Happy 20th Post Poems!
So...this is the last day of September, obviously, and for some reason I thought it would be cool to get in 20 posts before the archive moves to October. Since this is the twentieth, and since it means I've been in school and doing this blog for about a month, I thought I'd switch it up a bit and steal an idea from Paul, which I do regularly enough anyway. This post won't be about some thought I had. It'll just be some of my more recent poems I'm taking out of my notebook. Most of you have heard all of my decent old poems.
Thoughts
I don't ask for them,
not anymore. I beg and plead,
teasing and coaxing
them out. Among others
I see no signs. Well,
Perhaps. Through some Accident
they come out: miracles
of spontaneity and freshness.
Then-
What bothers me most is
what does not bring reflection.
Moments of bright opportunity
inspire only the usual stream;
Preplanned script on
an everspinning wheel behind
the invective. I can't stand to
discuss causality then-
it is too much, too much to ask
to speak of freedom to those
chaining themselves to the walls.
Imperfection
We hold on to so much
what are they?
It's not the perfections that drive
us, it's our flaws
that bind and complete
worries fall in the face
of failures rising up, so
often does the late start
lead to a stronger finish
and the dischord ornaments.
Our connection to the ideal
is strained, but there's
no need to complain in a
comforting paradox, take
hold of me and I
now cannot release. Hold
on to me and never
never let me go. I
cannot see it, what
others can only, what
I miss in the signs...
but when I see you
it doesn't matter at all.
This one I wrote while I was in England. You could probably have guessed that from the title, but I wanted to make sure you knew.
Londonplace
Gray-green hues mingle before me
I am above color recognition; I let it pass
through me. I know it as I know myself.
It has always been a part.
I didn't see the moon last night
you know that means the night overwhelmed me.
The moon is comfort. It is the same
wherever you see it, not fully real 'cause
it's never yourself. It's always nice,
though, when you're home, to look up
and see something invasive and
different.
I'm different. I've changed. But I think
now. I'm more myself than ever
because my home feels more like home
than ever before.
Perhaps because I've never been here before.
It's the air, the ancient air. It's known
people and cannot change. But I know people
and change constantly.
The inside changes; the whole remains the same.
Okay, I was going to stop with that one, but I'm going to do one more.
S.C.
You glanced away. I knew it, then-
I was not the one your heart lived for
not the one I had hoped to be
eyes down, you've broken me before
I could stand: you took me by the hand,
leading me from the wearied green foilage
to a land of light, where we stand,
dancing in the folding future
Eyes closing. I see a hundred sunset
frames for you. Nights of laughter
drowning the dreary day's upsets
then you're gone, gazing steadily at the stars
You fly out of my sight. I hope
you leave forever, forsaking me
to the vision of a window: looking
in can only make you see.
and I'm taken away to an untamed life
unheard of futures with no more strife
you live in the ideal of my adoring mind
where I cannot see myself in kind.
I walk to the river and swim.
the water's cold. It drains
the pain I had forgotten. It's
eternal, forever piercing and leaving
behind the life of a moment.
I began this line of thought at Pierre's blog, and I think you all know where that is, so I'm not putting the link here but you can get to it through the little underlined thing that says "forever gathering on yesterday" and clicking on "comments" after the "first post." Anyway, it sounded like there was some confusion about them so I thought I'd put up my thoughts.
I was reading (again) in Hopkins house, this time a book on cognitive psychology called The Meme Machine. The book was written by Susan Blackmore, in case you want to look for it, but the idea of memes that she considers was created by Richard Dawkins, the celebrated zoologist, in his book The Selfish Gene. Dawkins says that memes are human mental constructs that are repeated. They can be ideas, or songs, or pretty much anything that humans can copy from other humans. The idea of a really annoying jingle pops into my head right now. Blackmore says that the memes are the core of human thought. Most everything we consider or think other than the direct input we are getting from our senses has been something that has been given to us, and we are just copying that behavior. The behavior is the meme. On the other hand, Blackmore and Dawkins run into a tricky situation, though, because they can't really define memes, or at least not scientifically define them. What is the unit of a meme? Is language itself a meme, or only the individual letters and words? Is the song itself one meme, or several? Oftentimes we can recall only one short phrase of a song: look at Beethoven's fifth symphony.
Still, some of what they say regarding memes seems plausible. The idea that they come up with regarding memes is that they are replicators, like genes, and the rule of replicators is that the best ones survive, or more accurately, the ones that survive have traits that favor them in certain situations. In this case, we remember songs that are repetitive and simple, but we'll forget a meme like the essay I'm writing right now, which will fail as a meme because it won't be passed along.
Hopefully you guys get the idea. So what does the existence of memes mean? First of all, I am reminded of the postmodern movement in philosophy, which claims that language cannot be used to accurately describe reality, and so puts the whole history of philosophy in jeopardy. Memetics would show that science does not predict or map the physical world but is merely the strongest meme for its time in its idiom. I think Dawkins and Blackmore would agree with that statement. On the other hand, we are running into a logical paradox here. For the idea of memes to be true, it would have to exist outside the memes themselves. Memetics cannot be a meme otherwise it is becomes nonsensical. This logical contradiction is not necessary, however, if there are rules governing thought outside of memes.
One idea Blackmore repeats in her book is the insistent and constant use of language. People talk to each other all the time, and she says it makes no sense from a biological point of view. Talking wastes energy I could be using to eat or propagate. But memes would thrive in an environment that is all conversation, and, according to Blackmore, the ones that survive best are the ones that have some mechanism to ensure their replication. So when we talk, we know we are right (because the memes are set up so that they last longer with passionate carriers) and we often disregard logical methods of argumentation (because we don't remember those as well as we remember our schemas.) Memes even give us the sense of selfdom because a person would recall them better than a series of memories and sensations. Her evidence is strong and what we see seems to favor the existence of memes.
There are just two problems. One, we can create meanings that overcome (or undercut) our schemas and therefore the level of memetic thought. Logic may perhaps be a meme itself, but it creates ideas and knowledge that was not known before, and while those new ideas can also become memes, the system or principles governing it has to be outside the memes otherwise we have an infinite regression of memes that are not replicators. Second, the society she describes is only our society. Other cultures place much less emphasis on speaking than we do. Perhaps they have not created as many memes to reproduce. But why wouldn't they? They have as much experience as we do. Perhaps it is only in a culture where we spend so much time talking that the idea of memes can come up. Memes do exist, but they are not as overpowering as Ms. Blackmore claims.
