Tuesday, December 18, 2012
Interpretation of David Foster Wallace's "Mister Squishy"
After reading the story "Mister Squishy" by David Foster Wallace and really liking the design of it, I found myself uncertain whether certain aspects were actually there or just something I read into it. So, I looked around online for interpretations of the story, especially one given by Wallace, but I couldn't find anything too useful—and I felt that many popular summaries were doing the story a disservice by describing its marketing language as 'noise' or 'random,' since it appeared as a stream of coherent concepts in my reading. So, here's my interpretation.
The story is about the deception, manipulation, and unwavering self-interest that underlies the operation of modern corporations, particularly those whose success is highly dependent on the public's perception of the company and its products. The story is set in a downtown skyscraper, and the structure of the story matches this setting, its layers being displayed one at a time in an upward journey that reveals the figures of each lower level to have been duped by someone above.
At the start of the story we are shown a focus group in progress, and are introduced to its coordinator, Schmidt. Then we are shifted up a level for the first time: it is revealed that the company isn't interested in the immediate results of the focus group, but is instead using it as a component in a larger experiment involving a parallel focus group being conducted with a slight difference. In particular, the group which we are shown is given information on the the processes behind the development of the product (a chocolate snack-cake), particularly the concepts behind its marketing; the other group will not be given this information. The aspect monitored for variation between the two groups is a measure of difference between individual surveys of members within the group, and a single group survey which each group will fill out together; in other words, deviation between their private and public responses to the product—though "public response" is probably too much of a simplification: the story treats groups of people as isolable, abstract organisms, the organisms studied by statistical methods; so really, the group evaluation contains the responses of this group organism.
Now it seems that the purpose of the focus group, rather than gathering information about consumer response to the snack-cake, is to improve the design of future focus groups. Schmidt, however, informs the reader through glimpses we are given to his thoughts during the session, that the focus groups have no material impact: rather than using the collected data to make inferences about consumer preferences, it is desirable to end with a nebulous analysis which could conclude one outcome or another based on which direction the client company is already planning on moving in: the focus groups can only confirm a decision which has already been made: a deviation on this will result in the termination of the marketing firm. And so, the focus group facilitator, Schmidt, presumes that the real purpose of this inter-focus group experiment is to generate multiple conclusions so that a desirable data set may be selected at a later date.
Then we ascend another level. We are introduced to the perspective of a member higher up in the marketing firm—Awad, and a peer of Schmidt's who has the favor of Awad: Mounce. Awad shares with Mounce that the true purpose behind the inter-focus group study is to explore a class of marketing strategy where a depiction of the inner workings of the company is the subject of advertising material. So, Schmidt, without knowing it, is effectively delivering to the focus group a primitive form of this behind-the-product advertising, and his peer Lilley gives a similar presentation absent the behind-the-product information to another group.
Then we ascend another level. We are introduced to the perspective of a member higher up in the marketing firm than Awad: Britton. Britton also has a mentee, who he discusses strategy with while smoking cigars: Laleman. Britton and Lalemen have a sub-surface power struggle between them, Lalemen thinking he is on an approach to surreptitiously overtaking Britton, while Britton is fully aware of Lalemen's machinations. Still, they discuss the future of demographic analysis which they anticipate will be carried out by monitoring websites rather than running focus groups. The only problem is all of the presently employed focus group coordinators. Here is shown the penultimate deception of the plot: the inter-group experiment is actually a device that will be used to demonstrate to the coordinators their own inimical influence on the focus groups, using a statistical argument which the coordinators, themselves statisticians, will be forced to accept, followed by their resignation—or, if they are so unreasonable as to protest, as evidence against any case they may form in a lawsuit regarding their termination. The argument which Britton is devising centers on the fact that humans are random components interfering with the demographic analysis process, and in order to concretely represent this fact the focus group will have a "stressor" appear who pushes the coordinator to behaving erratically.
There is another character, nearly silent, who plays an important part in my interpretation of the story as a whole: a participant in Schmidt's group, who is referred to as "I" in the story's narration, so that we must identify this character with the narrator of the story; however, the narration is omniscient, switching between the thoughts of many people in the course of the story; so, I conclude that this character is different from the others—he is a meta character who is a character in the story, but also represents the story itself. This "I" is covered in sensors, has been given a script which he must stick closely to, and wears an "emetic prosthesis," that can be used to simulate vomiting. He is the stressor which Britton has inserted in order to effect his strategy of giving the coordinators "enough rope."
It is important to note also that this strategy of introducing a stressor and observing the results is demonstrated several times in the story (most vividly when Britton has Awad make unwanted sexual advances toward Lilley, just to observe her character), and becomes a symbol for the concept of applying scientific methods in a callous fashion.
Similarly, by various approaches the concept of the consumer's awareness of marketing activity is presented, the conclusion generally being that at best the consumer has a superficial sort of awareness which the marketing agencies have already easily accounted for.
Two other facts have evolved in parallel with the story's principle structure outlined above: Schmidt is a deeply dissatisfied person (probably) interchangeable with the typical white collar worker, and Schmidt has been developing (and implementing?) a scheme for injecting a lethal poison into the snack-cakes.
So, we are introduced to an experiment where one group of people is given the (appearance of the) marketing strategy behind a product, and a control group is not; in this experiment is a character present who will stress the group so that some outcome may be observed (using his emetic prosthesis)—and this character represents the story itself; and, the reading of the story represents a sort of experiment analogous to the inter-focus group experiment: we have just been given a generalized version of the story-behind-the-product—we have been told the story behind products. Thus another layer of deception has been revealed: the real purpose behind the experiment was to inform readers of the more complex and insidious reality behind product marketing—but, this character, who is the story, also played the role of a stimulus used to provoke a reaction which could be scientifically observed, so the story must play that role also, and the author wins the pinnacle seat on the tower of deception, and proves himself the master of calculating manipulation.
And there's another question left fairly uncertain: did Britton know about Schmidt's development of the poison or not? If so, then the emetic prostheses is supposed to trick Schmidt into thinking that one of the members of his group is vomiting in reaction to a poisoned snack-cake. If not, then the final scene where Laleman notes a chocolate cake stain on Britton's finger, laughing internally in reply, would seem to indicate that Laleman was exulting in consideration of Britton's demise. But, we are informed in the story that the chosen poison would take 24-36 hours to take effect, so I'm inclined to go with the latter interpretation, which seems to imply that the cog-like victims of the marketing machine eventually get their revenge.
There's also a guy scaling the wall of the building and drawing a crowd that speculates on his activities throughout the story, who in the end, while carrying a gun or gun replica, inflates his costume which bears the image of "Mister Squishy" (the logo for the snack cake company). I see this scenario as representing the reality of the interaction of marketing firms with consumers: the marketers put on a carefully designed show and the consumers are drawn to it inexorably, their awareness of their situation never reaching more than superficial levels, though many take satisfaction in their delusions of knowledge.
Thursday, April 26, 2012
I Who?
An excess of thought circulating in a young mind trammeled by habit and hopelessness drove the first of two unusually precise friends to complain, "I'm bored, Ramij. I'm tired of thinking about all the things I usually think about. I feel like all of the philosophical questions I've had have already been answered by derivations off of the universe being governed by rules..."
Ramij sat opposite his friend at a weathered and graffitied park table; he'd been silent for some time, contemplating, but the interruption was welcome at this point.
