The Naked Truth

I’ve been thinking about what I now see as dressing this up: looking for the serious angle, preferably philosophical, but if not then sociological or whatever—and it does have that sort of potential, but I don’t have time to get into that sort of thing now—I have to write 20k words over the next couple of months or so for my dissertation, so everything else has to be minimized. But when all the seriousness is stripped away, one thing remains: call it exhibitionism if you like, and I dare say I do have a streak of that in me, but whatever underlies it, I most certainly have an urge to come clean about what I’ve been doing recently.

Which is, basically, lying naked on a beach. Also standing, and walking, and swimming in the sea. But mainly lying on a towel, basking in the warmth of the Mediterranean sun, and getting an all-over tan.

Having gotten that off my chest, it doesn’t seem like such a big deal, and I’m not sure where to go from there—as if the urge had been satisfied. But this does seem a bit short, so maybe I’ll just add some practical information.

Where was this? The strip of public beach that parallels the car park at the end of Chemin de la Matarane, Ramatuelle, France. If you zoom in on that Google Map you can make out, not actual sunbathers, quite, but one of their big parasols, made obvious by the shadow it casts. (I should perhaps mention that the beach is usually much busier than when this satellite shot was taken.) If you zoom out, you can see that this is just south of St. Tropez, on the CĂ´te d’Azur.

This particular stretch of beach is one of two or three along the bay on which public nudity is accepted. I first visited it in 1981, on a package holiday, camping at St. Raphael. The couriers organised a coach trip one day to Port Grimaud and St. Tropez, with a visit to a nudist beach. I wasn’t awfully impressed, back then, though, perhaps because, inhibited by the people I was with, I didn’t strip off myself. But I did, and do, when the opportunity arises, sunbathe naked back home. So when I revisited the area last year (September 09), I remembered that beach, and paid it another visit, this time throwing caution to the winds, and enjoyed it immensely. So much so that I made sure my accommodation was much more convenient for my return in May this year—last year I did rather a lot of driving, much of it through heavy traffic, and in that respect my latest visit was a vast improvement. I got to the beach every day but one (when I took a train into the mountains), and on every day that I got to the beach but one (the first, when there was a really quite cool breeze, perhaps the Mistral) I got butt-naked.

Well, there it is, out in the open. I won’t add “at last”, because in fact I “came out” as a naturist a while back, elsewhere on this site. But that wasn’t broadcast to Facebook and Twitter, as this will be. I would actually like to write about a couple of more-or-less serious related issues, but that will have to wait. I’m due back on the CĂ´te not much more than a week after my dissertation is due in, so might not manage much, or any, blogging for quite a while, but we’ll see how it goes…

May 30, 2010   Posted in: announcements  No Comments

A movie with its heart in the right place, but…

…to be honest I haven’t seen Being In The World yet (it doesn’t seem to have been released), so what follows is based on the website, but there are enough trailers, clips and text there to get me thinking.

Being In The World is a new movie by Tao Ruspoli, and, as is common these days, there’s a website devoted to it.

This is not a review, of either the movie or the website. It’s just my reaction to some of the things said on the site, and you should definitely have a look at it, whether before or after reading the rest of this post.

The main message of the film is very humanistic and very positive. It’s about finding meaning and happiness in skilled activity, as well as in relation to other people. I’m all for it, what they have to say in this regard is not only very true but very important. That’s why I say that the film’s heart is in the right place, but as for its head…

The philosophy seems to come mainly from Hubert Dreyfus (@Wikipedia), a high profile critic of artificial intelligence from the 1960s to the present day. This is not place, nor do I have the resources, to deal with Dreyfus as he deserves. But the Wikipedia page on his best known book seems to me reasonably even-handed, if you read the whole thing.

The movie seems to consist largely of clips of “talking heads” and performers, edited together. Philosophers and what are called “masters” appear, the philosophers talking and the masters performing their particular skill, and also talking. Remember, I’ve seen only what’s on the website, and not all of that. The following quotes are from a luthier (guitar maker).

Why are guitars that aren’t handmade so bad?

