Ironsoul seems a fitting name for the man in this case. This scenario also explains his comment in the lava-filled depths of Cil-Aujas when they all think they're in Hell, but says that it isn't and he knows because he'd already seen Hell.

Crackpot: If a mortal swallowed a chorae, would they be able to walk into the Outside without destroying the portal?

Ironsoul indeed.

I think you're exaggerating the inability of philosophers to come to terms with scientific discovery, though I would agree we know so little about QM trying to say any philosophical argument is definitive gospel would be a mistake.

I try, sometimes poorly, to respect the value of philosophers and their modern development in the light of scientific understanding.  But understanding doesn't always correlate to total literacy - in the perspective of the utterly nonintuitive mathematics of QM, the only way towards understanding is a hideous slog of slogs towards the literacy (only on this board could I make this comparison in saying that QM is the gnosis to a Newtonian and intuitive anagnosis).

And that's not to speak poorly on any philosophy.  Some things are simply alien, through and through.

Couldn't you say the same about neuroscience?

I think neuroscience is the gate and gatekeeper and key between objective and subjective realities.  You poke the brain and get subjective experiences, you have subjective experiences and get objective signals.  And that means that any well-considered subjective experience can enlighten us, should we analyze it carefully enough.

QM might exist almost entirely outside of that.  The objective reality of the very small is so beyond our intuition and perspective that it is only by the tenuously logical proofs of a bizarre mathematics that we come to any remote understanding of it. 

Quote from: Wic on August 21, 2014, 10:47:06 pm

I just LOVE when philosophers talk about QM.  Absolutely priapic.

Sarcasm?

Much sarcasm.  QM is not the kind of model where you get the gist of it and then get to go out and express your personal theoretical interpretations as though they were valuable - there's a reason for a phrase that comes up often, 'shut up and calculate'.  It's not the kind of thing we can easily make sense of, internally.  Which makes the kind of people who think they've made sense of things on that scale, inadequate in any explanatory capacity.

It stands to reason that the Saik, being part of the empire that has that 'perpetual war and commerce' arrangement with the Kianene, would know something of the politics of the Cish, being as they're interconnected with the religion and politics of the region much more than any of the other Schools.

Hell, I've missed that.  Unless - are you talking about when he realizes there's been a 'shadow' structure, within the Heights?

There are a few quotes throughout the series that indicate the value of 'witnessing', much of it in Kell's lectures (which are prone to be lies used for manipulation, but the Dunyain know how easily you can manipulate with the truth instead), and the importance of the Judging Eye lends credence to that. 

Perhaps the fact that the God (or any god) can only judge by holding witness lends credence to that.

They don't?

No, can't find it since it's the one I don't have digitally, but in WLW, Cleric asks Mimara something like "Is it true that man experiences touching themselves and the touch of another differently?"  Whether or not that's the exact wording, the implication was very much from a 'different species' perspective, rather than 'Erratic vs. non-Erratic'.

Their art depicts a flow or summation of behaviors - they are never tricked into thinking their present self is the self.

These are radically different perspectives, and it makes their thinking genuinely alien to our own.

Is this radically different experience of reality due to them being (most likely) an entirely different species from Homo sapiens, or is it due to the slow derangement that accumulates as a result of their inability to cope with the sheer volume of their own memories? I find it hard to believe most Nonmen could function if their perspectives are anything approaching as erratic as the one in the first Atrocity Tale. But then he was an Erratic. And yet in a way that kind of art seems to represent a tendency not to see things in discrete events separated in time, which is certainly how that particular Cunuroi perceived the world.

And clearly their perceptions are different in some ways...they can't see paintings, evidently, so they have to do friezes and statues.

I just think their alzheimer's like symptoms are going to make judging what is native to their species and what is pathology difficult, if they end up being present in all Nonmen to one degree or another.

And I wonder what it implies of the Quya is Nonman thinking is inherently so alien to Homo sapiens? Is there really all that much overlap between the Quya and the Gnosis? The Nonman mind may be able to make logical leaps in their sorceries that a human would be unable to, and vice versa.

But yeah, if we get characters at Ishterebinth hopefully some of these questions are at least partially answered.

In this universe (that is, from Bakker's view), the 'self', and what it means to be a 'self', takes on a strong significance, so I think there's a deliberate creation in the Nonman self - and I think the ultimate crux of the Nonman self is that they don't view themselves as an instant, as  a purely present existence.  They recognize, perhaps only briefly, that what comes before and after is still integral to what defines their selves, and from there it might easily flow into a lack of distinction between other selves.

Maybe Bakker read up on mirror neurons and integrated those into the Nonman mind.

Also, I believe Madness said that we will explore a great deal of Nonman culture and mindsets when the story reaches Ishterebinth.