add cogsci blog posts

_bibliography/references.bib

@@ -533,3 +533,17 @@
   journal={MIT Technology Review},
   year={2020}
 }
+
+@article{von1992stroll,
+  title={A stroll through the worlds of animals and men: A picture book of invisible worlds},
+  author={Von Uexk{\"u}ll, Jakob},
+  year={1992},
+  publisher={Walter de Gruyter, Berlin/New York Berlin, New York}
+}
+
+@book{maturana1987tree,
+  title={The tree of knowledge: The biological roots of human understanding.},
+  author={Maturana, Humberto R and Varela, Francisco J},
+  year={1987},
+  publisher={New Science Library/Shambhala Publications}
+}

_posts/2021-02-14-depression-as-an-umwelt.md

@@ -0,0 +1,60 @@
+---
+layout: post
+title: "Depression as an Umwelt"
+date: 2021-02-14 00:00:00
+permalink: depression-as-an-umwelt/
+categories: personal, philosophy
+author: Mahdi
+---
+
+[Von Uexküll’s A Stroll Through the Worlds of Animals and
+Men](http://cspeech.ucd.ie/Fred/docs/vonUexkuell.pdf) is my favourite reading of
+the module so far, and it made me think about the relation of depression and the
+_Umwelt_, and what better time than our pandemic to think about these things with first-hand experiences.
+
+An animal, or any being’s Umwelt is restricted to what is relevant for that
+being, as an example, the tick’s Umwelt does not include vision or hearing similar to ours, but rather, it mostly consists of a sense of smell, and not one that us humans employ, but one that is specifically sensitive to one smell, that of butyric acid. Similarly, this idea extends to space and time; a snail’s sense of time is different to ours as is shown with the rubber ball experiment.
+
+Now of course, each individual being has its own Umwelt, although it may share
+a lot of properties with other members of its species, no two individuals can be
+said to have the same Umwelt:
+
+> In the grounds of my cousin’s castle in Estonia there stoon an old apple tree.
+A huge lichen had grown on it, which vaguely resembled the face of a clown, but
+no one had ever noticed this resemblance. One day my cousin had a dozen Russian
+seasonal labourers brought in, who discovered the apple tree and thereafter
+gathered before it daily for worship, murmuring prayers and crossing themselves.
+They declared that the fungus must be a wonder-working image, because it was not
+made by hand of man. To them, magic processes in nature appeared quite natural.
+{% cite von1992stroll %}
+
+This idea seems compatible with my experience with depression, that is, there is a gradual or at times a more instant shift in an individual’s Umwelt when they experience depression or similar states. With this idea in mind, I set out to find such differences with empirical evidence.
+
+Turns out, there is reason to believe that depression might cause [changes in
+our visual
+perception](https://www.health.harvard.edu/newsletter_article/the-quirky-brain-how-depression-may-alter-visual-perception),
+perhaps[^1] seeing with a lower contrast; [perception of
+time](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30798221/) as in time dilation or
+acceleration, as well as a potential [reduction in pain
+perception](https://journals.lww.com/psychosomaticmedicine/Citation/1994/07000/Pain_perception_in_depression__relationships_to.10.aspx)
+and [more](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19414617/).
+
+In a sense, depression has an Umwelt of its own, one with features that might
+be shared among those who experience it, or not. The significance of this for me
+is the hard problem of understanding depression, since it’s an Umwelt of its
+own, it is not easy for us to see into each others’ Umwelt, and if factors
+such as culture, language, history and more change our Umwelt and make it
+harder for us to understand each other, so do states such as depression. One
+might say the same could be said without the need to refer to an Umwelt, however, the distinction between worlds is important here. The understanding that this is not merely a change to be explained through simple behavioral analysis, but rather it might mean diving deep into another world governed by different rules.
+
+_This blog post was originally written for [Beyond
+Solipsism](https://postcognitivism.wordpress.com/2021/02/14/depression-as-an-umwelt/#more-3255)
+as part of my cognitive science course_
+
+## References
+
+{% bibliography --cited %}
+
+## Footnotes
+
+[^1]: I emphasise perhaps, because I personally have doubts about how much can be inferred from brain scan experiments, one might say there is a difference, but what the difference exactly is might not be as reliably derivable.

_posts/2021-04-05-a-fear-of-worlds-unknown.md

@@ -0,0 +1,36 @@
+---
+layout: post
+title: "A Fear of Worlds Unknown"
+date: 2021-04-05 00:00:00
+permalink: a-fear-of-worlds-unknown/
+categories: personal, philosophy
+author: Mahdi
+---
+
+When it comes to ethics, the impossibly hard question of ethics, we get dizzy when we try to think about relativity of it. The ideas of 4E cognition and imminence have been closer to my heart than the alternative approaches, however, I have always been dumbfounded by the question of ethics in such a framework.
+
+In The Tree of Knowledge, Maturana and Varela touch on this dizziness and fear that may haunt us once we realise we can’t pin down an origin for what happens, as all beings are structurally coupled and there is a mutual “bringing forth” of worlds by each, hence there is no the world, but a world for each, and each of these worlds is as legitimate as any other. Escher’s drawing of a hand drawing itself is a potential depiction of this recursion where we can’t say who is drawing who: we are bringing forth a world as much as this world brings us forth.
+
+> [I]f we do not presuppose an objective world independent of us as observers,
+it seems we are accepting that everything is relative and anything is possible
+in the denial of all lawfulness. Thus we confront the problem of understanding
+how our experience—the praxis of our living—is coupled to a surrounding world
+which appears filled with regularities that are at every instant the result of
+our biological and social histories. {% cite maturana1987tree %} (Chapter 10,
+page 241)
+
+How can we talk about ethics in such a setting? If there is no objective world to be talked about, no objective morality, what do we have to say at all about ethics?
+Copyright: Stranger on the internet who made the meme
+
+It seems impossible to accept legitimacy of someone else’s world and moral values if we are on opposite ends of an spectrum; it’s hard to accept Trump supporters by liberals, it’s hard to accept cannibalism by certain cultures, etcetera. Meanwhile, there is a close coupling between these opposing parties, even though it may not seem so at first glance. We only have a world that we bring forth together with others, whether we like them or not.
+
+In this setup we are doomed if we aim for certainty and an ideological truth on any subject, specially moral subjects. Our only hope is to opt for a mutual broadening of our perspectives to include understanding of worlds unknown to us, to not be astonished by another’s world, but be able to take it in. We don’t have to adopt another’s world, to replace our world with theirs (or force them to adopt our world!), but we need to understand the validity of all worlds.
+
+A friend of mine once told me that Utopia is not a place where everything and everyone is doing the right things, but it is a place that anyone can be anything they want to be. Utopia does not exist and will never come, but I think I am slowly starting to understand this concept. Still, I struggle with how this would work in practice, but I find it hard to see transcedental or absolute ethics as an alternative.
+
+
+_This blog post was originally written for [Beyond
+Solipsism](https://postcognitivism.wordpress.com/2021/04/05/a-fear-of-worlds-unknown/#more-3647)
+as part of my cognitive science course_
+
+{% bibliography --cited %}

_sass/_layout.scss

@@ -166,6 +166,15 @@ strong {
   }
 }
 
+.post-content .footnote + .heading-link {
+  display: none;
+}
+
+.footnotes .heading-link {
+  left: -40px;
+  top: 5px;
+}
+
 article .image-caption {
   display: block;
   text-align: center;