I’m hoping that over the next few weeks I’ll have time to write some articles that I’ve been meaning to get to for a while now, including a series on economics and ideology, a recent obsession of mine, some of my key ideas about which I had the pleasure of presenting to my school and local community earlier this month.

First Up, a Music Update…

I announced in my last blog post that I was planning to release two music projects around the beginning of 2012. However, school plus my aforementioned obsession with economics ended up taking up all of my productive time. I got some music done, but not nearly enough to release one album, much less two. This is ok. I believe in doing that which is most fulfilling (unless you’re a pedophile or cannibal or… you know what I mean… let’s not get into that). At any rate, I’ll be working on music in the coming weeks, after which I’ll give a new update on my progress.

That said, I’ll share some of the things I’ve been reading and watching lately in my leisure time.

Some of the Books I’m Currently Reading…

You Are Not a Gadget by Jaron Lanier

I’m only about halfway through this book, but the common theme is that current software design implementation – especially the web 2.0 internet model – tends to dissolve human individuals into a kind of collective hive-mind (sometimes a.k.a. the “noosphere”), the structure of which is influenced by the notion of the computer being a viable metaphor for the human brain and mind. He argues that software design should attempt to conform to the complexities of the human experience as opposed to reducing humans to facile computer-like systems.

I’m not quite as critical as Lanier is of the current state of things, though, as one might expect, Lanier is even more concerned with (or perhaps even terrified by) what’s to come than he is with what’s going on now. He describes a cyber-dystopia, disguised as cyber-utopia, towards which we are excitedly headed (the dividing line between dystopia and utopia, however, is not clearly drawn; for example, he pejoratively describes current cyber culture as “digital Maoism,” so, he’s using some rhetorical devices that his opponents – those who are supporters of current cyber culture and really do believe it to represent a kind of utopian ideal - would likely not appreciate). I Lanier’s assessment of what’s to come is extreme, but one thing that does ring true is that if the current design is as bad as he says it is - not just in terms of code, but also socially speaking – it’ll be that much harder to change that design as it becomes increasingly “locked in” (that is, as more and more structures are built with interdependent relationships to that initial, bad structure; he uses MIDI, which his friend invented, as an example of a bad locked-in technology).

(A current concern I won’t get into so much here, because I’d rather explore it in socio-economic terms later, is the phenomenon of internet users becoming irate at the suggestion that they should pay for content as opposed to, for example, stealing the music from a band they like. And, by the way, a lot of artists give away lots of free music because they’re advised to. For one thing, bands – especially lesser known bands – who don’t offer free music run the risk of coming across as selfish greedy jerks. It seems that users are far more interested in a libertarian cyber-society, in which everything is controlled by private interests. So, what even real-world socialists want online is a free market in which artists don’t get paid, but the people running the monopolies and olipopolies that control online content and information, such as Google, Facebook, YouTube, etc., make gobs of cash.

These users seem to THINK they’re engaging in some kind of free spirited socialism – or even communism - by keeping all content “free,” but the truth is that by eliminating the possibility for there to be a thriving entrepreneurial cyber-class, all the power goes to major corporations, not just online but offline. And, somehow, users are horrified by the notion of the government stepping in to regulate these corporations, even though those same users are currently demanding greater regulation of non-internet-based corporations. Internet-based companies have pulled off a neat trick, getting their users to see the company’s private best interest as the users’ collective best interest. This is true despite the fact that so many users think they’re the one’s manipulating Facebook – and not vice versa - by simply being aware that Facebook primarily exists as a marketing tool. Facebook likes us to think that. It keeps us coming back and empowering that tool, the accumulative result of which is that it keeps them and their colleagues in power over the attitudes users have in regards to online social and economic dynamics, such as what should be expected from musicians, filmmakers, writers, and journalists.)

At any rate, there’s a lot I agree with in Lanier’s arguments, which when boiled down are essentially anti-reductionist and anti-ideology in nature (two ideas that are important to me; note that when I referenced user attitudes above, I was referencing ideology).

Before going on, I want to be very clear about how much I like the internet. I love having quick access to so many ideas and media, and the ease with which I can communicate with people. The critique here is not of the internet per se, but of the design implementation that shapes how the internet is used. That “how” question is very important, and determines what other sorts of questions can follow (again, we’re talking about questions that relate to ideology, such as: What questions is it possible to ask within a given conceptual framework, and what questions are impossible to even imagine?).

Back to Lanier’s anti-reductionism and anti-ideology…

It’s interesting to consider how social networking sites like Facebook are set up to reduce personalities to checkbox database profiles, where you either are a thing or you are not (not to mention the reduction of friendship itself). Of course, this is done for the purposes of collecting marketing data, but there’s a deeper ideological framework at play that is related to this idea that humans are reducible to algorithms and categories of discrete experiences and, ultimately, math that can be replicated for AI and consciousness-simulating purposes. Where did marketers – and behavioral economists and computer programmers for that matter – get the idea that the Facebook-style database provides accurate information about how people function in the world, online or off? Why was that sort of design chosen as the untested starting point? Questions such as these give a peak at the extent to which ideology is at play in how the reductionist process is implemented.

In reading Lanier’s book, it occurred to me that Auto-Tune is another interesting example of the reduction of the human to match the computer-as-human metaphor. As opposed to being allowed to exist as a continuum of frequencies and other properties, the human voice is broken into discrete segments, imitating the binary computer mind as opposed to the human mind (and natural world), which is in constant conflict and dissonance with itself (this isn’t just about individual notes, but the relationship between frequencies; music, fundamentally, is about relationships, including - to name some of the building blocks - relationships of frequencies [which determine pitch and timbre], durations, intensities, and spatial dimensions). However, Auto-Tune is reshaping not just the music we hear, but HOW we hear music. Songs that sounded great to me ten years ago now sound out of key, especially the vocals.

Note that this isn’t just because of the use of Auto-Tune in and of itself. It’s that Auto-Tune and similar digital technologies have set a standard that’s impossible to reach in nature. Many artists don’t use automated tuning detection, but instead use digital pitch correction, where they retune individual manually. Other artists will record a dozen takes or more, and will piece those takes together. This has always been done to some degree, including in the pre-digital world of tape recording (the standard has generally been to perform about three takes, which would be spliced into one solid performance), but what is considered the best take of any given passage – or even syllable – is now influenced by the idea that it’s more important to be in tune than it is to be expressive.

At any rate, there are many consequences of this process of human reduction, to name just three of the many that Lanier touches on:

(1) Impediments to individual creativity in favor of crowd wisdom. I agree that crowd wisdom is good for democracy and, maybe, guessing how much an ox weighs. It’s not good, however, for writing a song or a symphony, developing a philosophical perspective, or inventing a light bulb. We can see this at play at Wikipedia, where there are no individual authors, and instead there is a mashup of fragments from various sources. I greatly prefer something like the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, the entries for which are written by individual authors who own up to their own bias. Bias is unavoidable, and Wikipedia tries to create the illusion of not having one by erasing the author from the equation, but it doesn’t work.