The real weakness behind the idea of that memes are more powerful than free will is the idea that languistic and semiotic reality is superior to actual reality. The times I know I'm most alive is when I'm alone in nature and trying not to think about anything, but I remain deep in prayer. The second most is when I'm with another person, and we're not speaking or even really thinking, but we are communing and realizing more of ourselves through the other person. To Blackmore and Dawkins, such experiences would be lost as they reject the spirituality of the events. They cannot explain any real thing that happens to us that is not a meme or a physical experience. But such things exist, though I think that they can be denied by the people who feel them.
I hope I didn't confuse anyone. I'm afraid I was incoherent and disunified. Please ask if you need clarification and I'll try to do better. (I don't know why I put this, I know you guys will reply anyway but I just seem to have a hard time stopping my fingers from typing. Okay...gonna...click...publish...now!)
The limit of my history is the limit of my world
I have a six page essay on The Odyssey due this time next week, and so right now I have to prepare for it by procrastinating mercilessly. Fortunately for me, I have this wonderful blog where I can put my thoughts out for everyone to marvel, and I have something to talk about. Whether or not it is fortunate for anyone else, or for my essay for that matter, I leave to posterity.
Despite my plans to major in history, I don't have a history class this semester, and I haven't read any books on history since the summer. But this week the long, dry stretch came to an end. I'm about half way through a biography of Bismarck I acquired from last year's lost and found in the honors house, and I'm already back to my old tricks, i.e. I've found a dozen minor points where I disagree with the author.
The other thing that reading Bismarck reminded me of was the idea of history; in other words, what is history? What does 'history' mean? Generally it's considered to be a description of the past using documents and other artefacts. The documents themselves are pretty pedestrian; it is very rare that we find a new document, the existence of which alone throws our idea of history out the window. No, usually it is the other half of history, the analysis of history, that major ideas come out. Here lies both the failure and the triumph of history. On the one hand, history becomes essentially English with archaic nonfiction; any analysis that can be supported is then valid enough to deserve recognition. No one wants to figure out all that has happened in the past, it is an impossible task anyway, so let's just figure out what it means. So people are no longer using the past at all, but simply putting a modern spin on old documents. History is often not a study of the past, but a study of present popular opinion. At this point I admit that I feel tears well up in my eyes.
But look! some part of me cries out. Look! See all of the good history has done for you. It can't be utterly meaningless. And the voice is right; lots of good does come from the study of history. Despite the seemingly inadequate method of teasing the knowlege out of the artefacts, we learn things from history. In fact, I believe that history, as it is right now, can tell us everything about people.
But why does history work? How can it describe humanity so well? I think there are two reasons.
First, there are three ways of gaining knowledge: reason, experience, and insight. Philosophers generally believe the first is the most powerful, scientists the second. Though the other two are very important, I think insight is overlooked. It is the key to so many disciplines: English criticism (despite my ragging on it), theology, and history. Any time we extrapolate ideas to find out what something
means we are using our insight. No matter how flawed it seems to be to those who subscribe to the first two methods, it seems to work.
Second, the reason insight works for history, and the reason why our imperfect knowledge of history can tell us everything about people, is because of the basic unchanging nature of humanity. People really don't change; the language changes, but it can be translated because there are similar experiences. Customs change, but they can all be expressed in terms of other customs. Technology changes, but the goals of the new technology is the same as the old. I hate to admit it, but English criticism can often tell us the stuff history tells us better than history, but only because the literary cosmos is less complex than the real world. But that's what literature is: a written universe, often meant to explain some parts of our own. History tells us our own story, but we can't understand all of it. This is when it's time to get out the empiricism and logic that the scientists and philosophers have.
P.S. Did everyone notice that all my majors correspond to a different aspect of gaining knowledge?
Triple the Workload, Triple the Fun!...
Wow, it's been a long time since I last posted. I just got overwhelmed with doing other stuff like staying up till 6 A.M. talking to people and procrastinating on my homework. There are lots of things floating around in my mind that I want to talk about, but right now I wanted to take a break from feeling philosophical and just let everyone know that I am indeed still alive.
I will also take this opportunity to announce that, as of Friday, I am no longer one of those sad, lonely open major Freshmen. I am now shooting for a triple major in Philosophy, Psychology, and History, with a minor in Mathematics. I can just fit it all in. But since Paul didn't mention multiple major people in his otherwise brilliant and comprehensive exposition on the psychology of picking Majors, I wanted to add my opinion on the subject.
Telling someone you are a multiple major is the equivalent of saying: "I'm an overacheiving type A personality who never stops studying and never takes a break" To announce a multiple major is to become a snob in the eyes of others, as they look upon you and think, "He thinks he's too good for us, eh?" You are obviously the penultimate example of snobbery, but the general inclination is that you are also transformed into some kind of puritan, shunning all for the sake of your studies that will get you into the right graduate school, then the right doctorate program and then off to a job where you can finally pay back the fortune you owe in student loans. Also, no one expects a double major. Three times I've been cut off after saying "Philosophy" before I could explain to them that that wasn't all I was doing; this of course cemented even further the idea that I thought I was better than them.
There are several people in the Honors program going for double majors, some that I believe are more rigorous than mine (such as Biology and English, or Engineering and French) who have already suffered this fate, so I could estimate, in some ways, what the reaction to my announcement would be like. I was way off. I figure that the other people with multiple majors, even if they had a harder workload than I, were only double majors (only double majors!) and lots of people go for double majors. I am the only person I know of here who is going for majoring in three fields, and Pierre is the only other person I've heard of going for a triple major. This fact, and the fact that they are pretty unrelated fields, especially the minor in math, leads people to ask what my plans for the future are. When I say that I'm pretty sure I'm going for a masters degree in Eastern Classics, they ask me whether or not I'm totally insane.
Of course I am. I wish they would have asked me that at the beginning, and get it over with.