"Well Illya, if you're up for it, I think there's a question of self-identity that's important to consider, though people generally neglect it, thinking it's either too obvious or too impossible. Specifically, I think it's important to go beyond looking at self-identity in the in the sense that we use the word 'I' to refer too; its usefulness seems to be primarily in distinguishing one person from another, which is of course a very practical thing to be able to to do, but what I'm more interested in, once we've isolated an individual, is figuring out what is that individual. In other words, how does the individual relate to the rest of existence?"
Illya nodded his assent, despite being a little disconcerted by his friend's barrage.
Ramij continued, "Probably we'll make the best progress if we can nail down a little more precisely what an individual is first—what 'I' refers to in the way it's commonly used. Ideas?"
Illya began to apprehend what he'd gotten himself into; he roused himself from his lazy boredom, sat up a little straighter, and managed to articulate, "Well, I'd say it's the atoms making up a person's body... Although... I'm tempted to go a step further and say most of the body is irrelevant and that when we speak of 'I,' it's primarily in reference to our preferences and decisions, which seem to belong to the mind particularly. So maybe 'I's and brains are one and the same."
Ramij knew fully well from the outset that they'd have to trudge through these preliminaries; he responded with patience, "I agree for the most part, but there's a tricky question of awareness that I think this misses—"
"—Consciousness?"
"Possibly, depending on exactly what's meant by consciousness. Ninety nine percent of what's usually meant by it is pretty mundane, and brains are obviously responsible for it: it's a part of the brain that's aware of—or, processes data from—the rest of the brain, the rest of the brain being aware of data received externally from sensory input, as well as what it has stored internally. The only quasi-mysterious aspect of it is self-awareness, which seems to come from the fact that the computations occurring in consciousness—which are about the rest of the brain—are fed back into the rest of the brain, so that some of the rest of the brain's computations end up being about itself. In either case, it's a sort of awareness that seems entirely possible in mechanical systems, and which I think is insufficient for defining 'I's.
"I think a definition of 'I' must include the aspect of brains which causes them to feel the data they process; which gives red or cold data the particular feeling of redness or coldness—though this must not be mistaken with the sensory input itself: I mean the mind's experience of processing those symbols. I think 'I,' as it's generally understood, refers to this sort of awareness... in conjunction with the operation of mundane consciousness and of the rest of the brain..."
But Ramij had a habit of thinking as he spoke, and a potential shortcoming in his statement occurred to him, "—Err, I guess this could just be a property of the functioning of brains then—something everywhere-intrinsic in their operation rather than something adjoined; though I still don't see how to account for it materially and I suppose we won't get anywhere if this definition we seek ends up using elements from some hypothetical extra-reality..."
For Illya the park then dropped out of consciousness. The thoughts that had ground circularly round too worn neural haunts appeared to slip outside the trammel. Tentatively, something new was happening.
"Hold on a sec—you've given me an idea. If we define 'I' to be simply the sum of all the matter composing a particular person's brain, then I think we would both agree that 'I' in the common sense will have been accounted for, absent this final awareness that you speak of. You said that maybe this awareness is just a property of brains—what if it's instead a property of matter generally, which just becomes interesting when matter forms arrangements with certain kinds of complexities, like human brains. In other words, maybe this final awareness is just how it is for the matter comprising a mind to process the data that flows through it; or rather, for that matter to exist in time(1).
"Then again, it's unfortunate—"
With quick perception Ramij saw the implications in full.
"—Oh! That's good!"
He Hardly paused before moving on to applications.
"Actually, seeing all of mind reasonably accounted for by ordinary matter, you've just given me a more satisfactory solution to the 'would I be my mind-duplicate' question than I've had before. If we take your definition of 'I' as all of the matter comprising a particular brain at a single instant of time and expand it to instead be the world line of that definition—"
"—wait, wait—world line?"
"I figured you'd know that one! A world line is an object in space and time, rather than just space. So, take a ball, say it pops into existence in 1952 and pops back out in 2005 and it stays in one place in space this whole time; its world line is a sort of cylinder with spherical ends extending from 1952 to 2005 along the time axis. Well, close enough anyway—that's a three dimensional approximate visualization of a four dimensional object. If you take a two dimensional object, say a circle, and extend it through time, then you actually get a cylinder.
"Anyway, with the world line definition of an 'I,' whose implications I think form a complete correspondence with our common understanding of the notion, it becomes very clear that duplicating a mind would create a new world line, hence a new 'I.' Awesome."
For Illya however, the discovery was not made without misgivings; it may have been, technically, a new region for his thoughts to roam, but the new land appeared as barren as the last.
"I'm glad you can feel good about it; I think its a depressing confirmation of the idea that the self is insignificant; it's just a matter aggregate with enough similarity through time for human abstraction to call it the same object now and ten years from now. It's unfortunate to have a material account of experience—if all it is is some configuration of matter 'being,' I'm tempted to say that experience doesn't exist after all; if data in the brain essentially dies after being consumed by consciousness, I don't think it ever does anything useful at all. I have a kind of longing for there to be something there that actually experiences—whatever that means; and I know that's useless: nothing material will satisfy me, and I'll never be convinced of the non-material..."
Illya's head drooped slightly; his boredom was forgotten.
Ramij could empathize with Illya, but the new notion had struck him from another angle. He shrugged, "I feel differently about it—I think we've arrived at a good definition for 'I' in the way that it's traditionally used, but I think the more interesting question, which we originally set out to answer, is a little different; that was the question of identity in the deepest sense, really of how an 'I' relates to the rest of existence. This greater question we can form as 'what is self?' for convenience. I became curious about self after noticing that I'd been answering the question with 'self is "I",' which of course isn't really answering it at all. So yes, I agree with you that the 'I' is far less significant than it's been considered in the past, but the question of self still has potential.
"We see the 'I' as less significant because it's material; it doesn't differ in any essential way from any other object in the universe(2). This makes the 'I' a much more arbitrary construct than it's traditionally been held to be; it doesn't make as much sense for our existential identity to be so strictly bound to it. If experience is just what it's like for matter to exist in time, then the essence of our selves is just being matter, not being the matter that our bodies comprise, but just generally being matter. That being the case, and since the universe is the only source of matter and nothing but matter, I feel a deeper identity with the universe as a whole rather than with just my body. "Matter" of course is slightly inaccurate, but by it I just mean "fundamental universe parts." Follow?
Illya considered, then gave a minor nod, not indicating his comprehension so much as his desire for Ramij to continue.
Ramij considered: his words were accurate, but their import significantly compressed; a new approach was required. A demonstration.
"There's a way of visualizing the universe that will help to make the notion more concrete. In actuality the universe has some extents in time and spatially, and perhaps along other unknown dimensions as well, and these extents may or may not be infinite. In order to hold some concept of the universe in my mind, I strip it down—it becomes finite in all of its extents, it now has two spatial axes and one time axis which behaves exactly as the spatial axes—the whole universe, throughout time mind you, then becomes one massive, luminous glass cube with the most intricate conceivable patterns filling it. Since we started with two spatial axes only, from outside the cube we see all the objects within as their three dimensional world lines(3).
"Now lets say this cube is actually glass—the material doesn't really matter, just that it's homogeneous, as the actually universe is in the sense that it's matter everywhere, or even better, rules everywhere—we can peer into it and see the full life of some two-dimensional being before us, one branch of a massively networked glass sculpture. When I contemplate the life of this being and ask myself what it is essentially, the only answer that comes to me is, 'part of the sculpture.' The only way that it differs from any other part of the sculpture is that it is in the space that it occupies—and its boundaries are extremely arbitrary: its only a consequence of my own mind's pattern forming routines that it can be called a separate object in any sense at all. Since the only boundaries between parts of the sculpture have a subjective origin, objectively there is just a single whole.