Are they really? I understand that some people of a romantic disposition would like to think so, and I’m sure that most handmade guitars are better than most machine made ones, but consider this: machines are much cheaper to keep than people, and so instruments that are designed down to a target price are made using them, whereas those that are designed up to a target quality are made by hand, so a machine-made guitar is generally a cheap one. But here’s another thing: is it reasonable to suppose there has never been a bad handmade guitar? I’m sure there have been many, and I’d go so far as to suggest that, of all the guitars made in the world during any particular period, the best machine made ones will always be better than the worst handmade ones. And, as the technology continues to improve, the proportion of machine made guitars that are better than some handmade ones will continue to increase. In my opinion, if somebody insists that everything handmade is inherently superior to everything machine-made, all they’re telling you about is their own mind. “That’s the sort of person I am, you know, a born romantic!” (And I’m sure the fact that this luthier makes his guitars by hand has absolutely no bearing on what he says about machine made ones. :) )

When a table is made by hand, the food eaten off it tastes different.

Oh really? Well, for some people, if, as they roll the food around in their mouth, they’re also rolling around in their mind the idea that, yes, the table is handmade, as is all the furniture in this beautiful little old bistro in the heart of the old town—yes, the food will taste different, and probably better than anything they’ve eaten in ages! That’s psychology for you, and there’s absolutely nothing wrong with it, as long as you don’t start rolling your eyes and (wonderful, wo-onderful!) insisting on the mystical influence of the genuinely handmade table, as against the one that’s merely designed to look handmade but succeeds in convincing you. (And you’d get the same effect on your sense of taste, or better, without all the emoting, by practising mindfulness while eating.)

Or take a plate that’s machine made, and compare it to a plate made of clay that comes from the earth and was touched by human hands

Presumably the food off the latter plate tastes better, though he doesn’t actually say.

Why, because there’s dedication… The machine is distinct from the human in that… precisely by virtue of the fact that a man is not a machine.

OK, so it’s the dedication of the table and plate makers that makes the food taste better. Now, I’m quite prepared to believe the making of tables and plates and all kinds of things by hand is better than by machine in lots of different ways. An obvious one is to give presumably rewarding employment to someone, but there may be many more, I haven’t given that much thought, and maybe I should. But I don’t believe it makes the food taste better!

Now, if this was just an advert for handmade tables and plates, maybe it wouldn’t matter much. (Or maybe it would, and I should probably think about that!) But this film has the imprimatur of a well known philosopher, and it’s full of crap!

OK, I probably shouldn’t have said that, I’ve seen so little of it, and it’s hardly what you’d call a philosophical response, but it is an honest expression of my spontaneous reaction, so I’m going to leave it in, just like a good romantic should do. Authenticity, you know.

Anyway, if you haven’t already, go have a look at the site and see what you think. All these quotes come from the New Trailer. As I say, the main message is great, it’s just a pity they used mumbo jumbo to back it up. And this is not the place to mention Continental Philosophers!

By the way, I’ve yet to find any mention on the site of Mihály CsĂ­kszentmihályi (@Wikipedia), who said most of the positive things they have to say many years ago. (Later: used Google to do a site-specific search, still no mention.)

March 30, 2010   Posted in: AI, philosophy, psychology  No Comments

The brights, mysticism and me

I recently joined the brights. What’s a bright?

  • A bright is a person who has a naturalistic worldview
  • A bright’s worldview is free of supernatural and mystical elements
  • The ethics and actions of a bright are based on a naturalistic worldview

That’s from the website’s home page. Naturalism is “the doctrine that the world can be understood in scientific terms without recourse to spiritual or supernatural explanations” (@WordNetWeb).

