Stanley Cavell and The Responsibility of Pictures of Skyscrapers taken from Parks

We see seeing as seeing the sublime and never just seeing. In every seeing there is something of a seeing-beneath, a certain thinking-through, a certain uncovering that goes into the very process. I look at a skyscraper and never just see a building but rather something beneath a skyscraper. Not a basement, not a skeleton of steel. But something else. Something at the bottom of things. When we see a picture of a skyscraper we never just see a skyscraper, which would be superfluous. We divine the world like it's buried beneath layer after layer of soot. This highlights our separateness of ourselves from the world. A break between ourselves and the rest. We see a picture of a skyscraper and we see ourselves—this “and” that we bring to bear brings our very selves into focus. A destabilization occurs. We see ourselves unanswered in the picture of the skyscraper—a lifeless thing. We see Manhattan from far away and see only a lifeless entity devoid of people. Artifacts, things, buildings. We're no longer subjective entities focused on this world; rather, we're horrified at our very real objectivity. This objectivity is perpetual and continual. We can't call ourselves human because there's nothing human about this “and”; once we've been destabilized we're mere objects, we think, maybe with relations to other objects but not with other humans. This is the horror of the skyscraper. The skyscraper will not answer us as we answer each other. In each instance of instability, of difference between ourselves and the skyscraper, we find a possible illumination. The “and” between us, that brings both the unanswerable unfamiliar to bear and the objective self, which is no self at all, illuminates something else. Through reflection on this “and” we come to reflect on ourselves and find ourselves outside of ourselves. By seeing ourselves outside of this relation—by reflecting on the relation itself—we become awakened to the possibility of the possibility of relations and the possibility of renewal. This renewal is a coming back to where we left, home. When we leave home we find possibility. In renewal we find freedom. In freedom we find that we ourselves are that which must be reevaluated. In this way we recreate ourselves and the world. The picture of the skyscraper is no longer unfamiliar or horrifying: rather, it becomes answerable and renewable. In short, we become responsible for it.  In this way, we find home again.

Aldous Huxley, You Suck

It's bad.  It's pretentious.  It's a waste of a morning.  I loved Brave New World and even Island (I never liked "The Doors of Perception" because I'd already been exposed to Schopenhauer/Kant and the thing-in-itself or "will" vs "representation" or whatever Kant opposed to it, the thing-for-us...I'm lapsing on the term, so I had already moved beyond that by the time I read it), but these stories are ridiculous.  A short story about grad school--followed by another short story about grad school. Unidentifiable poems in foreign languages inserted randomly throughout (admittedly only some of) the text.  I suppose it would make more sense if I had known the poems or where they had come from.  People with names like "Lykeham," "Mr. Buzzacot," and "Mr. Bigger." Honeymoons at Capri!  More funny names like "Lady Hurtmore."  More stories about grad school.  Counts. Countesses.  Drawing rooms and parlours.  I really didn't enjoy any of these stories.  They were pretty bad. Done ranting.  Just wasn't very fun.

What Computers Can't Do

Stanley Fish on Watson

I really like reading Stanley Fish's articles in the NYT.  Mostly because they're completely Heideggerian and Wittgensteinian without admitting it.  I don't really know who Stanley Fish is, but most of the articles I've read by him point backwards to a general point: meaning holism is probably correct in some broad fashion (that's basically what he argues in this article):

...as the philosopher Hubert Dreyfus explained almost 40 years ago, a “computer is not in a situation” (“What Computers Can’t Do”); it has no holistic sense of context and no ability to to survey possibilities from a contextual perspective; it doesn’t begin with what Wittgenstein terms a “form of life,” but must build up a form of life, a world, from the only thing it has and is, “bits of context-free, completely determinate data.” And since the data, no matter how large in quantity, can never add up to a context and will always remain discrete bits, the world can never be built.

Dreyfuss is maybe the modern day teacher of Heideggerian thought (well, he explains it much better than anybody else I've run across).  I even have a link to some youtube videos where Dreyfuss explains Heidegger's place in the history of philosophy fairly well--see my sidebar for them.  I believe Dreyfuss (in that book) also thought that computers would never be able to master chess, as well, but this isn't an argument against his more general point.  You could argue that chess is actually the epitome of being able to apply strict rules to a given situation regardless of the larger, holistic context.  As long as you know the rules and can run a large amount of predictions on any given move an opponent might make, you can win at chess.  But what Fish is arguing for is that we build up a context of meaning ("a world") from first living in it; the "discrete bits" take their meaning from that world. As Wittgenstein would have said, from their "use" within that world.