(2) AI begins to look more real – and more possible – than it really is, due to humans adopting computer-like personae that make computers seem more human in comparison, thereby fueling overblown reverence for the computer-as-superior-being fantasy. For more info on this, check out the Singularity Institute’s FAQ on singularity (the notion that computers will one day grow superior to humans, for better or for worse) and The Turing Test (tests for convincing cognition in computers).

(3) Software design, especially such that allows for easy and temporary pseudonym creation, has a tendency to bring out the inner-troll (i.e., meanness) in all of us. We’ve all seen this, and most of us have been guilty of it at some point, at least on some level, where we address an online stranger in a less polite manner than we would a stranger in the real world.

(4) Here’s one of my own, related to my above thoughts on Auto-Tune, but which can be broadened to include the general belief in the idea that computers expand innate human capability: In the case of Auto-Tune, there is created an expectation for singers to sing perfectly in key (something that’s not even possible for acoustic non-voice instruments, such as violin or piano). This expectation exists despite simultaneously existing criticisms of the fact that singers need Auto-Tune to reach that perfection. In other words, people recognize that Auto-Tune doesn’t give singers the ability to sing perfectly in key; it is a fiction.

That said, let’s consider the increasingly widespread idea that computers extend and enhance human intelligence. For example, having millions of facts at one’s fingertips is considered to virtually – or even literally – expand one’s knowledge.

As you can imagine, I consider this idea to be wrong. No amount of random, easy access to fragments of information is going to improve critical thinking skills or the ability to draw connections between the information represented in those fragments. The so-called expanded intelligence of a person who cannot intelligently discuss his or her area of interest – much less expertise – without consulting a digital Wiki is a fiction. The notion that the internet extends human intelligence is just something that was decided to be the case by some people who are overly enthusiastic about technology. It is an exciting idea, but it’s not real.

I should clarify here that there is an important distinction to be made between the above and, for example, using a website like Lumosity.com to exercise one’s cognitive skills. There are a number of ways to reinforce one’s mental capacities (get enough sleep and exercise, eat lots of blueberries, do cognitive puzzles for a while each day, et al.), but merely knowing how to do a Google search is not one of them. The internet is an amazing tool for the ambitious researcher (that is, the sort of researcher who also still reads books and talks to people in person), but it also contributes to many a person’s tendency towards intellectual laziness.

Perhaps a positive consequence of all of this is that it makes public debate – with no ‘net to fall back on – all the more important, just as the ability for musicians to perform well live increases in importance as people trust their ears less and less when listening to recordings (people’s expectations are highest when evaluating recordings, including live recordings; when someone’s in front of them in the room, many factors other than singing perfectly in tune come into play that make or break a show).

Back to Lanier’s book… He sometimes gets a little shaky, in my view, in his observations surrounding historical events, both in terms of the mechanisms behind how those events went down and the subsequent analogies he draws between digital and bricks-and-mortar life. However, I love it when he points out that, before the computer, the train was the techie metaphor for how humans function, and this affected how people (including doctors) treated other people. We see this now, with the human brain so often being referred to as though it were a computer, and I simply don’t accept that model.

This starts to get into a lot of other areas, especially consciousness, which I’ll touch on only briefly, just to give a sense of some of the complexity behind the idea of a computer – or human for that matter – being conscious. Four things come to mind:

(1) My view of human consciousness and mind can be characterized as non-reductionist materialism. That is, I believe that the mind is physical (not immaterial or, as philosophers call it, epiphenomenal), but at the same time, I don’t believe that the mind, or human behavior in general, can be reduced to discrete objects that can be transliterated into math or explained in terms of mere evolutionary properties. So, I don’t accept comments such as, “we respond to music merely for some vestigial evolutionarily beneficial biological reason,” or, “music is just a series of isolated sound events that we happen to experience and respond to as if it were a thing in itself,” or, “love is an illusion; it’s just chemicals guiding you towards procreation.” There are a number of reasons I don’t accept these statements, but I won’t get into that here.

There is a growing concept that contrasts with reductionism, referred to as “emergence,” in which it is recognized that the chemical biologist (or other sorts of observers) can look at the function of smaller parts of the whole for the sake of emerging back up to attempt to understand that whole with the function of those smaller parts in mind. The complexity involved in the system of interdependent relationships between the parts and their resulting whole is called “supervenience. “ This is where the mystery (or indecipherable complexity) exists, and the binary mind of a computer is nothing like that. For example, one can just look at how human memories work, insofar as we understand that process, and one sees that it’s nothing like how a computer stores information and makes that information accessible. (Here’s a fun and quite fascinating Radiolab podcast on memory.)

(2) Nick Bostrom’s Simulation Argument. I find this argument problematic for a host of reasons (such as the notion of substrate independence) I won’t get into here because it would be a lengthy. I figured I’d mention it, though, as it’s worth checking out before reading Lanier’s book, at least for anyone interested in the idea that we might be computer simulations (which, if that’s the case, then those post-humans who are simulating us are likely simulations as well).

(3) I am reminded of another Radiolab podcast, in which the creator of the Furby pet robot thingy argues passionately that the Furby is conscious, and that the only difference between a human and a Furby is complexity.

(4) Going even simpler than the Furby, philosophers of mind sure love to talk about thermostats in their debates over the nature of consciousness. Here I feel compelled to comment a little further on my view of this subject. I do not agree that stimuli-responsive dolls and/or thermostats are conscious. An example I like to use is a spinning quarter. Here we have an object that has been set into motion and subsequently follows a path determined by its environment. The relationship between the spinning quarter and its environment results in a kind of mechanized behavior, but this does not mean that the quarter is conscious.

It could be argued that the difference is that the quarter is following the path of least resistance according to physical laws and principles, while the doll is doing something more complex that requires something closer to a personality and that contains variation. I, however, don’t believe that the behavior of the quarter and doll are really all that different. What’s really going on here is that the doll is being inappropriately anthropomorphized because of the shape of its physical and behavioral design. The doll cannot resist its own nature, cannot fight against the path of least resistance. When programmed to say some phrase upon detection of a certain kind of sound, it will say some phrase. If the phrase changes, that’s only because there is a computer chip inside of it running a program designd to give the impression of spontaneity. Also consider that, when turned upside down, the Furby goes into a noisy, unceasing fear-like state. It has to do this unless it is broken.

Some might argue that humans are the same way, and are only capable of following their programming, even though it’s more complex in nature. My response to this is the following: Humans may not be able to fully escape their nature and conditioning, but they can be aware of this fact on some level, and that makes all the difference. The human can fight, or TRY to fight, his or her nature, conditioning, tendencies, desires, reflexes, et al. on some level.

