Hugh,
Yesterday was very busy. I drove alone to Manistee to get a prescription for Pauline and a variety of things needed at the hardware store (mousetraps, a garden kneeling pad, lids for 5-gallon buckets, specific sizes of screws, ballpoint pens, paper plates, and groceries). It took a long time and was tiring.
I thought about your De Anima reflections but didn’t get farther than concluding that the Latin is preferable to the Greek (Peri Psyches) in that casual English usage would stimulate overtones of Life in Latin rather than of Mind in Greek. Happily, neither would immediately connote “soul” in common parlance.
As usual, the problem is the fundamental poverty of language itself. You probably will have to gin up some poetry if we are to proceed further!
I have been sleeping well, and this morning I woke fairly early and was able to have more than an hour of reflective thought before getting out of bed. That luxury is counterbalanced by constraints on my writing time this morning. So, although my thoughts will have some semblance of order, my writing will not probe as deeply as it might. I had probably better start with my comments because the pressure of time is increasing.
After we began reflecting on Julian Jayne’s take on Consciousness (when was that?), we came upon some agreement on the utility of the phrase: “subjective reflective self-consciousness”. (Did we hack that phrase together or did we incorporate it from someone else?) Without going further in that direction at the moment, I would also like to add the concept of “personhood”.
I believe I sent you an article (tell me if I didn’t) on Aphantasia––the inability to form mental images of remembered persons, places, things, and experiences. This rare phenomenon draws our attention to the fact that most people are able to form and be conscious of these images. There are also some who cannot mentally “hear” remembered tunes. At one time I was curious about the fact that it is quite possible to vocalize pitches indicated on printed musical notation with surprising accuracy. As I reflected on this, I noticed that my vocal cords physically changed their tension as I thought of various pitches. [Just think of the bugle call “reveille”. You will be surprised at how dramatic and clear this sensation is]
FULL STOP!! A Great Blue Heron, the first we have seen this year, just flew up from the water under the “Yellow Iris Cedar” about 30 feet from me! WOW! What a spot! What a life!
At any rate, “personhood”, although it can veer off and dive deeply into various realms, can be hijacked into being a stand-in for that element of De Anima that is limited to the idea of an essential human element that you allude to.
My, my. I had no idea that I could reduce the deep waters of thought that I had this morning into something that would have any coherence at all––much less that it would relate to the subject you are addressing.
I do hope that I can dip into the prospectus you sent, but I must warn you that I am also following the trail of the common elements of “the good Life & the good Death”––as well as living an otherwise ordinary life.
Something will have to give;
It always does.
Charles
Charles & All
(June 9, 2021)
This morning's herald:
Rising from the water
Beneath the cedar
And yellow iris,
A Great Blue Heron
Welcomes us home.