tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12189014.post6149341695508260407..comments2024-03-28T22:57:07.128-04:00Comments on ILLUSTRATION ART: MEAD SCHAEFFER: A CLOSER LOOKDavid Apatoffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11293486149879229016noreply@blogger.comBlogger74125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12189014.post-64329971662367035822014-03-07T00:07:51.836-05:002014-03-07T00:07:51.836-05:00"I believe it's "C."" ~ Th..."I believe it's "C."" ~ Thats what I'm saying, "If you nor the Goodfellows know then who would?"<br /><br />"…he did for his personal amusement were very different from anything you have ever seen from him-- lots of sea scapes" ~ <a href="https://picasaweb.google.com/104843871720362761374/20thC#5987905329180025314" rel="nofollow">Cool story bro!</a><br /><br />"his love of fishing" ~ Was he on the trip that killed John Atherton?<br /><br />One last thing, when/where did he study with Dunn? Some illustration "expert" claims at Pratt, but Dunn never taught there…did he‽ …& did he‽अर्जुनhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14724439749828805512noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12189014.post-56130947107918512392014-02-24T12:28:40.252-05:002014-02-24T12:28:40.252-05:00PS: What I meant by the biblical salutation is tha...PS: What I meant by the biblical salutation is that wasn't an intellectual acknowledgement, but a deeply personal acknowledgment of being, something of deep simplicity people thirst for in their lives.<br /><br />Also, some of the things introduced on this site have broadened my own appreciation of related subjects. The subject of semiotics and a long discourse we shared back a bit were very helpful.Sean Farrellnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12189014.post-43918074756213129772014-02-24T01:46:36.630-05:002014-02-24T01:46:36.630-05:00Kev, The two statements of yours which I commented...Kev, The two statements of yours which I commented upon might have been written by any number of saints across western history. The emphasis on being and the replacement of it with ever more persistent appetites is a much misunderstood notion. Yes, very much an ordered aesthetic and experiential beauty as you've described. Quite a happy reality at that. <br /><br />Peace be with you, My peace I give you, is also a very personal affirmation. <br /><br />Your last line is extraordinary. Yes, I agree.Sean Farrellnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12189014.post-68174531463803732014-02-23T19:22:38.611-05:002014-02-23T19:22:38.611-05:00Thanks Sean.
Your point about the similarity of a...Thanks Sean.<br /><br />Your point about the similarity of all this to early Christian thought is quite interesting. I don't have the education in that area to add anything, but I have been thinking lately that a lot of what religion is about is bringing ideality into life in a profound way. That is, to perceive life more like art; to experience everything aesthetically and as only the cresting aspect of a deeper order. (And, of course, any idealized, deeply-ordered aesthetic experience will be beautiful.) <br /><br />This resonance with the religious impulse may also explain why Art has been such a political battleground.kev ferrarahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09509572970616136990noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12189014.post-24047338015571356392014-02-23T16:04:59.808-05:002014-02-23T16:04:59.808-05:00Another post filled with nuggets.