One of the Enthusiastic Brights listed on the site is Daniel Dennett, but the organisers are not, unfortunately, philosophers. I contacted them to complain that they misuse the word “mystical”. They were good enough to ask me to explain what it means to me, and here’s my reply:

In your previous message you said “Being a Buddhist presents no problem to the Brights.” Presumably that’s because you understand that such an identification does not necessarily carry any implication regarding belief in “the supernatural”. You also mentioned other religious affiliations, so presumably we can broaden out the point to say that “religious” does not imply “non-naturalistic”. I would say that exactly the same consideration applies to “mystical”, and in support, here’s a quote from the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy:

In the wide sense, mystical experiences occur within the religious traditions of at least Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Indian religions, Buddhism, and primal religions. In some of these traditions, the experiences are allegedly of a supersensory reality, such as God or Brahman (or, in a few Buddhist traditions, Nirvana, as a reality (See Takeuchi, 1983, pp. 8-9). [Missing parenthesis closure, presumably after "Nirvana", in the original.] Many Buddhist traditions, however, make no claim for an experience of a supersensory reality. Some cultivate instead an experience of “unconstructed awareness,” involving an awareness of the world on an absolutely or relatively non-conceptual level (see Griffiths, 1993). The unconstructed experience is thought to grant insight, such as into the impermanent nature of all things. Buddhists refer to an experience of tathata or the “thisness” of reality, accessible only by the absence of ordinary sense-perceptual cognition. These Buddhist experiences are sub sense-perceptual, and mystical, since thisness is claimed to be inaccessible to ordinary sense perception and the awareness of it to provide knowledge about the true nature of reality. (@Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Section 1.1 on that page. My emphasis.)

I hope you agree that there is nothing to contradict naturalism in “an awareness of the world on an absolutely or relatively non-conceptual level”. Even where deities are mentioned, such statements can be interpreted in a naturalistic fashion, such as Spinoza’s concept of God as reality-as-a-whole. That’s my own preference, not that I often think of it in these terms, and I certainly don’t worship it, but I do, as a practising Buddhist, seek to identify with it, and that, for me, is mysticism. Mystification is something else altogether, and I won’t bother to say anything about it, because I’m sure we see it the same way.

The brights net person replied saying that they were using “mystical” in the ordinary sense, not the philosophical one. Now, I’m not sure that there is an ordinary sense of “mystical”, besides the common but mistaken assumption that it must mean something like “mystificatory”, but this is not really about semantic squabbles.

Another, much shorter definition of “mysticism” that I ran across a while back but didn’t note the source for, is “the elevation of experience over the intellect”, and that works for me. This is, arguably, the main aim of meditation. Some people think it’s about stopping thinking, and that’s true as regards the result, but how the result is obtained is extremely important: ideally, at least, that state is reached effortlessly. But this is not about meditation technique either.

So what is it about? Well, at one level, it’s the usual, my main obsession (yes, I have a few) for some time now: is academic philosophy really what I want to be doing at this stage in my life? But people on the Buddhist/mystical/meditation path are supposed to become less selfish, and if there’s one thing that most or all of my on-line writings show, it’s my self-obsession (of which the one about studying is a sort-of sub-obsession).

This morning the sky here was a clear, light blue, and the sun was shining brightly on the snow all around. I took my camera, went out, and had a ball. I rediscovered the thing I used to like most about photography when I was deeply into it many years ago: the focusing. Of course, my current camera has autofocus, and that’s not what I’m talking about. I find the concentration required to get the best possible shot from a given situation takes me to another level, mentally. After I got back to the house and uploaded the pics to the computer, I discovered most were horribly over-exposed (I’d taken bad advice about compensating for the snow). But it didn’t matter very much: it was the activity of taking the pictures that mattered, not the results. I’d rediscovered photography—I even discovered things about the camera I never knew before, though I’ve owned it for a couple of years. And, for the first time in several years, I was sufficiently active in really cold weather to get really warm. (I used to do a lot of hill walking, until knee trouble got in the way.) I enjoyed it all immensely. And although some thinking was involved, I enjoyed it most when thinking least. Because that’s when I was most aware of the sun, the snow and the scenery. It was truly beautiful.

