Sir Cliff's Law

The recently passed EU Directive will allow performing artists to draw benefits from their performing copyrights for another twenty years. Three cheers for Cliff Richard, the surviving silver(-haired) Beatles and others. I do not begrudge them their millions. But I am sad, because I will not get a free recording of “Love, Love Me Do”, which was specifically promised to me next year (the song was to be out of copyright after 50 years).
I am told there exist artists who:
1) will never get out of their bed to do anything for less than 1 million (dollars or pounds, I am not sure),
2) even if they stay in their beds, they still make a lot of money.
(I am not discussing whether it is good or bad for their creativity)
Society allows them to live like this, because we love them very much and would never swap their music for something novel and more original. We are lazy and thus it is only us who are to blame.

Has it always been so?

What is good for the contemporary pop artist, should be good for Socrates.
But Socrates, the most famous performing artist of his day was put before a court and asked to propose his own punishment. He suggested a wage paid by the government and free dinners for the rest of his life instead, to finance the time he spends as Athens' benefactor. This proposal did not go well with the judges and probably speeded up his death sentence. He simply pissed the judges off. They did not subscribe to the view that society owed an artist a living.

Socrates never wrote anything and the royalties would have to go Plato (some to be shared with Xenophon). But surely he did perform a lot!

A Machine Am I

I have a guest at my summer cottage. A mathematics and economics professor from the UK (I live in Poland). Day and night he busies himself writing scientific papers on the distribution of goods in a two-person society. They are obviously very good, because he publishes them later in American peer-reviewed journals. But to me they are complete gibberish, double piss written backwards. Most of them are in mathematese, with occasional comments like: “It is evident that….”, “It goes without saying that…” or “further derivation is trivial…”. It is not trivial to me! If I ever wanted to follow the proof, I would need to have it written in full. Every step of it.

The pioneers of artificial intelligence advocated the creation of a machine which would simulate intelligent human behaviour. For instance it would prove mathematical theorems. But they would have to be spelt out properly, with every formalized step encoded. Otherwise the computer would react to them like I react to my guest’s scientific paper. But does a machine show an intelligent behaviour. If it follows an algorithm, it merely does what it is told. A man who does everything by the instruction book does not show inteligence. The conclusion is: I am a machine. I am not intelligent (not in mathematics anyway) and neither is a computer. [Admittedly, a computer is a better machine, because it knows all the steps in a derivation, and I know only some].

It looks like intelligence cannot be formalized. Almost by definition. If something is structured as an algorithm, it no longer is creative, intuitive. Intelligence has no recognizable logic, just as there is no logic of scientific discovery.


AFTERTHOUGHT

Nowadays almost anyone can prove a mathematical theorem

Take

Proof that the exists no largest prime number.

You insert the whole phrase to GOOGLE and carefully copy the steps of the derivation. Probably after just one writing out the proof you will already know how it works.

ANOTHER AFTERTHOUGHT

ADULS DO NOT DO ANY COUNTING.

Children do, but adults not. If what you have to count is very simple, then the adult will just remember the result

16 + 16 = 32 (Do you really have to count it - you certainly know).

If the addition is really complicated, like


44558 + 33442

the adults will not count, but use their pocket calculators instead, like their grandparents used pen and paper. I do not say that the adults do not recognise any mathematical patters, but this is irrelevant to their "calculation". Either they know the result already, or are at a loss without a pocket calculator.

Teaching mathematics is useful. But probably not for our daily lives. Once pocket calculators were invented, mental abaci (counting frame of minds) are not only redundant, but probably not used very much. Counting is now part of philosophy. And this is what really counts.

Three problems with I

The concept of “I” seems to be on a permanent run.
To a naive mind „I” (self) is a very simple concept. I am one and indivisible.
But philosophers noted that it can never be fully observed. At least three problems have been noted.
1) If want to reflect upon my mind, I can probably do so. But in this case the observer is also an “I”. If I want to observe this second I, I become the third I (no pun intended), then the fourth and the fifth I, etc. Philosophers call this an infinite regress. Anyway, I will never see the entire I, because I will need some I to be the observer.
Quotation:
According to the legend, whenever an agent does anything intelligently, his act is preceded and steered by another internal act of considering a regulative proposition appropriate to his practical problem. [...] Must we then say that for the hero's reflections how to act to be intelligent he must first reflect how best to reflect how to act? The endlessness of this implied regress shows that the application of the criterion of appropriateness does not entail the occurrence of a process of considering this criterion.(The Concept of Mind (1949), p. 31.)