If this argument isn’t sufficient for those who’d claim that Furbies and humans are just different scales of the same phenomenon (for example, that both only give an illusory appearance of free will), then I’d say that neither is conscious. It then begins to become a ridiculous semantic argument, even more ridiculous than it’s already been thus far. (A real challenge here is to look at the consciousness of other animals in this context. It’s not a subject I’ve spent a lot of time with, but I’ve definitely come across some interesting current work going on in that field.)

Back again to Lanier’s book… One last thing I wanted to mention is a list of proposed suggestions that Lanier gives early on in the book for what individual users can do to remedy the issues he’s diagnosing. They are all more or less in line with my own thinking, and I could write a whole blog post about each of them (partly because we creative types with an online presence are usually advised to do the opposite of what’s advised here), but I’ll resist the urge as I think we all recognize the phenomena being addressed by these suggestions. Here are two examples from the list:

- Post a video once in a while that took you one hundred times more time to create than it takes to view.

- Write a blog post that took weeks of reflection before you heard the inner voice that needed to come out.

To summarize, whether you agree with him or not, Lanier’s book is an important read at a time when very few people understand the implications of the cosmology and implementation of the cyber-world in which they spend more and more of their lives. (Keep in mind that a lot of what I’ve touched on here isn’t actually in the book, but is inspired by its subject matter. Also, he gets into more than what I’ve mentioned here, including economics, speculative finance, and the music industry.)

Psychomagic: The Transformative Power of Shamanic Psychotherapy by Alejandro Jodorowsky

My good friend Coe Douglas sent me this book a few days ago. I’ve only gotten about forty pages in, so it’s a little early to be commenting on it, but so far it’s fascinating, and there are a few things I’d like to mention.

In my 20s, Jodorowsky was known to me as a mysterious filmmaker whose movies managed to be thoroughly, surreally poetic while simultaneously being saturated in (sometimes quite grotesque) humanity. Santa Sangre was my favorite. I didn’t know much about the man himself, though, and, in retrospect, I think I liked it that way because it added to his underground cachet. Part of the fun was sitting around with friends exclaiming, “I love the fact that someone actually made this.”

(Does this sort of thing occur with young people today? Are there mysterious contemporary creative types doing weird work that young people look up to for their obscurity? Bansky comes to mind, but his anonymous celebrity is manufactured, and it’s everywhere. Interesting to contemplate…)

I was well familiar with Un Chien Andalous back in the day, but Santa Sangre was in color, and the freakishness seemed more real, and it didn’t make a pretentious declaration of a new art movement on the rise, such as Dali claimed of Un Chien. It wasn’t history, it was both now and it was timeless. Jodorowsky is still where my mind goes when I think of “surreal filmmaking.”

Thanks to Psychomagic, I’m learning about a whole new side of Jodorowsky as a kind of physical mystic who sees illness as a physical dream that can be interpreted. Or perhaps, better said, I’m getting a more complete picture of him, because there seems to be no seams between Jodorowsky the filmmaker and Jodorowsky the whatever else he is. As a Chilean youth, he was all about poetry and what has been called “environmental theatre” by some (not him, I don’t think, because he calls it “poetry,” though he certainly recognizes the theatrical elements of his methods). He and his friends back in Chile were physical poets, freaking people out (or perhaps just heavily annoying them) in restaurants and on the street with absurd acts that I hesitate to characterize as surreal or Dadaist. I suppose “poetry” is as good a term as any to use.

This desire to infiltrate one’s life with poetry by a Chilean back in the 1950s is particularly interesting to me right now as I am in the midst of an obsession with all things economics. Chile of course plays a critical early role in the history of the shift from Keynesian to neoliberal economic policy in the U.S., a far-right-leaning experiment in capitalism that resulted in disaster for the Chilean people as Allende was ousted by the murderous, U.S.-backed regime of Pinochet.

Jodorowski, as he speaks of his childhood, speaks of a handful of national poets, explaining that everyone in Chile wanted to be a poet. The most influential of them was Pablo Neruda, who has became an icon for the air of poetry and adventure that characterizes the time and place Jodorowsky describes (surely he’s romanticizing to a degree, but that romance was inspired by that time and place, and that’s not insignificant). It’s also timely to be reading Jodorowsky’s book in light of recent revelations that Neruda very well might have been assassinated by Pinochet via a doctor while Neruda was hospitalized.

Some of the Next Books in the Stack Are…

The Ethics of Ambiguity by Simone de Beauvoir - Someone recommended this to me based on my deep interest in the connection between metaphysics and ethics. Particularly the question of how it’s possible to approach ethics from a place in which there is a lack of satisfactory metaphysical conclusions. I’m also interested in her classic text, The Second Sex.

Philosophical Foundations of Neuroscience by M.R. Bennett and P.M.S. Hacker – I’ve been meaning to read this for a good while now. I’m especially interested, not because of questions relating to philosophy of mind or the nature of consciousness, but instead because I want to see what the philosopher and neuroscientist who wrote the book have accomplished in this interdisciplinary endeavor. Such merging of academic disciplines is often frowned upon, not just because of intellectual rivalry (though, believe me, I’ve had my fair share of science and math types get visibly frustrated – even angry – when I tell them I’m studying philosophy), but because of departmental competition for funding. At any rate, I feel that interdisciplinary work is where it’s at. People from different fields should work together to tackle the same problems from multiple perspectives.

On What Matters by Derek Parfit – Parfit was brought to my attention in a New Yorker article that came out earlier this year. He is concerned with some of the things that concern me, such as difficult questions surrounding identity and even more difficult questions surrounding the paradoxes that arise when considering the moral relationship between humanity and the world humanity inhabits. One thing that really struck me is that Parfit cannot create visual images in his mind. He cannot visualize his wife’s face when away from her, for example. It seems this would give him some interesting ideas on identity. For a sample of his thinking, here’s an ethical formulation he came up with known as the “repugnant conclusion.”

The Way of Zen by Alan Watts – This book was really influential on my thinking back when I was in high school, a little over twenty years ago. There were several passages that gave me chills, in fact. I’m curious to read it again now that I’ve been exposed to other schools of thought from within and outside of my own culture. It would be a lengthy endeavor to write about my impressions of Zen Buddhism, so for now I’ll just copy this quote from the first paragraph of the first chapter of the book, and which appeals to me: “Zen Buddhism is a way and a view of life which does not belong to any of the formal categories of modern Western thought. It is not religion or philosophy; it is not a psychology or a type of science. It is an example of what is known in India and China as a ‘way of liberation,’ and is similar in this respect to Taoism, Vedanta, and Yoga.”

(Next time, there will be some fiction on here… I’m hoping.)

Currently Watching from TV Land…

Avatar: The Last Airbender – (Click on the image to the right to see this fantastic portrait of Zuko and Mai at full size!) I just finished this series last night. I almost never go for animated shows or movies that aren’t specifically for adults (even then, it’s rare), but this one is fantastic. It is marketed for children, for which I found varying age recommendations from as young as 8 to as old as 17. The show does have a strong adult fan base, however, a glimpse of which can be had at the Avatar blog at the Onion A.V. Club.

