Hello everyone ❤️.
This is Andrea Hiott and I wanted to write and thank you for signing up. Admittedly, it has taken me so long to begin sending posts; I’m committing now. In getting started, I wanted to reach out with some clarification and introduction across the various mailings lists, in case any have been confused.
As my writing and research live at the intersection of philosophy and phenomenology, neuroscience, and studies in ecological orientation, mobility and technology—themes that can seem very different at first glance—I wanted to do a quick post for all those who have subscribed to the various lists, so it can be easy to tangle or disentangle each prismatic (or each cell in the honeycomb, as a generous friend recently gifted it).
I’ll share the different links to the different spaces we are building, then I’ll offer a brief summary of each. At the end, I’ll link to the audio podcasts and other publications and resources, as well as to other connected groups such as the Active Inference Institute, the Ecological Motoring Institute, and Holon Labs.
Way-making
The Way-making Substack explores way-making and navigability via essays and writings about philosophical texts.
Way & Lifeworld is a space for exploring, creating, recommending, criticising & improving a philosophy I’ve been developing (the way-making framework). Here I respond to and welcome advice and (well-meaning) criticism from others as I try to relate philosophical ideas across walks of life and disciplines. This is a place to explore whether the way-making approach can be helpful, to champion the many people who have inspired it and its ideas, and to clarify how it relates to other areas of inquiry and scholarship, as there is nothing new under the sun. There is still so much beyond my experience, and I hope others will help me become more aware of it.
This comes in a spirit of community; the point is to grow philosophy together. Everywhere we look now there are captions telling us they have the answers. Instead of pretending there is one answer here, I am hoping we can find the answers together and let those answers grow and live and change as living systems. My goal is to listen and learn, to study and notice the patterns as best I can, and to communicate, create, and share in service to love, health, critical thinking and sensual presence. The dream is that as a community of discussion, we can build better ways together, expand our senses, experience joint presence, and discover a new ecological phase space towards helping one another with our individual and community challenges.
What really matters in this life? How do meaningful philosophical and scientific pursuits change how we experience the world? How do the ways we frame our experience (whether consciously or not) become the ways we make in it, or the ways that make future generations?
The first writings here will look at what philosophy is or might be from this perspective and sketch the philosophy, though it is a work in progress, and the sketches are meant to ask for your participation in showing me what I might have missed or what I can improve or how it would be more relevant to your own work and life. Thank you for being here, and I look forward to your perspective!
Love and Philosophy
This is a research channel, a podcast, and there is a substack that goes along with the converstions.
You Tube Channel: Love & Philosophy, Beyond Dichotomy
Substack: Love & Philosophy Beyond Dichotomy, the Substack.
Conversations in love and philosophy. Beyond Dichotomy. Sensation. Invitation. Exploration. Way-making. Research in science, art and philosophy towards understanding how our approach to life and cognition might address some of the urgent divides we face. Moving beyond traditional demarcations for learning and development. By love and philosophy, I mean the people, passions, and ideas that move us, shape the trajectories of our lives, and co-create our wider social landscapes. Partly due to my trajectory in philosophy, technology, & the cognitive sciences, I’m hoping to better observe binary distinctions in our academic & personal lives: What positive roles have these structures played? How might rethinking these structures & their parameters open new paths & ecological potentials?
Desirable Unknown
Desirable Unknown on You Tube Channel and Substack works on moving beyond dichotomies in urban development and transportatin, discussing themes about how we can improve our cities and our forms of movement. In both the podcast by that name, Desirable Unknown (more economic, social, and environmental related), and in the podcast that is directly motoring related, Future Motoring, we explore these themes. You can listen to it here: https://pod.link/1680860964 or click below.
In our shared future, there are potentials we know are possible, but there are also unknowns, potentials we have not yet considered. The distinction between the knowable and the unknowable is at the heart of philosophy. In Chinese philosophy, for the Taoist, the universe is fundamentally unknowable and yet, holding the paradox, we can come to know it better and glimpse the Way in experiences Japanese traditions call satori. In more European oriented philosophy, Socrates is famous for the idea that 'all we can know is that we do not know' though his life is itself a way through the unknown. The reason this paradox matters and is at the heart of our search for meaning, is because within the parameter of the unknown, there are unknowns which are desirable and those which are not. Here we find way towards discussing what might be the desirable unknowns for our living planet, and in so doing, ride the paradox of trying to know what is unknowable, or what is only knowable if it occurs.
Desirable Unknown is also the title of a book I’m writing about these and related ideas.
More Projects and Collaborations
Future Motoring is a collaboration wit the Ecological Motoring Intiative, whereby I host conversations to rethink what is meant by both ‘forever’ and ‘motoring’. This is also related to academic work I regarding cities and mobility.
EMI works to initiative conversations, connections, and collaborations towards finding ways to meet the motoring needs of all within the means of the living planet (🍩). Vehicles change everything from our cities to our mindsets, but we rarely connect the dots between. Movement is sensual and ecological and we need new forms of motoring for a new earth
EMI (the ecological motoring initiative) looks at how we might transcend traditional dichotomies around machines and ecologies and bring people together around common needs towards a new notion of motoring.
We are moved at so many levels and through so many different landscapes, be those physical, emotional, mental or virtual. From city designers to coders to car manufacturers, we can work together to create a better vision for motoring.
Our minds have been channeled in part by the ways we motor--the ways we move ourselves, our materials, and our ideas. Ecological transportation begins with understanding that the vehicles and infrastructures moving us are also creating cognitive systems.
How can we meet the motoring needs of all in a way that is ecological? What does it mean to move within the means of the living planet? How can we move in ways that inspire and motivate us and increase our potentials longterm?
Personal website for Andrea Hiott
Andrea on LinkedIn
Website for Love & Philosophy
Ecological Motoring Initiative
Active Inference Institute, Sign up for Substack
Brandenburg Institute of Technology (BTU)
Website for podcast Future (Forever) Motoring
Love & Philosophy on Spotify
Love & Philosophy on Apple
A list of links to L & P for many other podcast platforms
Desirable Unknown podcast and You Tube