I would rather encounter a penguin than a rabbit. Imagine. You are walking in a field. You encounter: a penguin! What do you do? A) Pick up the penguin. B) Poke the penguin. C) Run away. D) Put the penguin in a sack. E) Call the authorities.
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(8)
08:09:05 PM,
Tuesday 7 August 2007
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Neuroscience & Philosophy: Brain, Mind, & Language is a big name for a small book. It consists of a neuroscientist and his philosopher friend (Bennett and Hacker) taking on the big names in cognitive philosophy (Dennett and Searle). Here is an outline of the argument:
Bennett and Hacker (mostly Hacker): Brains don't think, people do. So stop talking as if they did! It makes no sense! You all are crypto-dualists.
Bennett: Plus, neuroscience is really, really hard.
Dennett: Everything you said that's right I said years ago. But basically, you just don't grok the cognitive neuroscience lingo. (In a moment of elevated discourse, he actually says "Now who's right?")
Searle: Feelings are real! And they are located in the brain! This will be proven any day now.
Bennet and Hacker: [whipping off the Wittgensteinian mask] We are Aristotelians! All hail the true heirs of Aristotle. The soul is the form of the body. The whole is greater than the sum of the parts.
Robinson (the editor): Dennett and Searle are just storytellers. Hacker is at least grounded in the grand traditions of analytic philosophy. What was wrong with Descartes again?
I found this book extremely thought provoking. It represents the only serious challenge to the world of Dennett et. al. that I have come across. I had always thought that the analytical philosophers lived in their own abstract worlds and never came out to play with the cognitive scientists. Hacker's dry confidence is delightfully refreshing compared to Dennett's snarliness and Searle's gooeyness. I wish he would have sacrificed some verbal safety, even accuracy, for the sake of clarity, however. Until he broke out the Aristotle in his rebuttal I had no idea what actual ground he was standing on, how he proposed to be a non-dualist without referring mental activities directly to the brain. I can't say I fully understand Aristotle's concept of the soul, it keeps slipping around when I try to grasp it. Will have to read On the Soul again one of these days. But I can see how it might, if explicated and applied to modern concepts, be an interesting route out of the Cartesian mess. Though I'm also with Robinson on Descartes. He was relatively sensible and extremely clever and does not deserve to be treated universally as a straw man.
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(1)
12:23:58 PM,
Saturday 4 August 2007
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Tim didn't know what halva was. And now he does.
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(2)
06:27:05 PM,
Monday 30 July 2007
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This brief article, "Eternity for Atheists" sums up the conventional wisdom, such as it is, on what it's like to be dead. The article is unsophisticated, putting Plato and people who think we are going to be resurrected as computer programs on the same level, but this in itself is interesting: how much sheer confusion there is over this topic, which is, after all, relevant to everyone.
Saying that there is nothing after death seems on the surface of it hard-edged and sensible, but I don't think it holds up to close examination. I believe that is what some of the physicists mentioned in the article are on about. If we are forms in particles, the particles aren’t going anywhere. The forms change, and this matters, it matters deeply, but it doesn’t alter the fabric of existence, which includes experience. There is something, not nothing; the individual personality is no longer accessible, can no longer speak, but the world goes on, and the individual personality was only ever part of the world. Something along those lines. The “nothingness” idea has a certain tinge of egoism: that this body, this mind, is what creates the world for me, without it there will be nothing (as if the ego were the only something). One is, like it or not, part of a system much larger (if not greater) than oneself, and it is not likely that one is ever fully separate from it, or is ever likely to escape it.
My own personal hunch is that are certain illusions that are necessary or at least inevitable while one is alive that make death seem very confusing, but when the time comes it will be obvious and natural.
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(3)
10:45:05 AM,
Sunday 29 July 2007
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Went to the Peabody Essex Museum today. They have a Chinese house. It's a two hundred year old house brought over from China in the 80's. The most disturbing thing about it was the government loudspeaker. It was a little red radio type thing, in the corner of the living room. Apparently everyone had them while Communism was at its height. It broadcast government propaganda. They weren't allowed to remove it or turn it down. Horrifying. The weird thing was it was just sort of a side note in the guided self-tour-- "oh and by the way this house comes from a totalitarian state".