"When I add back on to this glass sculpture each of the pieces I originally stripped out, making it matter again rather than just glass, giving it infinite extent and all of the dimensions it deserves, but pausing after each facet I rejoin to ask whether my conclusions about the object and its parts have changed, I must answer 'no,' even when the universe is whole again. And for that reason I think the universe is the most sensical source of identity for anyone in it. 'I's have no objective significance; your mind is how it feels to be the universe in one particular area, the same way that the sensations from a patch of skin on your arm are how it feels to be you in one particular area."
Content that he'd made his case, Ramij leaned back, placing his hands with interlocked fingers behind his head.
"The only question remaining then is whether it's any better to be the universe rather than some person in it. My answer to this is that although the glass cube approximation is a miraculously wondrous thing in itself, the true universe is still incomprehensibly grander. I think I would not have felt this way in the past, but the more I learn about the universe the more incredible I find it; and it doesn't hurt that it's probably infinite and eternal. I think even man's earlier overblown conceptions of the 'I' are meager next to this self I see."
Illya had listened closely, and caught the spark of something in the proposition, but held on to reservation. His suspicion that reality was a disappointment still lurked nearby, hardly budged; but the prospect of a potential fatal flaw within it inspired a little cheer.
"We'll see."
(1)
Unfortunately, now that I am done writing this, I realize that I'm actually uncertain on the existence of qualia (the stuff making up "final awareness," the way it "feels" to process the symbol "red")—I've got doubts. And I've expressed the doubt before: "A complex self-monitoring system would have the illusion of a meaningful interpretation of its own data." Fortunately the main thesis is untouched if they turn out not to exist (it'd be quite a lot stronger in fact). The material account of qualia I gave was only to give a fully material specification of mind; if the mind does not include qualia then its specification was already completed before broaching the subject. Ramij gets excited when qualia are accounted for because it troubled him before as a potentially non-material aspect of mind, but his important insight about self is due only to the fact that the mind had been fully materially accounted for; if Qualia is stripped out as part of the description, as may be appropriate, the mind remains material and the argument stands.
(2)
I see the most basic constituent of the universe as being the actual laws that govern it. My understanding of the modern view of fundamental particles, in physics, is that "particle" is really just a convenient way of referring to something which in fact doesn't represent a physical object at all, but is something closer to a consistent behavior. Now I say the universe is homogeneous because its laws appear uniform throughout. And even if there were more variation in its fundamental behavior than I've described, it's still just a bunch of rules being carried out; I don't think someone would find the essential character of the universe as one thing under A, B, C and another under D, E, F. The only thing which could make the character of these rules different, that I can conceive of, is if they were embedded in some kind of infinite nesting doll of meta realities—which is absolutely impossible to determine. So if nothing else, our universe is a homogeneous locus of rule application. (Later edit: interesting seeing this serious and detrimental error in thought here: the idea that the universe IS rules; clearly mistaking a system of description with the thing being described, mistaking the "finger pointing for the moon itself" as it's sometimes said.)
(3)
I think some would object to viewing the universe in this crystallized form even in principle due to a supposed lack of determinism in reality, the idea that what will happen next isn't actually determined until the current instant occurs. Perhaps that's the case—but I think we lack a reason for thinking it is. The idea of this non-determinism comes from quantum physics, which is non-deterministic; but quantum physics is not a direct description of physical reality, but a modeling of our knowledge of physical reality instead. So, just because this system we've invented for making approximate determinations of certain physical quantities (granted, with great precision) isn't deterministic, it should not be taken as an indication that the system it approximates is itself non-deterministic. The non-determinism in physics comes directly from the fact that its statements are in terms of probabilities, which are a result of speaking of our knowledge rather than the system itself—this should have no bearing on the qualities of the system itself.
Ramij sat opposite his friend at a weathered and graffitied park table; he'd been silent for some time, contemplating, but the interruption was welcome at this point.
"Well Illya, if you're up for it, I think there's a question of self-identity that's important to consider, though people generally neglect it, thinking it's either too obvious or too impossible. Specifically, I think it's important to go beyond looking at self-identity in the in the sense that we use the word 'I' to refer too; its usefulness seems to be primarily in distinguishing one person from another, which is of course a very practical thing to be able to to do, but what I'm more interested in, once we've isolated an individual, is figuring out what is that individual. In other words, how does the individual relate to the rest of existence?"
Illya nodded his assent, despite being a little disconcerted by his friend's barrage.
Ramij continued, "Probably we'll make the best progress if we can nail down a little more precisely what an individual is first—what 'I' refers to in the way it's commonly used. Ideas?"
Illya began to apprehend what he'd gotten himself into; he roused himself from his lazy boredom, sat up a little straighter, and managed to articulate, "Well, I'd say it's the atoms making up a person's body... Although... I'm tempted to go a step further and say most of the body is irrelevant and that when we speak of 'I,' it's primarily in reference to our preferences and decisions, which seem to belong to the mind particularly. So maybe 'I's and brains are one and the same."
Ramij knew fully well from the outset that they'd have to trudge through these preliminaries; he responded with patience, "I agree for the most part, but there's a tricky question of awareness that I think this misses—"
"—Consciousness?"
"Possibly, depending on exactly what's meant by consciousness. Ninety nine percent of what's usually meant by it is pretty mundane, and brains are obviously responsible for it: it's a part of the brain that's aware of—or, processes data from—the rest of the brain, the rest of the brain being aware of data received externally from sensory input, as well as what it has stored internally. The only quasi-mysterious aspect of it is self-awareness, which seems to come from the fact that the computations occurring in consciousness—which are about the rest of the brain—are fed back into the rest of the brain, so that some of the rest of the brain's computations end up being about itself. In either case, it's a sort of awareness that seems entirely possible in mechanical systems, and which I think is insufficient for defining 'I's.
"I think a definition of 'I' must include the aspect of brains which causes them to feel the data they process; which gives red or cold data the particular feeling of redness or coldness—though this must not be mistaken with the sensory input itself: I mean the mind's experience of processing those symbols. I think 'I,' as it's generally understood, refers to this sort of awareness... in conjunction with the operation of mundane consciousness and of the rest of the brain..."
But Ramij had a habit of thinking as he spoke, and a potential shortcoming in his statement occurred to him, "—Err, I guess this could just be a property of the functioning of brains then—something everywhere-intrinsic in their operation rather than something adjoined; though I still don't see how to account for it materially and I suppose we won't get anywhere if this definition we seek ends up using elements from some hypothetical extra-reality..."
For Illya the park then dropped out of consciousness. The thoughts that had ground circularly round too worn neural haunts appeared to slip outside the trammel. Tentatively, something new was happening.
"Hold on a sec—you've given me an idea. If we define 'I' to be simply the sum of all the matter composing a particular person's brain, then I think we would both agree that 'I' in the common sense will have been accounted for, absent this final awareness that you speak of. You said that maybe this awareness is just a property of brains—what if it's instead a property of matter generally, which just becomes interesting when matter forms arrangements with certain kinds of complexities, like human brains. In other words, maybe this final awareness is just how it is for the matter comprising a mind to process the data that flows through it; or rather, for that matter to exist in time(1).
"Then again, it's unfortunate—"
With quick perception Ramij saw the implications in full.
"—Oh! That's good!"
He Hardly paused before moving on to applications.
"Actually, seeing all of mind reasonably accounted for by ordinary matter, you've just given me a more satisfactory solution to the 'would I be my mind-duplicate' question than I've had before. If we take your definition of 'I' as all of the matter comprising a particular brain at a single instant of time and expand it to instead be the world line of that definition—"
"—wait, wait—world line?"