It’s an epic, American-made series with anime influence, and whose world-worn characters (who range from very young to very old) and stories are complex, touching, drenched in the human experience, and hilariously funny. Themes such as love, hate, rage, death and war are treated with a gravity that not only adults can appreciate, but, more importantly, respects that children are persons who have to deal with these difficult topics even at their early age, despite the best efforts of some parents and despite what the content of most children’s shows might lead one to believe. Indeed, it won a 2008 Peabody Award for “Unusually complex characters and healthy respect for the consequences of warfare.”

I also appreciate the influence of Eastern philosophy on the show. The title character of the show is Avatar Aang (though this is definitely an ensemble show), and one of his goals on the show is to clear his chakras. The final chackra, which requires letting go of attachment, is treated with surprising philosophical complexity. Also, he faces a tremendous moral dilemma near the end of the series, which is not treated lightly, and for which there is a great payoff.

Oh, and one quick qualifier about the series. Around the middle of the first season, it started to seem like it was getting too childish - too simple in its conclusions and moral lessons. This lasted a few episodes and began to worry me, but then the show grabbed my attention again and held it pretty much to the end of the series run. Some might actually consider the subject matter to be too mature for younger audiences, especially starting near the end of the second season.

Louie – Set in New York City and written, directed, edited, executive produced, and starred in by Louis C.K., this show covers a lot of ground while remaining small and intimate. I remember C.K. talking (on the now legendary two-part WTF interview with Marc Maron) about how he used to make weird little movies – some funny, some dark – when he was younger, around the time he started writing for Conan O’Brien. This love of filmmaking comes out in Louie, where the tone ranges from dreamlike to painfully realistic. The show is definitely funny, but there are long stretches of drama that are often the most effective scenes in an episode. In fact, there’s a scene involving a garbage truck that is downright horrifying, and not because of anything trash-related.

The show draws comparisons to Seinfeld (a show I love, by the way) because C.K. plays himself as a working comedian in New York City, and interspersed within each episode are scenes in which C.K. is performing his comedy. There are some key differences to be observed, however. For one thing, C.K.’s comedy is darker, more philosophical and more personal than Seinfeld’s, and reveals much more about the character and C.K. himself. Also, C.K. actually repeats material that has been shown on earlier episodes, because that’s what comedians do in real life. Louie doesn’t really have plots in the way Seinfeld does (partly because it isn’t an ensemble show), often just ending without any kind of real resolution. I think you have to experience this to understand what I’m referring to. The events on the show just kind of happen and then stop happening. Finally, Louis has a strong streak of artiness that is intelligently and tastefully implemented into the sitcom format, has no laugh track, and not only blurs the line between the character and the man, but crosses it (especially in the recent episode featuring Dane Cook).

Parks and Recreation – I watched the pilot for this when it first came out… and hated it. I couldn’t stop cringing. Recently I decided to give it another chance based on repeatedly hearing about what a great show it is. The first season, which is only six episodes, grew on me by the fifth or sixth episode, and it didn’t take long into the second season for me to fall completely in love with the show. Amy Poehler is magnificent as Leslie Knope, who, yes, starts out uncomfortably reminiscent of Michael Scott, but quickly comes into her own. Knope is a loveable overachiever who excels at just about everything she puts her mind to, and she expects nothing less of her friends and coworkers (there is little distinction between the two). Those around her are often annoyed by her intensity, but also love her for it.

Parks and Recreation stands out in contrast to so many other shows because the main characters actually genuinely like each other. Two characters on the show, however, are unfairly reviled (as opposed to the understandably disliked – and hilarious – Jean-Ralphio), but this is done with such emphasis, including by nice characters, that it seems clear that it’s a commentary on the current trend of meanness as comedy (Knope’s disdain for salad is noteworthy in this context as well).

(As I write this, I’m reminded of the silly TV trend we are seeing lately in which a stupid husband is constantly being corrected by his much smarter and together wife; but, about once per episode, the husband has to do something endearing to remind the wife – and viewer- of why she doesn’t just leave the guy).

Oh, and I Need to Catch Up on from TV Land…

“It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia,” Season 7 – This series has something in common with Louie in that it goes into some pretty dark dramatic territory (and as a show that tends to subdivide its ensemble cast into distinct, but often overlapping subplots, it can also rightfully be compared to Seinfeld), but I think what distinguishes it is that there are dramatic moments that, while shorter than those on Louie, sometimes involve a level of gut wrenching emotional intensity that I don’t think I’ve seen on any other sitcom (this might be because some of the cast members were originally aiming for careers in dramatic theatre). It’s also a show full of risks that often pay off with tremendous comedic value. To the left is a picture of the brilliant Kaitlin Olson, who plays Sweet Dee.

Finally, Some Movies I Look Forward To…

To name three: The Future by Miranda July, The Tree of Life by Terrence Malick, and Midnight in Paris by Woody Allen. And to name three more: just kidding… I’m noticing that this post is getting long.

Wait, did I mention how much I loved the movie Kick-Ass and the television series Party Down? Ok, ok… stopping now.

Take care, have a great holiday season!!

-Dan

I. Overview: Philip Pettit on Group Agency

The other day, I heard a fascinating interview with philosopher Philip Pettit on the Philosophy Bites podcast. The topic was group agency (the subject and title of Pettit’s as-yet unreleased new book), described thus on the podcast’s website:

How do groups act? We hold them morally and legally responsible, but are their decisions simply a majoritarian sum of individuals’ decisions? Princeton philosopher Philip Pettit, who has written a book on this topic with the LSE’s Christian List, explores these questions in this episode of the Philosophy Bites podcast.

Here’s the Amazon.com book description (full title: Group Agency: The Possibility, Design, and Status of Corporate Agents):

Are companies, churches, and states genuine agents? Or are they just collections of individuals that give a misleading impression of unity? This question is important, since the answer dictates how we should explain the behaviour of these entities and whether we should treat them as responsible and accountable on the model of individual agents. Group Agency offers a new approach to that question and is relevant, therefore, to a range of fields from philosophy to law, politics, and the social sciences. Christian List and Philip Pettit argue that there really are group or corporate agents, over and above the individual agents who compose them, and that a proper approach to the social sciences, law, morality, and politics must take account of this fact. Unlike some earlier defences of group agency, their account is entirely unmysterious in character and, despite not being technically difficult, is grounded in cutting-edge work in social choice theory, economics, and philosophy.

And, “agency,” as defined in its philosophical and sociological connotations, taken from Wikipedia:

Agency is the capacity of an agent to act in a world. In philosophy, the agency is considered as belonging to that agent even if that agent represents a fictitious character, or some other non-existent entity. The capacity to act does not at first imply a specific moral dimension to the ability to make the choice to act, therefore moral agency is a distinct concept. In sociology, an agent is an individual engaging with the social structure; the structure and agency debate concerning the level of reflexivity that agent may possess.

