Then MOPS - the law firm chaired by the DCU chancellor who brought in the illegal statute – would defend the illegal assignment – for IMRO! See

http://seanonuallain.com/id2.html)

SUMMARY DISMISSAL - LEGAL IN IRELAND SINCE 1990

The 1990 industrial relations act, written in rather less charged times, reintroduced individual dismissals , with the reference to sections 10, 11, and 12 below being to the possibility of strikes;

“
Where in relation to the employment or non-employment or the terms or conditions of or affecting the employment of one individual worker, there are agreed procedures availed of by custom or in practice in the employment concerned, or provided for in a collective agreement, for the resolution of individual grievances, including dismissals, sections 10, 11 and 12 shall apply only where those procedures have been resorted to and exhausted.
“

Let us be clear; this was the end of academic tenure, or any job security, in Ireland. Anyone can be sacked, at any time, for anything or nothing. In this Prondzynski is absolutely correct(as distinct from the common law Cahill/Fanning cases); everything else is window-dressing. Can they be reinstated, once dismissed, after going through Irish IR?? Well, it is now nearly 10 years since I got a paycheck, despite a Labour court, EAT, two high court, and one Supreme court decisions on the issue. Why did SIPTU allow this ?There was momentum for a strike on the STATUTE, one that is legal within the terms of the 1990 act, and one that would have ensured that the Cahill, Howarth, and Kearney cases, inter alia, would have been won on the spot. (As readers of this blog know, I have developed a hypothesis about the motivations for SIPTU's non-action)

The notion “ individual dismissal” is itself peculiar. Let's look at some pseudocode in a fictitious block-structured computer language for the sacking of employees numbers 1 to 100;

For i=1 to 100

Begin

Dismiss (employee (i))

End

The function dismiss

Defun dismiss (a)
begin
Print 'Employee (a), “here's three months' salary, now go clean out your desk”'
end

So each of these ex-employees is an individual dismissal, and will be subjected to appeals lasting up to several decades. No procedures are necessary. Furthermore, regardless of the speed of the processor, there is a time lag between the dismissal of each employee. (If it's vista, it may be days). The geniuses at Arthur cox may not think of it in precisely these terms; my best guess is that the structure of their argument is;

“You're an individual, are you not?”

“Yes”

“This is therefore an individual dismissal”

The criminality of the procedures that both staff and students have been subjected to by DCU management will be appropriately responded to in time. For the moment, we need to protect ourselves, so that nobody else is forced to undergo what Paul Cahill, his family, and my own went through as these cretinous criminals and their political masters drove Ireland over the cliff's edge.

The so-called “academic freedom” meeting has happened because many academics signed contracts that made no provisions for tenure; some of them did so as “promotions”. The issue is not academic freedom; it is contract law. Are DCU's post 1995 contracts legal? Probably not. Are there similar contracts in other college? Probably yes.

So let's handle this as the IR issue it is. And try and make sure that the 1990 provisions – which allows everyone to be retried over and again for the same reasons, however spurious, as management appeal using taxpayers' money – ARE also done away with.

Seán Ó Nualláin Ph.D 28/29u Eanair 2011

PS I know how dreadfully ephemeral this sounds to academics, but the fact Fianna Fail are at only 16% even after changing their leader is going to have more effect on academic tenure - particularly at DCU - than anything written or said here, or elsewhere

Alternatively put, watch Mac Craith and the others in DCU management join in the new moderate point of view as they rush, desperately, for safety

Let's be clear - given that what has been going on at DCU is deliberate and organized illegality = that is, criminality - constituting a danger to the lives and welfare of many, surely the next step is to make a formal complaint at Whitehall garda station? If they persist in their present path, surely Mac craith, Byrne, Burns, conry and the others on site currently upholding this statute should be arrested?

If I make it back to vote, I will lodge the complaint myself. And now, miscreants, there is no Bertie Ahern to make a call to the cops to sort it out for you, unlike the last time!

PPS I just wrote to the "Greens" as follows;

"Despite my repeated requests, I note my name is still on;

http://www.greenparty.ie/en/policies/information_technology

I am not a member of the party, - I resigned in 2003 over Cuffe's inherited oil money - let alone a convenor and deplore its record in government. Please remove any mention of me on your website"

Paddy Healy is too funny to ignore

2011-01-25T22:40:00.000-08:00

Those close to me are aware that I'm from Kilkee, where the Irish state had little presence. We had a national school - where, ironically given the history of these institutions, most subjects were "as Gaeilge" - a post office, and a group of quietist mystics in what was revealed to me in later life as a "Garda station". That was a revelation, because the Derry IRA holidayed in Kilkee, and the cops maintained a wonderfully low profile as G. (later of an Foras Teanga)and the lads partied, the cops instead busting country bars for late night drinking before heading in for a few pints to Kilkee's illegally open hotel bars. .

That was all the Irish state had to offer ; apart form the occasional scam like testing cattle, which our veterinarians abused like everyone else, the incompetent and latterly criminal bureaucrats in Dublin left us alone. As we would say, flaunting our little classical education: "Deo Gratias". My view of the Irish state has not changed; it is a criminal conspiracy against the Irish people. Only from 2010 did it become official; our tax $$$ are to be sent direct to the likes of Johnny Ronan, but we Corca Baiscinners had always known that.