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(2)
05:12:17 PM,
Sunday 24 June 2007
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From the introduction to the selected poems of Hoccleve, the critical consensus: 'only read as a professional duty', 'anything but poetical', 'deficient both in character and poetic merit', 'a weak, sensitive, look-on-the-worst-side kind of man', 'on the whole has not a sensitive, alert mind', 'does not recognize his real strengths and produces reams of aureate dullness'. Never have I seen an introduction so hostile to the author. He's not bad, by the way. Or at least, I like Thomas Hoccleve's Complaint. I mean, you have to admit, "myn herte roote" beats "the depths of my heart" by miles.
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09:26:54 AM,
Sunday 24 June 2007
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Outlines
It's the same patch of sky through the leaves
dappled blue through shaded green
that was silver against lace black last night.
I want to cry for the guy on the radio
his alcoholic mother
and his delinquent brother
(these words define them only here
make that clear).
I'd like to see the sea freeze.
Have seen it, once. The Harbor in ice chunks. So cold.
Over and over
sunlight streaming through windows:
Don't we get bored with this?
This beauty falls flat
or simply does not catch
on the mind-gears.
Crunch crunch goes the mind
hunched over
seeking some definitive design
and not approaching it.
I wanted to jump the fence.
I jumped. I caught on a barb and bled.
Learned to press my palm to stop the bleeding.
Flowers crawl through the fence.
It protects what it protects.
Gingerly I defy it (and not twice).
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08:54:53 AM,
Sunday 24 June 2007
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While I'm on interesting shopping experiences, last week I went to a bead shop. I picked out some beads that I thought were wood. It turned out, according to the woman at the counter, they were buffalo horn. Special red buffalo horn. I have an image in my mind of the sterotypical gypsy-bead-shop woman, but upon reflection I have no idea how she actually looked. Well I wasn't sure whether to believe her but I bought them anyway. When I got them home the buffalo story seemed more credible. They are definitely not wood, as they are somewhat transluscent. Whatever they are they are probably dyed since I made them into a bracelet and they bleed pink all over my wrist.
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09:46:19 AM,
Saturday 23 June 2007
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I saw a famous poet in a bookstore yesterday. What famous poet, you ask. I doubt I will ever know. He was wearing pink sunglasses and signing books that were out on the display table. I was the only customer in the tiny one-room store. I didn't catch his name when he introduced himself to the store clerk, and either a) asking or b) going round to the other side of the table once he left were too awkward. I think he said something rude about customers who come in and just flip through books, which is what I was doing.
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09:41:22 AM,
Saturday 23 June 2007
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I am taking a weeklong break from the internet (and everything else). So if I don't respond to emails, that's why.
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06:28:37 PM,
Friday 8 June 2007
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We were wondering what the oldest company in the world was. So the winner is from 578, a construction company from Japan, except it went out of business last year. So wait, did Japan really have a notion of "company" long before Europe did? Lloyd's of London, founded 1688, wins for oldest company that I recognize offhand. Twinings, founded 1706, is the oldest whose products I use regularly.
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(4)
11:43:34 AM,
Thursday 31 May 2007
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There is a line of traffic every day on a street that runs through our neighborhood. The thing is, it's there both in the morning and the evening. It's not as bad in the morning, but it never backs up in the other direction. This seems like some sort of contradiction.
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(1)
11:01:00 AM,
Wednesday 30 May 2007
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A small selection of automatically-generated palindromes:
fleece elf
eroded ore
gandered nag
gardened rag
knife fink
laced decal
debt silk list bed
tray baby art
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(1)
06:46:07 PM,
Monday 28 May 2007
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Sometimes I remember to look at the Athanasius Kircher Society blog. And today I was rewarded with wonderful forms in paper
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06:22:09 PM,
Sunday 27 May 2007
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I seem to have had a nap. This was not very well organized of me.
Crowded park today, perfect weather, though not with that 6am charm. I seem to have become a habitual park bench sitter. Someone passing me with a small child today said in my general direction, "I seem to recognize that lady but I don't actually know her" referring, I think, to the possibility of sharing a bench with me (they passed it up). I'm surprised how many people recognize me from my walks. Several people I've met have known me as a pedestrian first.
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05:57:13 PM,
Sunday 27 May 2007
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So the water in the bowl wasn't enough to cover one egg, but six eggs, it covered just fine. This is one of those counterintuitive things.