II. The Problem with Voting

Before I touch on the podcast discussion, some comments:

I have for a long while had a problem with voting as a means of deciding what’s best for individuals. Here are some of the issues I find most bothersome:

- when a democracy is established, nobody votes on who gets to vote; that right is designed by those with power and given as they see fit to serve their own interests

- what’s best for the group is not necessarily best for each individual in the group, which is to say, most people are voting for their own best interest, and those who happen to share the most similar self-interests win; often people will band together simply for the sake of winning; all of this falls more or less under the Tyranny of the Majority problem, a recent example of which is same-sex marriage (I’ll get back to that)

- no group ever gained the right to vote by voting, they gained that right through protest (which is true of most progressive social victories); once the right to vote is won in an already established democracy, most protest movements wane and are reduced to those few who understand that that particular victory is one step in a longer journey

- it seems to me that voting in the U.S. (with its Electoral College, judicial system, etc.) is a largely symbolic gesture of expressing one’s voice (as uninformed as it may be, in which case voting is not the practice of voicing one’s opinion on a particular philosophical, social, or political ideology, but, instead, is the practice of asserting the right to vote per se as a symbol of living in a free country; in this symbolic form, voting is treated more like badge/duty than a right); the political process too often serves to placate and exploit those eligible to vote by giving them the impression of voter/civil influence

- in the broader sense of group agency, I am not convinced of individual moral impunity: if you are a part of a group, and are aware of the ethical implications of the group’s actions, you are responsible for your actions despite personal gains or perils that might come with complying or not complying with the group’s belief system/policies/etc. (a fantastic morality play [to use the term loosely] on this subject is Sam Raimi’s 2008 film, “Drag Me to Hell,” which deals with a bank loan officer who, against her guilty conscience, forecloses on a sick elderly woman’s house in the hopes of winning herself a promotion).

There are disconcerting problems with how large groups tend to be organized. In most corporations, for example, members of upper management make policy but don’t have to deal face-to-face regularly with low level staff or customers (especially significant in the case of essential services such as health care, credit lending, heating gas, et al.), while lower level staff deals out the bad news to those customers, citing policy and saying “I’m just the messenger, just doing my job to feed my kids.” Thanks to this arrangement, the individual members of the group have manageably clear consciences, however, this arrangement does not translate into moral impunity for the group or, frankly, for the individual members (though, considering that I only believe in morality as a human conception, I would have to make a fine distinction between conceptions of moral duty and practical social accountability to fully argue this premise). These members might have elaborate and justifiable explanations for their actions, but those explanations don’t automatically remove the moral implications of actions and their consequences. I myself have worked for a major insurance company and health care network, and have seen the consequences of such group organizing on both lower level staff and clients/patients; “disconcerting” is putting it lightly.

With all this in mind, however, I’m not actually convinced that the low level employee, the low ranking soldier, or the least affluent of the voter classes are genuine members of the group they serve (I say this keeping well in mind the possible differences as well as similarities between being born into a group and purposively joining one). One of the reasons companies need to put the effort they do into employee morale is to compensate for the tremendous discrepancy between that which the lower level employees accept to be the case and that which the middle and upper management employees accept to be the case. Lower level employees have little to no say in the group’s belief system (how the company is run) and are therefore prone to morale problems. As you move up the ladder, these problems are less prevalent because of the control and influence held by those positions (it is generally accepted, and borne out by studies, that employee satisfaction is more related to a sense of personal control and autonomy than pay scale, just as customer satisfaction is more influenced by customer service than product cost).

These are general issues I have with voting practices. To be clear, I’m not against the idea of voting per se, but at the same time, I see these flaws in its practice and they bother me. It seems obvious to me that voting’s only one small part of a flourishing democratic life, despite its status as the be-all and end-all symbol of American democratic freedom. In fact, voting often seems more like a justification for laziness, which those who are more socially active either exploit, or towards which they adopt a, “well, it’s the least you can do,” attitude.

III. Same-Sex Marriage and Rights Distribution (States of Being vs. Kinds of Persons)

To look at a specific example of problems with voting practices (whether at the popular or governmental/higher courts/etc. levels), we have the recent controversy of same-sex marriage. The problem in this case is that we have established that any two consenting adults of a certain age who aren’t too closely blood-related and who aren’t already married etc. have the right to marry one another, and those who wish to not get married don’t have to. To establish such a set of criteria toward the goal of determining the scope of a civil liberty is, in effect, to establish a right. Surely there are people who feel they should be able to marry their brothers or have 12 wives, and, for their loss, I see no solution. They are out of luck. But I do feel that once a right is established (including the right to a privilege, for those of you who like to argue that marriage is merely a privilege*), that right should be viewed as a shared, inviolable vision for the group as a facet of free agency within a democracy.

Violation of that vision occurs when people begin to decide exactly which KINDS of consenting adults of a certain age (and so forth) have the right to marry. This is a step too far, and is where problems arise: in some states, a majority of people (again, either at the popular or governmental levels) won’t allow for same-sex marriage because they don’t believe that “self -evident” human rights apply to every kind of person. This is, in fact, a blatant violation of human rights as we conceive of the idea in the Western world (see the below footnote). They are applying specific as opposed to general criteria to which they themselves could never be subject.

To resolve this, it’s necessary here to make a critically important distinction. It could be argued that, especially as these criteria originate at the state level where age, blood-relation and other such criteria may vary, so may the criterion of gender. That is a groundless argument, however, just as it’s groundless to argue that liberty should be determined by a criterion of race. I will make a distinction here between two types of criterion: (1) kinds of persons; (2) a state of being in which any kind of person can exist or find him/herself.

Elaboration:

Age does not designate a kind of person, but instead a state of being in which any kind of person can exist or find him/herself. So, an African American, homosexual and heterosexual can all find themselves at the age of 17 or 18. In marriage laws, state of being criteria are covered by the stipulation of consent between both individuals. We determine states of being in which any kind of person is unable to consent: children, the comatose, severely mentally disabled, dead… these are all states of being in which any KIND of person can find themselves or exist (or, in the case of death, be found by others).

Incest, polygamy, et al. are also states of being that are not restricted to kinds of people, but they are states of relationships as opposed to states in which a single individual can exist. They are often evaluated based upon cultural taboos with varying levels of rational support, but this is irrelevant to the question of to whom we should apply established human rights. Counterarguments invoking cultural taboos in the same-sex scenario often have to take the slippery slope route because, unlike incest, polygamy (especially polyandry), bestiality and, for that matter, cannibalism, homosexuality is not a genuine cultural taboo and is not a relationship state of being: a homosexual can, just as a heterosexual, find him/herself in a relationship state of incest or polygamy. (Citizenship falls into the relationship state classification as well, but that’s a case that comes with its own special prickliness not worth getting into here.)