2) What does it mean to reflect upon my mind, to introspect? Does it mean to observe one’s mind as it looks now? Or does it mean to observe one’s mind as it was some moments ago? Some people think that introspection is retrospection. When I am angry and also think about my anger, I probably remember my anger some moments ago. And what about the person some moment ago? Is it still I? Or perhaps it is a he?
Quotation:
There is one last objection to be made against the claim for introspection, that made by Hume. There are some states of mind which cannot be coolly scrutinised, since the fact that we are in those states involves that we are not cool, or the fact that we are cool involves that we are not in those states. No one could introspectively scrutinise the state of panic or fury, since the dispassionateness exercised in the scientific observation is, by the definition of panic and fury, not the state of mind of the victim of those turbulences. Similarly, since a convulsion of merriment is not the state of mind of a sober experimentalist, the enjoyment of a joke is also not an introspectible happening. States of mind such as these more or less violent agitations can be examined only in retrospect. Yet nothing disastrous follows from this restriction. We are not shorter of information about panic or amusement than about other states of mind. If retrospection can give us data we need for our knowledge of some states of mind, there is no reason why it should not do so for all. And this is just what seems to be suggested by the popular phrase to catch oneself doing so and so.
Gilbert Ryle The Concept of Mind p. 166, Google Books



3) Some philosophers say that you can observe only your particular experience: pain, pleasure, hatred, but never something like I
Quotation:
For my part, when I enter most intimately into what I call myself, I always stumble on some particular perception or other, of heat or cold, light or shade, love or hatred, pain or pleasure. I never can catch myself at any time without a perception, and never can observe any thing but the perception.
Hume http://www.mnstate.edu/gracyk/courses/web%20publishing/TreatiseI.iv.vi.htm

French Waiter and a French Woman

L'existence précède l'essence. Existence precedes essence. Thus speak existentialists. The human being chooses and creates his own values and moulds the meaning of his life. This is because the human being has no inherent essence, identity, value or meaning. He needs to pick up one of his own.
According to Sartre, if someone tries to reduce his existence to any essence, shows bad faith. The French philosopher gives an example of a waiter, who shows exaggerated waiteresque movements, as if to cheat himself that his nothing but a waiter. Perhaps a salesman or a call-centre employee would provide a better example today, but let’s stay with the original waiter and read Sartre in translation
“Let us consider the waiter in the café. His movement is quick and forward, a little too precise, a little too rapid. He comes toward the patrons with a step too quick. He bends forward a little too eagerly; his eyes express an interest a little too solicitous for the order of the customer. Finally there he returns, trying to imitate in his walk the inflexible stiffness of some kind of automaton while carrying his tray with recklessness or a tight-rope walker by putting it in a perpetually unstable, perpetually broken equilibrium which he perpetually re-establishes by a light movement of the arm and hand.”
“All his behaviour seems to us a game (…) He is playing at being a waiter in a café.
Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, transl. by Hazel E. Barnes (Methuen and Co, Ltd., UP Paperback, 1969), 59.
But despite what existentialists say or preach many people seem to base the reason for their existence not even a many-featured essence, but even on a single feature. This may seem odd and even disquieting. But they do not seem to cheat themselves; they are genuine in their suffering, when this feature is gone. They do not play a waiter.
I was struck by a quote from the BBC’s Bookclub of 3 April 2011 (to be easily found on the BBC podcast page). It describes the feelings of woman who became barren after an accident.
“My friend in France said to me over and over again (she said it in French of course which I am not going to do): “I am not a woman any longer” And I said don’t be so silly. What are you talking about? And she said that it was because of that thing: everything was gone. There was no reason, as far as she was concerned, for her existence”.

Soul without a God

I am a dualist. I believe that consciousness cannot be reduced to matter. But there are different dualisms (like materialisms). Not every dualist believes in God.

Below I list five propositions about consciousness that may be associated with dualism. I believe in some of them, but not in the others.

1) Mental events (conscious experiences) are different from physical phenomena
2) I have private access to my conscious experiences
3) If I think that I have a conscious experience, I certainly have it (certainty of inner events as opposed to external phenomena, which are supposed to be uncertain).
4) A soul (consciousness) is immortal
5) A soul (consciousness) reflects my spiritual, God-like nature.

I believe in 1) and 2). As to 3), which reflects the intuition of the indubitability of inner experiences, it is true about some experiences, but not others. “I think that I think” may be evidently true, but not “I think that I am in love” not necessarily so. Philosophers (for some strange reasons) are more interested in the former rather than the latter sentences.

I have nothing interesting to say on 4) and 5 other than the identity of the soul and consciousness is implied here.

There is no such thing as a democratic institution

What is the difference between a democratic institution and a totalitarian institution? Absolutely none. There is no such thing as a democratic bank, democratic factory, democratic government. Whatever boss says goes. Criticising HIM is never sound policy. Even political parties are not democratic. They regularly banish their dissidents.

The only difference seems to be the following one. If you do not like to work in a bank or factory, you can simply go (most likely to an identical factory). There are many banks and factories in a democratic state and they all look the same. If you do not like a totalitarian state (which is like a giant factory), you can be gone forever.

So there is one important difference between a totalitarian state and a democratic state. The first one consists of just one, huge and interconnected totalitarian institution (the government, the army and prisons are part of the same system). And a democratic system consists of many institutions, internally totalitarian, or at least undemocratic, but independent and sometimes equally strong. This is often better, because one totalitarian institution can protect you against another. Pluralism is good.