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04:28:26 PM,
Monday 21 May 2007
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Books to buy for people you hate. I disagree with some of the selections (Kipling??), but the concept is amusing. I think I would start my list with Wheeler's Gravitation.
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11:20:59 AM,
Sunday 20 May 2007
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I heard, the other day,
a poem spoken to you, pond.
I didn't recognize you in it.
An inert body, a background for birds.
But you are a polite and public thing
with many faces to maintain.
You let me fancy myself an insider.
I know you by your many silences,
most of them gentle.
I rest my many thoughts on you.
You do not seem to mind.
I am surprised, one morning
to see your mist on another body of water.
Of course it makes sense,
mist being meteorological,
and bodies of water much alike.
Still it surprises me, that connection.
I revolve around you, clockwise,
poking at my patchwork thought,
pulling a thread here, stitching a seam there.
You are a spool, you are there to untangle me.
Though you sometimes suffer certain indignities
(algae treatments, trash)
you are always suited to the moment.
Ducks in the distance at dawn, that sort of thing,
you do so well, such grace.
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08:27:10 AM,
Saturday 19 May 2007
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I'm trying to figure out why I find The Secret to be the most nauseating thing ever. I remember reading similar things in a book on "witchcraft" many years ago, which at that time just struck me as silly. Maybe it's the parade of cynical self-help gurus backing it up, or maybe it's the emphasis on wealth as the thing you're supposed to want, or maybe it's just that my usual mechanism of dealing with flakiness (there's some way you can squint where it's got some sort of sense to it) is failing. There was this radio program I heard once where a woman was talking about the power of prayer, and how her brother was in the hospital, and she prayed, and he was cured-- and if you pray your brother will be cured too. In that case, I could see how she would think that, though it still seemed very mistaken to me, and just sort of tragic to recommend it so fervently, when some brothers will die, prayer or no. But The Secret is more or less inexcusable.
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(6)
07:46:45 PM,
Wednesday 16 May 2007
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There are points that I return to
dips that the mind rolls into,
one a bush full of birds
near railroad tracks, by a school.
I don’t know why.
At very small scale we are dancing particles or strings.
The dances are meaningless, we are informed.
Most intricate steps, but all formal,
lifeless, perfected and performed without desire.
It takes a certain taste
to enjoy the performance.
I am vulnerable to these things,
I find myself on night highways
with fellow business travellers
all grown-up and confused.
But I don’t, finally, believe this.
I know what it’s like
to be balanced between forces
there is, to be sure
a selective stiffening of the soul
but it is not senseless.
The sun is bright through the trees.
This never ceases.
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(1)
09:51:17 PM,
Monday 14 May 2007
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I was walking by Alewife yesterday and there were about a dozen police cars, yellow crime scene tape, and traffic being redirected. What brought this about? "You might want to check what's in the backpack."
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(8)
08:33:26 AM,
Friday 11 May 2007
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Another poem
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(1)
09:03:22 PM,
Sunday 6 May 2007
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This poem by Louise Gluck is about our local cheese shop. Among other things. I like it.
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06:17:18 PM,
Saturday 5 May 2007
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I have a feeling I've gone on about this elsewhere, but anyway: the number of conceivable numbers is countable, if you define conceivable as expressible by means of any finite set of symbols whatsoever, which I think is reasonable. When I first saw the diagonal proof I thought that it was numbers like pi and e which fell between the cracks of aleph null and made up the doubly-infinite irrationals. Then I took a computer theory course and found out that the computable numbers (including pi and e and the square root of 2 and anything along those lines) are countable: just start enumerating valid computer programs. And it's only one step further from that to all conceivable numbers (no matter how abstract or strange their properties may be): just enumerate meaningful symbol strings. But we still seem to run into situations that call for aleph 1, so what gives? While it's never possible to actually need an infinite string to express something meaningful, it's possible to express something in one language that needs an infinite string of another language to express. But once we go through those all that's left in aleph 1 are numbers which cannot be grasped by thought at all, except all at once. Which is somewhat disillusioning, but also fascinating. (This outburst of geekiness was brought on by Douglas Hofstadter's new book, I am a Strange Loop).
