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 Csíkszentmihályi (@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.)

Each of these examples of symbol-triggering constitutes an act of perception, as opposed to the mere reception of a gigantic number of microscopic signals arriving from some source, like a million raindrops landing on a roof.

So it’s meaning that matters. Which, of course, denies the possibility, or at least the significance, of “raw feels”. But I’m quite convinced that I sometimes perceive sights, sounds, smells and other signals without recognising their source. I don’t mean when I mistake something for something else, but when I’m quite mystified, and have no idea what a particular sound or sight signifies. Some people say that there are no raw feels, because there is always some interpretation, however minimal, but I say, if so, sometimes it’s so minimal as to make no difference, in this context anyway.

In the preceding pages Hofstadter writes quite a lot about video, and especially about video feedback, which he says will serve well in the following discussions of perception and other mental phenomena, so what he’s comparing the sense of smell with, in that passage, is the signals transmitted from a video camera to a television (“receiver”) to which it’s directly connected. Also implicit is the fact that scents are carried through the air by molecules of the substances concerned, so his “million raindrops” stands for millions of molecules, and there’s the matter of levels of explanation too, because these might trigger just one symbol.

My theory of consciousness copes very well with the problem of “meaningless perception”. The crucial point is whether we’re willing or able to identify with the receiver/perceiver. It might be an extremely sophisticated chemical sensor connected to a powerful computer programmed so that it can identify smells just as well as you or I, but unless you imagine yourself as that computer (or software, whatever), “smelling” what it “smells”, it’s still just a piece of automatic equipment to you. To attribute consciousness is to identify with the attributee. That’s what it’s all about.

Later: I just realised, this fits in very well with something Hofstadter wrote earlier, on page 17, which struck me at the time as not quite right:

Some of us (myself included) believe that the late President Reagan was essentially “all gone” many years before his body gave up the ghost, and more generally we believe that people in the final stages of Alzheimer’s disease are essentially all gone.

When I read that I made a note: “Does that mean it’s OK to abuse them?” He goes on to say that these peoples’ souls have departed (contradicting “before his body gave up the ghost”), though of course he emphasises throughout that he uses that word “poetically”, not religiously. But then most or all animals lack the higher cognitive faculties, and animals are generally denied souls, so maybe that makes some sort of sense. But like people with Alzheimer’s, they can suffer. Doesn’t that matter?