What computers can’t do, we don’t have to do because the worlds we live in are already built; we don’t walk around putting discrete items together until they add up to a context; we walk around with a contextual sense — a sense of where we are and what’s at stake and what our resources are — already in place; we inhabit worldly spaces already organized by purposes, projects and expectations.

For example, there's the hammer/nail analogy in Heidegger's "Being and Time".  A carpenter hammers a nail just like a computer manufacturing a car could hammer a nail or screw a bolt.  But what's missing in the computer's case is what Heidegger would call an "equipmental totality."  We don't just hammer nails for the fun of it: a carpenter hammers nails because he/she is building a house or building a couch or making a desk, so that he/she can get paid for doing this work and then eat when they go home--you get the idea.  The machine has no such "equipmental totality."  It's simply following a program, not determining how many nails it should hammer, or why its building cars in the first place (presuming it's building cars), or how many cars it should make.  It simply does it--it's a piece of equipment itself, embedded in a larger context of car-making.  Now, its not hard to imagine another computer deciding in some technocratic fashion how many cars should be made, maybe based on carbon emissions (also programmed and decided).  But we still never get to the crux of the issue, which is what Fish addresses in the quote above.  Our worlds are "organized by purposes, projects and expectations." These are things that are part of being human on some pre-conscious level, I would argue.  They are part of simply being in a world at all.  (enter a meditation on animals, here--but leave out the computers.)

In an interesting turn, too, Heidegger adopts a new word for "human": Dasein.  Literally it means "there-being." For Heidegger's project this becomes interesting because he's describing what it's like to be in a world at all without all the garbage associated with trying to define "the human."  He's describing the ways in which we simply are in the world prior to our conscious selves.  We already inhabit a world.  What becomes interesting is describing how we inhabit it.

Computers, so the argument would go, can retain information and even use this information in limited, rule-following contexts (like statistical analysis).  But these rule-following contexts crucially miss part of what it means to be a person: the ability to be faced with the unfamiliar.  Because we ourselves already inhabit a world, we're already given over to it, just as a computer with a large set of rules would be.  But the unexpected always shows up; and crucially, Fish argues, these unexpected amendments will "always [outrun] the efforts to take account of them, and after a while you’ve reached the point when every situation will require a rewriting of the rule, which means that there will no longer be a rule at all."  Basically, because we're "built" with the ability to "be in the world," we can adjust to new worlds and new contexts.  Not to say this is easy.  But computers, Fish argues, can't do this. This adaptive principle is unique.  This is why Fish argues that Watson's achievement is purely "formal."

Ishkur's Guide to Electronic Music

The Guide.

I think this site is hilarious.  I stumbled over it as a freshman in college way-back-when, when I would look for cool shows in Mpls to go to.  It's so sarcastic.  Funny.  I just looked over it: it's still funny.

Take this example, from the genre called NOIZECORE:

Noisecore is not music insomuch as it is anti-music. It is a recreation of the sounds in our modern technological society through an abrasive form. In this instance, then, what is commonly considered noise is not. It is simply part of our surroundings through a grual introduction. For instance, imagine living in the city, seeing nothing but glass and steel and concrete consuming our daily grind like an apathetic beast shoveling food into its bottomless belly. Imagine also the sounds that go along with it, the jackhammers and cars and hustle and bustle of people moving about. These sounds have become so much part of our daily consciousness that we don't even notice it anymore. In fact, if it gets too quiet, we feel uncomfortable, as exemplified by our need to have a television set on in our home all the time, even if we aren't watching it. If you go out into a desert, or a lake, or someplace secluded from everything so that there is no sound anywhere for miles and no wind, hold your breath and open your mouth, you can actually hear the blood flowing through your ears. An interesting trick, yes, but it brings about the realization that total and complete silence is not actually capable to us. Unless you were born deaf, you have never known total and complete quiet; that is, zero sound waves reverberating in your ears. There is always a constant sound with you, even if it's your own heartbeat. An interesting way of looking at things, but at the same time it's also rather disturbing. I think the point I'm trying to make in all this is when it really comes down to it we need noise in our lives because we can't imagine living without it. Furthermore, despite this necessity--nay, DEPENDANCY--on the sounds of life and the world around us, and how pleasing this noise actually makes us feel, Noisecore as a genre is definitely not something we are looking for, and you are much better off simply disregarding it entirely and taking everything I just said as a huge collossal waste of time.

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Undelete: Computer Action Beta Twelve

I undeleted my blog because...I have no reasons not to.

I started another blog, more personal I think, here: disengage!.

I like blogs with purposes.  This blog was mostly non-personal while being entirely personal at the same time.  The other is more casual.  I don't really care, I guess.  Got the time.  Got the money (it's free!).

I'll post on both probably at some point, depending on what's happenin'.