Happiness is a...Another post filled with nuggets. <br /><br /><b>Happiness is a state of mind brought about through a satisfying and secure communion with some preferred person, set or setting.</b><br /><br />The above statement, dependent upon leisure in ancient Greece was also central throughout Christian thought from its very beginnings.<br /><br />It is very rare today to find the idea outside of thoughtful religious discussions were it is a regular topic with many facets.<br /><br /> The beauty of not pretending to be God is the freedom to be oneself with all one's human imperfections intact. Such is freedom in being.<br />It is also a freedom from the burden of judging others. That is, with or without faith, the freedom from the pretensions of being God are beneficial. <br /><br />The statement more fully illuminates the criticism of excess analysis earlier where such analysis often misses the whole reality of the experiential, or being.<br /><br /><b>The appetites are under control in such a happy state because they are not depended upon to produce the state.</b><br /><br />Again, a beautiful understanding rarely discussed outside the religious context. Thank you again.Sean Farrellnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12189014.post-82507305162802927522014-02-22T16:18:50.437-05:002014-02-22T16:18:50.437-05:00Instead of answering all the specific ripostes, le...Instead of answering all the specific ripostes, let me just try to articulate my position with greater precision, and see if that does the trick...<br /><br />Happiness is a state of mind brought about through a satisfying and secure communion with some preferred person, set or setting. There is restful contentment, a sound and appreciable order involved, and there is security without a too-harsh sacrifice of freedom or variety. <br /><br />Pleasure best enters into this happiness when it is emblematic of it, or resonant with it. Thus, the pleasure one feels in a state of happiness isn’t really the point. But it is through the pleasure that the happiness is reaffirmed or made more evident. In a sense, the pleasure is a celebration of the satisfying communion that justifies it. <br /><br />The appetites are under control in such a happy state because they are not depended upon to produce the state. <br /><br />But if the underlying satisfaction is not there, no amount of pleasure can bring it about. Where pleasure lacks the foundation of happiness, I think it is hollow, fleeting, and merely a quick hit of sensual gratification. Which means to sustain such sensual gratification, to exist in a constant state of such pleasure, would necessitate addiction, causing over-stimulation, and will always fail to bring about satisfaction.<br />kev ferrarahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09509572970616136990noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12189014.post-77528381098307442832014-02-22T15:49:02.665-05:002014-02-22T15:49:02.665-05:00Hi Kev,
You may have read the recent articles on L...Hi Kev,<br />You may have read the recent articles on Lee Smolin's Time Reborn which was interesting. If you or any readers may have missed them I copied a link from one article from the NY Times below. <br />Sean<br /><br />http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/05/books/review/time-reborn-by-lee-smolin.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0Sean Farrellnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12189014.post-22447295568326093632014-02-22T14:36:31.932-05:002014-02-22T14:36:31.932-05:00Kev, I was deeply sympathetic with your last post,...Kev, I was deeply sympathetic with your last post, but at 2:00 AM thought better to sleep on it than try to make sense from a tired state.<br /><br />One of the wonderful things about young people is their lack of conclusion. Watching a group of teenage girls pop up and down as they talk, eagerly sharing affirmations, jokes, etc., is to view a certain pleasure unburdened by knowledge. Certainly one could explain away their insecurities and teenage solutions of thought in action in a certain knowing way, but such would miss the enthusiasm flowing through the scene.<br /><br />A man yells to his dog across a field and it turns and scampers back to him enthusiastically. There is identity and response and no one cares to have a handle on a thing, a conclusion. It is a bond.<br />It is identity, but also experiential. The label is apart of, but within a larger experiential reality.<br /><br />Where I part is in the conclusion, confinement or limitation of what thought or the intellect's core function is. I don't disagree with what you are saying at all, but I also don't believe the book is closed on the nature of thought, its relationship with life, or even its limitations in space and time.<br /><br />There was a website where scientists told stories of inexplicable things they experienced. Some of the stories were quite odd, but others had a simple curiosity to them. One was of this man who was taken by the look of a woman. He went home and heard an actual voice, not his own say, She's at the library now. He hopped in his car and in the library he saw her, with her husband. Just a curious little story of no great importance.