Systems and Selection
This will probably be more brief than is usual for me, but only because I really should be sleeping now instead of typing. I get that a lot here. No one understands that it is much more important to finish the book I am currently reading instead of, say, eating dinner before the cafeteria closes.
Anyway. The honors program here has a seminar on Tuesday nights, and it was there that this train of thought hit me. I had considered this before, though without outside evidence, and I actually believe that nobody has stated this as a rule before. So let me put forth the Tribolet Principle (patent pending):
Any system that someone claims
ought to be in place (and therefore is not already in place) will not be inherently superior to any present system if the only improving factor is that it will be more morally acceptable. That is, saying a theoretical system will be better because it is more moral than the one in place is fallacious and false. The basic idea that is behind this is that systems, in themselves, are amoral: that is, neither good nor bad. I do admit that some systems are easier to corrupt than others and so become immoral. But the theoretical system is amoral essentially because it has no people in it. Until we get a way to accurately simulate every person's behavior, every moral discussion involving systems is overlooking some aspect of human nature. As such, the theoretical systems are not describing people and so are not moral one way or another.
The examples are plentiful, though perhaps the most obvious is communism. Theoretically, communism seems to be a very morally acceptable philosophy. As it turns out, it is just easily corrupted. More to the real point, my principle refers to laws and minor changes in a current political system. To argue for a law because it would promote moral behavior is useless because it is the implementation and actions of the individuals involved that the moral aspect begins and ends, and not in the creation of laws at all. I remember learning about, in psychology, the riddle of the pharmacy: would you break a law in order to serve a higher good, i.e. save someone's life? I believe my principle explains that paradox.
patent pending, patent pending, patent pending.
(I'm adding this later to clarify what I mean by system: the above post is too vague on the subject and has led to confusion)
The easiest example of system that applies to the Tribolet Principle is a political system, obviously. But I've found more broad applications, such as economic systems and the rules thereof, and even ecclesiastical systems and their rules. So any definition has to be more general than a political system.
I've found that the systems that the Principle can be applied have to be dealing with people rather than facts or objects, and have to exert some amount of control over the actions of the people who live under that system. Otherwise the system cannot have moral consequences. So the Principle only works for
systems that shape some aspect of moral behavior, even if that is not the primary aspect of the system. If I talk about this again, and I probably will, I will call these systems
moral systems.
Wealth? Who needs it?
Let me begin with a warning: this is going to be another economics post. I won't mind if at this point you run away screaming. On the other hand, I probably will be done ranting against my economics professor by shredding his ideas philosophically behind his back after this one. Then I'll just be doing ordinary philosophical shredding of ideas I don't like.
Anyway, in economics we've been reading about Adam Smith and
The Wealth of Nations. First, though, let me tell you a little something about my professor. He seems to believe, despite the number one rule of economics (There is Scarcity) that we can create a society where everyone has enough to be happy and content. He is also a staunch supporter of the free-market school and is in love with Adam Smith for creating it. Now I've plenty of ways of refuting his views, but I thought it would be fun to do it on his terms, especially because he probably doesn't know I've read
The Wealth of Nations.
I say let's set up a society where everyone plays by Adam Smith's rules. In this scenario, the majority of people have a job defined by the division of labor, which means, basically, that they are cogs in a giant machine. The assembly line concept is a perfect example of Smith's thought. This is the most efficient way of creating wealth. But would anyone trade such an existence for the increased goods it provides? All of the workers would be encouraged to become mindless machines, doing their jobs for the sake of their overall well being.
Do I sound like Karl Marx yet? This is the kind of atmosphere he was describing in the mid 1800's, with the rapid growth of the free market and, as a result, a vast increase in wealth. But people opposed it on humanitarian grounds, and today we have antitrust acts and welfare so that people have some stability among the vast and chaotic force of the rampant free market. Or so socialists say. I'm still an economic pragmatist. 8)
This line of thought, however, still has another philosophical consequence. Society today is still a goods based society, meaning that the more wealth (i.e. goods) one has, the higher status that person has. But as we have seen, having more wealth does not necessarily make a person happier or more content. In fact it was some of the people who got the most out of the industrial revolution that sanctioned better conditions for the poor, even if that meant that they would personally lose some wealth. Doesn' t this mean that there is something more out there beyond acquiring wealth?
Yeah, he's going down. Especially when I show him that Adam Smith agreed with me. He mentions in
A Wealth of Nations that he favored compulsory basic education for everyone (a very liberal view in his day) because otherwise the humanity of the worker would be at stake. I knew he was smart.
Another day, another argument
I have just gotten back from eating dinner, and the train of thought started by the previous post kept chugging along until it hit a station. I remembered a conversation I had had recently on a similar vein as the ideas I put forth in the last post. The girl I was talking to was a staunch atheist. While I know everyone who reads my blog has strong feelings on this subject, try this time for the sake of experiment not to think of the things I'm going to bring up as
true or
false but as provable or fallacious. I'll try to put in reminders as I go along.
This girl, whom I shall call 'Jane,' was adamantly against everything I had proposed on the nature of suffering and evil, as outlined in the previous post. She insisted that it could not be as I said; to think of some afterlife where all is made right was ridiculous. There is no reason for human suffering, there couldn't be. She had read Dostoevski's
The Brothers Karamazov and agreed with one of the characters in saying that she would reject any place in heaven on account of God's cavalier attitude towards the suffering children.
For a long time I struggled with her, trying to get her to see my side. How dull could she possibly be? I asked myself. Then it occured to me that almost certainly she was asking herself the same question. What kind of fool believes in this mystical hocus pocus? She was saying; he certainly knows some things, but some of what he believes is really quite ridiculous!
I must have startled her when I started laughing, but I couldn't help it. We were really so close to understanding each other, but we kept getting caught up on some basics. I tried to explain my new thought to her.
We each had some basic premise that was key to our argument. Hers was that everything is basically physical. She saw no evidence to contradict it, plenty of circumstantial evidence against the people who said the things I had been repeating, and therefore no reason to doubt this premise. Thus, physical suffering, which I had passed over because of my own premise, was much more important in her view than it was in mine. There was no way I could convince her of the truth of my premise, and solely because of that, my argument was unprovable and void to her. In the same way, I had to reject her argument on the same assumption that my premise was correct.