From time to time, word would reach us of protest against the Dublin state. Seamus Costello we took seriously; Paddy Healy, Alex White et al in the "League for a Workers Republic", we did not take seriously;

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/League_for_a_Workers_Republic

Likewise, Marnie Holborow, Keiron Allen and the other SWP people are beneath even derision. It is they who have destroyed academic tenure in the American model (free expression of opinion; no redundancies ) in Ireland. Allen and Holborow hels positions in SIPTU which they abused - the better, one assumes, to leverage world revolution from our little isle. We are meant to feel complimented?

But Paddy Healy is funny. I'm a bit impecunious at the moment, not having had a salary for nearly a decade; could someone please register

paddyhealy.com

as Paddy obviously is embarrassed by the "pro school discipline" views he used to express on it, and has let the site lapse?

For the record, there was no sign of Paddy, Garret Fitz, Tom Garvin, David Norris, the SWP heroes, or any of the 150 who turned up to support "academic freedom" when it mattered - at the cases involving Connell Fanning, Paul Cahill, and myself. Indeed, at Paul's supreme court hearing, TCD sent an observer; apart from me, there was no-one else in the spectators' gallery.

I assume the same holds for Dylan Evans, and hope that the Irish state does not provoke the suicide of another obviously sensitive and talented Englishman, as it did for Dr Josh Howarth

But Paddy - thanks for the many giggles over the past week!!

Seán Ó Nualláin Ph.D 25u Eanair 2011 (26u in Eireann)

PS https://www.register.com/domain/available.rcmx?domain=paddyhealy.com&term=36&result=available&domain=paddyhealy.com&selectedTLDs=.com

- still up for grabs at 8-35 am GMT !!

PPS I have redacted a name as it in the public interest only to know that the person in question later served in "An foras teanga"

“Academic freedom” in Ireland.

2011-01-25T01:56:00.000-08:00

It is proper to reply here to the recent initiative on “academic freedom” in Ireland. As I expected, it quickly morphed into pleas for a job until 65.

I must state my position clearly on this; no-one on the public payroll deserves a permanent job paying more than 50k a year, and involving fewer than 10 hours contact time with students. On the other hand, the state has behaved abominably; it has unilaterally changed contracts to preclude “tenure”, which used to be defined precisely as a job until 65. In DCU's case, management in 1995 issued a document with these new contracts, claiming it was a new “comprehensive agreement” with SIPTU superseding that of 1985. SIPTU never agreed it; anyone employed at DCU on a contract dating post 1995 is in contractual limbo at best.

It is safe to predict that cooler heads will prevail, now that this awful Gombeen/Gomgreen government is gone, and that there will NOT be mass firings at third level in Ireland. Some of us, like Josh Howarth and I, have been unlucky, and had our lives ruined; in fact, Josh killed himself after undergoing the rigours of DCU's illegal disciplinary procedures. Dylan Evans in Cork is currently going through something similar, and I wish him well. As for me, in 2003 I was offered my full salary until I got a new job in exchange for a formal resignation; in fact, Prondzynski went into Gormley's office at Leinster house to profer this. I refused; we have to work out what tenure is outside backroom deals.

Academic freedom, as defined here, should attach immediately to any teaching job at university. Indeed, it can and should extend to any public exchange of views, a la the US first amendment. The state should honour its contracts with its employees. The unions should keep management honest. Neither desideratum has been complied with of late; I tabled a motion of no confidence in SIPTU at DCU as early as 2008.

The issue of a job until 65 is an industrial relations one, not one of academic freedom. It can be addressed in a standard industrial relations context. It can correctly be argued that Irish unions currently negotiate salaries and nothing else; despite an unanimous vote for my reinstatement at DCU at a general meeting, SIPTU made it clear that they were against such reinstatement. In fact, on legal advice, I refused to allow Chris Rowland of SIPTU testify at my EAT hearing, as my lawyers (Clerkin Lynch) advised me she was going to give evidence that I was unduly critical of SIPTU.

I favour permanent tenured jobs at universities at a considerably diminished salary; 30-40% of what they are now. I see no reason why academics should get paid more than the bus drivers and street-cleaners who kept the country running during the recent blizzard. Conversely, the state should take its contractual obligations seriously, and prosecute management at DCU, who have been working in an illegal framework for a decade.

The main protagonist of the recent initiative comes form a similar background to Alex White, who spectacularly failed to mediate a legal statute at DCU. The absence of Cahill, Fanning, and myself at the recent shindig meant it had none of the people with actual front line experience;

http://9thlevelireland.wordpress.com/2011/01/23/report-on-the-academic-gathering-from-paddy-healy/

http://paddyhealy.wordpress.com/about/

Finally, I posted this on 9thlevelireland.wordpress.com;
“The mechanism for getting rid of an academic is simple; remove him/her from the payroll and ban him/her from campus. No procedures of any sort need be followed. Should the academic go the industrial relations route, the fact that it is a “single” dismissal means that his/her colleagues can’t strike. (In fact, our experience is that SIPTU will in any case lie to its members rather than strike)
The alternative; High Court injunction etc – involves the very real risk of personal bankruptcy that both Paul Cahill and Connell Fanning took.
For the record, I believe that the war on tenure was politically driven, and only governmental support would allow DCU keep a flagrantly illegal statute on its books for a decade. The withdrawal from politics of Noel Ahern destroys DCU’s last major protection. It is hard to imagine the incoming government allowing illegality of this nature.”

Seán Ó Nualláin Ph.D 25u Eanair 2011