Saturday, June 19, 2010

What is Naturalism? Part III: The Quest for a Pathway to the Noumenal

In the last post, we looked at Kant’s distinction between phenomena (objects as they appear to us) and noumena (things as they are in themselves), and we saw that Kant took the noumenal realm to be entirely inaccessible to human understanding. Whatever is knowable by human beings is knowable by virtue of being presented to us in experience—and anything that is presented to us in experience is a phenomenon. Furthermore, phenomena are not only presented in a form that says more about our mode of apprehension than it does about the things being apprehended (their spatio-temporal properties are an example of this), but any effort to understand them necessarily involves putting them into conceptual categories that, at the most basic level, say more about the nature of human cognition than than they do about the objects being conceptualized.
So, the object of experience is an appearance, not a thing-in-itself (which is beyond the reach of cognition). All our knowledge is thus knowledge of appearances. But the world of appearances has a givenness to it: it is a world we have to come to grips with, a world that operates according to rules that hold regardless of what we might wish. Put in simple terms, this world of appearances is the world in which we live our lives—and even though it is in part constructed by our distinctively human cognitive faculties, its features are beyond our conscious control or will. Space and time won’t go away just because we wish them to—they are an inextricable part of the world of experience.

For these reasons, Kant calls the world of appearances “empirical reality”—it is real in the sense that it’s a given, something we have to come to grips with. But even though space and time are therefore “empirically real,” they are not for Kant a feature of things as they are in themselves apart from our experience. They are, rather, the necessary form in which our faculties of perception present objects to us in experience. Kant captures this idea by saying that space and time, while empirically real, are transcendentally ideal. That is, they are a real part of the empirical world (the world of phenomena) but not of the noumena that lie behind or beyond the empirical world.

If all of this is correct, then “ultimate” reality is unknowable. And, as I pointed out in the last post, this implication of Kant’s thought was not one that others were prepared simply to accept. In the intellectual generation immediately following Kant, there were two towering figures in philosophy and theology who, each in his own way, sought a pathway beyond the wall of unknowability that Kant had erected around the noumenal.

I’m speaking, of course, of Schleiermacher and Hegel. Both thought that Kant had missed something important—namely, that the self which experiences the world is also a part of the world it is experiencing. Rather than there being this sharp divide between the experiencing subject and things-in-themselves, with phenomena emerging at the point of interface, the experiencing subject is a thing-in-itself. It is one of the noumena—or, put another way, the self that experiences the world is part of the ultimate reality that lies behind experience.

So: the self that has experiences is a noumenal reality. Both Schleiermacher and Hegel believed that this fact could be made use of, so that somehow the self could serve as a wedge to pry open a doorway through the wall of mystery, into an understanding of reality as it is in itself.

But this understanding couldn’t be achieved by simply turning our attention on ourselves. As soon as we do that we’ve made ourselves into an object of experience, and this object is just as likely to be the product of our own cognitive reconstructions as any other object. In other words, what we are presented with when we investigate ourselves introspectively is the phenomenal self, not the noumenal self. The self as it appears to itself may be radically unlike the self as it is in itself.

In briefest terms, Hegel’s solution to this conundrum was his dialectical method. If my understanding of myself is at odds with what I am in myself, Hegel thought this would become apparent as I attempt to be (in practice) what I take myself to be (in theory). There arises a clash between my self-concept and what the self really is, a clash that manifests itself as a “contradiction,” one that then forces a revision in my self-understanding. When I try on this new self-understanding and attempt to live it out, another contradiction emerges. And so on. The resulting “dialectic” (Hegel’s name for this evolutionary process) continues until (at the end of history, so to speak) I finally reach a self-understanding that generates no contradictions when lived out. At that point, the phenomenal self has collapsed into the noumenal self—and I come to see what I am in myself.

According to Hegel’s own developed philosophy, the vision I have of my noumenal self turns out to be not just a vision of one small piece of the noumenal realm, but rather a vision of the Absolute (Hegel’s term for the ultimate noumenal reality). And this makes sense, insofar as an understanding of the self cannot be divorced from an understanding of broader reality. A materialist understanding of the self is wedded to a materialist understanding of the universe, etc.