And when I was thinking, it wasn’t about myself. Because that’s one of the main things behind the academic activity: I want recognition for my ideas, and for my ability to come up with them. It’s all ego. That’s not to say I don’t find the ideas intrinsically fascinating, because I really do. But to do a proper academic job, you not only have to cultivate your own beautiful ideas, and show how good they are, you also have to shovel the shit of competing ideas, to show how bad they are, and that can be so tedious! (That’s a caricature, of course.) But it’s worth it, in some cases. If I was much younger, and looking for a career, the situation would be very different. To have an academic career, and all that goes with it, including being able to work on your own ideas, is a highly worthwhile aspiration. But that’s not me, I’m just too old now. And that’s not all: I want to spread my thinking as widely as I can, incorporating consciousness, information and mysticism, and I know how to do it, the outline is really quite clear. It involves Dennett plus empathy, simulation and imitation, memes as information, Blackmore, the self as memeplex and meditation to dissolve it. But I’d never get to work on more than one tiny corner of that at a time in academia.

Maybe, just maybe, the main issue here, though, is that the academic work involves too much thinking for me now. Yes, working on my own ideas involves thinking too, but not nearly as much as does the work of shovelling those of other people. So, instead of a PhD, and maybe also instead of completing the MSc, I want to write a non-scholarly, popular (I hope) book on my ideas. Yes, it’s still largely ego-motivated, and I might well drop the book as well after a while, but meanwhile, I think, it’s much closer to what I really want to do. And this post is ridiculously long, and I need to get some other things done today, so that’s where I’ll leave it for now.

References

  • Griffiths, Paul J., 1993, “Pure Consciousness and Indian Buddhism,” in The Problem of Pure Consciousness, Mysticism and Philosophy, Robert Forman (ed.), New York and London: Oxford University Press, 121–159.
  • Takeuchi, Yoshinori, 1983, The Heart of Buddhism, James W. Heisig (trans.), New York: Crossroad.

March 2, 2010   Posted in: philosophy  No Comments

Opposite extremes in psychotherapy?

I’ve both studied and experienced psychodynamic psychotherapy (“talking therapy”, like psychoanalysis) so I’m very interested in the fact that it’s gaining a good evidence base at last. Similarly, having experienced psychedelic drugs, I was interested to read that they are again being considered for therapeutic use. (This is the first time that I’ve publicly owned up to “recreational” drug use, but I’ve been encouraged by Susan Blackmore‘s attitude.)

February 27, 2010   Posted in: announcements  No Comments

Meta-philosophy

I’ve been reading up on information, again (John Collier’s Intrinsic Information), which has nothing to do with what I’m supposed to be studying, and, probably as a consequence, thinking deep thoughts about my future in philosophy, and whether I really want to do a PhD (and if not, whether I still have reason to complete the current course). It can’t be instrumental: I’d be over 60 by the time I finished it, and not likely to be more willing to relocate then than I am now, which is very reluctant, so a philosophical job is very unlikely.

So what it comes to is: do I want to do a PhD for its own sake, regardless of what I might or might not do with it? An important consideration is that my philosophical interests tend to be in the big picture, the broad sweep, and philosophers these days seem to be like scientists, focusing on smaller and smaller issues. I want to develop a sort of philosophical (as opposed to scientific) theory of everything: matter, meaning and mind from the bottom up. What are my chances of getting to do a PhD on that? Not good, I’d guess—but that’s all it is, a guess, I really don’t know.

So leaving aside the question of what I’d do it on, for now, ask this: would I be likely to enjoy the process of doing it, the life, as it were? Umm, don’t know that either, so how could I find out? If only I could do the next best thing, the nearest to a PhD that’s currently open to me, an MSc by research, and see what that’s like. Wait a minute, that’s what I’m already doing! Except, as long as I’m thinking about my future in philosophy, or studying other things like information (or blogging), I’m not. I suppose I better get on with it then… :)

[In a "senior moment", I forgot I supposedly committed myself to completing the MSc and going on to do (or try to) a PhD on information last week. That's fairly typical these days. Would having a memory like that compromise my ability to do a PhD? Let's see what effect it has on an MSc...]

February 26, 2010   Posted in: announcements  No Comments

Second Annual Online Consciousness Conference

This might seem a bit gimmicky (or maybe I’m just behind the times—I certainly am as regards this announcement) but some big names are taking part.

February 23, 2010   Posted in: announcements, consciousness, philosophy  No Comments

Effects of media violence ignored by media?