IV. Back to the Podcast: Group Agency and the Discursive Dilemma

Ok, back now to the abovementioned podcast in which Pettit discusses group agency. Most interestingly, he describes a paradox which he calls the discursive dilemma (a generalized version of the jurisprudential doctrinal paradox) in the voting process within a group (or, more specifically, the means by which a group’s beliefs are established). He doesn’t have time to fully explain his proposed solutions, but does point out that groups should be treated like individuals (as “institutional persons”), and that the group should have a shared vision toward which it works and which is not dependent on majoritarian support that can lead to incoherence in the group’s beliefs. Here’s the paradox, followed by his example (edited for the sake of simplicity/clarity):

Tom, Joan and Ed are to vote on P and Q:

Tom believes P and Q
Joan believes P not Q
Ed believes Q not P

Result: The group believes P and Q as being disjunctively true, but not P and Q as being conjunctively true = paradox

Example:

A tenant has a faulty heater in his apartment. He complains to the landlord that it’s malfunctioning and needs to be fixed. The landlord does nothing. The heater explodes, which the tenant claims has caused him trauma, for which he sues the landlord. The case is taken to the housing board. The questions at hand are: Was the explosion the landlord’s fault? and Did the tenant really suffer trauma? If both things are true, then, presumably, the man has grounds for suing the landlord. They vote:

Tom believes that the landlord is responsible for the explosion (P) and that the man suffered trauma (Q)
Joan believes P but not Q
Ed believes Q but not P

Result: the group believes that the landlord is responsible for the heater exploding (P), and that the tenant was traumatized as a result (Q), but the group does not believe both P and Q together: that the landlord should be held accountable. In other words, viewing the group as possessing a single mind (an “institutional person”), the group believes that, as two separate ideas, the landlord is responsible AND that the man experienced trauma, but the group as a single mind doesn’t believe those things together: that the landlord is responsible and that the man experienced trauma. In which case, the landlord is off the hook, and the group’s beliefs are clearly incoherent.

Pettit and List’s book is not out yet, though I did find an article in which Pettit describes the basic problems of the discursive dilemma and some proposed solutions: Groups with Minds (I am also interested in his paper, Rawl’s Political Ontology in this context, but haven’t read it yet). He also explains (in Groups with Minds) that he believes that groups should be viewed as individuals in their own right.

Whether or not the group is to be treated as having a single mind, it seems clear to me that sharing a common vision would be essential for coherence. In cases such as the above, it seems that such a vision would be: if both P & Q are considered true by a majority of the group, then P & Q together will be considered true by the group, and P & not Q will be considered false. This is very sticky, and is ultimately an ethical problem (I take “vision” to mean “moral stance,” really) because it would seem to be just as easy to say that if each P & Q separately are not considered true, then P & Q together will be considered not true by the group.

The group would need to decide beforehand the ethical thrust of their purpose. To be clear, what I’m interested in are the ethical implications of group agency and determining case outcome in general (itself something of debate in law… natural law vs. legal positivism vs. soft positivism… namely, the role of ethics in jurisprudence). Pettit’s article deals mainly with the metaphysical idea of the group forming a single mind, so I’ll need to read his book to understand his take on ethics and accountability (I get the impression that the book does deal with ethics to some extent, which it should, considering that agency is tied to ideas about moral accountability).

Anyway, in order to determine the thrust of their vision before voting, the group will first decide if it is their belief AS A GROUP that if it’s the landlord’s fault and if the tenant did suffer, then the tenant has grounds for being compensated by the landlord (what’s referred to as a premise-centered procedure, as opposed to conclusion-centered). Which approach to take should be decided based on considerations of ethical thrust and group agency coherence (metaphysically, I’m not convinced of the single-mindedness of the group, but, either way, the incoherence exists). With these considerations in mind, the outcome then becomes a matter of how the culture of that group affects the group’s evaluation of the ethical grounds for holding the landlord accountable for a breach of duty of care, which, in our society, I think the outcome would most likely be that of the premise-centered procedure.

(Of course, this still doesn’t take care of the problem of a majoritarian ethical perspective ["tyrranically"] beating out a less prevalent one, which is why I’m more concerned with the ethical than metaphysical implications, though I do understand the importance of the metaphysical question when determining the accountibility of the group itself as well as the members that constitute it. I’ll be curious to see how Pettit and List approach this problem. I’m skeptical of there being any practical solution to the ethical problems of voting [including the notion I suggest, that some members are really only ostensibly such], despite achieving group coherence.)

To make things more complicated, voting isn’t always laid out as it is in the above example. P and Q are not always voted on separately. For example, the housing board might vote individually simply on whether the landlord should be held accountable (a conclusion-centered procedure). In this case, you’d have one yes and two nos. However, that doesn’t change the fact that, AS A GROUP, there is still incoherence, whether it’s as apparent as it is in the earlier example or not. Even trickier is the incoherence resulting when P and Q are voted on at different times (Pettit calls this scenario the diachronic generalization), perhaps even by different members of a group fulfilling the voting quota at different times (a problem tackled by 18th century philosopher Marquis de Condorcet).

V. Wrapping it Up

I look forward to reading Pettit and List’s book to see how they deal with the concept of group agency in and outside of the jurisprudential context, and I am happy to have learned about the discursive dilemma (which is the relative of quite a few similar voting paradoxes, just google “doctrinal paradox” and you’ll see what I mean; if you’re interested in economic theory, you’ll notice some shared ideas between voting paradox and game theory).

One last bit of clarification: I am very frustrated by political practice, and am therefore not interested in politics. I am, however, very concerned with those things which politics are supposedly in place to address. But, given the way the political machinery actually works, I have little interest in it for reasons which, were I to point them out, would seem too obvious to even bother stating. The best cure for this frustration seems to be writing about it. If you made it this far, thanks for reading and please feel free to share your own ideas.

————————————————————————–
FOOTNOTE:

*The UN’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights lists marriage as a right, and there is nothing in it that explicitly states people can only marry those of the opposite gender, though I could imagine someone arguing that it is implied:

Article 16:
(1) Men and women of full age, without any limitation due to race, nationality or religion, have the right to marry and to found a family. They are entitled to equal rights as to marriage, during marriage and at its dissolution.
(2) Marriage shall be entered into only with the free and full consent of the intending spouses.
(3) The family is the natural and fundamental group unit of society and is entitled to protection by society and the State.

Article 2:
Everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration, without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status. Furthermore, no distinction shall be made on the basis of the political, jurisdictional or international status of the country or territory to which a person belongs, whether it be independent, trust, non-self-governing or under any other limitation of sovereignty.

I’m a big fan of the often engaging and thought-provoking WNYC radio show podcast Radiolab. However, as the generally science-oriented subject matter tends to deal with things with which I have little personal experience, it’s hard for me to judge the soundness of the content. The loaded language of the presenters (“the results were… startling”) along with the constant use of cosmic sound design often gives the impression that the show’s creators are at least as interested in blowing the listener’s mind as they are in educating and informing (to be fair, the show’s sound designer, Jad Abumrad, has expressed concern for going too far, and has demonstrated at least one segment before and after having added music and sound effects).