Let’s leave Hegel aside for a moment to consider how Schleiermacher dealt with the same conundrum--that is, with fact that even if I am a noumenal self, the self as I appear to myself may not be all that similar to what I am in myself. Schleiermacher dealt with this conundrum by privileging a distinct mode of self-consciousness, one in which all attempts to make the self into an object of consciousness—that is, all attempts to come to know the self—are set aside. When the self is made an object of study it becomes a phenomenon, and as such is divorced from the noumenal self. But it is possible to simply be—to become quiescent, if you will, and simply be what one is rather than attempt to know what one is.

And in this place of cognitive stillness, one discovers in a direct experiential way an ultimate reality that cannot be conceptualized or made into an object of study. This is the domain of mystical experience—and even though it is ineffable (that is, even if it cannot be made into an object of knowledge) it brings with it a kind of insight or enlightenment. One may not be able to adequately put this experience into propositional terms that can be affirmed as true, but that doesn’t mean one hasn’t in some sense encountered noumenal reality. One hasn’t encountered it as an object of experience (since that would turn it into a phenomenon). Rather, one encounters it in the way one experiences.

The challenge, then, is to attempt to articulate this encounter in a way that is meaningful to us--in other words, in a way that our cognitive minds can grasp and affirm. The encounter itself is what Schleiermacher calls “religion.” The effort to articulate this encounter is theology. My own view, for what it’s worth, is that theology risks turning this profound mystical experience into just another phenomenon unless something like Hegel’s methodology guides the theological discipline. And so, rather than treating the approaches of Schleiermacher and Hegel as alternatives, I treat them as complementary pieces of a broader strategy. In effect, as we spiral up through the Hegelian dialectic, one of the most important things to do is pay attention to what implications our self-understanding has for the interpretation of mystical experience. Contradictions that arise on this front are uniquely significant in driving the evolution of our self-understanding

But defending the merits of this approach will have to wait for another time, because my aim here is simply to describe one broad strategy for trying to get beyond the Kantian wall of mystery that hides noumenal reality from us. And my main reason for describing this broad strategy is to offer a point of contrast with the view that I take metaphysical naturalists to be espousing.

Make no mistake: like Hegel and Schleiermacher, metaphysical naturalists think there is a way to get beyond appearances to things-as-they-are-in-themselves. But for the metaphysical naturalist, the method isn’t Hegel’s philosophical one of pushing successive self-concepts to the point of rational untenability, nor is it Schleiermacher’s method of critically reflecting on alternative interpretations of mystical experience. Rather, the method is a scientific one of describing the phenomenal world, modeling it in essentially mechanistic or mathematical terms (that is, conceiving a general mechanism that might produce the range of phenomena we observe, or a coming up with a mathematical formula that these varied observations all fit into), and then testing and refining the models in the light of further phenomenal observations.

What the metaphysical naturalist claims is that this method gets us past appearances to things as they are in themselves—or at least it moves us ever closer to an understanding of reality as it is apart from our experience of it. The question is why one might think that, and why one might be skeptical. And while I had originally thought to take up that question in this post, my lead-up to it took more space than I had expected—so it will be the topic of the next.

16 comments:

  1. Eric,

    Thanks very much for this very informative series of lectures on Kant and naturalism.

    If I understand you correctly, “empirically real” includes all our experience of reality, including those experiences that are subjective and private, such as one’s experience of beauty. Thus, both one’s experience of a tree and of this tree’s beauty are parts of the phenomenal world.

    I don’t quite get why warranted beliefs about the phenomenal reality are “knowledge” whereas warranted beliefs about the noumenal reality are not. The way we arrive at the former beliefs is certainly very different than the way we arrive at the latter (and here you explain how Hegel and Schleiermacher suggest one can arrive at the latter), but why is the epistemic status of the latter lower than the former as the knowable/unknowable distinction strongly suggests? Why not the other way around, for the noumenon is what is basic and the phenomena what is contingent? (Incidentally I find both these ways very reasonable. The mark of falsity is incoherence, and Hegel’s way methodologically makes use of this fact. And Schleiermacher proposes the way of mystical experience, which is an experience of union and thus pierces the veil that hides noumenal reality; I wonder if the ancient Greek dictum “know thyself” does not refer to the same way. On theism, I suppose, there is a third way, namely God’s self-revelation in history. A fourth way would be more intellectual, namely to make alternative hypotheses about the noumenal reality and then study which one works better when directly compared under some given set of epistemic principles. So, by pointing out the chasm, Kant inspired people to discover ways to bridge it.)

