From: Noam Chomsky < To: J <[email protected]> Subject: Re: Date: Sat, 29 Dec 2018 14:24:01 +0000 Interesting perspective. Perhaps we can look at it sort of like this. The way our minds work, it develops constructs to try to accommodate our immediate experience -- like table and chairs to accommodate what I'm experiencing now, manifestations of what we take to be an external world; and comparably, norms of social action and beliefs about society to accommodate what I experience in social life, manifestations of what we take to be a prevailing culture. If so, we're back to Bertie's picture but with a broader range, the mind constructing an external world that consists of tables, chairs, cultural norms,... in an effort to provide some coherence to the flux of experience (itself a construct, so our efforts at scientific explanation instruct us). There's a preliminary discussion with the mediator planned for Jan. 2, then a general mediation session later. Will keep you up-to-date of course. Noam On Sat, Dec 29, 2018 at 12:06 PM J <[email protected]> wrote: what i am suggesting is that what the term culture means is the same as what consciousness means. culture can be describes as russell did for consciousness. the physics and math envy habit of trying to measure things . we experience culture, it is stubborn, transmitted, localized. contains memories. boundaries. dictum. . it manifests itself in different ways but doesn't have a separate existence. it is like consiousness a human construct. no more no less. btw, is a mediation date and time set. yet? vincent papers were good except for the amount to settle. On Sat, Dec 29, 2018 at 8:56 AM Noam Chomsky > wrote: From the point of view of a jihadi, Klan, evangelical Christian, my ultra-orthodox grandfather,.... ifs the rest of the world that's crazy. I think we can do better than just to take the fall-back position that craziness is a value judgment, but not so easy. On consciousness,