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(15)
06:01:55 PM,
Saturday 5 May 2007
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On software engineering:
We spend our days building
baroque cathedrals of thought,
line upon line
of clockwork words
whirring in silent circuits.
We meet the machine’s fastidious needs:
not a comma out of place.
Our parentheses nest perfectly
and in return,
complete obedience
(though silicon is obsequious,
like all matter,
and eager to mirror mistakes).
We make the abstract concrete;
we write symphonies sung by machines.
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(8)
09:05:15 AM,
Saturday 5 May 2007
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Dream: Tim and I are joining a cult. We spend days trekking over a beautiful but crowded countryside somewhere foreign, perhaps Thailand. We pray that the weather holds up, because all we have is sleeping bags, not even a raincoat. At night, there are no stars, only planets, lots of them, gathered around the horizon. Finally we reach the temple. It is a large building with the interesting feature of having two roofs paved with stone. Not side by side, you understand. Nor one on top of each other, exactly-- they both face the sky*. I am quite certain there is some regulation against this, but I can't figure out why. Each roof has a small, brightly colored hut at the center of it. Inside, deep in the basement, there is a large bronze statue somewhat hidden behind a curtain depicting a battle. Next to that, a somewhat disheveled kitchen, where we are welcome to make ourselves food.
*This may have something to do with a vivid memory I had yesterday, of pasting pasta shells to paper in a room by a lake. I had the impression that there was sunlight in the rafters of the building, which is of course impossible.
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08:35:29 PM,
Wednesday 2 May 2007
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It's always time for a good anomalous motion illusion.
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(3)
05:08:52 PM,
Sunday 29 April 2007
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a) The five senses are limited input streams.
b) The mind is a limited processor.
c) The will is a limited output stream.
Therefore, experience is limited; is in fact enumerable, theoretically (bhangra songs, salt water snails, small stuffed birds...). I find this thought comforting, that there are limits.
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10:01:59 PM,
Saturday 28 April 2007
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Something to keep in mind when dealing with (software) projects:
The moment we turn our mind to the future, we are no longer concerned with "objects" but with projects, and it is not decisive whether they are formed spontaneously or as anticipated reactions to future circumstances. And just as the past always presents itself to the mind in the guise of certainty, the future's main characteristic is its basic uncertainty, no matter how high a degree of probability prediction may attain. In other words, we are dealing with matters that never were, that are not yet, and that may well never be.
Hannah Arendt
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09:03:11 PM,
Thursday 26 April 2007
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I think for me, the thought that's really making me feel free right now, is that I don't need to accomplish anything-- and I can accomplish whatever I want, or at least, efforts in any direction are not wasted.
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10:04:29 PM,
Monday 23 April 2007
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I just walked in to our home office in the dark. There are 26 LEDs on in this room, green, yellow, orange, and blue, and several of them blinky. No wait, 27 (my cell phone just blinked). Like some sort of sci fi command and control center. Which it is, in a way. That's how you can tell it's the Future, you know. All the blinky lights.
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(2)
09:40:57 PM,
Monday 23 April 2007
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A non-weighted weeble. I want one.
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(3)
07:07:13 AM,
Wednesday 18 April 2007
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and when we get there
cold streams running through our toes
and slippery stones
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09:12:48 PM,
Tuesday 17 April 2007
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Tim: It's a house sparrow.
Me: On a house!
Tim: That's why they call them houses, you know.
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07:26:32 AM,
Friday 13 April 2007
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Dream: The magic goes out of Harry Potter world. Buildings are about to collapse. A well-ordered evacuation is executed. All the young wizards are milling about in a guarded hotel lobby. Harry talks to a cigarette-smoking guard at a door; he, Hermione, and Ron are allowed outside, onto a dimly-lit street corner. He tosses a top hat onto the top of a nearby flagpole. At least this much I can do without magic, he says.
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06:29:48 PM,
Monday 2 April 2007
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I was thinking vaguely of doing a quiz for which of Chalmers' types of mind/body problem person you are. But then it turned out most sensible people would by his (weighted) taxonomy be type F (pan[proto]psychism). It's funny how philosophers seem to always end up in that corner and always seem embarrassed by it. I remember meeting a woman studying philosophy who told me that really, deep down, she believed in universal panpsychism, but shh!
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(3)
07:53:22 PM,
Thursday 29 March 2007
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