I wonder how often this occurs? I'm relatively sure it happens more in discussions on religion than anywhere else, but I still wonder. Both sides believe the other is being entirely uncooperative because they won't play on their field. "Prove to me the existence of God without any talk of spirituality" one side cries, while the other says, "just pray over your disbelief and God will speak to you." Don't you see that both are being ridiculous? I wonder how any converting (to either side) gets done.
And Behold, Their Tears Have Become Laughter...
Wow, it's been a while since I last posted. I thought I'd be able to do one a day, but stuff just kept coming up and...well, no excuses. Down to business.
I went to see a movie called
Lord of War yesterday with a bunch of other honors program brats, and one of the great things about going with them rather than most college people is that we had a discussion on ethics while walking back. (I seriously think that the majority of my peers got dumber after they went to college, but that of course excludes anyone reading this blog.)
The topic of the conversation was the basic nature of evil. Much of it everyone has heard before, discussing religion and whatnot. But there was one new thing that I noticed, and I'm going to discuss it in terms of religion because I think it will be more interesting that way.
Okay. Point number one: Evil causes suffering. I think everyone understands that, but it is at the core of a major objection against religion and the belief in an omnipotent, all powerful, all good God. I.E., such a god should not allow suffering to happen because he is powerful enough to stop it and good enough to stop it.
But I realized, during our discussion, that there are two distinct phenomena under scrutiny here. Evil, as the cause, is completely separate from the suffering. Let me give an example. In the movie, the main character, a gunrunner, has no regard for the people he harms. He has no compunctions about selling guns to an army within sight of the villagers who are going to be massacred by those guns. But, such an existence drives him away from all that is truly human. He barely feels pain when his family disowns him, when his wife leaves him, when his brother is executed in front of his eyes. Evil men become the ultimate solipsists, alone and afraid of all that they do not control or understand.
In fact, in his case, the little pain he did feel when personal tragedy hit him was probably a good thing. It was, quite possibly, his last chance to realize what he had become and change his ways. It was his last connection to his humanity.
Of course, while suffering may be separate from evil, it is still an awful thing. But the other thing we considered in our discussion (and I must warn you now that it was here that we had the most disagreement) was those who suffer. We will not consider physical suffering (i.e. torture and death) here because as a religious discussion, the premise is that death is not the end, and any physical existence will be minute compared to any eternal one. So, consider emotional pain. While it is horrible, occasionally you find people living in complete depravity, who've lost loved ones, who are truly joyful. It's all too rare, to be sure, but it happens, and it goes to show that suffering is not the end-all worst thing that can happen to a person. (I think I described that two paragraphs up) In fact, I think that suffering can cause two very good things, while remaining (I can't overstate this) a very bad thing. First, it can cause people to realize how stupid they have become, a la the gunrunner in the movie. It's not a bad thing if a drug dealer realizes the error of his ways and turns to honest work if he gets, say, stabbed in a fight. Second, I think pain sometimes creates a sharp relief to joy, making it more meaningful. In
The Great Divorce, C.S. Lewis talks about eternity as retroactively moving everything into place; to those in Hell, they had always chosen Hell; to those in Heaven, they had always been in Heaven. In the end, even the pain is made new to become something good, something strong, something real.
I'm now wondering if you're all completely lost because you haven't seen the movie. Dang it.
Dismal. Dismal, indeed.
I've just returned from my economics class with a new realization about what I'm actually learning there. I had previously labored under the impression that economics can predict and describe human behavior in terms of decisions regarding utility. By utility I mean that what people want to do; with some goods, their utility is in aiding our survival, but in other goods their utility is in abetting our pleasure. The first rule of economics has always been: people want to do things. They want to survive, certainly, but they also want to be happy, they want to have possesions, they want to help other people. Economics is purportedly able to predict and describe these behaviors, albeit it is only a statistical description. This means that they can only say what the tendency of people, corporations, and nations is in a given situation, usually using graphs. If I've learned anything in that class, it's that economists love to make graphs.
All of this is fine. I won't go into the problems involved in using statistics to predict behavior. Economists are aware of this weakness in their discipline, and the weakness of trying to find the 'right' economic decision. The most important thing I have gotten out of that class so far is that nothing is free. There are consequences for everything, and every action you take requires a trade-off. Economists say, "If the trade-off is beneficial to a person's overall utility, then people will do it." But sometimes there are consequences that we cannot predict, and that we did not intend. This is what happens when nations become single minded in scope; their efforts against a given enemy, without regard to everyone else involved, will likely spawn negative (for that nation) unintended consequences.
But I have regressed from the weakness of economics as a predictive science. The problem is that people's values change, and that change is complex and unpredictable. Also, the change is often upon mainstream society before anyone realized it. Let me give you an economics example. There is a school of thought that says that finding out any new information regarding the stock market is useless, because once the news hits, the market has already adjusted for that new information.
So, when economists put forth a new theory that is supposed to describe an aspect of human behavior, that behavior has already been part of society, and may already be passing out into obscurity.
The practical upshot of all this is that, if you're a policymaker, you will not be able to find an economic system that is perfect for everything. Remember the rule: there are consequences for anything and everything. However, there may be some policies which have been tried in the past to aid something. If that something needs fixing, then fix it. But don't be so in love with a system because it matches, say, your personal beliefs that it starts to grow stagnant. Look at the overuse of Keynesian economics that led to recessions in the late 70's; look at the overuse of Laissez Faire capitalism that Marx so harshly (and accurately!) analyzed a century and a half or so ago. This is why I'm an economic pragmatist: do whatever works in order to fix whatever is wrong today.
I guess I see the discipline of economics as a useful tautology. It is certainly not a science, but it can be used to see what economic activity people are doing right now. It's a figure which represents the real world, but only approximately.
But now I have to go buy some dinner. I feel like Chinese food.
"
Economics is extremely useful as a form of employment for economists."
John Kenneth Galbraith
If music be the food of love, then why am I not fat?
I've been sitting here for the past half an hour or so listening to a string of Bach's fugues. It's been a while since I've a had a chance to listen to them. I love so many different kinds of music, but there are only a few that seem to reach deep inside and touch my soul in a way that seems to make me a better person. Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D is one, and one that affects me even more is Barber's Adagio for strings.