There is one episode, “Musical Language”( 9/24/07), the informational soundness of which I am better able to judge. The episode is a good one, and I would endorse listening to it as an overview of, or introduction to, some of the material covered, but there was one glaring issue in the program that bothered me to the point of feeling the need to write about it.

In one of the segments (dealing with the correlation between the tonal aspects of the Chinese language and the attribute of perfect pitch in Chinese music students), perfect pitch is characterized by Abumrad as follows:

“If you look in your music history textbooks, you will see that every famous composer, like the really big ones, they all had it. So, if you have perfect pitch, on some level you are closer to them. You’ve got the gift.”

(Not true; read on…)

The second half of the next segment in the same episode deals with the riot that occurred during the 1913 premiere of Vaslav Nijinksy and Igor Stravinsky’s ballet Rite of Spring. Stravinsky is referred to as being considered “one of the most important composers of the 20th century, if not the most important.” It is certainly true that Stravinsky is one of the most important (or relevant or influential or however one might put it) composers of the 20th century, and he would be listed as such in any music history textbook of at least the last 50 years. What is not mentioned in the segment is that he did not have perfect pitch (in fact, I remember reading that he had the worst ear in his class when studying under Nikolai Rimsky-Korsokov).

This apparent oversight bothers me for three reasons: First, it would be reasonable to deduce from the information provided in the episode that Stravinsky had perfect pitch. Second, and more importantly, this is not just an oversight on the part of the journalists who put the segments together. Abumrad, co-creator/host of the show, is a classically trained composer. He knows better. Finally, there is a mythic conception about perfect pitch that contributes to an ongoing and dangerous elitism in classical music as seen by outsiders and which is perpetuated by insiders. This elitism (of which ideas such as that of perfect pitch, too often portrayed as a practically superhuman attribute, is one of a handful of constitutive factors) has played a big part in the demise of classical music as a viable feature of the contemporary cultural landscape.

Perfect (a.k.a. “absolute”) pitch is loosely defined as the ability to recognize and produce musical pitches without the aid of a reference point. It’s not really that big of a deal to have it. At any conservatory or university music program there are bound to be at least a few people with perfect pitch, but everybody knows that this ability in and of itself does not translate into outstanding musical talent, or even that it is obvious that it contributes to musical talent.

While it is true that many famous (and non-famous) musicians have had perfect pitch, it is not clear that all of those reported to have perfect pitch actually had it. You will find conflicting information about J.S. Bach (assumed, not confirmed), Frederic Chopin (probably not), Leonard Bernstein (most likely did not), Claude Debussy (presumed to by many, but not confirmed), and Gustav Mahler (who seems to have had it as a child but not as an adult). Joseph Haydn did not have it, nor did many other famous composers I don’t have time to list here. There are also degrees of perfect pitch, such as the ability to recognize single pitches, but getting confused when trying to separate clusters of notes in an especially high or low registers of the piano; being able to recognize only a single pitch (such as a violinist recognizing ‘g’); not being able to recognize quarter or eighth steps or microtones in general; being able to recognize but not produce pitches; not being able to do it at all on days when you’re very tired. Just look at it this way: some people are better at distinguishing degrees of color and color content, and some people are better at distinguishing pitch content. It’s not known where most famous composers would have landed in this regard because it’s just not that important.

Getting back to Radiolab, Stravinsky definitely did not have perfect pitch. In the same segment, Stravinsky’s dissonant music is compared to the consonance of Richard Wagner’s, whose work is given as an example of “the great Romanticism of 19th century music.” They don’t mention that Wagner didn’t have perfect pitch either. Also, Wagner had plenty of dissonance in his time. In fact, I’d like to speculate here a bit about the correlation between the development of increasingly dissonant 20th century music and the lack of perfect pitch in those responsible. Wagner introduced a harmonic idiom (such as with his famous Tristan/Isolde chords) that would influence those who would construct the basis of the most complex harmonic theory to date; among them: Debussy, Arnold Schoenberg (not confirmed to have perfect pitch), and Stravinsky. In fact, it was implied in the Radiolab episode that one of the chords in Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring was the most dissonant ever heard.

Could it be that a lack of perfect pitch leads to increased musical freedom? That it perhaps enables the composer to go to places that would sound wrong, possibly even revolting, to a composer with perfect pitch? Wait… no, Ludwig van Beethoven (who might have had perfect pitch) went pretty far out there for his time with the dissonant harmonic complexity. Especially once he was practically deaf, that is (perhaps that’s the logical conclusion to what I’m suggesting with the whole not-being-constrained-by-ears thing; keep in mind that, with imagined dissonance, the inner-ear doesn’t experience the physical clashing that occurs in the material dissonance of the real world, which could influence a deaf composer to compose more dissonantly).

But then there’s Charles Ives, the father of American style harmonic dissonance, and whose music was much more dissonant than that which was being developed in Europe at the time (Ives was unaware of those composers, in fact, and they of him). He supposedly did have perfect pitch, but his musical case is an interesting and unique one. He was trained by his father to do things such as play a song in two keys at once (he was also formally trained at Yale, but his father’s impression came first, chronologically and philosophically; so maybe Charles’ father, George Ives, is the real father of American dissonance…). This wasn’t purposeful atonality (lack of a key), this was two instances of diatonically proportioned music happening concurrently. His father wanted him to “stretch” his ears. Later, though, Ives would experiment with all sorts of complex harmonic structures with an aesthetic ideology that was more based on representing the constantly clashing sounds of the “real world” (including off-key singing) in his music than any kind of purely musical theory, and which included dissonance for its own pleasurable sake.

I’ve been reading a lot about Ives lately and will stop here before I get carried away writing about him.

And let’s not get started on John Cage, either, another very famous and important textbook composer of the 20th century who not only didn’t have perfect pitch, but it could be easily argued he would not have been the important composer he was had he had the “gift.”

The upshot is that Radiolab must be taken as an entertaining way to be introduced to complex subject matter, and that perfect pitch is a tool which, depending on one’s perspective, may or may not be a benefit or liability to musicians and music in general, but is most likely irrelevant either way in the grand scheme of musical innovation and progress.

British Lecturer: Suppose a student comes in late to class the fifth day in a row and I say to her, “Early again are we?” What have I really said?

Class of British Adults Attending Beginning Philosophy Lectures: She’s arrived late again.

Lecturer: Right, my meaning is not the literal interpretation of the actual words, but is dependent on [certain factors]. You know perfectly well what I mean if you are an English-speaking person.

Man in the Class, Interjecting (this one’s a quote): Isn’t it cultural? If you said that in America they wouldn’t know what you were talking about.

(End of recreation.)