    The idea that we ourselves, as a thing-in-itself, are part of the noumenon, and that given this we have some privileged access, is very interesting. What I found especially striking is that if we assume that the noumenon consists *only* of beings as ourselves, one directly gets to Berkeley’s subjective idealism. I always thought that subjective idealism is the most parsimonious ontology, in the sense that it requires the least number of assumptions, and hence is the worldview one should adopt. Indeed subjective idealism’s assumptions are incorrigible, for it only assumes two kinds of things the existence of which is both inescapable and inseparable, namely: experience and experiencer. Why people in general, and theists in particular, have walked away from subjective idealism is a great mystery to me. I’d very much appreciate your thoughts on subjective idealism, perhaps in a later series. (And I really hope I am not abusing your kindness here.)

    You write: “ Rather, [naturalism’s] method is a scientific one of describing the phenomenal world, modeling it in essentially mechanistic or mathematical terms (that is, conceiving a general mechanism that might produce the range of phenomena we observe, or a coming up with a mathematical formula that these varied observations all fit into), and then testing and refining the models

    Ah, but observe that this scientific way can only account for the objective/public part of the phenomenal world (not to mention that even this limited task has proven to be extremely difficult since the discovery of quantum phenomena). The naturalist is then at a loss of how to deal with the noumenon which produces the subjective part of the phenomenal world, such as our experience of beauty, and simply pushes this major problem under the rug suggesting that in the future science will somehow explain consciousness, and thus discover what produces our subjective experience. The problem of course is that science’ methodology only deals with the objective/public part of the phenomenal world, for which task it does not even require the consciousness hypothesis. So, the naturalist can only hope that a different and as yet unknown kind of science will evolve in the future. But until then naturalism’s way to pierce the veil is not even defined, let alone shown to be successful.

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  2. Hi-

    "That is, they are a real part of the empirical world (the world of phenomena) but not of the noumena that lie behind or beyond the empirical world."

    But he has no idea, not knowing anything about the so-called noumenal world. Where does Kant get off telling us what is or isn't part of it if he has just finished telling us we can't know anything about it? Sounds like he is trying to have his cake an eat it too, especially for the sake of sneaking in some cognitively-driven theology.


    "As soon as we do that we’ve made ourselves into an object of experience, and this object is just as likely to be the product of our own cognitive reconstructions as any other object."

    Amen- that is where people came up with the idea of the soul and other intuitive conceptions.


    "According to Hegel’s own developed philosophy, the vision I have of my noumenal self turns out to be not just a vision of one small piece of the noumenal realm, but rather a vision of the Absolute..."

    I'd go wtih Kant here. The lesson of Freud and similar psychologies is that even scratching the surface of our inner selves is difficult to the point of impossible- Hegel's ambition is unfulfillable. We can not know ourselves by introspection. The Buddhists are an excellent example, having developed powerful practices of introspection. These have rendered up the principle insight of no-self, but aside from that amount largely to cultivation of one's good nature, which is a wonderful and positive thing, but not the same as really knowing what is going on inside.


    "And in this place of cognitive stillness, one discovers in a direct experiential way an ultimate reality that cannot be conceptualized or made into an object of study. ... but that doesn’t mean one hasn’t in some sense encountered noumenal reality."

    And what is this experience? I am tempted to say that no one knows, and equating it with noumenal is grossly overstepping one's warrant. Yet we do know quite well what it is- it is a brain function that gives us some warpage of our normal conscious experience, as can be induced in many physical ways. Why this should present more reality rather than less is not at all clear. The logic here is simply absent.


    "The challenge, then, is to attempt to articulate this encounter in a way that is meaningful to us--in other words, in a way that our cognitive minds can grasp and affirm."

    I.e., let us now make stuff up about it so we can soothe our preconceptions of god, the virgin mary, souls, and etc and so forth. You seem to be going off a philosophical deep end here, or at least this line of thought is.


    "In effect, as we spiral up through the Hegelian dialectic, one of the most important things to do is pay attention to what implications our self-understanding has for the interpretation of mystical experience."

    Now this I can agree with, and with a little more neuroscience under our collective belts, we will certainly know far more about it.