I was worried, last year, that taking music theory would make music dry and boring for me. I thought I would be stuck analyzing the music that went through my soul, and it would be just like eating sand. Well, I have to admit, my fears came true. I can't help now but analyze what I can in the music I listen to, but, amazingly and fortunately, the music has become even richer and fuller to me now that I know more about it.
(This may be more about me than about music, though, because I find now that I like finding chemical formulas on lists of ingredients and figuring out exactly what is in them. Yes, I'm weird. But you know that already.)
I believe music is fundamentally connected to all aspects of human existence. It's just so similar to life. First, while our brains may pay more attention to what we see, what we hear is just as important because it's the only sense that is attached to time, which we also inhabit. This is why two live performances are never quite the same, even while a painting is the same one visit as the next. The painting is a flash, a moment of the human condition. The composition is an allegory that takes on a life of its own, a life created by the cooperative geist or spirit of the musicians. Another parallel music has to life is the idea of rhythm. Nature especially is fond of the idea of rhythm. There is Spring, and Summer, and Autumn, followed by Winter, always new, always the same. Rhythm follows the rule of undulation; there are peaks which are followed by troughs. In nature, there is the dry season that prepares the earth for the wet season. In life, there are times of excitement and action which are balanced by times of rest. In music, there are the beats, and then there are rests. There is tension, which is then resolved. There are antecedents, then there are consequents.
No one really understands, technically, why people find pleasure in some harmonies, but not in others. We like major triads, but don't like augmented sevenths. But I think it appeals to our sense of order. We love the idea of logical thought because it all 'fits' together, and we love harmonies because they also satisfy our need for order. On the other hand, we love melodies because they are unique and independent of the harmony and rhythm, and make things interesting and different.
All art is meant to tell a story of some kind, to explain something about what it is like to be alive and to be a part of this odd thing we call humanity. But I think only music fulfills so much of our contradictory aesthetic nature.
I've been discussing music in its artistic sense, but music is also wonderful in its role as a connecting point to the rest of human nature. It is an important aspect of basic physics with the description of the motion of the sound waves. It is fundamentally connected to mathematics, the core of what we would consider the other end of human knowledge, scientific and logical knowledge. With singing, it is connected to language and poetry. With dance, it is connected to kinesthetic beauty and knowledge. (I wonder if Howard Gardner, when he formulated his idea of multiple intelligences, realized how connected all of them are. Perhaps they are like legs on a starfish, different aspects of one thing.) And, the thing is, I know that knowing more about, say, the physics of music would also not make music more cold and dry, but only add another aspect of beauty to appreciate.
Because that's what it comes down to, really. I can write and write about music, and what music means, but I'm not really going to add anything to music's essential nature. While finding out more about something may extend it's beauty, don't get so wrapped up in finding out things that you forget the original wonder that made you fall in love in the first place.
So Ciao. I need to go practice my guitar.
It's just a crazy Schema
I was just scrolling down to the bottom of my blog and I found out that I don't have all of my posts up anymore. I've only had this thing a couple of days and already I've written so much I have to check the archives to see my older ones. Anyway, I'm sure you don't care, but it's a big deal to me.
My philosophy teacher is a great guy. It's been the first time since Doc. Stone that I've really been able to have a philosophical argument with someone who has studied a lot more than I have. The class is way too easy, but we occasionally have discussions that I really enjoy. A while ago we discussed schemas, which are the main way people organize the facts that they know.
Consider grocery stores. Most people can go into a grocery store they have never been to before and not have too much trouble with finding the things they need. They have a general framework that corresponds to those stores with food in aisles. This general framework is the schema, and it is the same way we know how to find books in libraries, rules about sports we have not seen or played, or how to clean a strange bathroom, if we were so unlucky. The main idea is that these things are abstract and general, rather than specific. Another point is that they are mostly unconscious acts. We don't think about what the inside of a grocery store is like, we just are expecting what we have outlined in our schema.
After we talked about this in class, I realized how much this way of organizing thoughts is connected to language. Consider the word "dog." What comes to mind? Oftentimes it's a visual image of a specific dog, one that we might perhaps have some connection to. Then comes the vital characteristics of all the entities that we consider to be dogs: I think first of the tail, and then usually the teeth. If we continue, more come to mind: four legs, barking, buries bones, etc. When we use the word "dog," then, we are not describing a real dog but the idea of 'dogness' that matches our schema for dogs.
Let me also say that it is during the consideration of the characteristics that we find we can connect our schemas. I think of dogs, then think of the waggly tail, which shares some properties with, say, snakes, then from snakes I think of scales, which reminds me of scale armour, which reminds me of castles, etc. etc. So each schema is not a wholly independent entity, but is connected to the whole like a cluster on a web.
This explains, using the first principle I stated about schemas, why words are so hard to define. we have to use abstract notions to describe other abstract notions, always a tricky proposition. (This is why so many smart people go into concrete subjects, such as mathematics. That's also why they hate it when those concrete subjects, such as mathematics, turn out to be more abstract than they thought.)
The other principle of schemas shows why people are so hard to convince. They are 'trapped' so to speak, in their schemas. The best example is politics. Politicians persuade people by appealing to their schemas. No issue can be resolved because the various sides are working with different schemas of the issues at hand.
Schemas are very powerful and useful ways of looking at the world, but sometimes they need to be sidestepped. It is important to realize that everyone thinks like this when you interact with them. You never know.
We are such stuff...
I had an odd dream last night, and as I have been reading Freud I have found myself strangely interested in them. They may not be a window into the unconscious, as he claimed, but they are still worth understanding, certainly.
Sometimes I have dreams that are like Dali paintings: the physical world becomes strange and distorted, with objects acting in strange manners unlike their usual forms. Sometimes I have dreams like movies: as the protagonist, I just lived out the script that was set for me, and they would often end with a fall or a chase scene. Sometimes I have dreams where I am completely in control of what is going on, and the only way I can tell the difference between the dream world and the real world is that in the dream world I can do anything. No, I'm not ripping off the Matrix.