<br /><br />The other night I awoke from a dream where a man with an English accent was calling me for some work to be done from a foreign country. I was in a second story office overlooking a street in a foreign country I had never been to in the dream. It woke me from my sleep and about an hour later went down to find an e-mail from an agency in a foreign country, yet the website of the agency was in English. A coincidence or curiosity of no great importance. Unfortunately, I had to pass on the job.<br /><br />How many angels can fit on the head of a pin was contemplation about the limits of space and time. Has anyone yet put a cap on space and time? I wouldn't know.Sean Farrellnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12189014.post-45166843999687329762014-02-22T12:41:22.199-05:002014-02-22T12:41:22.199-05:00This comment has been removed by the author.Richardhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08249577762409684046noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12189014.post-5793984666508237202014-02-22T09:34:12.904-05:002014-02-22T09:34:12.904-05:00(Continued from previous comment):
Anyway: cuttin...(Continued from previous comment):<br /><br />Anyway: cutting to the chase, I don't see why we seem intent on placing so much weight on a dichotomy between foolish pleasure and mature, enriched happiness. Many of the most highly educated intellectuals are trying desperately to scramble from the "happiness" to the "pleasure" side of the boat (witness Ezra Pound's "Salutation" or Ingmar Bergman's "Wild Strawberries"). <br /><br />Myself, I'd guess it's not an either/or kind of distinction, and probably not even an simultaneous-but-opposite-ends-of-the-spectrum kind of distinction. I suspect it's more of a cycle, where when art starts to become too precious and mannered and refined and perfumed, when the burden of knowledge and all of that weighty culture and history begin to oppress innovation (and genuine "pleasure"), something coarse and shallow takes priority and frees us from our straightjacket.David Apatoffhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11293486149879229016noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12189014.post-38898098459411670092014-02-22T09:33:01.430-05:002014-02-22T09:33:01.430-05:00I was hoping that this fascinating conversation wo...I was hoping that this fascinating conversation wouldn't peter out before the weekend.<br /><br />It seemed to me that Richard and Kev had the same goal, that both were predisposed to believe in a higher form of happiness based upon commitment, belief, effort, complexity, content, etc. (as opposed to a reductionist, biochemical pleasurable stimulus) but that Richard was having a hard time justifying that belief intellectually. Nothing Kev was offering could get Richard across that finish line. (I recall that somewhere in Plato's Republic that the great skeptic Socrates steps out of character and tells a young man he is noble for wanting to believe in virtue, even though he can't find a compelling rational basis for his conclusion).<br /><br />I share Richard and Kev's inclination but I also share Richard's skepticism that this inclination can be compelled by reasoned argument. The mere division of the subject into two different words-- pleasure vs. happiness-- strikes me as the beginning of a process by which we put our thumb on the scale. How sturdy is that dividing line between pleasure and happiness? After all, it's not as if there is some point where pleasure becomes more worthy and transforms into happiness, the way water changes into steam once it reaches a certain temperature. There are many richer pleasures in life, pleasures of refined taste and connoisseurship, pleasures of culture and family, etc. that you would say are indistinguishable from "happiness." Furthermore, the thumb on the scale begins to press more heavily as we begin to string adjectives such as "mere" or "superficial" in front of pleasure, adjectives that don't necessarily belong there. <br /><br />I think we also tend to stack the deck with words such as "stimulus" which are currently in disrepute but which, taken literally, don't necessarily have such pejorative implications. Would you claim that art which "stimulates" your mind (as opposed to your genitals or your taste buds) does not place near the top of Kev's "hierarchy of values"?<br /><br />Perhaps we might step back and ask why art "feels good." Why do we enjoy looking at images that are well designed, with balance and harmony and proportion? Isn't it possible that, as a matter of pure biological stimulus, we have an aversion to entropy, and art gives us pleasure by ordering the world along paradigms that make it meaningful and compatible (and beautiful)? After all, Edmond Hill wrote sensibly that drawing is an act of meditation, an "exorcism of disorder." Science tells us that entropy is the measure of a system's disorder, and from the beginning of the universe (the ultimate low-entropy state) entropy has increased (as predicted by the second law of thermodynamics). One day entropy will be too great to sustain complex life forms (such as us) and then it will be all over, so perhaps art "feels good" in our eyes and our belly because we relate to artistic objects that stave off entropy a little longer. Kev, does that feeling count as pleasure or happiness?