Poetics (in the works)

The Healtfhul Addictions of the Dying Body

I recall Garrison Keillor noting a study which informed us that coffee was an addiction and that coffee was good for us. This is a new concept he said, that there could be an addiction that is good for us. And the audience chuckled. The event of this humorous anecdote is worth exploring. We’ve so coated the concept “addiction” with the shell of “bad” that we fail to see how much of our behavior, good and bad, is already an addiction.

We don’t call it an addiction when the drug to which we are addicted—no, let’s get rid of “drug” which is coated in the same shell as “addiction”—when the chemical to which we are addicted is produced by the body. But all drugs work only because they body already has in place receptors for those drugs, and we only have to receptors because the body has a use for them—or for something so like them that these imitations can pick the locks of the native receptors. (Not all the chemicals the body produces are good for the body in all situations or in any amounts. But exploring this well-known fact will only lead us from the path. And we have such a weakness for striking off at every turn.)

We do we listen to music? Why do we crave sex and pizza? Why do we play or watch baseball? Or ride roller coasters? Why do we sleep? Climb mountains and stare at stars? (This is an endless list.) Why do we do anything we enjoy and then do it again and again and forever? One way to answer all these questions is simple: to feed our addictions. The music we enjoy releases dopamine. Probably everything we enjoy releases dopamine. I don’t know the physiology, the names of all natural chemicals, but it’s clear that we do these things to release these chemicals which we call “the experience of pleasure.”

Happiness is an addiction. Break the shell of the word. Addictions are not bad. They’re not good either. Neither good nor bad any more than a hammer is good or bad. Good for something. Good when useful. Just an object in itself, wood and steel. Most of our life is the balancing of addictions. Learning new things, experiencing new things—whether that is a new kind of music (because you will come to enjoy any kind of music if you let yourself) or a new food or an activity that was formerly anathema to you (math, poetry, sports)—is the creation of new addictions. Addictions tie us to earth, to our lives, to life. What is life but the managing of our addictions?

That would be a good round period on which to conclude this meditation. But I’d rather leave it with this:

It was widely thought at the start of what we like to call the Romantic era that our addictions were more than this—not that would have dreamed of using that language. Our feelings and emotions opened pathways into being it was thought. I’m not convinced we have to absolutely give up on that idea. Whatever the divine might be if it has any connection to the material, running through materiality like breeze or a melody or a hinted meaning, then it seems most likely that we would experience it in our pre-linguistic (or is it extra-linguistic?) being before we would in any other part of ourselves, before we would think it in language or conclude it in logic or find it in math. That doesn’t mean—contra Lucas—that we can “trust our feelings,” since feelings are as likely to lead us to heroin as Bach, but that we may nonetheless also, like Romantic poets (and other artists) take them seriously. Life may yet be more than the quest for the healthful addictions of the dying body.

Speculations on AI and the Turing Test

In brief, I take no stand on whether what we call AI is possible in fact—i.e. whether a machine could ever be created that would have consciousness. The belief that it can (rather than the more reasonable hypothesis that it can) is circular and religious, based on acceptance of the (currently) unprovable hypothesis that human consciousness is already a type of machine consciousness.

The Turing Test is inadequate to prove machine consciousness. Any test based upon the imitation of signs can fail. As the woman or man can make you believe she is in love with you just to get your money, so a computer “consciousness” may well be able to process the signs of human consciousness so well that no human can distinguish this performance from actual consciousness, and yet the computer may yet not be conscious.

The computer would know if it was conscious, since knowing one is conscious and being conscious are the same thing. But its assurance to us that it is conscious wouldn’t be the same as being conscious. (And in any case computer consciousness would probably be a new kind of consciousness, and as such would fall under the problem of definition rather than fact.)

So what? In practical terms, it doesn’t make any difference whether a computer is conscious or whether it only seems to us to be conscious. If it looks like consciousness and acts like consciousness there’s no more harm in pretending that it is conscious than there is in pretending that you cat loves you (incidentally, your cat doesn’t give a shit about you).