If we weren't asleep when dreaming, we would be considered crazy. The two are not at all dissimilar. Many studies have shown dreams to be a kind of controlled insanity, with random nerve firings at rigourously controlled times. Perhaps we have the advantage over chronically ill mental patients that we have a stable reality to compare dreams to, but for the most part our dreams are real enough, in the sense that the mind accurately reads the signals that it is sent by the nerve clusters.
The question "why do we dream?" is one that has plagued psychologists for years, at least since Freud, whom I believe was the first to come up with an explanation for why we dream what we dream. Many people and psychologists believe they have evolutionary value, but what that value is is the subject of controversy.
I wonder if we don't dream because we wish to escape. I wonder if our minds don't realize the bounds that we have put on them, the bounds of reason and rationality. We love to organize things into differing groups, to encapsulate them and to label them. Such distinction is foreign to the real world; the categories we place things in often tell us more about our own minds than about whatever it is we are trying to describe. I wonder if dreams are a reaction against such artificial thought, to let us know that there is more to existence than what we know and believe. We haven't found a better system to organize our thoughts, but the fact that there is an artificial system already shows its weakness in understanding natural phenomena, or indeed, any phenomena outside of what we already know, of what we already are.
Dreams remind me, at least, of days before I knew anything; things just were and that's all of what was.
The Multitalented Mr. Leibnitz
As you may possibly have surmised, today's post also comes thanks to the writings of Gottfried Leibnitz. He just happens to be a hero of mine, by the way. Not because he was incredibly insightful and bright, but because he was such a prodigous polymath. Not only was he an amazing philosopher, but he was an innovating mathematician who invented the calculus at about the same time as Newton, and a renowned statesman. I was reading some of his letters (he was a prodigous correspondent, also) to a disciple of Newton when this very interesting subject came up.
Newton was a very religious man. He thought his description of the Universe showed the perfect balance of God's workmanship and his authority. There was just enough unaccounted for to explain God's divine intervention. Today, this idea is mocked by many scientists, giving rise to the name 'god of the gaps,' a God who is merely the answer to a question we don't know. The idea still continues today. I was reading a letter written to National Geographic by a man who knew God was the 'Dark Matter' that physicists were having difficulties describing.
Leibnitz refutes this idea in his letter to this disciple of Newton's. He says that to claim that God didn't have enough foresight to make a self-running Universe is more of a slander against God than denying Him the power of intervention in the Universe. Also, couldn't God, with perfect foreknowledge, know of problems to come, and then set up a natural reaction to fix it at that time without having to resort to miraculous intervention? Using the standard analogy of the time, Leibnitz claims that it is only the bad watchmakers who have to make adjustments to their work. The good ones do it right the first time.
So there's my 18th century warning to zealous 21st believers. Don't lessen your idea of God by forcing Him to be a god of the gaps. If there is a problem with the physical description of science then science usually sets it right. How many people today believe in an aether that pervades the universe, like scientists in the nineteenth century? If you have a theological problem with science, then realize that God made the Universe the way He wanted it. Science is not supposed to be atheistic or theistic, but agnostic. It gives no evidence about God either way. It only describes what is there. So just relax.
Warnings to Philosophy majors
Yes, I know this is the second time I've posted twice in one day. Occasionally, I get more than one thought a day. Go figure. It helps when I read good material; this thought was triggered by Leibniz. I was reading some of his philosophical essays in the honors house (If for no other reason, I would love college for the book collections.) and was struck by this thought. Actually, I've considered it before, but this was the first time I've had the opportunity to put it up where the world can see it.
Philosophy is a daunting subject. There are dozens of books introducing it, hundreds explaining it, and lots of parodies of it. I am sure there is more stuff written about philosophy than philosophy written, and (let's be clear here) they are not the same thing. It is the same difference between literature and literary criticism. One actually says something, the other restates it in a useless manner. I may be overstating here, but not much. How can you understand the explication if you don't understand the original? What makes you think another person can explain ideas better than the original author?
So this is the first warning: be aware of the difference between philosophy and works about philosophy, and always give higher significance to the former.
Another problem people have with philosophy is the often confusing and complicated worldviews the philosophers propose. I empathize with people who dislike philosophy because philosophy seems to have little to do with the real world, but I have to disagree with them. Philosophers probably see the world better for the exercise. Still, sometimes the worldviews philosophers propose are confusing because they contain popular ideas that have since fallen out of favor. But it is too much to ask to leave these parts out: we all use them, and assume that they are essential to existence.
If we look at philosophy as a combination of essential truths and modern thinking, we can separate the two quite easily. Philosophers essentially just combine these truths with modern thought, so we should (and do!) see streams of thought that perpetuate throughout the history of philosophy, and will not be submerged no matter what evidence appears for the contrary, and vice versa. These are the things that philosophy is about. Unfortunately, as I just implied, philosophy will not tell us which side is true. The evidence (i.e. the modern ideas) is never enough to completely rule out the other option. Or people are just hardwired to slip into these beliefs that continue through history. Either way.
On the other hand, these essential truths are by no means limited to philosophy. They can be found in every part of human thought. All scientific theories have rung true with ancient ideas from Greece, China, and other parts of the world. Heraclitus would have been familiar with the general idea of our quantum world; Democritus would have had no trouble understanding the old atomic models.
It seems then that we already have all the ideas here that we're going to get, all the evidence available to decide what kind of world we live in. And any option we choose has been done before with a different linguistic dressing.
So that's my other warning to philosophy majors: if you're looking for answers, tough luck.
It really just doesn't matter, in the End.
I was running yesterday and thinking about the Philosophy of History. I just realized that I may be the only person to ever put that last sentence together, or at least be the only one telling the truth when I said it. Anyway, I bought a book in England entitled, conveniently enough, The Philosophy of History. Yes, I admit it. I buy textbooks because they look like interesting reading material. Anyway, it got me thinking, and while running, I found some general parallels among the various philosophies:
1. They tend to be linear in direction, i.e. history is moving toward some end. (Rather than the cyclical idea of history in many early cultures.)
2. The present time period of the author is the culmination or nearly the culmination of some vital aspect of thought that will end or cap all. In other words, just about all of them not only thought humankind was moving in a positive direction, but that the end of that movement was near. The end of history was at hand. No more to be said.
3. They based their analysis of history on one aspect that was important in that time period, but may or may not have been in other time periods.