<br /><br />I would start by suggesting that we should not be so quite so harsh on raw titillation, for there is no telling how deep its roots go. Sure, we are all appalled by what Kev describes as "superficial flippancies or content-free spectacles," such as Miley Cyrus or Jeff Koons, but on balance titillation has achieved many impressive things, not the least of which is the perpetuation of the species.<br /><br />(Ack! out of space!)David Apatoffhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11293486149879229016noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12189014.post-57757072852802792782014-02-22T02:24:51.170-05:002014-02-22T02:24:51.170-05:00Yes, that is exactly the point I was tying to make...Yes, that is exactly the point I was tying to make. <br /><br />I used the term worship, because it is not enough to surrender. One has to develop a sense of omnipotence about that for or to which one surrenders their humanity, even if in the end it is to convenience.<br /><br />Kev, your thoughts on labeling are true in the limitations of what your are addressing. Your thinking goes further than my own in reminding me of how little we may know of anything and how insecure the human race is. Thanks.Sean Farrellnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12189014.post-1172300240656079742014-02-21T22:18:05.366-05:002014-02-21T22:18:05.366-05:00It's an inherently insecure reality which huma...<b>It's an inherently insecure reality which humanity pretends it has overcome with knowledge and such is now a widely held belief. </b><br /><br />I agree, but I also think we can dig down to an even more basic pretension than that. <br /><br />I think the intellect's core function is distinguishing things by labeling or naming them. And this instinctual act often gives rise to the most foundational error of thinking; that to distinguish something by name, to recognize it and identify it, is in any way to understand it. In my experience, people constantly mistake the recollection of the name of a thing, which is mere trivia after all, with somehow having a handle on it. Generally, labeling seems to me to be a naturally-human method of quelling anxiety about the extent of our ignorance. <br /><br />Once the labeling is done, then we move on to taxonomy, the second biggest self-delusion the mind uses to quell anxiety about its ignorance. <br /><br /><b>In a world searching for the certainty of calculated affirmations and nullifications, the entire human endeavor (including art) gives way to pretending to (...) have courage (...) doubts are dismissed as too small to matter and (...) we begin dismissing our own humanity bit by bit rather than (...) suffer (...) the larger culture (...) is well under way towards worshipping (...) a monstrous mechanical leviathan.</b><br /><br />If I understand your point right -- that millions seem to be welcoming technical dehumanization because it insulates them from the pain of living in an authentic, emotion-filled way - then I agree.kev ferrarahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09509572970616136990noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12189014.post-29927926854512178682014-02-21T20:30:05.226-05:002014-02-21T20:30:05.226-05:00Kev,
Well, I do like seeing you or anyone else go ...Kev,<br />Well, I do like seeing you or anyone else go through that door, and if that helps to pry it open for you, who am I to argue? I'll just echo the sentiments of Sean's first paragraph above.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12189014.post-56316238412387581572014-02-21T10:58:51.525-05:002014-02-21T10:58:51.525-05:00In his posts above, Kev has brilliantly slain many...In his posts above, Kev has brilliantly slain many modern demons with rare clarity.<br />I very much appreciate that, thanks.<br /><br />We live in an experiential world of sense, including common sense. It's an inherently insecure reality which humanity pretends it has overcome with knowledge and such is now a widely held belief. Conventions and manners have always afforded insecurity a certain safety, but never has insecurity been solved, nor can it or should it if it could, being a larger part of our humanity than anyone cares to admit. <br /><br />The experiential realm is fraught with limits, the mysteriousness of unknowing which compels people to venture out from themselves. Does she ever think of me, or am I just paying her bills? Will he never buy me flowers again or say anything kind? Wondering is not enough. One must ask to get an answer and it is often the most insecure who do, while others await necessity to prompt action, hoping necessity will never come.<br /><br />In a world searching for the certainty of calculated affirmations and nullifications, the entire human endeavor (including art) gives way to pretending to be, pretending to have courage, while self doubt suffocates in presumptuousness. In such a state, doubts are dismissed as too small to matter and the weird task of self justification begins, that is, we begin dismissing our own humanity bit by bit rather than inconvenience or suffer ourselves. <br /><br />It's hard to admit a metamorphosis towards such cowardliness in oneself, no less the larger culture, which is well under way towards worshipping something very dangerous, a monstrous mechanical leviathan. Sean Farrellnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12189014.post-79262284861937640712014-02-20T23:27:17.527-05:002014-02-20T23:27:17.527-05:00I keep harping against analysis because I constant...I keep harping against analysis because I constantly see it being abused; overused, used in isolation, adopted as a default way of experiencing the world, or in some way privileged as a superior form of mental tool or framework. <br /><br />I believe analysis and synthesis must go hand and hand, (fact with truth, moment with event, members with relations, notes with key, content with context, specifics with generalities, detail with gesture, etc), and either without the other inevitably leads the mind astray and into confusion. (Or as Novalis put it, "Poetry heals the wounds inflicted by reason.")