This is like with churches. Few churches are democratic, so it's better to have a country with no dominant religion

Two Types of Scepticism

(manuscript of Leibniz's Monadology)

Scepticism may come in all shapes and sizes, but two of its forms are most important for me, the second more than the first:

1) Scepticism as to the external world. The question if the computer I am typing on right now really exists or is a mere illusion. Is it a serious question? On the one hand it would be difficult to say how a real computer can differ from its illusion, which looks exactly the same, feels the same to the touch, etc. If a duck looks like a duck, walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it probably is a duck. On the other hand films like Matrix or Inception make a powerful case for the validity of the question about the real existence of the external world.
2) Scepticism about the existence of other minds. This is not the same question. The world may be a mere illusion and all my perceptions may be false. But if other minds exist, they may have the same illusions. And they do not need to exist in the outer physical world. They can be monads like in Leibniz’ monadology which perceive their own perceptions synchronised with my own and everyone else’s perceptions in a special harmony. But as long as they are feeling and suffering beings I fell compassion for them, whether they are spatial or not.


That’s why the second question is more important for me. If I do not recognise the existence of other minds (even if I question the existence of the external world) I cannot feel compassion for them and build a Hume-style ethics based on empathy with my fellow beings.

Dawkins is no H.G. Wells

(H.G.Wells)

But it seems that Dawkins’ views are even more complicated. Darwinian in science, but hardly anywhere else. Here is one of his recent lectures compressed to the size of a blog entry:


I support Darwin as a scientist I am a passionate antidarwinian as it comes to politics and how we should conduct our human affairs. If you try to apply the lessons of Darwinism as social Darwinists did to human society, then you end up with a kind of super-Thatcherism (…) or even Hitler
“The New Republic”, where Wells outlines his Darwinian utopia contains some blood-chilling lines so unpleasant that I find it hard to read them aloud. [But] we have moved away from the mores of our wild ancestors .Contraception is good enough evidence that we move away from our Darwinian principles. That it can be done and the fact that we spend most of our live striving for goals which have nothing to do with propagating ourselves with genes is further evidence that it can be done.”
I would like to live in a sort of society which is not run on Darwinian principles, while fully acknowledging that the brains and bodies that we possess were put there by Darwinian principles in the first place. Theoretically, in future centuries evolution could take a new human-guided turn and you really could plan for evolution.
Source:
http://www.radiolab.org/blogs/radiolab-blog/2009/jul/13/in-defense-of-darwin/
:

Luck or Fuck

I am trying to understand Richard Dawkins. I have not so much a problem with his evolutionism or atheism (in fact I share the latter). But he seems to swing from one extreme to another.

“The total amount of suffering per year is beyond all decent contemplation. During the minute it takes me to compose this sentence, thousands of animals are being eaten alive, many others are running for their lives, whimpering with fear, others are being slowly devoured from within by rasping parasites, thousands of all kinds are dying of starvation, thirst and disease… the universe that we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil and no good, nothing but pitiless indifference.”

So our world does not seem a very attractive place to live in. But then he writes

We are going to die, and that makes us the lucky ones. Most people are never going to die because they are never going to be born. The potential people who could have been here in my place but who will in fact never see the light of day outnumber the sand grains of Arabia. Certainly those unborn ghosts include greater poets than Keats, scientists greater than Newton. We know this because the set of possible people allowed by our DNA so massively exceeds the set of actual people. In the teeth of these stupefying odds it is you and I, in our ordinariness, that are here.

If the world is such an unattractive place, such a slough of despond, why should we consider ourselves lucky to be thrown into it? Dawkins’ description of the world is a description of hell. Why should you and I be happy to go to hell rather than remain in a peaceful Nirvana, where even the very concept of suffering does not seem to make sense?

To be or not to have been

Richard Dawkins, the great scientist and author, says that “To live at all is miracle enough”.
He also thinks we are the winners of a certain lottery, despite our end being rather miserable.
“We are going to die, and that makes us the lucky ones. Most people are never going to die because they are never going to be born”.

Is he right that living is better than non-living, even if you have never and will never live. He may as well be right, but not before this is thoroughly discussed? After all, the Buddhists and Schopenhauer have pointed out (as if we did not know anyway) that life is intrinsically connected with suffering. Is it better not to have ever lived and not to suffer or be alive and in pain (as one must be sooner or later)? That’s the rub.

Do not worry. However you answer the question, children are still going to be born. Women still want to have children at some point of their lives.

But the question: “to be or not to have ever been” is an entirely practical one. If Dawkins is right, then vegetarians are wrong. Animals may be killed in slaughterhouses, but many of then would not have even been born, if they had not been bred for meat. However cruelly they are butchered, they are still quite lucky. But if Dawkins is wrong and vegetarians are right, then breeding animals for meat not only increases their number, but also the amount of their suffering.