"I figured you'd know that one! A world line is an object in space and time, rather than just space. So, take a ball, say it pops into existence in 1952 and pops back out in 2005 and it stays in one place in space this whole time; its world line is a sort of cylinder with spherical ends extending from 1952 to 2005 along the time axis. Well, close enough anyway—that's a three dimensional approximate visualization of a four dimensional object. If you take a two dimensional object, say a circle, and extend it through time, then you actually get a cylinder.
"Anyway, with the world line definition of an 'I,' whose implications I think form a complete correspondence with our common understanding of the notion, it becomes very clear that duplicating a mind would create a new world line, hence a new 'I.' Awesome."
For Illya however, the discovery was not made without misgivings; it may have been, technically, a new region for his thoughts to roam, but the new land appeared as barren as the last.
"I'm glad you can feel good about it; I think its a depressing confirmation of the idea that the self is insignificant; it's just a matter aggregate with enough similarity through time for human abstraction to call it the same object now and ten years from now. It's unfortunate to have a material account of experience—if all it is is some configuration of matter 'being,' I'm tempted to say that experience doesn't exist after all; if data in the brain essentially dies after being consumed by consciousness, I don't think it ever does anything useful at all. I have a kind of longing for there to be something there that actually experiences—whatever that means; and I know that's useless: nothing material will satisfy me, and I'll never be convinced of the non-material..."
Illya's head drooped slightly; his boredom was forgotten.
Ramij could empathize with Illya, but the new notion had struck him from another angle. He shrugged, "I feel differently about it—I think we've arrived at a good definition for 'I' in the way that it's traditionally used, but I think the more interesting question, which we originally set out to answer, is a little different; that was the question of identity in the deepest sense, really of how an 'I' relates to the rest of existence. This greater question we can form as 'what is self?' for convenience. I became curious about self after noticing that I'd been answering the question with 'self is "I",' which of course isn't really answering it at all. So yes, I agree with you that the 'I' is far less significant than it's been considered in the past, but the question of self still has potential.
"We see the 'I' as less significant because it's material; it doesn't differ in any essential way from any other object in the universe(2). This makes the 'I' a much more arbitrary construct than it's traditionally been held to be; it doesn't make as much sense for our existential identity to be so strictly bound to it. If experience is just what it's like for matter to exist in time, then the essence of our selves is just being matter, not being the matter that our bodies comprise, but just generally being matter. That being the case, and since the universe is the only source of matter and nothing but matter, I feel a deeper identity with the universe as a whole rather than with just my body. "Matter" of course is slightly inaccurate, but by it I just mean "fundamental universe parts." Follow?
Illya considered, then gave a minor nod, not indicating his comprehension so much as his desire for Ramij to continue.
Ramij considered: his words were accurate, but their import significantly compressed; a new approach was required. A demonstration.
"There's a way of visualizing the universe that will help to make the notion more concrete. In actuality the universe has some extents in time and spatially, and perhaps along other unknown dimensions as well, and these extents may or may not be infinite. In order to hold some concept of the universe in my mind, I strip it down—it becomes finite in all of its extents, it now has two spatial axes and one time axis which behaves exactly as the spatial axes—the whole universe, throughout time mind you, then becomes one massive, luminous glass cube with the most intricate conceivable patterns filling it. Since we started with two spatial axes only, from outside the cube we see all the objects within as their three dimensional world lines(3).
"Now lets say this cube is actually glass—the material doesn't really matter, just that it's homogeneous, as the actually universe is in the sense that it's matter everywhere, or even better, rules everywhere—we can peer into it and see the full life of some two-dimensional being before us, one branch of a massively networked glass sculpture. When I contemplate the life of this being and ask myself what it is essentially, the only answer that comes to me is, 'part of the sculpture.' The only way that it differs from any other part of the sculpture is that it is in the space that it occupies—and its boundaries are extremely arbitrary: its only a consequence of my own mind's pattern forming routines that it can be called a separate object in any sense at all. Since the only boundaries between parts of the sculpture have a subjective origin, objectively there is just a single whole.
"When I add back on to this glass sculpture each of the pieces I originally stripped out, making it matter again rather than just glass, giving it infinite extent and all of the dimensions it deserves, but pausing after each facet I rejoin to ask whether my conclusions about the object and its parts have changed, I must answer 'no,' even when the universe is whole again. And for that reason I think the universe is the most sensical source of identity for anyone in it. 'I's have no objective significance; your mind is how it feels to be the universe in one particular area, the same way that the sensations from a patch of skin on your arm are how it feels to be you in one particular area."
Content that he'd made his case, Ramij leaned back, placing his hands with interlocked fingers behind his head.
"The only question remaining then is whether it's any better to be the universe rather than some person in it. My answer to this is that although the glass cube approximation is a miraculously wondrous thing in itself, the true universe is still incomprehensibly grander. I think I would not have felt this way in the past, but the more I learn about the universe the more incredible I find it; and it doesn't hurt that it's probably infinite and eternal. I think even man's earlier overblown conceptions of the 'I' are meager next to this self I see."
Illya had listened closely, and caught the spark of something in the proposition, but held on to reservation. His suspicion that reality was a disappointment still lurked nearby, hardly budged; but the prospect of a potential fatal flaw within it inspired a little cheer.
"We'll see."
(1)
Unfortunately, now that I am done writing this, I realize that I'm actually uncertain on the existence of qualia (the stuff making up "final awareness," the way it "feels" to process the symbol "red")—I've got doubts. And I've expressed the doubt before: "A complex self-monitoring system would have the illusion of a meaningful interpretation of its own data." Fortunately the main thesis is untouched if they turn out not to exist (it'd be quite a lot stronger in fact). The material account of qualia I gave was only to give a fully material specification of mind; if the mind does not include qualia then its specification was already completed before broaching the subject. Ramij gets excited when qualia are accounted for because it troubled him before as a potentially non-material aspect of mind, but his important insight about self is due only to the fact that the mind had been fully materially accounted for; if Qualia is stripped out as part of the description, as may be appropriate, the mind remains material and the argument stands.
(2)
I see the most basic constituent of the universe as being the actual laws that govern it. My understanding of the modern view of fundamental particles, in physics, is that "particle" is really just a convenient way of referring to something which in fact doesn't represent a physical object at all, but is something closer to a consistent behavior. Now I say the universe is homogeneous because its laws appear uniform throughout. And even if there were more variation in its fundamental behavior than I've described, it's still just a bunch of rules being carried out; I don't think someone would find the essential character of the universe as one thing under A, B, C and another under D, E, F. The only thing which could make the character of these rules different, that I can conceive of, is if they were embedded in some kind of infinite nesting doll of meta realities—which is absolutely impossible to determine. So if nothing else, our universe is a homogeneous locus of rule application. (Later edit: interesting seeing this serious and detrimental error in thought here: the idea that the universe IS rules; clearly mistaking a system of description with the thing being described, mistaking the "finger pointing for the moon itself" as it's sometimes said.)
(3)
I think some would object to viewing the universe in this crystallized form even in principle due to a supposed lack of determinism in reality, the idea that what will happen next isn't actually determined until the current instant occurs. Perhaps that's the case—but I think we lack a reason for thinking it is. The idea of this non-determinism comes from quantum physics, which is non-deterministic; but quantum physics is not a direct description of physical reality, but a modeling of our knowledge of physical reality instead. So, just because this system we've invented for making approximate determinations of certain physical quantities (granted, with great precision) isn't deterministic, it should not be taken as an indication that the system it approximates is itself non-deterministic. The non-determinism in physics comes directly from the fact that its statements are in terms of probabilities, which are a result of speaking of our knowledge rather than the system itself—this should have no bearing on the qualities of the system itself.