<br /><br />I have come to feel that the reason I keep seeing analysis privileged is because of the terrible fiat by the analytic philosophical tradition, which convinced the learned world to dump metaphysics (and poetry in the process) in anticipation of their refutation of it, which never came about. The result being a society filling up with confused nerds who believe in nothing except the technical, the factual, and the chemical. And whatever the latest pop science press release tells them to think about the same. This does not result in culture, only gadgetry. kev ferrarahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09509572970616136990noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12189014.post-83457783915624462262014-02-20T22:34:27.238-05:002014-02-20T22:34:27.238-05:00Kev,
How is that you can pooh-pooh analysis (a re...Kev,<br /><br />How is that you can pooh-pooh analysis (a recurring theme with you) on the one hand and be such a fervent exponent of semiotics on the other?Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12189014.post-59517354547613340612014-02-20T11:12:13.393-05:002014-02-20T11:12:13.393-05:00On another point, I’ve been a musician since I was...On another point, I’ve been a musician since I was about 5, having begun piano lessons then. I began playing trombone at 12. I began learning guitar at 15. By 18 I was giving lessons and writing songs. I’ve played in just about every type of band you can think of, from Jazz and Classical to Prog Rock to Bongos around a campfire, and have my own digital recording studio. And I am versed in theory, both as a piano player and as a guitarist, and have improvised live and composed at home for as long as I can remember. And I have done sound design for a number of firms in the city for online apps and animations and ads and such. I can’t claim to be world-class at any of this. I am merely passable as a musician, and barely tolerable as a singer. But I have been most dedicated to <a href="https://myspace.com/kevferrara/music/album/observation-deck-2187879" rel="nofollow"> songwriting and song production </a> and have really put the hours in with those endeavors. And I think I have earned a pretty good sense of what it means to be inspired, and the ways in which melody can be mechanically constructed (see Schoenberg, Howell) and the ways in which it can be improvised from the heart. And, more crucially, ways in which chord changes can be mathematically arranged and ways in which they can be utterly expressive and devoid of anything resembling math-based resolutions.kev ferrarahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09509572970616136990noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12189014.post-26654758168959792812014-02-20T11:09:36.197-05:002014-02-20T11:09:36.197-05:00The exception seems to be this pet analogy of your...The exception seems to be this pet analogy of yours where an analytical view of the brain is compared to a computer system. (Analogy is, by the way, considered a non-rigorous method of thinking by the very thinkers you are currently swayed by. Whereas the pragmatic metaphysicians see it as a rather essential tool in the human mental toolkit.)<br /><br />Not surprisingly, there will be similitude between an analytical view of the brain and computer logic; given that computer processing architecture derives from the math-logic work of highly analytical intellectuals/philosophers and most work on human thought has been based on a computer math-logic analogy. (So your analogy is actually just an accidental tautology in disguise, which is due to the limited frame of reference brought to bear on the question by science, as yet.) <br /><br />And, fyi, the analytic philosophers around 1900 burst on the scene and demanded that such notions as truth be cast aside in the name of progress and science. They thought metaphysics needed to be dispensed with, and that all problems could be solved deductively. About 70 years later, it was found that metaphysics simply could not be dispensed with without rendering all communication senseless and deduction couldn’t explain any creative act whatsoever. A mea culpa was never dispatched about this titanic error and terrible arrogation of intellectual purview…. they just let the matter drop. So very few people got the memo. And we are all the less educated for this.<br /><br />That you are privileging analysis to such a degree that you can only appreciate or defend phenomena in terms of its disintegration, puts you outside of the pragmatic correction to over analysis. And is limiting the ways in which you are allowing yourself to understanding the world. <br />kev ferrarahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09509572970616136990noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12189014.post-30273437842547831302014-02-20T11:09:10.537-05:002014-02-20T11:09:10.537-05:00Whew. After reading a lot more of what you are wri...Whew. After reading a lot more of what you are writing, I’m not really sure I want to pursue the matter full out with you. It would take all day. But there is a theme to what you are writing which I can address.