A while back I got this message via my web contact form:
"hi, love your work what is your inspiration to do the work you do" - from Michelle C.
Here is my reply:
"My inspiration is the need to express beauty. I think probably all of us have a desire towards what is beautiful and expressing it in art is one way of getting close to it. Or perhaps it is frustration at not having the real thing, like a lover wanting to have a picture of his or her beloved because their real beloved is not with them.
"Art is a signpost pointing to something else."
2009-04-19
2009-04-16
consciousness is not functions
The human machine is not the mind.
We think we 'do' and 'decide' but it is done for us and we respond unconsciously. Then we claim that 'I' did it. We rationalise what happened after the fact as if we had planned it consciously all along.
This article from the Economist suggests that decisions on what to think and what to do and even the solving of problems are done before they reach consciousness.
So who do we think we are? The machine which thinks and acts unconsciously? Or the consciousness that perceives after the event?
Is there any way we can rescue the 'common-sense' view that we decide what to do and then do it? Or does thinking just get in the way of decisions already made deep inside the human machine?
The study of 'artificial intelligence' mostly studies functions (like the ability to play chess, for example). It seems clear that functions can be carried out prior to (and perhaps without the help of) consciousness.
We think we 'do' and 'decide' but it is done for us and we respond unconsciously. Then we claim that 'I' did it. We rationalise what happened after the fact as if we had planned it consciously all along.
This article from the Economist suggests that decisions on what to think and what to do and even the solving of problems are done before they reach consciousness.
So who do we think we are? The machine which thinks and acts unconsciously? Or the consciousness that perceives after the event?
Is there any way we can rescue the 'common-sense' view that we decide what to do and then do it? Or does thinking just get in the way of decisions already made deep inside the human machine?
The study of 'artificial intelligence' mostly studies functions (like the ability to play chess, for example). It seems clear that functions can be carried out prior to (and perhaps without the help of) consciousness.
2009-04-12
Vita - naked women and bicycles
I received an email from a gallery owner in Quebec representing an artist called Vita, who specialises in paintings of naked women, often with bicycles. The gallery owner had responded to my essay, 'Towards a new art'.
I especially liked this painting by Vita in which a woman, beautiful in her nakedness, looks at an abstract painting from which elements have fallen.
There is a commentary on the web site.
In reference to the commentary, the male and female elements both refer to our own psychology - the male guides, the female has the force of inspiration. The male has the rules, the female has the love. One is useless without the other, a string and a bow.
I especially liked this painting by Vita in which a woman, beautiful in her nakedness, looks at an abstract painting from which elements have fallen.
There is a commentary on the web site.
In reference to the commentary, the male and female elements both refer to our own psychology - the male guides, the female has the force of inspiration. The male has the rules, the female has the love. One is useless without the other, a string and a bow.
2009-03-14
this blog, my art
I shall shortly move this blog to www.dace.co.uk/blog and restore my old front page with its direct links to my paintings. See links at the right of this page for my artwork. The blog will continue and there will be a link to it from my new front page.
determinism and free will 3
Fate could not operate without that choice, which is part of the web of fate itself, part of its colour.
Did not Odysseus reach Ithaka as he was fated to do all along? And did not that arrival require strenuous efforts and choices, the choice to leave the nymph Calypso for example?
To say that determinism and free will contradict each other is to confuse two things on very different scales.
The sense of choice, of decision and effort, are woven into the very fabric of fate. Free will is necessary for fate to unfold as it must.
Did not Odysseus reach Ithaka as he was fated to do all along? And did not that arrival require strenuous efforts and choices, the choice to leave the nymph Calypso for example?
To say that determinism and free will contradict each other is to confuse two things on very different scales.
The sense of choice, of decision and effort, are woven into the very fabric of fate. Free will is necessary for fate to unfold as it must.
2009-03-08
mysticism
Mysticism (Oxford English Dictionary):
1. belief that union with or absorption into the Deity or the absolute, or the spiritual apprehension of knowledge inaccessible to the intellect, may be attained through contemplation and self-surrender.
2. belief characterized by self-delusion or dreamy confusion of thought, esp. when based on the assumption of occult qualities or mysterious agencies.
I have long been a bit of a hard nut, not given to believing in 'mysterious agencies,' and indeed I have come actively to disbelieve anything written in a newspaper, and require stringent proofs for any important claims. I am a doubter.
Even dictionaries, of course, can get things wrong. Be that as it may, the Oxford Dictionary gives the Greek root of the word mysticism as muein - to close the lips or eyes. Plato said that we come into this world knowing much, but we forget it all. Someone has put a seal on our lips. At the same time, much that is worth knowing cannot be spoken.
There are, indeed, things that cannot be put into words. They make themselves manifest. They are what is mystical. Wittgenstein, Tractatus 6.522
1. belief that union with or absorption into the Deity or the absolute, or the spiritual apprehension of knowledge inaccessible to the intellect, may be attained through contemplation and self-surrender.
2. belief characterized by self-delusion or dreamy confusion of thought, esp. when based on the assumption of occult qualities or mysterious agencies.