Sunday, April 18, 2010
A Sinister Morning
At 4am, just before bed, I entered a morning perhaps sinister, though not gloomy, perhaps menacing, though not sad. After a day of relative ease, I decided to end with a cigarette and mug of Brazilian evening tea. Unexpected, however, was the fog laden morning I soon found before me. The streetlights glowed yellow and the trees, though expectant of Spring, knew leaves not yet; instead their branches jutted bare like broken swords, unfriendly and austere. But the morning was undecided, and knew not whether to emerge evil or amicable. In partnership with the darker elements it did proffer, were the morning birds and their sweet chirp. At first sparse, their sounds left me only wanting more; and as my desire fulfilled, the morning and I grew more in accord. At last its visage showed nothing worse than mystery, not any hidden threat; and as I dragged the cigarette I rolled, then expelled my contribution to the early fog, a sense of wonder grew within me. My thoughts roamed to ancient man in my position, amid the fog but less knowing. Would it be fearful to him? Without modern images, what is a densely fogged night? Is it the mantle of some goddess, or the oily smoke of war? I knew not. My cigarette was done now, ready for tea was I; and happy to find its temperature somewhat slaked by chilling mist, which now surrounded on all sides, my first warming gulp took I. Before me I spotted wet accumulations, water gathered just to fall, too weak to bear its weight; and across the way, objects earlier plain to see had been pulled with greed into the mist. This revealed something new. Perhaps the fog was not so friendly; it would not maul or bite at once, but one should not recline in ease amidst it. And the birds -- their chirping was now everywhere -- but was it calling in the sun? or were the creatures not themselves? Things trembled in the grass unseen. The birds, it's possible, were diseased. Their hearts had blackened, and together they conspired. This morning, after all, was cruel and hungry, and the birds its siren call.
Friday, March 12, 2010
Some Thoughts on a Potentially Immaterial Piece of Mind
As a consequence of the apparant mechanical nature of the human mind, consciousness and its adjunct mental processes must work by the manipulation and storage of patterns. The use and effects of patterns in this manner are not unfamiliar to scientists and engineers; they've been building pattern manipulators for many years (e.g. computers). And during this time, it has always been plain that the nature of the machine's operation resides in the patterns themselves, rather than in the material used to represent them. Indeed, there were certainly theories of pattern manipulators before a material to build them with was selected; and the choice of materials has changed over the years to meet our requirements for efficiency, and it continues to change.
This suggests that a scheme for replicating our minds in different materials is possible -- and there has been much writing related to this idea during the past two decades (perhaps especially due to Ray Kurzweil). We know that our minds function as they do because of their ability to store and modify patterns; how could this ability be altered by changing the underlying mechanism from neurons to transistors? Well, it seems that it might be made more efficient and durable; aside from that, it shouldn't make one bit of difference.
Subsequent to my learning of them, and prior to my thinking which produced this essay, I had yet to doubt the possibility of a transfer of this sort; its plausibility seemed necessary. I still do believe them to be possible even, but with a certain important limitation now. I believe minds can be transferred, but I also believe something could be lost.
Imagine a variation on the substrate transfer theme: imagine sitting isolated within a small cube with plain blue walls and even lighting, awaiting your complete duplication: bones, blood, viscera, memories, habits, fears, moods, moles, scars, chromosomes, bacteria -- everything -- copied from yourself to an identical form, with consummate fidelity, two meters left in a cerulean womb a lot like your cube.
Would the creation of this duplicate have any effect on you? Would that part of you that's consistent throughout your life, which is often termed 'self' or 'soul' indiscriminately, be multiplied? If you were killed off at this point, would 'you' persist in the next blue cube over? You may not, though this is essentially what is suggested as possible in mind transfers. Something could be lost. Maybe we can make new, even enhanced, consciousnesses -- but we can't transfer ourselves without risk of losing something.
This seems to suggest that some part of our being may be non-material. Consciousness, i.e. self-awareness, emotion, creativity -- none of these are difficult to conceive of as having a material basis; perception at the final level, however, that's difficult. Perception at this level is useless in our materiel existence, it serves no purpose. Every last detail of human, or animal, functioning makes sense without it; and if it were taken away, no one would ever know the difference. Even now, we don't know whether it's there or not; but it feels like it is, and the chance of losing it is a very high stake.
The conundrum of the final observer arises from the following: our minds are pattern manipulators whose state at any given time is the product of internal self-modifying processes and external sensory input. It's likely that a self-monitoring system, which we call consciousness, sits atop the remaining unconscious mental hardware for the purpose of monitoring an enormous array of variables representing select aspects of the unconscious mind. The values of these variables are interpreted by consciousness and responses are fed back into the unconscious. The unconscious mind is tied into the nervous system which exerts influence on the 'physical' body (it is, of course, all physical); and through the interaction of the physical body with the environment, data is sent back to the nervous system, back to the unconscious mental components, and back to consciousness. It's an endless interactive cycle resembling: environment, body, mind, consciousness, mind, body, environment. At the level of consciousness, the pinnacle of the cycle, all of the data for the rich experiences we have do exist; the problem is, there's nothing to interpret the data at this level; indeed, you face the problem of an infinite regress and must introduce the non-material in order to have meaning.
Data is meaningless without something to interpret it. This is made clear in computing systems: meaningless binary sequences are stored in memory and are given meaning when an interpretation for them is provided. An example: 0101 is stored in memory. A piece of software can treat this as whatever it chooses: if we want it to represent a numeric value, then it would be a decimal 5; if we want it to map to a standard set of alphanumeric characters which start with "A" at zero, then it could be the letter "F"; or if we want it to represent a simple image, then it could be a four pixel image with alternating white and black pixels.
However, the computer has still not provided anything intrinsically meaningful: it has provided an interpretation that truly does affect the physical world, but another level of interpretation is required for the data to become more to us than an arbitrary arrangement of atoms. Take the case of the bit string interpreted as an on-screen image: when your eyes catch the photons from the screen, your mind has to organize the signals from your photon receptors into something meaningful to itself. Of course it does do this, and then consciousness picks up on it, reacts, and feeds the interpretation back to other parts of mind -- and at this point we're satisfied with calling the interaction meaningful. But that is all that we can tell happens; the mind just keeps reading data, modifying itself, and feeding data elsewhere.
So, does the final, meaningful interpretation happen at all? The question has well disguised depths; it provokes facile and specious responses; and the glowing, recondite heart of it is that we would react as if it did in spite of the truth. A complex self-monitoring system would have the illusion of a meaningful interpretation of its own data. And, were it to exist, anything fulfilling the role of the self, soul, final interpreter/observer, or whatever you'd like to call it, would necessarily reside someplace beyond material existence, leaving it forever beyond our definite discovery.
Maybe then there is nothing we stand to lose. Certainly we have no reason to assume there is, and it is very unclear what it could be. Still, the above duplication scenario evokes some discomfort in myself, and reminds me that there is potentially a non-material part of mind.
Progress the scenario to a few seconds after the duplication. One of the staff of the experiment approach the cube containing the clone, open it, and issue a first question to its occupant: "How do you feel?"
"Well I feel fine, of course; have you spoken to the clone yet?"