<br /><br />I’ll try to be brief. <br /><br />Analysis always does what it does best, and that is disintegrate everything into constituent parts in order that each respective fragment be isolated for easy (often facile) scrutiny. You are in an analytical frame of mind currently. You are reading analytical material, submitting phenomena that interests you to your own analytical abilities, and using analysis as the benchmark of understanding. In short, you have taught yourself to think in the language of analysis, and have ignored other ways of thinking in doing so. <br /><br />In your mind, this is sensible, because you believe that analysis is the only road to fact, the only method of sufficient rigor to be defensible to scientific testing. And maybe it is. Except one thing is missing. And that is that fact is not understanding. Because no fact comprehends anything. It is synthesis and relation that comprehends; and such unifying comprehension is what has been called our sense of truth. So, therefore, the byproduct of your analytical frame of mind is that you don’t integrate any of the facts you have gathered. And this results, in general, in the disintegration of comprehension.<br />kev ferrarahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09509572970616136990noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12189014.post-21490725224610263882014-02-19T16:32:57.379-05:002014-02-19T16:32:57.379-05:00Okay, well, I'm paused in case you want to com...Okay, well, I'm paused in case you want to come back to read it later.Richardhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08249577762409684046noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12189014.post-47747615578374880722014-02-19T15:40:08.366-05:002014-02-19T15:40:08.366-05:00I don't have time to read your whole message n...I don't have time to read your whole message now, Richard, but I'll return later or tomorrow to do so.<br /><br /><b>"it seems rather clear to me that the only working response to physicalist reductionist science is a perpetual goal-post-moving, not unlike the God of the gaps, which will reserve for a metaphysical mind all of the things we hold dear, until those things are inevitably proven to be reducable to their constitutant parts without any actual non-physical emergence, then the goal post is moved again."</b><br /><br />There are two realities, Richard. One is the reality of the physical world and the other is the reality of our experience. <br /><br />While the physical world contains us, our experience of the physical world is contained within us. So, what we know of what contains us is what we are able to experience. I think this problem can't be dissolved, we will ever be minds, and this affects the reach of empirical investigation. <br /><br />Even when we develop incredibly advanced machinery to investigate the world, we still are filtering it through what we are able to understand or perceive.<br /><br />Our whole body is a filtration system for experience. A small example is the way we perceive color. Compared to the red and green receptors, we have very little blue receptors. What does this mean? Do we live in an incredibly blue world that we simply can't experience because evolution has filtered the heck out of our color senses? How much else is filtered out of our experience? How much of the EM spectrum are we missing out on due to the limitations of our five senses?<br /><br />I feel most comfortable with C.S. Peirce's pragmatic view of this, that our thoughts are real but do not exist. That is, they have no extension in physicality, yet they are undeniable. Thus, I can appreciate metaphysics as real without thinking that it exists. And this is good, because clearly metaphysics is the software our brains are running, no matter how it was coded in meat and chemicals. kev ferrarahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09509572970616136990noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12189014.post-69436178059871974842014-02-19T15:08:58.812-05:002014-02-19T15:08:58.812-05:00So, while I understand that a subjectivism about h...So, while I understand that a subjectivism about human issues still feels unconvincing, or unsatisfying, I cannot find a rational basis for believing the opposite, anymore than if a computer told me that a parallel-computing architecture is objectively supreme (and to that computer, operating under that architecture, it would surely seem so), I would have to ask said computer in what problem domain are they making that conjecture, and have they actually <i>experienced</i> other computing architectures.