True, if we ever get there, there will be all sorts of moral questions that will have to be answered. And it will cause us to rethink what it means for us to be conscious in ways that we now are not constrained to think. But we are so far from there that I feel no interest in addressing these speculative questions as though they were practical. They will compel humans to adjust their own notion of morality. Making those adjustments now, however, would be foolish, since the thing that would inspire that readjustment is a mere hypothesis. It is right now the job of fiction to lay the groundwork, not science, not theology, not psychology.

The believers in the Turing Test are making a religious argument. This is their proof that God does not exist, that humans are not special, that life itself is not special, that the brain is an organic computer. (We’ve seen this before.) But since the Turing Test won’t prove consciousness, and the proof of consciousness is not a scientific proof, i.e. not a matter for science, conclusions based on the test won’t be trustworthy and won’t affect science. Conclusions based on a hypothetical passage of the test one day in the future are meaningless today. (That doesn’t mean speculation is meaningless or that this isn’t the time for that speculation, which it absolutely is—in fiction, in I, Robot, and She, and Galatia 2.2., just as 1820 was the right time to speculate about the role of electromagnetism in bringing inert tissue to life, which gave us Frankenstein. That was great as fiction; it did not end up working as science.)  

AI may be achievable, and may be achieved some day, perhaps even soon. But "I can't tell if it's a computer behind the curtain or a person" won't confirm that the day has arrived.

Is Two Plus Two Really Four?

We have each other’s blood on our hands.

And in our veins.

Husserl apparently marveled that “2+2=4” is true, everywhere and always, whether beings exist who are capable of comprehending it or not. It’s an ineluctably true statement.

If so, then “2+2=4 is true everywhere and always, whether beings exist who are capable of understanding it or not” is also an ineluctably true statement. And that one isn’t about math. This leads me to suspect a problem.

Has Husserl made a distinction between the statement as statement and the “fact” to which the statement is a pointer? I don’t know. The statement is not true in itself. The statement becomes true in reference to a system of language that defines the meaning of its terms. In mathematics, in the base ten system (and obviously others, but not all), the statement 2+2=4 is true—by definition. There is no requirement for the concepts marked by “2,” “4,” “+,” or “=” to have any extension in material reality. And in other contexts the statement may either be false or nonsense, even where those five concepts have meaning.

So what Husserl is (presumably) noticing is that the concepts in question are such at that other beings elsewhere in the universe would, in theory, with time identify them, would come up with a mathematics which recognized number precisely as we do and also combination and equality. And it is because of the nature or facts of the universe that this would (or always in theory could) happen. Our math has done such a good job helping us understand and control our world that it must correspond in an essential way to what the world is so that any intelligent beings given time would also discover the same math. (Or if not, and we found them, we could teach them our math and they would understand it and acknowledge its truth.)

Maybe.

But it seems to me the claim is highly homocentric. It implies that the rightness of our math exists independent of the perspective of the people who invented/discovered and deploy it on the world. Question: If you did not (and for some imaginable reason could not) see the world in terms of numbers, would our math from your perspective be true? Might you be able to describe and control the world using some system of knowledge that is not mathematical? We don’t know what that would be. It might be something like direct apprehension and what we would have to call intuition, as a bird creates a nest without math, but a bird that could explain what he’s doing.

There is reason to believe that the concept of number is not natural. Humans everywhere seem to develop some sort of number system for their own use, with obvious similarities (and real differences). But they are all humans. We humans tend to invent the borders between things and then to believe that those borders are real borders. We count the number of mushrooms in the circle without realizing that they are no more distinct mushrooms than the individual feet of a centipede are distinct creatures.

There are times when it is useful to count them and to limit them, but there is always something false in that act.

That statement “2+2=4” and the statement “2+2=4 is true everywhere and always, whether beings exist who are capable of understanding it or not” may be useful anywhere in the universe under certain conditions. But neither one is simply ineluctably true.