I have long been a bit of a hard nut, not given to believing in 'mysterious agencies,' and indeed I have come actively to disbelieve anything written in a newspaper, and require stringent proofs for any important claims. I am a doubter.
Even dictionaries, of course, can get things wrong. Be that as it may, the Oxford Dictionary gives the Greek root of the word mysticism as muein - to close the lips or eyes. Plato said that we come into this world knowing much, but we forget it all. Someone has put a seal on our lips. At the same time, much that is worth knowing cannot be spoken.
There are, indeed, things that cannot be put into words. They make themselves manifest. They are what is mystical. Wittgenstein, Tractatus 6.522
2009-02-17
determinism and free will 2
Now we descend from Parmenides's vantage point on Mount Olympus.
From there we could see the whole world laid out, not only in space but also in time: everything that was is and will be as a single unimaginably complex intertwining of threads of existence. For each object and being we see that coming into existence, being and going out of existence are just one thread.
Thus the Fates weave. There seemed from there no possibility of anything ever being any different, since we see all changes as one thing.
From the point of view of the being whose thin thread of life we observed from Olympus, things look very different. The twists and turns of fate do not entirely feel to us like being pushed and pulled helplessly, but require decisions and action.
Saxon King Harold Godwinson, standing on the battlefield not far from York in 1066, is faced by his brother Tostig and Harald Sigurdson, King of Norway at the head of a large Norwegian army. Harold sends a messenger to the Norwegian camp and offers a third of his kingdom to his brother Tostig. Tostig asks what Harold will give to Harald of Norway. Harold replies that he will give him six feet of English earth, but because Harald is such a tall man, seven feet.
Battle commences and the invading Norwegians are defeated and Harald and Tostig slain. Harold Godwinson returns to fight William of Normandy at Hastings, the outcome of which we all know.
What if Harold, knowing that he had two battles on his hands and weary troops, had made a pact with Harald and gone on to victory at Hastings? Probably the inhabitants of Newcastle would speak Norwegian to this day, and English history would have been very different.
Perhaps the choice Harold made was determined by Fate. But from Harold's point of view he was making a decision, in those few minutes.
From there we could see the whole world laid out, not only in space but also in time: everything that was is and will be as a single unimaginably complex intertwining of threads of existence. For each object and being we see that coming into existence, being and going out of existence are just one thread.
Thus the Fates weave. There seemed from there no possibility of anything ever being any different, since we see all changes as one thing.
From the point of view of the being whose thin thread of life we observed from Olympus, things look very different. The twists and turns of fate do not entirely feel to us like being pushed and pulled helplessly, but require decisions and action.
Saxon King Harold Godwinson, standing on the battlefield not far from York in 1066, is faced by his brother Tostig and Harald Sigurdson, King of Norway at the head of a large Norwegian army. Harold sends a messenger to the Norwegian camp and offers a third of his kingdom to his brother Tostig. Tostig asks what Harold will give to Harald of Norway. Harold replies that he will give him six feet of English earth, but because Harald is such a tall man, seven feet.
Battle commences and the invading Norwegians are defeated and Harald and Tostig slain. Harold Godwinson returns to fight William of Normandy at Hastings, the outcome of which we all know.
What if Harold, knowing that he had two battles on his hands and weary troops, had made a pact with Harald and gone on to victory at Hastings? Probably the inhabitants of Newcastle would speak Norwegian to this day, and English history would have been very different.
Perhaps the choice Harold made was determined by Fate. But from Harold's point of view he was making a decision, in those few minutes.
2009-02-15
adolescent philosophising
Some adolescents pass through a stage when they want to know who they are and what is the meaning of life. Then they grow up and die.
It is better to stay an adolescent in our thinking.
When we change enough we may realise that we don't know who we are, or that we are not who we thought we were. If we are what is common to what was before and what is now then what we thought we were shrinks indefinitely. It can only stay the same if we have fossilised.
Yet what watches remains.
It is better to stay an adolescent in our thinking.
When we change enough we may realise that we don't know who we are, or that we are not who we thought we were. If we are what is common to what was before and what is now then what we thought we were shrinks indefinitely. It can only stay the same if we have fossilised.
Yet what watches remains.
2009-02-04
determinism and free will
We are with Parmenides, standing on Mount Olympus, looking down on the whole universe in time and space. From our god-like perspective the universe is a four-dimensional space-time solid, in which all our heres and nows that were and are and shall be are but specks.We can perhaps distinguish a line connecting all the moments of the life of one being, this being the thread spun by the Fates. Everything is fixed.
Omar Khayyam wrote:
With Earth's first Clay They did the Last man's knead,
And then of the Last Harvest sow'd the Seed:
Yea, the first Morning of Creation wrote
What the Last Dawn of Reckoning shall read.
However, from the point of view of this being, whose thread of life we observe from Olympus, things look very different.
In my next post I propose to challenge the idea that determinism and free will are irreconcilable.
2009-01-15
silence
Be silent, or let your words be worth more than silence - Pythagoras. I have many thoughts, but few of them of any value.
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