<br /><br />Given these extreme positions, I'm forced to posit that if we were to uncover a new-heroin for which there was no tolerance, it would be in the best interest of man to plug himself into a new-heroin drip for life. Not pretty, to be sure, but also not unlike the way our brain already works, except that dopamine and mu-opioids do produce some tolerance. Hopefully, that last position will be understood solely as an aside, as it, and the rest of this argument, I believe, pivots on this disagreement about physicalism and mental reductionism, not on artificially produced happiness.Richardhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08249577762409684046noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12189014.post-58128966010157822902014-02-19T15:08:35.496-05:002014-02-19T15:08:35.496-05:00I would argue that the real excitement of music is...I would argue that the real excitement of music isn't in expressing musical ideas already in the players mind, but in discovering musical content by applying novel musical rules. You hit the right keys, you get a dose of mu-opiods, not unlike your rat. (And how similar then is the starving musicians to the button-pressing rat?) <br /><br />Being a competent piano player, one can even push the tuning of the piano into an entirely novel breakdown of an octave, one no human being has ever heard before, tell that musician the notes that fall fractionally justified in the key, and they'll be able to produce music without having any idea what it will sound like ahead of time. This is made clear by Professor William Sethares's improvisations in invented novel scales -- for example http://sethares.engr.wisc.edu/mp3s/Imaginary_Horses.mp3 his Imaginary Horses with its "octave" that is broken down to the justly intoned fractions 1/1 6/5 4/3 3/2 8/5 9/5 2/1, as opposed to Western music's 1/1 9/8 5/4 4/3 3/2 5/3 15/8 2/1, and that's just the beginning of the possibilities there. The system provides the majority of the contents.<br />This is just a taste of the way in which what we see as emergent "spiritual" human mentation, can be broken into algorithmic processes by dumb physical machines. These sorts of results will only become more convincing as time progresses in our project to produce the digital mind.<br /><br />Physicalism then becomes valuable insofar as it allows us to see the possibility of computer or brain architectures, and thus to better know ourselves. To the computer in HER, if such a computer was programmed in a declarative, procedural, object-oriented or symbolic programming paradigm will affect how the computer understands "rationality", and "objectivity". A Symbolics LISP machine, designed to do symbolic processing at the level of hardware, will vary intrinsically from a procedural processor like the ones we generally use. <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SyNAPSE" rel="nofollow">DARPA's SyNAPSE</a>, to take that idea further, will vary even more significantly, and that project it seems may very well be able to build something approaching the mammalian brain.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.popsci.com/technology/article/2009-11/digital-cat-brain-runs-blue-gene-supercomputer" rel="nofollow">Were Bluebrain's cat-brain or rat-brain concious?</a> It's unknowable, but the same is true of any human being we know.Richardhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08249577762409684046noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12189014.post-70821785896819845642014-02-19T15:08:13.446-05:002014-02-19T15:08:13.446-05:00I was, for a long time, a non-reductionist in the ...I was, for a long time, a non-reductionist in the mind-body debate. It was only in recently studying electronics and logic gates up through low-abstraction assembly programming, up to higher level languages, that my opinion changed. Computers can also have seeming emergence from those simple electrons to advanced graphics rendering. It was in delving deeper there that I found myself constantly relating this new knowledge to the human mind, and realizing how difficult the idea of emergence is to break in a computer, a relatively simple machine, let alone inside my own head.<br /><br />In that sense, the neurologists' discomfort with the term soul, is comparable to the computer scientists' discomfort with the term Artificial Intelligence even though a program that <i>learns</i> to play chess better than a human is in some sense "artificially intelligence".<br /><br />Which leads well into...<br /><br />>>>"Great improvisation happens when instinct and talent are trained to an extraordinary degree. Until the free play of symbolized ideas become unified to the psychology of the artist, and his art becomes a direct translation of his soul."<br /><br />As far as music is concerned, I think that is demonstrably wrong.<br /><br />In music, the systems are so clear, that one with very specific rules can produce seemingly concious improvisations, without being in any way aware of what's going to happen. Knowing only the mode of the current chord, identifying the most likely next tonic location, the rhythms that will work in concert with the current rhythm of the other parts of the piece, and useful local arpeggio shapes, one can improvise cohesive sounding music without actually having to know ahead of time what's going to happen at all. To make that arguement in an extreme way, see the music of Emily Howell, a computer program that produces classical pieces. The program is still in her infancy, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jIXkfG553mo" rel="nofollow">but you get the picture.</a> This is the first step, the algorithms for doing this are new, the hardware is less than half a century old, yet we're seeing actual music result.<br />Richardhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08249577762409684046noreply@blogger.com