This suggests that a scheme for replicating our minds in different materials is possible -- and there has been much writing related to this idea during the past two decades (perhaps especially due to Ray Kurzweil). We know that our minds function as they do because of their ability to store and modify patterns; how could this ability be altered by changing the underlying mechanism from neurons to transistors? Well, it seems that it might be made more efficient and durable; aside from that, it shouldn't make one bit of difference.
Subsequent to my learning of them, and prior to my thinking which produced this essay, I had yet to doubt the possibility of a transfer of this sort; its plausibility seemed necessary. I still do believe them to be possible even, but with a certain important limitation now. I believe minds can be transferred, but I also believe something could be lost.
Imagine a variation on the substrate transfer theme: imagine sitting isolated within a small cube with plain blue walls and even lighting, awaiting your complete duplication: bones, blood, viscera, memories, habits, fears, moods, moles, scars, chromosomes, bacteria -- everything -- copied from yourself to an identical form, with consummate fidelity, two meters left in a cerulean womb a lot like your cube.
Would the creation of this duplicate have any effect on you? Would that part of you that's consistent throughout your life, which is often termed 'self' or 'soul' indiscriminately, be multiplied? If you were killed off at this point, would 'you' persist in the next blue cube over? You may not, though this is essentially what is suggested as possible in mind transfers. Something could be lost. Maybe we can make new, even enhanced, consciousnesses -- but we can't transfer ourselves without risk of losing something.
This seems to suggest that some part of our being may be non-material. Consciousness, i.e. self-awareness, emotion, creativity -- none of these are difficult to conceive of as having a material basis; perception at the final level, however, that's difficult. Perception at this level is useless in our materiel existence, it serves no purpose. Every last detail of human, or animal, functioning makes sense without it; and if it were taken away, no one would ever know the difference. Even now, we don't know whether it's there or not; but it feels like it is, and the chance of losing it is a very high stake.
The conundrum of the final observer arises from the following: our minds are pattern manipulators whose state at any given time is the product of internal self-modifying processes and external sensory input. It's likely that a self-monitoring system, which we call consciousness, sits atop the remaining unconscious mental hardware for the purpose of monitoring an enormous array of variables representing select aspects of the unconscious mind. The values of these variables are interpreted by consciousness and responses are fed back into the unconscious. The unconscious mind is tied into the nervous system which exerts influence on the 'physical' body (it is, of course, all physical); and through the interaction of the physical body with the environment, data is sent back to the nervous system, back to the unconscious mental components, and back to consciousness. It's an endless interactive cycle resembling: environment, body, mind, consciousness, mind, body, environment. At the level of consciousness, the pinnacle of the cycle, all of the data for the rich experiences we have do exist; the problem is, there's nothing to interpret the data at this level; indeed, you face the problem of an infinite regress and must introduce the non-material in order to have meaning.
Data is meaningless without something to interpret it. This is made clear in computing systems: meaningless binary sequences are stored in memory and are given meaning when an interpretation for them is provided. An example: 0101 is stored in memory. A piece of software can treat this as whatever it chooses: if we want it to represent a numeric value, then it would be a decimal 5; if we want it to map to a standard set of alphanumeric characters which start with "A" at zero, then it could be the letter "F"; or if we want it to represent a simple image, then it could be a four pixel image with alternating white and black pixels.
However, the computer has still not provided anything intrinsically meaningful: it has provided an interpretation that truly does affect the physical world, but another level of interpretation is required for the data to become more to us than an arbitrary arrangement of atoms. Take the case of the bit string interpreted as an on-screen image: when your eyes catch the photons from the screen, your mind has to organize the signals from your photon receptors into something meaningful to itself. Of course it does do this, and then consciousness picks up on it, reacts, and feeds the interpretation back to other parts of mind -- and at this point we're satisfied with calling the interaction meaningful. But that is all that we can tell happens; the mind just keeps reading data, modifying itself, and feeding data elsewhere.
So, does the final, meaningful interpretation happen at all? The question has well disguised depths; it provokes facile and specious responses; and the glowing, recondite heart of it is that we would react as if it did in spite of the truth. A complex self-monitoring system would have the illusion of a meaningful interpretation of its own data. And, were it to exist, anything fulfilling the role of the self, soul, final interpreter/observer, or whatever you'd like to call it, would necessarily reside someplace beyond material existence, leaving it forever beyond our definite discovery.
Maybe then there is nothing we stand to lose. Certainly we have no reason to assume there is, and it is very unclear what it could be. Still, the above duplication scenario evokes some discomfort in myself, and reminds me that there is potentially a non-material part of mind.
Progress the scenario to a few seconds after the duplication. One of the staff of the experiment approach the cube containing the clone, open it, and issue a first question to its occupant: "How do you feel?"
"Well I feel fine, of course; have you spoken to the clone yet?"
Monday, March 1, 2010
Cereal thoughts
I had an idea to write some sentences while eating cereal lately. However, they would sense less make. Variety in means and increasing dosages, also. Still, tangent. And syntax violates, diction misinformed, tenses having obtrude. Which, were it as, defines -- no, contradicts, thence; but continue. And, so, tyrannied, nonplussery, sequence. Garble-goble.gourmet;sprocketedrelief. CoN;we,ro.ir"P).####****____
Tuesday, December 23, 2008
Beer-Pong through College-Colored Glasses
It is the noblest tradition among those entering the latter years of education to undertake a pilgrimage in quest of knowledge divine and extracurricular. These pilgrimages are said to be fraught with peril, and often end in shame; but to those sturdy enough to complete the journey to frat house, their neighbor's up the street, or perhaps even their own living room, questions may be asked of sage Players older and wiser than themselves: "What is Beer-Pong? Whence does it come? By what codes and precepts do its participants abide? Can I just sit out this first round and watch?" And if the proselyte presents himself with obsequious, trembling humility, answers may be given.
"Beer-pong is the Eternal Game; the game of our roommates and of their roommates before them; the passage from innocence and youth into manhood; and the substance of life. Its origin is unknown, lost to the chaotic drunk that its own creation birthed. It's rules are lewd, numerous, and relative. And you have no choice but to sit out and watch the first round; you aren't even on the list."
As the initiate takes his place as spectator, waiting the interminable duration to his virgin game, he will see and hear many things unknown to him. He is as a nestling watching its mother fly for its first time. He observes acts that are unexplainable and imagines sensations beyond his experience, all with the growing excitement that he, too, will soon become part of this fantastic alien world. He sees giants of unmatched proportions bearing the weight of monstrous distended bellies, flinging, with the utmost delicacy, opal spiraling spheres. He sees steezy sunglassed playboys swaying like the leafy branches of spring, stumbling and recovering, casting and scoring. The mystery of how one so intoxicated could act with such precision will stay with him, and in shroud, for the next half hour or so. He listens to the powerful intellects in the crowd shout recommendations for re-racks, respectfully deliberate over progressive legislation, and muse over the more philosophic aspects of The Game. Should the cups be arranged with consideration given to horizontal and vertical alignments, or does valency reign supreme? Without a spokesman for the household present, what rules should be established as defaults for in-cup ball retrieval? Does the purity of one's water cup truly reflect the compassion of one's soul?
The powerful impression of myriad new sites and ideas weigh heavily on the initiate, and he is encouraged to drink of Economy's golden nectar. First he makes libations to the owner of the house and parsimonious supplier of beer; the remainder is drank personally and induces him to frown the Frown of Economy's Golden Nectar. His cheeks flush, and his cup is found wanting.