    In the end, insofar as we take Kant at his original word, describing the noumenal as under some kind of chastity belt of non-interaction and non-understanding, it is of zero relevance for anything that humans care about. If, on the other hand, we take it as standing for the true reality that underlies or gives rise to phenomena, then it is our cognition that creates ever-closer models of this reality, from the raw materials of perception. This may be related to Hegel's dialectic, which seems a description of the scientific method, whether directed outwards (productively) or inwards (not very productively, in general).

    Anyhow, great post, and thanks for the explanations!

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  3. Dianelos and Burk--Your comments help idenitfy some places where my exegesis of Kant (as well as Hegel and Schleiermacher) calls for a bit of clarification.

    First, Kant's take on beauty is complex and gets own treatment in Tthe first half of The Critique of Judgment. The judgment of beauty is different from empirical judgments. He calls the former kind "reflective" and the latter "determinative." In a determinative judgment, the object of experience is located firmly under a given category of the understanding. But with a reflective judgment things are more nebulous, and I confess to not understanding it fully. He thinks the judgment of beauty is a judgment to the effect that something has the FORM of purposiveness without actually possessing a definitive purpose.

    This means that beauty isn't empirically real in the way that space and time are, at least for Kant.

    Unfortunately, my seven-year-old son is clamoring to use the computer so that he can continue writing his book about the Gulf oil spill and saving the Earth. So I'll have to continue this later.

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  4. Burk said: "But he has no idea (whether space and time are features of things in themselves), not knowing anything about the so-called noumenal world. Where does Kant get off telling us what is or isn't part of it if he has just finished telling us we can't know anything about it?"

    This is a fair criticism. Perhaps a more charitable way to interpret Kant here is not as saying that noumena lack spatio-temporal properties, but rather as saying that the spatio-temporal properties with which we are acquainted are something we bring to experience rather than something that the noumena impart to us. As such, the spatio-temoporal properties WITH WHICH WE ARE ACQUAINTED have their origins in our perceptual aparatuses and so do not have their origin in things in themselves (why he thinks this is true is another matter altogether). This does not preclude there being in noumena properties entirely analogous to space and time and we experience them--but space and time AS WE EXPERIENCE THEM are merely features of phenomena.

    Perhaps an analogy will help. Suppose I'm wearing blue-tinted glasses that make everything appear to me in shades of blue. The blueness of the objects is thus attributable to the glasses rather than to the objects. While this fact doesn't rule out some of the objects being blue independent of the glasses, it does mean that the blueness I am experiencing has its origins in the glasses.

    I said: "As soon as we do that we’ve made ourselves into an object of experience, and this object is just as likely to be the product of our own cognitive reconstructions as any other object."

    Burk replied: "Amen- that is where people came up with the idea of the soul and other intuitive conceptions."

    Kant would also say (and I think with the same degree of warrant) that this is where people came up with the idea that the mind is reducible to the brain, and the idea that the mind is an epiphenomenal by-product of brain processes, etc. When we focus on introspective phenomena, the phenomenal picture that emerges is dualistic. When we focus on external phenomena, the phenomenal picture that emerges is physically reductionistic.

    For Kant, neither gives us the noumenal reality. By contrast, metaphysical naturalists are, I think, defined in terms of a tendency to accept the former Kantian move but reject the latter--that is, to affirm that when the scientific process works with sufficient diligence on modeling the objects of consciousness when consciousness is directed outside itself, the picture that emerges has somehow bridged the phenomenal/noumenal divide.

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  5. For me Kant raises an important possibility, that the nature of the mind colours the nature of our experiences. What I don't quite understand though is why it should follow that we can not discover things about the world as it is by carefully examining the way the world appears to us. Surely by better understanding the apparent nature of the filter we can then begin to ask questions about the sort of reality that might then give rise to observed relationships.

    So, perhaps our model of electromagnetic radiation doesn't accord with reality exactly, but my apparent experience of typing this will in turn lead to your apparent experience of reading it thanks to the extraordinary success of this model. One possible reason we might infer is that the model says something important about the world as it really is. And this inference leads to us using scientific enquiry as a primary means of approximating reality.

