The Center publishes "Dianoetikon: A Practical Journal" on the CSDL website. "Dianoetikon" is one of many Greek terms used by Aristotle to describe our myriad of mental activities. We would translate it as "thinking-things-through" (in the spirit of classicist Joe Sachs, who translates the Aristotelian neo-logism "entelechy" as "being-at-work-staying-itself"). As with Sachs, we hope to suggest the dynamic activity involved, as well as the teleology implied, in our thinking.
Aristotle is very important for the Center's work. While noting Whitehead's the "European philosophical tradition. . . consists of a series of footnotes to Plato," we also note that his interest in "Process Philosophy" has a decidedly ELECTRIC sensibility to it. While Plato is certainly not to be discarded and ongoing efforts to remove later anachronisms from available translations is appreciated, we consider ourselves to be "realists" and attempt to set aside our technologically-conditioned biases when it come to promoting "idealisms."
"Existence is real . . . ," as Thomist Frederich "Fritz" Wilhelmson put it. For this reason, we have aggressively tried to understand the psychology of perception involved – in particular, the relationship between the faculities of Imagination and Memory. Aristotle is the father of psychology. His foundational work persisted from 400BC until the 19th-century, when it was discarded in favor of "experimental psychology." Typically labeled "philosophical psychology," Aristotle's themes and categories were taken up by both Hebrews and Muslims alike. It was integrated into Western medicine via Galen. Often called "Faculty Psychology" (named after the "faculties" or "powers" of the soul), the Aristotelian understanding of the human psyche was even the basis of the first psychology text translated into Japanese and Chinese in the 1870s (East cultures which previously had no terms for what the West calls psychology).
So, how do we tell the difference between make-believe and reality? Or, as the 1980s commercial put it, "Is it Live or is it Memorex?" This question is at the center of the concerns over "disinformation" – prompting a flurry of efforts to somehow prevent TELEVISION-based "deep-fakes" (which some think will have political consequences) by implementing "standards" and "watermarks" to authorize the "real" versions. We seriously doubt that approach will succeed. It is not the "authority" involved but rather the "eye of the beholder" that really matters. This, in turn, depends on the ability of the population to recognize the patterns involved (see Patterns heading).
Aristotle's psychological frameworks reached their zenith in the 13th-century work of St. Thomas Aquinas (along with his mentor, Albert the Great). We have recovered a robust version of Aquinas &al in our first volume of Dianoetikon, "Ecology of the Inner Senses." It contains original essays along with a bibliography, as well as reprints of various 20th-century efforts to remember an important understanding that has been lost. Our view, broadly, is that "experimental" science suffers from a lack of grounding in Natural Law and that "experimental psychology," in particular, suffers from a lack of understanding of the psyche/soul. Lacking that ground, things cannot end well. As a result, we are looking to work with neuro-scientists and others to launch a DIGITAL understanding of these factors.
TELEVISION is a technology deliberately designed to promote illusion. In many ways, it is an animated Rorshach test. Like with an "ink blot," there is actually no real image involved – only a suggestion of one. Our subconscious "inner senses" are then expected to turn a blinking-light puppet-show into something that commands our attention and emotions (as well as our wallets). The result is a population suffering from a wide-range of delusions – for which the mechanism called "memes" is supposed to implant "media viruses" into our awareness. Memes are a tenous replacement for RADIO-based propaganda now in break-down mode – with the "disinformation" crisis as one of the results. Our suggestion is that ELECTRIC media – Radio, Movies, Newspapers, Television &c – will likely never achieve their previous levels of blind acceptance. The fire is upon us and the willingness of the population to "suspend disbelief" has already stampeded through the barn-door.
DIGITAL, on the other-hand, is a technology that is rigidly grounded in flawless memory-based systems. McLuhan suggests that Computers retrieve the human sense of "Perfect Memory – Total and Exact." Internally, every computer spends most of its time storing and recovering bits of memory, often with elaborate error-checking to avoid crashing to a halt. The human faculty of Memory is tasked with associating "images" with each other, adding time-stamps and generating percepts, while recognizing patterns. If this process is corrupted, as it has been severely under TELEVISION conditions, Imagination degenerates into Fantasy. In sharp contrast, as humans confront technology that relies on valid memory, our own diminished Memory capabilities are likely to be enhanced.
Plato was half-correct when he introduced the notion that writing would "implant forgetfulness in our souls" (undermining Memory as it had been exercized under ORAL conditions). What he missed – since his student Aristotle hadn't yet invented psychology – was that the fact that a new kind of memory would be the result. Merlin Donald names this next "stage in the evolution of culture and cognition" the "Theoretic Culture," while highlighting its reliance on "External Symbolic Storage." In terms of our understanding of environments, this reflects the transition from ORAL to SCRIBAL – a process also associated with the Axial Age (c. 500BC) and the rise of "religion" that relied on both literacy and "sacred texts." We believe that humanity is now going through a fresh stage-rehearsal of those changing environmental conditions. The archiac ORAL that ELECTRIC media retrieved is now being replaced by a new SCRIBAL (aka "medieval") attitude – just in the nick of time.
Dianoetikon Vol 1 addresses these issues, introducing a framework for a new Psychology. Vol. 2 will extend this effort to understanding how Subsidiarity underpins a new Economics, while Vol. 3 will build on Solidarity as the basis for a new Political Economics. We look forward to developing these new frameworks, so they can then enable a host of new questions and hopefully contribute to the training of our sensibilities.