The first one is simple enough. It may or may not be
true, but it certainly can be used as a framework in order to better organize what we know of history. It is the second and third ones I have problems with. The second one pretty much hits me as ludicrous, as people refuse to learn from other people's mistakes. For at least two and a half centuries (from the early 1700's to the late 1900's) philosophers have been predicting the end of history, while the most that happens is the culmination and eventual end of one aspect of history. The mistake these philosophers make is assuming that an aspect of human existence that is very important in their day is the prime aspect of human existence. This is of course tendency number three.
Another, related issue is the idea of an 'end of history.' What would such an existence mean? None of the philosophers take the next step and describe what happens after all the conflicts have been resolved or completed. This is because such an idea is impossible in the framework of history that they have set up. Hegel was right when he claimed that history is made up of conflicts and changes. But that is not only true of history; it is a basic fact of human existence. Humans come up with new conflicts when old ones have been resolved, and rehash old conflicts when it suits their purposes.
But don't get the wrong idea. I don't dislike philosophy of history. I just don't like what it has become. I think if someone with insight took a fresh look at the meaning of history, what it can tell us and what its limits are, I think the philosophy of history can become something useful and good. Or maybe I should just give up and become an engineer. Nah.
Schrodinger says he has no mind
Despite the title, the gentleman whose writings led me down this stream of thought, while also austrian and crazy haired, was a coke addict at one point. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, I'm talking about Sigmund Freud.
Everyone thinks they know something about what Freud said, but the aspect I want to consider is his idea of the three conflicting parts of the subconscious, or, more abstractly, the idea that there are things going on inside our minds that we don't know about. Freud put a lot of emphasis on this idea; he thought most of our actions are controlled by subconscious processes usually dealing with painful past situations. Now, today, we know that we don't submerge painful memories into the subconscious (if there even is one) because, really, we don't remember painful memories with any real accuracy at all, and they are not submerged and forgotten, they are replayed in our minds over and over. So Freud was wrong about that, but he might have been correct in principle. How often do we do things without thinking about it? Think of driving a car. You hardly ever consciously keep track of everything that goes on. In fact, you couldn't. Your brain can only keep track of around seven new items at once, and there is a lot more than that on the road. Much of what we do is like that: we do things often enough that we have them down as schemas in our minds, and so don't consciously figure out everything. It's done by rote, as it were.
The question this brings up, at least to me, is: what part does consciousness play in the nature of free will? The general concesus among philosophers is that consciousness is the carrier of free will; that is, consciousness can override our natural, instinctive, unconscious predilections in order to sustain free will. Now I can understand that. Think of fasting: no animal voluntarily gives up food unless forced to, but we can choose (consciously) to do so. But what about ordinary life? As I said before, we wouldn't even want to have complete conscious control of all my actions: I'd have to remember to breathe, and to beat my heart.
The general solution to this is given by Erwin Schrodinger, the brilliant physicist, in his biological paper "What is Life?" where he outlines much of the view of the mind used by modern cognitive scientists (also in his paper "Mind and Matter"). The view says that 'Mind' is what the brain does. If this is true, then we have the further problem that the brain works under physical rules, including quantum mechanics, which means the molecules which make up our brain could be changing randomly. This seems bad for free will, which seems to require something outside physical reality in order to will things that go against nature. Schrodinger says that such an outside presence is not needed, though, because even if these physical laws are changing your brain, it's still physically a part of you. You, as a physical unity have free will because it's your mind making these decisions, even with molecular prodding.
I'm still working on the answer here guys, so I'm going to put it to the masses of people who read my blog, all three of you. Can you have free will while having mental processes that are defined by nature? Keep checking this space!
The crazy adventures of Moh Tzu and Meng K'e
I've recently been reading
The Mencius, and I have to begin this by saying that it is a fantastic book. I love
The Analects as well. Chinese philosophy is a wonderful place to find new ideas, or at least a new perspective on old views. It's especially great for people who have to read a lot of very logical textbooks because it still has great intellectual content, but simply arranged in a different fashion to western philosophy or intellectual thought. Anyway, to the subject at hand...
Mencius was a Confucian, and as an apologist for that school, one of his biggest rivals was Mo Ti. The difference I want to recognize here is the ethical difference of universal love. The Confucian school said that universal love was essentially impractical, and that the best we could do is give love order by loving best the ones we know best, and then outwards in various degrees. Mo Ti said that this was absolutely ridiculous. Love should not be graduated out. We should love and aid everyone equally, and to not do that would be to show favoritism to some and, therefore, hate towards everyone else.
Now, as a Christian and a compassionate human being, ethical questions have always been of upmost importance to me. I want to be able to do the right thing, so I thought about what these two philosophers meant. I realized rather quickly that both sides have merit. Mo Ti analyzes correctly that we show favoritism when we don't love everyone equally. Mencius is right when he realizes that we cannot practically live in such a way: idealism really never lasts very long as a philosophy for mass consumption. Then I considered the ramifications of them both being right. Does this mean that Ethics is always so paradoxical and open to imperpretation? Or does it mean that any system of Ethics is right, because doing right is so complicated that you'll always get just enough right to get by?
Well, as I considered an answer to those questions, I decided that the answer was: Yes, kind of. Ethics is never a complete science because we cannot ever have a complete description of what to do in
every situation. The system of rules we have are not complete, and let's face it, they mean different things at different times. Sometimes we have to realize that something we consider morally wrong on a personal or even group level cannot be outlawed in a general way because that would be moving even farther from doing what is right. I also thought that anyone who tries to do what is right, no matter what his system is, will get something right.
But that cannot be enough. I realized the weakness of thinking in systems: the systems. As I just said, any system of rules we come up with is weak (or could be interpreted wrongly) at some point, some situation. The trick is to have a universal idea or connection to what is right, and then, at that point, if the rules don't work, break 'em. Don't be so overly solicitous to those you know (a la Mencius) that you neglect charities or start hating outsiders. Don't be so overly concerned about humanity as a whole if your neighbor is contemplating suicide or even if your roomate forgets a blanket that you don't give him a spare because it would be favoritism. The idea here is to be aware of your situation. It's no good to be just loving to your friends (for is that not what even the tax collectors do?) but the quest for universal harmony shouldn't bring you to neglect your duties as a neighbor, a son, or a student. Moderation in all things.