Finally his turn is called and he may take his place at the stately game table; the table which is gilt with hardened Venetian leather, heavily embroidered with gold; whose surface is responsive, glistening, and redolent of countless prior games. There is an inscription in the center inlaid in a glowing argent fire:
Though Beer-Pong be a game
Beer-Pong be that what shall remain
The initiate's partner brushes against him with damp and fashionable raiment, entreating him to play with the dignity of a warrior and to not, "fuck up." Unbeknown to him, his opponents are the peerless "Clarence" whose birth was the accident of the passion of a 14 game winning streak consummated in 1985, and the redoubtable "Floyd, bulwark of The South" who himself is now in the midst of a 14 game winning streak. The outcome is set; his fate is sealed with the promise of much more to drink.
Though his first game has been lost, the initiate is not dismayed; he knows something of Beer-Pong now and sees that it is like life with its changing seasons, victories and losses, joys and sorrows. Whichever way the evening goes, the initiate has taken his first steps to becoming a man, he has tasted of the best life has to offer, and he will surely suffer a formidable hangover come morning. His story is the story of all men throughout the ages who have ascended to the exalted peaks of human knowledge, and who from this eminent platform have truly progressed the vanguard of human experience. His story is eternal and yet timeless; it is the story we all live and learn from. His story, is the story of Beer-Pong.
"Beer-pong is the Eternal Game; the game of our roommates and of their roommates before them; the passage from innocence and youth into manhood; and the substance of life. Its origin is unknown, lost to the chaotic drunk that its own creation birthed. It's rules are lewd, numerous, and relative. And you have no choice but to sit out and watch the first round; you aren't even on the list."
As the initiate takes his place as spectator, waiting the interminable duration to his virgin game, he will see and hear many things unknown to him. He is as a nestling watching its mother fly for its first time. He observes acts that are unexplainable and imagines sensations beyond his experience, all with the growing excitement that he, too, will soon become part of this fantastic alien world. He sees giants of unmatched proportions bearing the weight of monstrous distended bellies, flinging, with the utmost delicacy, opal spiraling spheres. He sees steezy sunglassed playboys swaying like the leafy branches of spring, stumbling and recovering, casting and scoring. The mystery of how one so intoxicated could act with such precision will stay with him, and in shroud, for the next half hour or so. He listens to the powerful intellects in the crowd shout recommendations for re-racks, respectfully deliberate over progressive legislation, and muse over the more philosophic aspects of The Game. Should the cups be arranged with consideration given to horizontal and vertical alignments, or does valency reign supreme? Without a spokesman for the household present, what rules should be established as defaults for in-cup ball retrieval? Does the purity of one's water cup truly reflect the compassion of one's soul?
The powerful impression of myriad new sites and ideas weigh heavily on the initiate, and he is encouraged to drink of Economy's golden nectar. First he makes libations to the owner of the house and parsimonious supplier of beer; the remainder is drank personally and induces him to frown the Frown of Economy's Golden Nectar. His cheeks flush, and his cup is found wanting.
Finally his turn is called and he may take his place at the stately game table; the table which is gilt with hardened Venetian leather, heavily embroidered with gold; whose surface is responsive, glistening, and redolent of countless prior games. There is an inscription in the center inlaid in a glowing argent fire:
Though Beer-Pong be a game
Beer-Pong be that what shall remain
The initiate's partner brushes against him with damp and fashionable raiment, entreating him to play with the dignity of a warrior and to not, "fuck up." Unbeknown to him, his opponents are the peerless "Clarence" whose birth was the accident of the passion of a 14 game winning streak consummated in 1985, and the redoubtable "Floyd, bulwark of The South" who himself is now in the midst of a 14 game winning streak. The outcome is set; his fate is sealed with the promise of much more to drink.
Though his first game has been lost, the initiate is not dismayed; he knows something of Beer-Pong now and sees that it is like life with its changing seasons, victories and losses, joys and sorrows. Whichever way the evening goes, the initiate has taken his first steps to becoming a man, he has tasted of the best life has to offer, and he will surely suffer a formidable hangover come morning. His story is the story of all men throughout the ages who have ascended to the exalted peaks of human knowledge, and who from this eminent platform have truly progressed the vanguard of human experience. His story is eternal and yet timeless; it is the story we all live and learn from. His story, is the story of Beer-Pong.
Mechanistic Beauty Via Conversation
[Wherein two eccentric old friends drink whiskey and talk about serious matters under the stars.]
Cannon: "By Jove's sable brow! Didst thou just drink all thy whiskey?"
*Cadwalader's face is contorted in a manner that suggests "yes", but he is unable to reply. Moments later, he sets his countenance straight and clears his throat.*
Cadwalader: "Yes. Unfortunately I had no choice: I know of nothing better to combat those vile change-of-season pathogens."
Cannon: "I see..."
*pause*
Cadwalader: "Anyway.. You were asking me something just before?"
Cannon: "Right. I had meant to ask: do you not think that by taking a purely mechanistic, physicalist view of reality that you limit your own ability to perceive its beauty? And more than that, disregarding how things actually are, and stepping beyond the bounds of your own beliefs, do you hold that the belief would be benevolent, generally applied?"
*Cadwalader lets his head drop near his knees to better consider the proposed question. After a moment of deliberation in this position, he raises his head and begins rubbing his bristled chin, checking a few final details for consistency.*
Cadwalader: "I think it is a powerful view... It has great potential; but it may be misapplied, misinterpreted, and simply incomprehensible for some I'd imagine. Or.. at least they wouldn't be willing to put the work into comprehending it. I say this because to fully understand it requires a reasonable amount of imaginative effort -- not to invent something about reality, mind you, but to understand something about it that is invisible to human minds and eyes."
Cannon: "Well, that's rather vague isn't it?"
*Cadwallader laughs a moment and then thinks silently for another before continuing.*
Cadwalader: "This is where the viewpoint's problems begin: the beauty it has the potential to reveal is everywhere within it; and yet, just as atoms are everywhere and invisible, so to might this beauty be. Both atoms and the beauty in physicalism are at first transparent because of limitations inherent in humans for dealing with: the extremely small, in the case of atoms, and the extremely numerous, in the case of physicalism -- which will require some explanation. However, just as we were able to find an indirect route to atoms in physical reality, an indirect route to beauty in physicalism may be walked."
Cannon: "Why though? Why put effort into 'locating the beauty'? Isn't it a sign that we're on the wrong track if we have to strain to see it?"
*Cadwalader smiles*
Cadwalader: "Not at all. This is an easy mistake to make; one of the many pitfalls along the way to a safe comprehension of physicalism. Just because we have to put effort into seeing the beauty initially does not mean its radiance will be dimmed once spotted; you won't be perceiving beauty through squinted eyes, you'll just have to furrow your brow in the effort to reach it. This is done beforehand. You're still free to relax and enjoy yourself at other times; in fact, it's encouraged.
The other reason you should bother is because it's useful and gratifying to know the truth. Physicalism is an accessory viewpoint automatically installed when a mind is furnished with man's most current knowledge of the universe. And while this knowledge expands, bits will be revised and scientists will work in changing paradigms; but you can be certain enough that we won't ever take back the universe's deterministic nature (despite what that daft pseudo-scientist who misinterprets quantum theory for you might say); this is all that physicalism requires."
*Cannon takes it all in while contemplating star-ward, then turns back to Cadwalader.*
Cannon: "Okay then, how is the beauty located? As far as I can determine, physicalism sounds dull and plain, uninspiring and.. mundane. I can surmise no redeeming qualities which it might posses in the way of enjoyability."
*Cadwalader acknowledges with a nod.*
Cadwalader: "Well, the first obstacle you have to overcome has to do with comprehending large numbers. When people see numbers like 10 to the 42nd power, the only thoughts they can have regarding it are along the lines of: that's a damn lot! But what's important is how damn much it really is.