    Think of Einstein's prediction that the mass of the sun would bend light from a distant star, or the perplexing accuracy of our quantum models, the startling observation that the speed of light is independent of the speed of the observer, or the efficacy of so many of our life saving drugs. If we are not to make the very good working assumption that there is some kind of match between our model and the world, then what is the alternative we embrace to explain this mighty power? Coincidence? That seems weak to me.

    An evolutionary perspective would suggest that while there is no selective pressure on the mind knowing reality, there is very strong selective pressure on it being able to predict reality's impact on it.

    Just a thought.

    Bernard

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  6. Eric,

    I mentioned the case of beauty as because it is an important example of the qualitative/private/subjective dimension of our experience, just to make sure that this dimension forms part of “phenomenal reality, or of what is “empirical real”. My point then was not to ask how Kant deals with the experience of beauty per se, but to ask how Kant deals with the qualitative/private/subjective dimension of our experience (which is a dimension of major importance, as one values it more than the quantitative/public/objective dimension that the natural sciences study). I could have used a simpler example, say how the color red looks like. And if Kant does not explicitly deal with qualia then how should we deal with them when we interpret Kant’s metaphysics?

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  7. "Kant would also say (and I think with the same degree of warrant) that this is where people came up with the idea that the mind is reducible to the brain, and the idea that the mind is an epiphenomenal by-product of brain processes, etc.
    ...
    to affirm that when the scientific process works with sufficient diligence on modeling the objects of consciousness when consciousness is directed outside itself, the picture that emerges has somehow bridged the phenomenal/noumenal divide."


    I think this is a classic case of false equivalence. The noumenal as offered by Kant seems like a game of keep-away. If you think you understand reality, you don't really understand reality, by his frankly mystical conception of what "real" reality is.

    If one defines it as direct contact with reality, then fine- we can't have it, and that is that. But we all want contact with reality, (i.e., we are intuitive theists and mystics), so he has given us the temptation of crossing his artificially constructed barrier, only to define it away.

    On the one hand, we drive cars around without killing each other too often, so there is clearly some kind of reality that we live in that is real (i.e. it exists outside of us and prior to us as individuals). Let me call this practical reality.

    On the other hand, we have mystical experiences which Eric (and his philiosophical forebears) would like to have us believe are a "true" way to breach the barrier. Why? Because it seems that way! Whatever dualism a computing device experiences when it computes about its world may be intrinsic to such a condition. We could not be conscious or attentive otherwise. Its internal experience is accountable by external analysis, though it is not directly experience-able externally (at least not yet). Let me call that subjective reality, which in cases of deragement turns into mystical reality.

    The question is- what is the status of practical reality vs the subjective, mystical, and noumenal realities? Well, first thing, practical reality is real. It is consistent, testable, present ourside our awareness, continuous, and unyielding. So there must be something to it, however little it is appreciated by mystics and dualists.

    Secondly, it is far more real than noumenal reality, which is an abstract construct that seems custom-made to validate mystical approaches to "knowledge". Thirdly, it relates directly to subjective reality by way of containing computing devices that have subjective experiences and accounts mechanistically (to some degree, given our incomplete science) for their fundamental basis and activities.

    It is in practical reality that heads get chopped off, thereby terminating subjective and mystical realities in definitive fashion. We have no evidence otherwise. Thus we are left with noumenal reality, which is a definitional construct that transcends subjectivity and practical location in space and time. Which is to say, it represents the theist's imagined god figure, just as much as Yahweh or Thor or other such conceptions. These have their charm as myth, but it is hard to take them seriously as claims of truth/reality or as relevant to anything other than theism.

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  8. Burk,

    Just an FYI.

    Luke Muehlhauser did a great interview with Konrad Talmont-Kaminski of Marie-Curie Sklodowska University in which Konrad did a very good job at explaining how many, if not most of the philosophers of the past examining this issue, really missed the mark. It is probably not best to try to base your view points on Kant or any of the older more classic philosophers. Much of their fundamental views have been shown to be inadequate or just flat out wrong. You can listen to the interview here http://www.archive.org/download/ConversationsFromThePaleBlueDot048KonradTalmont-kaminski/048-KonradTalmont-kaminski.mp3.

    Cheers!
    RichGriese.NET

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  9. I don't think separating noumenal and phenomenal reality, or respecting the possibilities of introspection and subjective (or even mystical) experience necessarily lead to wild claims about tooth fairies, unicorns and and Young Earth Creationism.