The second point is to not get so wrapped up in the system that you forget to do good things. It really is very simple: love one another, and don't treat others how you wouldn't want to be treated. But there are many things that can keep one from accomplishing this, so this is the time to consider getting out some serpent's wisdom.
New Orleans
Sometimes I'm glad that the words we say don't accurately reflect our thoughts. I don't think we could handle it if we could articulate all the complex thoughts running around in our heads. Sometimes, as time passes, the words change but the feelings remain the same, but if we could express at one go the whole of our thought, it would be more than we could handle.
I've been hitting the 'next blog' button of blogger.com, and, unsurprisingly, I find a lot of blogs with people's opinions on Hurricane Katrina. I wonder sometimes whether people ever reflect upon what they say at all. So many things I read make no rational sense, but as they are accompanied by strong emotion (as they should!) they have weight and power to influence not only the person's own action but the actions of everyone around them.
I read blogs saying that the hurricane was the wrath of God upon a sinful populace. Was the tsunami in southeast Asia also the wrath of God? I heard no such claims then. Who are we to say what is the wrath of God and what is not? Did not God promise to stay his destruction over Sodom and Gommorah for the sake of ten righteous, and failing that, saved the only righteous family in the city anyway? God's wrath is not the vengeful, destructive force that some people make it out to be. We have to realize that there are things in nature that happen on their own power. Storms, even killer storms have happened before, but we get to claim this one as God's wrath because it was strong and hit a more populated area?
I see other people who are wondering why New Orleans and the federal government were not more prepared for the destruction. They don't consider that we have never dealt with this kind of tragedy before, and until disaster actually strikes, the mindset is that such things could never happen. We can consider events happening in our mind, but this is not the same as actually believing in our core that disaster can strike. All humans are programmed to believe in their own invincibility and accurate assessments.
to New Orleans, our prayers are with you.
to the rescue workers down in the city, our prayers are with you.
to those who have lost loved ones, our prayers are with you.
Numbers
It's interesting to me that wherever I go, I manage to find people to have philosophical discussions with. Last night I was up past midnight talking with a girl about people and how they think (or don't think), then today I got into an argument with my Philosophy teacher on the Ontological argument of Anselm before coming back and talking with an agnostic on matters of faith and how it works in all sorts of people. I love talking with people because they show me what I don't know, what I've overlooked, and what I've reasoned falsely. But one thing I notice is that whatever I talk about, I remember something very similar has already been written or discovered. This is one of those instances. I had this conversation with an old friend of mine, then a week later read a book by the philosopher Gottlieb Frege coming up with the exact same conclusion from a different angle.
We were looking at people eating lunch at tables in a cafeteria, and it started to become clear to us that people have odd notions about tables: namely that they are all the same. They can count groups at a table as a group because they have a common property with the other groups: they are sitting at tables. The groups are not the same, but because they have similar properties that are group together in the mind, they that are similar are also same, just in lesser degree. But this is the best we can get: in a physical world, you can't get two things that share the exact same properties: There would not be room for them as they tried to fill the same space. However, there is a place that perfect sameness exists.
In mathematics, the most basic property is that a=a, or that 1+1+1=1+1+1. Here = really means completely equal, the same, sharing all properties. But using numbers in the real world forces us to call equal what is only similar or approximate, like the people at the tables. One book and another book become two books because they share the properties of "bookness" we hold in our minds, but they still have different words on their pages. If we look at the pages something else comes out. Say a book has 300 pages. Try to think where the number 300 comes from, or what it is associated with. The number 300 is neither part of the book or of any of the pages. Each page does not hold within itself the idea of 300, and neither does the book. It is something outside both the book and its pages, something within our minds in order to organize the group or set. The 300 is a concept of the multitude of pages that are in the set of the book, but is still neither a property of the book or of the pages. Think of a pair of men standing together. The number two is not identical with these men. The number two is instead something that all pairs have in common, and is a way for us to organize groups in our minds, namely all groups with a pair hold the number two.
But this idea has already been taken. So I'll keep thinking, and try to come up with something no one has come up with in quite the same way. Maybe.
College
Because Paul started me on this whole blogger thing (good idea Paul's roomate!) I dedicate my first post to him and all the interesting things he's found out about the college experience. Now, I think BYU has some stranger stuff going on than Gonzaga does, but in case I'm wrong, I wanted to share my perception of the College Orientation.
It begins by moving all possesions you care about in life into a miniscule room that you share with a complete stranger. For most people this is fairly difficult; I, with my single suitcase and two small bags was astounded to see people come with large tv's, full sized computers, refrigerators, popcorn makers, just absolutely crazy things. You are allowed here to 'loft' your bed, that is, stick it up on concrete blocks in order to fit more things under them. I walk down the hall and I find people who have their bed higher than they can reach, and I have no idea how they can get up there to sleep. On the other hand, these are the ones whom I have not yet seen go to class, so I supposed if I stayed in my dorm room 24 hours a day, I would want all that crap too.
One other strange thing about Orientation is the Freshman Welcome Night. I know Paul has already spoken of this, but I have my own thoughts on the matter. I believe it's a very well planned psychological event. The University realizes that it has a thousand or so new students who are pretty much being completely cut off from everything they know. The response (of the students) to such a stressful period, one where they are adapting to a completely new enviroment, is one of contempt and mutual bonding against this new and strange entity. 90% of the freshmen I talked to were verbally abusing the school for its lousy Orientation. Now, this slow movement towards unity in the new student body is great, but classes start in two days and the University needs to turn its students into sheep before then. So they put on some loud music and everyone spends a few hours bumping into each other. It acts like a dionysiac orgaic ritual. Everyone gets to expel all their pent-up feelings together with some loud music, and the bonding is cemented. The only thing the University has left to do is to turn the students contempt away from itself. This is a much slower process, but an interesting one because it generally leaves the students
saying how much they hate the system, but
acting like they are wholly supportive of it. I found Seniors in the honors program ranting on about the inadequacies of the school for a quarter hour, then later going and saying how they had never missed a basketball game.
They've become more sheep now than man.