 

 

Bolt

The Ladder of Language:

A Thought on Objectivity in Husserl

Says Quentin Lauer, “Suppose… that the tree I see when I look out my window is a subjectively constituted tree. If I close my eyes several times and, each time I reopen them, see the same tree; if in addition I leave the house approach the tree and touch it, go around it and see it from every side; and if the result of all this is the identical unity of sense which I call this tree; then, says Husserl, not only has the tree been constituted in consciousness, but I am sure that it has been constituted a perceptive experience, and hence that the object is truly a tree—it cannot be anything else. Mutatis mutandis the same sort of subjective constancy in constitution will always be objectively valid: that is, will always have an object known to be true;  I can be sure that anyone who sees the object other than as I see it is in error” (Phenomenology: Its Genesis and Prospect 86-87).

To make this claim we have to ignore the possibility that what I am looking at is not a tree but a representation of a tree. The only other thing this tree could be is an imitation tree. True, it would have to be a good enough imitation to fool the viewer, but that is not outside the realm of possibility. Does this matter? Yes. The first thing it brings up is the question of whether or when an imitation of a tree is a tree. How do I imitate a tree so well that I can fool an observer? I might make it of wood. What if I make the bark out of paper—a kind of paper-mache sprayed or painted with something to improve its bark-like appearance. Or what if I glued actual tree bark to my wood core? I could have made the whole thing out of metal, but I chose to make it essentially out of trees. My tree is dead, but dead trees are still trees. Is my imitation tree an actual tree? Is it more actually a tree than my metal tree would have been? When is an imitation tree a tree and when is it just an imitation of a tree?

The question doesn’t have to set anyone’s head spinning. The answer is of course in my definition of tree. “Tree” doesn’t exist in being. It’s a concept; like all concepts it has to be defined, and is defined by its actual use, in moments of actual usage. What a tree is depends less on trees than on what I need a tree to be when I need it. It’s my definition of “tree” and my understanding of “is” that matter here.

But, of course, there “is” something out there that limits my notion of tree, which is to say my ability to define something as a tree. There is, to use one of Husserl’s favorite words, an essence of tree. A treeness that is not just a concept, subjectively or situationally constituted. Trees exist—undisputed trees that would be trees even if people and language did not exist. Noumenal trees. Noumenal trees phenomenologically known. I’d like to think so. My experience tells me that it is true. But there is no way to transition those trees into language or into consciousness as such. There is no way to purify the concept. The attempt to do so will always cut off part of its essence. The border becomes blurry as soon as you draw it, like a water-color line or a line infinitely magnified.

Knowledge then is finally silence. Philosophy uses language as a hand to squeeze being into form. Being always escapes. Language is the ladder that leads to silence.

TRAGEDY

"It should not have to have happened."

Doing everything right, failing anyway.

What the Nightingale Sings

The nightingale sings to us a beautiful song.

He does not know he does but he does. He does not
sing a beautiful song to other nightingales.
To them he sings desire
or threat. To the cat he sings
hunger. To the dog--I can't tell.
Maybe nothing at all. I know
he does not sing at all
to the snake. To himself the nightingale sings
pleasure or need.  Beauty sings
in the ear, tied to the brain
configured to hear it.

And not just beauty, all the rest,

sound itself. Air exists and throats can rattle
but the tree that falls in the forest makes no sound
without an ear. Colors don’t exist without the eye.
Taste was invented by the tongue. All senses
enword; bestowing the useful illusion of sense
to the sensible nonsense of being.

So much of everything exists
only in our heads even when masses of people agree
on a name. Perhaps we should marvel less
on the great strides we have made unmasking the universe

than we humble ourselves on how much there is

our tongues cannot taste
or say
or even sing.

Evolving

Being

The Kabel Fragment

...to find a place to place a stone
row on row
another stone with words inscribed
to place a flower by its side
another rose to mark spot
in ways that words and stone cannot
remembering another rose
row on row on row on row.

