Criteria Of A Mind Case Study: Farm As Mind

Chapter Three Farm as Mind Case Study Introduction

We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started And know the place for the first time (Eliot, 1943, cited in Bateson, 1979, p.xi)

Within this concluding chapter the Criteria of Mental Process considered in Chapter One are applied as a holistic theory to a case-study farm: my family's farm. Hinging this framework upon a place I am overly familiar with warrants a rethinking of place, permitting an examination of the family farm as an entity in itself; a potential mind. Before engaging with the criteria I will describe the
The current reality of the farm system has shifted from this notion however. The modern farm is so heterogeneous in character that its network of components is not solely limited to the physical site of the farm. Its complexity renders it increasingly difficult to define or draw boundaries between what belongs to the farm system and what belongs to its environment. External entities are constantly being mobilised into the farm system and influencing activities. For this reason I have described the aforementioned boundaries as operational and permeable, the farm constituting an open system which is subject to the influence of increasingly variant entities, ranging from Coillte and Teagasc advisors to subsidies and "tenant" cattle.3
3.2 Farm as Mind Does "Flynn's" satisfy the Criteria of Mental Process?
The components, subsystems, boundaries and operations of Flynn's are weighed directly against the criteria of mind in the remainder of this chapter. This analysis will conclude if Flynn's as a modern farm continues to possess the mental capacity its progenitor cultivated within the modern
He is not suggesting that the difference is energy, rather that the energy for the response or effect caused was available in the respondent before the event occurred which "triggered" it, (1979, p. 95). Using the aforementioned account of the collection of slurry this notion of collateral energy may be portrayed. When weather conditions are ideal, the farmer begins to spread the slurry using a slurry spreader hitched to a tractor. At the point of spreading the farmer will turn a vacuum pump on the tank to a pressure setting and open a gate valve on the tank to release the slurry. This operation displays two energetic systems linked in performing a function; the farmer who is "permissive" in opening a gate valve to "release" the slurry and the system whose energy moves through this valve once it is open. The farmer's energy does not physically push through the flow of slurry he is "permissive" of the interaction. By simply opening the gate valve he offers information which triggers the action of the slurry emptying from tanker. The actual work in spreading the slurry is done by gravity whose force is released in opening the gate. The collateral energy was available within the tank once it contained the slurry it just required "the machinery of decision" to release it (Bateson, 1979, p.