A Bifurcated Approach

Date

3/24/19

Last time, I ended with the beginning of an analysis of the components of consciousness. That is a project that I identified in my essay, "A Proposal for an Expanded Paradigm", but did not advance very far except for a brief sketch about how one might proceed.

My excuses for not following through with that project were first that Max Tegmark had imposed a strict word-count limit on the essay which I had trouble staying within, and second that I just hadn't been motivated to work on it since I submitted the essay. But now, as I mentioned in the previous musing, I have had a renewal of interest and motivation and I am ready to continue.

After having started that analysis in the prior musing, and after having re-read my essay, it occurred to me that I should completely re-write the essay. I am no longer constrained by Max's word-count limit, and it is no longer necessary to contort the essay just to answer the specific questions Max required that I answer. I am free to address the topics of consciousness, cosmogony, and cosmology directly as I see fit.

So that brings us to the title of this musing, which might have been a little puzzling to you. What I mean is that I am going to pursue two different approaches to developing and explaining my theory of consciousness. One prong will continue to be these musings, which will still be occasional stream-of-consciousness chronicles of my progress, but the second, the other prong of the bifurcation, will be a re-write of my essay. It will still be titled "A Proposal for an Expanded Paradigm" but it will be as comprehensive as I am able to make it.

I am not sure how to enable you to follow along with the development because I have not yet decided exactly what and when to publish. I have, however, decided where to publish. That will be on my website which means that it will be strictly under my control with no deadlines, rules, or any other restrictions on what I think and write.

I expect that I will publish the musings on a fairly timely basis as I did with the first set of musings. But I will probably not publish intermediate drafts of my essay. Or maybe I will. We'll see how it goes. I may just include the new material for the essay in the current musing. I just don't know.

What I do know is that I started this musing too late in the evening to be able to think coherently (you could probably tell), so I am going to close it off for now and when I get some more energy, I will begin re-writing my essay, and post these new musings on my web site. So, goodbye for now.



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