    That is because all those wild concepts are attempts to create cognitive models to match an initial subjective experience - and when we transcribe something from the "noumenal" to the "phenomenal" reality, in order to communicate about it and find some sort way to understand it, then defeaters abound by which to judge our interpretation.

    A powerful experience may yield the basic idea of "something means something!" or "there is something beyond what I normally perceive and it is good". This is religious/mystical experience.

    Then it gets transcribed into even more phenomenal terms - "Jesus physically rose from the grave" or "There is one god and Mohammed is his prophet" or many things more or less dramatic.

    These interpretation can be empirically tested, scientifically and logically. They can be defeated. This defeats the interpretation of an experience not its occurrence.

    And subjective experience is more fundamental than "objective" reality. That's just practical. I must approach objective reality from a subjective point of view. I cannot do it the other way around - not fundamentally.

    That's why the Buddhist focus on introspection is so important. And their beliefs about no self seem to jive with Sch and Heg's belief about self being connected to all noumenal reality. If self is connected to all things, then ultimately, there is no self - or all is self. Whichever way of thinking about it one prefers.

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  10. Hi Eric

    One other thing. Your posting on Kant, Hegel et al has been excellent because it has helped me clarify where my disquiet with the theistic approach lies. And of course I might be quite wrong, so perhaps you can help me see why.

    I feel the starting point is solid. As a naturalist I think yes, of course there are layers of reality that are beyond our grasp. Some because our concepts haven't advanced sufficiently yet, who ever thought we'd one day talk in terms of general relativity, and it's foolish to imagine this process of digging to be over.

    But also, my evolved mammalian brain is likely to always find some things beyond it. I don't understand the universe for the same reason a slug doesn't understand birthdays.

    But, the leap to the notion of the self being some real thing that can be approached through meditation or a dialectic method leaves me cold. If I am going to accept that something as fundamental as time or space is at heart a human, make-do construction (and contemporary physics supports this view), then surely so is self. There is good evidence that our sense of self as some continuous thing through time is little more than a useful illusion; for example look at the effects of sleep, narcotics, general anaesthetic or brain injury, or a phenomenon like multiple personality disorders).

    Furthermore, the processes of meditation or even rational argument (finding contradictions as per Hegel) are every bit as susceptible to the charge of constructions of the brain as our sense perceptions.

    So, if Kant is right and we examine his claim in the light of what we now know from neuroscience and evolutionary theory, then the wall probably is inpenetratable. It may be science is giving us an excellent match with reality but as per Hume we can't know for sure. And many naturalists are very comfortable with this style of uncertainty. Personally I find it invigorating.

    Bernard Beckett

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  11. "There is good evidence that our sense of self as some continuous thing through time is little more than a useful illusion"

    Perhaps so, but I am thinking that the self, as described in this post, is not something separate, but rather a window into everything else. Pure experience.

    It's the 1st person view, rather than the 3rd person. That's all. It's knowing things in addition to knowing about things. I think there is a useful distinction. Perhaps?

    But I completely sympathize with your view that the self shouldn't be considered something separate from all other things......except that self is this thing perceiving all other things.

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  12. Hi Steven

    Yes, that's a fair distinction I think, thanks. So the kicking off point is yet again consciousness, and whether a third person perspective on consciousness can take us to the heart of this aspect of 'self', or whether it must always necessarily leave something out. Shades of Daniel Dennett then.

    So how to resolve this? Isn't it just by pushing the third person perspective as hard and far as it will go and seeing where it takes us, or is there an demonstration that such an approach is flawed in principle?

    Bernard

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  13. My next post in the series will address at least some of the issues and questions raised here--at least enough to stimulate even more questions and objections! Hopefully I will have it up later today.

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  14. Recent online discussions by others about supernaturalism, and naturalism has inspired me to search for an example of explanations that I think are more clear, and more accurate. I am therefore making this audio file available for those interested in the topic;

    recordings.talkshoe.com/TC-84743/…

    In it, Richard Carrier takes 53 minutes and 27 seconds to explain both supernatural and natural clearly, with simple language

    I welcome responses at;

    webulite.webhop.org/node/…

    Cheers!
    RichGriese.NET

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  15. exceptional writing and an absolute model of clarity. This has brought together many ideas that I have been contemplating for years. Thankyou very much.

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