I’ve been reading a paper by Susan Hurley (@Wikipedia), a philosopher who sadly died a couple of years ago aged only 53, for a university course. The title is “By-passing conscious control: imitation, media violence and freedom of speech.” (In S Pockett et al, Does Consciousness Cause Behaviour, MIT Press. I might be doing an essay on whether conscious control is really required for “free will.”) It really surprised me to learn that there seems to be widespread agreement among researchers in the relevant disciplines that there’s a link between the viewing of media violence and subsequent aggressive behaviour: “The consensus among researchers is that there is indeed a robust causal influence here.” (p301)

The last I heard about this, admittedly several years ago, was from a media studies academic, who insisted that no such link had ever been shown. However, Hurley cites many studies, including meta-studies (reviews of multiple studies), and the overall effect is very convincing. This bit particularly impressed me:

What is the magnitude of the effects of media violence? The effect sizes shown in the 1994 meta-analysis are larger than the effects of calcium intake on bone mass, lead exposure on IQ in children, or asbestos exposure to cancer… (p303)

So why isn’t this widely known? IMHO, the main reason is that there are connections between news and entertainment media businesses, and it’s not in their interests to publicise it. After all, what’s more important, to reduce the level of violence in society, or to maintain the profitability of big business? What do you think they think?

February 16, 2010   Posted in: philosophy, politics, psychology  No Comments

My study plans

After much cogitation, mainly about PhD possibilities, but also (very briefly) about whether I even want to complete the MSc, yesterday I reached some firm conclusions, which I’m publicising to confirm my commitment to them (ie for my own benefit even if nobody else is interested, which is entirely possible).

The main development yesterday was my realisation of the link between the MSc dissertation and what is now my main aim for a PhD project. So here’s my favourite expression of what I very much hope to do a PhD on:

It is tempting to suppose that some concept of information could serve eventually to unify mind, matter, and meaning in a single theory. Daniel Dennett and John Haugeland.

My thing always used to be consciousness, but having a much clearer view of the state of the art since starting the MSc course, I don’t believe there’s very much left to do there. Information is something else, and I have some very definite ideas, which remain intact even after studying Dretske and others last semester, and spending much of this week looking at philosophy of info on the web.

The link between the MSc dissertation (see the proposal) and the proposed PhD project is memes, as items of information. I’m now thinking that it might be possible to explain the difference between Blackmore’s and Dennett’s concepts of consciousness largely in memetic terms. That’s basically because Blackmore, unlike Dennett, provides a convincing account of how memes get going in the first place (though she didn’t make the link between that story and consciousness). That unfortunately reduces the emphasis on meditation (probably, I think), but you can’t study everything!

If that works out as I hope and expect it will, it’ll make a great jumping off point for the PhD project. The timing isn’t so great, though, because as yet I’ve no idea who might be willing and able to supervise it, so I’ll probably have to take a year out, and start the PhD in September 2011, which seems a long, long way away! But of course I don’t have to wait until then to get working on it…

[Later: I should maybe make it clear that my commitment to this plan isn't absolute, but any alternative would have to be very good to compete. Short of sheer fantasy, I can hardly think of anything better!]

February 13, 2010   Posted in: Dennett, announcements, information, philosophy  No Comments

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi on flow

I discovered this while working on my PhD research proposal (which at the moment is on again, though maybe not for long). I’m interested in the implications of altered states such as flow for philosophy of mind. But you don’t need to be a philosopher or psychologist to learn a lot from this. Some of the comments are very interesting too, which is why I’ve linked to the page rather than embedding the video here.

January 30, 2010   Posted in: philosophy, psychology  No Comments

Empathy with robots

This is a fascinating, if short, article in New Scientist magazine.

Exposure to robots in the movies and television could affect our ability to empathise with synthetic beings, suggests a study of the brain regions thought to be responsible for our ability to relate to each other.

The team found that the MNS [mirror neuron system] was activated when the robot performed actions – but only when the actions were robotic, not when the robot’s motion was smooth and human-like.

When they watched the virtual human, exactly the opposite was true – the MNS was activated when the movements were human-like, but not when they were robotic – and the contrast was even greater between these two scenarios.

January 22, 2010   Posted in: pro-social, psychology  No Comments