As humans evolved, they were not required to deal with quantities in that range; we are still without the capacity to proceed otherwise, directly. The national debt is incomprehensible, the number of sand-grains on a beach is more incomprehensible, the number of atoms in your thumb is far more incomprehensible. Once you understand how greatly concentrated the units of matter in the universe are, try for a grasp of how large and complicated the universe is.
Take a moment and try to visualize each step: the lot which your high school and all of its grounds rested on was a great deal less than a single square kilometer; the surface area of the Earth is over 500 million square kilometers. The sun we revolve around is millions of times larger than our Earth. The observable universe contains more than 50 billion trillion stars organized into more than 80 billion galaxies. Now, think about how many atoms must be in the universe.
This is such a hugely, extravagantly, vast number of interacting parts that I can conceive no limitations of beauty and wonder afforded to the system containing them. Not only that, but the unsurpassed elegance and genius of the laws of physics which define how the parts interact, giving rise to all of the coordinated grandeur of stars, planets, DNA and life, rather than to chaos, is more worthy of reverence than anything else known to me.
This is the compass of the physicalist viewpoint, this is what it allows for. I have no doubt in my mind that a system with this level of complexity could give rise to perceived emotions as rich as the most profound love or diabolical, raging hatred; to our most awe-inspiring works of art in music, architecture, painting, poetry; to entities which can be moved by them as we are; and finally, to delicate flowers, gurgling streams, epic sun sets, and all of the rest of natural world.
Once you realize the full import of these statements, you can feel free to discard them. Perceiving beauty has nothing to do with whether you believe in god or atoms; it has a lot to do with observation unclouded by thought. Not just visual beauty either, beauty of the moment, as I like to call it. This is something that can be found when you tune into sounds, smells, appearance, temperature -- in short, everything around you -- without thinking anything about it, just appreciating and waiting for more. All that's required to perceive beauty with physicalism is to remove the obstruction which a false impression of it may leave you with.
*Cannon is silent for a moment.*
Cannon: "I'll have to think about it."
*Cadwalader smiles again.*
Cannon: "By Jove's sable brow! Didst thou just drink all thy whiskey?"
*Cadwalader's face is contorted in a manner that suggests "yes", but he is unable to reply. Moments later, he sets his countenance straight and clears his throat.*
Cadwalader: "Yes. Unfortunately I had no choice: I know of nothing better to combat those vile change-of-season pathogens."
Cannon: "I see..."
*pause*
Cadwalader: "Anyway.. You were asking me something just before?"
Cannon: "Right. I had meant to ask: do you not think that by taking a purely mechanistic, physicalist view of reality that you limit your own ability to perceive its beauty? And more than that, disregarding how things actually are, and stepping beyond the bounds of your own beliefs, do you hold that the belief would be benevolent, generally applied?"
*Cadwalader lets his head drop near his knees to better consider the proposed question. After a moment of deliberation in this position, he raises his head and begins rubbing his bristled chin, checking a few final details for consistency.*
Cadwalader: "I think it is a powerful view... It has great potential; but it may be misapplied, misinterpreted, and simply incomprehensible for some I'd imagine. Or.. at least they wouldn't be willing to put the work into comprehending it. I say this because to fully understand it requires a reasonable amount of imaginative effort -- not to invent something about reality, mind you, but to understand something about it that is invisible to human minds and eyes."
Cannon: "Well, that's rather vague isn't it?"
*Cadwallader laughs a moment and then thinks silently for another before continuing.*
Cadwalader: "This is where the viewpoint's problems begin: the beauty it has the potential to reveal is everywhere within it; and yet, just as atoms are everywhere and invisible, so to might this beauty be. Both atoms and the beauty in physicalism are at first transparent because of limitations inherent in humans for dealing with: the extremely small, in the case of atoms, and the extremely numerous, in the case of physicalism -- which will require some explanation. However, just as we were able to find an indirect route to atoms in physical reality, an indirect route to beauty in physicalism may be walked."
Cannon: "Why though? Why put effort into 'locating the beauty'? Isn't it a sign that we're on the wrong track if we have to strain to see it?"
*Cadwalader smiles*
Cadwalader: "Not at all. This is an easy mistake to make; one of the many pitfalls along the way to a safe comprehension of physicalism. Just because we have to put effort into seeing the beauty initially does not mean its radiance will be dimmed once spotted; you won't be perceiving beauty through squinted eyes, you'll just have to furrow your brow in the effort to reach it. This is done beforehand. You're still free to relax and enjoy yourself at other times; in fact, it's encouraged.
The other reason you should bother is because it's useful and gratifying to know the truth. Physicalism is an accessory viewpoint automatically installed when a mind is furnished with man's most current knowledge of the universe. And while this knowledge expands, bits will be revised and scientists will work in changing paradigms; but you can be certain enough that we won't ever take back the universe's deterministic nature (despite what that daft pseudo-scientist who misinterprets quantum theory for you might say); this is all that physicalism requires."
*Cannon takes it all in while contemplating star-ward, then turns back to Cadwalader.*
Cannon: "Okay then, how is the beauty located? As far as I can determine, physicalism sounds dull and plain, uninspiring and.. mundane. I can surmise no redeeming qualities which it might posses in the way of enjoyability."
*Cadwalader acknowledges with a nod.*
Cadwalader: "Well, the first obstacle you have to overcome has to do with comprehending large numbers. When people see numbers like 10 to the 42nd power, the only thoughts they can have regarding it are along the lines of: that's a damn lot! But what's important is how damn much it really is.
As humans evolved, they were not required to deal with quantities in that range; we are still without the capacity to proceed otherwise, directly. The national debt is incomprehensible, the number of sand-grains on a beach is more incomprehensible, the number of atoms in your thumb is far more incomprehensible. Once you understand how greatly concentrated the units of matter in the universe are, try for a grasp of how large and complicated the universe is.
Take a moment and try to visualize each step: the lot which your high school and all of its grounds rested on was a great deal less than a single square kilometer; the surface area of the Earth is over 500 million square kilometers. The sun we revolve around is millions of times larger than our Earth. The observable universe contains more than 50 billion trillion stars organized into more than 80 billion galaxies. Now, think about how many atoms must be in the universe.
This is such a hugely, extravagantly, vast number of interacting parts that I can conceive no limitations of beauty and wonder afforded to the system containing them. Not only that, but the unsurpassed elegance and genius of the laws of physics which define how the parts interact, giving rise to all of the coordinated grandeur of stars, planets, DNA and life, rather than to chaos, is more worthy of reverence than anything else known to me.
This is the compass of the physicalist viewpoint, this is what it allows for. I have no doubt in my mind that a system with this level of complexity could give rise to perceived emotions as rich as the most profound love or diabolical, raging hatred; to our most awe-inspiring works of art in music, architecture, painting, poetry; to entities which can be moved by them as we are; and finally, to delicate flowers, gurgling streams, epic sun sets, and all of the rest of natural world.
Once you realize the full import of these statements, you can feel free to discard them. Perceiving beauty has nothing to do with whether you believe in god or atoms; it has a lot to do with observation unclouded by thought. Not just visual beauty either, beauty of the moment, as I like to call it. This is something that can be found when you tune into sounds, smells, appearance, temperature -- in short, everything around you -- without thinking anything about it, just appreciating and waiting for more. All that's required to perceive beauty with physicalism is to remove the obstruction which a false impression of it may leave you with.
*Cannon is silent for a moment.*
Cannon: "I'll have to think about it."
*Cadwalader smiles again.*
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