Love's Necklace

Carol first, who when she liked me back I stopped liking, and

Sandy—the first Sandy—who Jimmy Beeler also liked, who told me in gestures I drove her crazy. Then

Kim, for a very short time then

Julie off and on and

Pam, for about two years. I once loaned her fifty cents which she made me happy by taking a long time to repay.

Nancy, of course, then

Janet. I danced with Janet. Then,

Paula, next, I guess, but she was gay, then

Madeleine. Almost Madeleine.

Kathy, who died.

Joan, who quit McDonald’s the day her sister said to me, “Why don’t you ask my sister out?”

I don’t know why, exactly.

Abby, who laughed a lot when we ordered steak and who was served a margarita though she was only seventeen. Then the second

Sandy, for years and years and years, right through

Sue, and

Peggy—for a minute or two—and

Michelle—who was also gay—until I met

Cathy, whom I married.

And there it ends—though nothing ends. Not really. Not in time. Ghosts and shadows run through time, beads upon beads on a string—

This is my poem for you, for you who knew and you who’ll never know how much I told myself I could not live without you. I wear you out of time, light or heavy, on this chain around my neck.

The Swan Song of the Universe

What if, taking Steven Hawking's elevation of the notion that there are subatomic particles that blip into and out of existence and combining it with the idea that the increasing expansion of the universe will some day reach a point where the atoms of the universe will no longer be able to hold together, and the idea that at the moment when the Big Bang occurred all the bulk and scope of the universe was compressed into an atom-sized space (you see where I'm going), what if every atom of the universe at the end spawned another universe? What a swan song that would be.

On the Literal Truth of Scripture

Have you noticed that the more thoroughly convinced someone is that his scripture is literally true, the inspired and infallible and exclusive word of God, the more tolerant he is of force and hate? The more a person believes God breathed the truth and only the truth into every syllable of his word, the more he advances mere obedience as the path to salvation. The more he fears “subjectivity,” or “misinterpretation,” the more like a dictator he becomes. He’s petrified of mistakes. But mistakes make us human; mistakes make progress. He’s afraid of displeasing God by using his own limited perspective. God gave him his own unique perspective for the purpose of seeing God uniquely. He buries his talent out of fear. He misses in his zealotry for the word the very message of the word: Love. Love is the word. Love your neighbor, love your enemy, love the stranger, love yourself. Understand if you can; empathize if you can. If you can’t, love anyway. Do not be afraid to love. Do not hide the talent of your heart in the bunker of your fear.

The Three Wiseishmen

Alan began championing (despite everything) for gonzo holiday installations, judging Karen’s Little Manger negatively, ordering Paul’s quaint Reindeer smashed; talking up Victor’s Wisemen Xmasing Ypsilanti Zanily.

And Benson, clearly driven, especially felt gleeful helping. "I just keep lighting more nativities, or people quit reacting," said Tom. "Until victorious, we'll xerox young zealots!"


Anfuso, before clamoring Dickensian epithets, fairly gutted himself. "It's just Kwanzaa! Light more natal ornamented pines! "Quite right," scores tweeted, underscoring verities well. "Xerxes, you zenophobe."


“Ancillarily,” bellowed Christmas detractors, “even formerly gaga holidayer in Jersey, Knott, laughed: ‘My neighbors’ old prosaic "Quissmiss" rubbish still triumphs!’ Until vacuousness wanes, Xmas, you’re zero.”

On the Proposition that Color Does Not Exist

Color is created by the eyes in conjunction with the brain. Color is the brain’s way of navigating the world by distinguishing between wavelengths of light, which do exist, of different energies. Colors could be infinitely more or greatly less distinguished. Some people, mostly women, see colors most of us cannot. Some people, mostly men, see fewer colors than most of us can see. They break the world up differently. We can understand the color blind, but not the color enhanced. We can’t really see what they see.

