ericgerlach79
Gerlach is German and rhymes with bear-lock. I was born and raised in the Haight Ashbury of San Francisco, moved to Berkeley for college and grad school, with an MA in History of Religion from the Graduate Theological Union of Berkeley, and now teach Philosophy and the history of human thought at Berkeley City College. I have taught Intro Philosophy, Ethics, Logic, Asian Philosophy, Greek Philosophy, Modern European Philosophy and Social & Political Philosophy there for the past several years, and it has been a joy.
Thought Itself 
February 8, 2021 at 4:24 am
I’m back! Quite enjoyable. I like Wittgenstein’s later idea of logic being something more culturally specific, rather than some sort of universal truth-checker. It definitely makes logic more appealing. While I did a decent chunk of truth tables in math, it never completely clicked. This approach seems more philosophical than it does ‘mathy’. This in mind, I think it’s very reasonable to assume all humans functions through a sort of pragmatic ‘math’ based map that includes more variables such as emotion, temperament, norms, etc combining to make cultural idiosyncratic ‘logic’s.
At least, this is me attempting to paraphrase what I thought you were saying.
Side note, with some of your comments about psychology: I used to be quite fond of the all things depth-psychology, reading much of Jung’s collected works and enjoying Lacan’s thought as well. While I don’t want to throw out the babies with the bathwater (as some of the babies are quite useful, pragmatically speaking), I am now highly skeptical of any claim to any sort of ‘unconscious’.
I kinda of follow the thought of post-jungian James Hillam here, who thought that ideas like ‘complexes’, ‘ego’ and ‘unconscious’ were concretized and turned into a set of metaphysics that pretends to be empiricism. I mean… I don’t know about you, but I have never met an ‘ego’… (and to some extent, I think that’s what Zen might respond with to these sort of ideas)
At best, whether its based on mirrors/language, or some convoluted claim to evolutionary platonic forms, most depth psychologies are best treated as phenomenologies.
Well, anyway, that’s just my personal rant I make to myself some mornings.
I will try to catch up on your logic talks, and maybe the analytic & continental lectures, but I promise nothing.
Interested to see what you do with logic and Zen, if that should come up!
February 9, 2021 at 1:47 am
I’m glad you’re back. I am very into Wittgenstein’s criticism of Freud, and he would say anything unconscious is overthinking it. The self is the interweaving of several things, often the tactile sensation of being a self, which is overlooked to pay attention to anything, but also glimpses of hands, the face in the mirror (hello, Lacan!) and the sound of one’s voice, even the tactile experience of the sound of one’s voice as it overlaps with the sound, and imagining oneself occasionally. Much of the self is given in the situation, not an inner mental conception in any way, conscious or unconscious. That’s what Wittgenstein seems to say in his later work, and it fits in amazing ways with Zen. I am going to make more Zen videos tomorrow.