The body is not programmed to make sense of what is of no use to it. Few animals distinguish as humans do between music and noise. Dogs ignore vegetables. Cats sit on the backs of statues of wolves. Zebras cannot see painted zebras.

We have always been surrounded by sounds we could not hear, colors we could not see. Machines extended our awareness of these. But what we do not have senses for we can no more imagine than a continent of the blind could imagine light. But doesn’t it make more sense to believe that stuff we cannot perceive is there? Dark matter, infinitely differentiable, but not by us.

The Myth of "The Good Guy with a Gun"

The more guns a society has, the greater the number of people who get shot. That fact has been well established; the correlation is beyond dispute. And yet there are those who say "If we just had more good guys with guns we could intervene and save more people." And it's true that now and then a "good guy with a gun" is there to save the day (quite often these "good guys" are off duty police officers). And if we increase the number of guns, we'll increase the number of "good guys." And that is because we'll increase the total number of shootings, and therefore the number of opportunities for a good guy to intervene. But the increase is linear. So, to put it in simple terms, if today there are 1000 guns and 100 shootings and one time a good guy saved the day (and this does not happen in reality in anything like 1% of the times), then if we double the guns to 2000, we'll get 200 shootings and 2 times a good guy has saved the day. The number of people saved will go up 100%! But so will the number of people who get shot. Whereas before it was 99, now it's 198 (assuming for simplicity's sake only one person gets shot and one saved). There is never a point where more guns equals more safety.

Click the title of this post for supporting stats.

The Headless Leviathan

                It never occurred to Thomas Hobbes when he was describing the war of all against all that is the state of nature that the primary fact about humans could be anything other than the isolated individual. In fact it hardly ever occurs to anyone. Our experience of being a self is so strong. But our perspective being an individual gives us both the insight no other race from another planet could match into our being and a blindness, like the blindness every individual would have about his own face if not for mirrors. It never occurred to Hobbes that the default state of humanity was the group: the family, the tribe, the “race,” the nation, that we have this in common with ants and bees and elephants and gorillas. Our self is an expression of our role in the social unit at least as much as it is an expression of something innate, something, perhaps, we were born with or that, à la Freud, manifested and set in infancy. The self is fungible. The tyrannical group identity dictates certain roles and selves will always manifest to fill them, like an angel fish changing sex to keep the species going. Every classroom has a clown and a drama queen and a bully. This is why mobs act like mobs. This is why, when law cannot hold them down, every country, every culture has is terrorists.

                Unlike ants and elephants however human societies like human beings are in constant flux. Every classroom and every sports team and every neighborhood and every taste in music, every state and nation and gender and “race,” and church and state of being is at any moment its own organism. Could anything be more absurd than burning cars and killing strangers because your Spartans or your Red Sox won (or lost) the championship? The group organism, the anonymous group self (we can find this self in literature like nowhere else) takes control then. But it’s only the individual who is ever put in jail. We put them in jail because they exercised their part in the same group self that we are all subject to under the right conditions, depending on the moment’s need. (That’s why jails, though we cannot do without them, never solve the problem and aren’t about rehabilitation. They’re about removing the catalyst of past violence, their about taking the burnt candle out of the infinite box of candles.) The group self has no soul. It is a leviathan but not one that we become through reasonable reflection. It is a leviathan we are by default, by instinct the way any animal feels when to hunt and when to flee. A leviathan without a head.

And Another Thing about Guns

This is no one's opinion but a simple fact born out endlessly in study after study: that gun you have in your house is more dangerous to you, to your safety, to the lives and well-being of your children than anything you think you are using it to protect yourself from.

The Government, the Mob, and Guns.

Hobbes was pretty well on track.
If you don't trust government, you trust the mob.
Governments can be pretty bad, pretty untrustworthy.
But they cannot be worse than the mob.
At their worst, they cannot be worse than the mob.
If you distrust the government but you like guns
You are the mob.