What? The lecturer responds, saying some stuff about cultural conventions that come into play when people communicate ideas, then comments that although it is supposed that Americans don’t use irony, she’s sure that sometimes they do, though she can’t think of an instance (she characterized Jon Stewart as being sarcastic, not ironic; I assume her distinction has to do with degrees of subtlety/dryness and possibly context, but considering the obviousness of the “late student” example she gave, an explanation would have been nice).

I tried to shrug this off because, really, who cares, right? Well, I guess I care, as that was a few days ago and it’s still gnawing at me. It wasn’t just that the (smug, “I’ve got you now teacher” sounding) adult student was ignorant, it was that the (smart and seasoned) lecturer herself didn’t have a proper response to the stereotype. Maybe she hasn’t been to the U.S. or had any American friends, or maybe she was just too tired to address the issue after over an hour of having to field the constant attempts from her students to challenge just about every other thing she said.

I’ve run into this kind of thinking before, by the way. I once met some young British men in Paris when I was in my mid-20s who were hilarious afficionados and practicioners of sarcasm, just as many of my back-home American friends were at the time (in fact, neither of these guys were ever as complex in their practice as my American friend whom I once heard being elaborately sarcastic while sleep-talking). My new British friends were happily surpised to discover, very much contrary to their expectations, that Americans not only understood sarcasm, but could engage in it. (Incidentally, one of them asked me, ”But isn’t it true that Americans don’t understand sarcasm?” The word “irony” never came up.)

The best (well, my favorite anyway) argument I’ve heard for American irony/sarcasm comes from a British man I blogged about recently, Stephen Fry, in one of his Blessay/Podgrams:

“Incidentally, forgive a detour here, but if there is one misapprehension about Americans that annoys me more than any other, it is the lofty claim, usually made by the most dim-witted and wit-free Britons, that America is an – ho-ho – “irony free zone”. Let it be established here, this day, that no one, on pain of being designated fifty types of watery twat, ever dare repeat that feeble, ignorant, self-satisfied canard ever ever again. Americans are no more irony illiterate than Britons or anyone else and the repeated assertion (and it is no more than an assertion not a demonstrable provable fact) is no more than a pathetic symbol of a certain kind of Briton’s flabby need to convince themselves of their sophisticated superiority over the average American. Now, don’t feel bad about the fact that you, dear listener/reader have, at some point in the past been guilty of repeating and transmitting this feeble myth, we all have. It’s lazy, easy and gives us a warm glow. My war on the lie begins now, and is not retrospective, so you need not feel ashamed. Only promise never to repeat it. Actually, even if you think it’s true, have the grace to recognise that such a clunking, tedious, oft-repeated cliché is so dull and well-worn that it almost doesn’t matter whether it’s true or not, it’s just plain tedious and only bar-stool bores and dull-witted gibbons would ever think it worth trotting out. Besides, it is ugly, graceless and rude.”

Thank you, Stephen, for saying this in terms that the Briton can relate to (does “watery twat” mean what I think it does??).

Finally, I’m reminded now of something I read some years ago (only a few months after the abovementioned Parisian trip, in fact) in a book called Dialogues of Alfred North Whitehead, in which Whitehead (a British philosopher who died in 1947) is quoted as saying:

 ”Irony, I would say, signifies the state of mind of people or of an age which has lost faith. They conceal their loss, or even flaunt it by laughter. You seldom get irony except from people who have been somehow more or less cleaned out.”

The best way to get an idea of what her music sounds like is, obviously, to listen to it, though I will say that, in addition to the abovementioned qualities, it is technically brilliant without being perfunctory, and there is an emotional quality that is both arresting and highly temporally focused even at its most seemingly chaotic (you can read about attempts to describe her music here; it also includes info on her methods). This mixture of the intellectual and the emotional is a very refreshing thing to find in an essentially avant-garde (or mid-20th century modernist) American composer whose generation quickly gravitated towards embracing a purely intellectual musical approach.

I’ve always felt that what we often refer to as the music of the Institutional Avant-garde worked better before it abandoned its expressionistic element (I use “expressionistic” here in its multiple connotations). So, I vastly prefer Arnold Schoenberg’s (“pantonal“) music to Milton Babbitt’s totally serialized compositions: both composers are very intellectual, but Schoenberg (who invented the serialism, or dodecaphony, upon which Babbitt built his own methods) has a balance of intellect and expressionism/intended hyper-romanticism without which, Babbitt’s work just sounds like a math problem set to music. Coates, who I think also has an expressionistic leaning (though, to be clear, is not a serialist), uses her intellect as a means for getting at something deeper than what the intellect alone can understand or describe. She herself claims her work to be technically simple enough for “young people” to play, though I would be surprised if that were true, but maybe it is… maybe the scores are easy to read and execute, but the moving, original music that results is a more complex affair.

One last comment I’ll make on this matter is that it’s conceivable that the the only reason her music might be considered (or even mischaracterized as) intellectual at all is a result of that which results from contrasting it to current popular and, in contemporary classical music, neo-romantic (such as minimalism) musical trends. The upshot is that her music is beautiful and moving, and that’s what counts to me, regardless of how it came to be thus, though, as someone who has largely rejected the post-modernist (!) avant-garde philosophical perspective as a rich source of contemporary aesthetic endeavor, it’s wonderful to discover someone who straddles the largely forgotten ambiguous lines found therein .

All right, now to the music itself. I recommend:

- Symphony No. 15 “Homage to Mozart” (my favorite is the second movement, called “Puzzle Canon,” which is how she refers to the form she used)

- Symphony #1 (especially the fourth movement, titled “Refracted Mirror Canon for 14 Lines”; this title, as with the Symphony No. 15 example, alludes to her methods)

- Symphony #14: “Symphony in Microtones” (especially movement 3, titled “The Lonesome Ones: Homage to Otto Luening”; this is on the same CD as Symphony #1)

- String Quartet #1 “Protestation Quartet” (I think it was this piece I recall her mentioning from her early college years, written outside of her studies, which expected a different style from students than the one she was naturally interested in; this would be before she went off to study with Tcherepnin, who encouraged her to pay special attention to the study of Renaissance era counterpoint but to keep her studies-related composing and her intuitive composing quite separate; this idea brings to mind my recent post about music theory).

To learn more about Coates, here’s a website with bio, works, articles, and listed recordings. And/or check out her Wikipedia entry.

Finally, here’s something she said about becoming a symphonist (she decided to call some of her works “symphony” well after having written them, and was initially worried about having called them that):

I always had an idea of symphonies being in the 19th century, somehow. I never set out to write a symphony as such. It has to do with the intensity of what I’m trying to say and the fact that it took 48 different instrumental lines to say it, and that the structures I was using had evolved over many years. I couldn’t call it a little name.

I could write pages on the wonderfulness of this outlook, but will just say: There you have it. Gloria Coates: listen to the interview and investigate her music!

PS: The title I gave this post reminds me of the scene in the Woody Allen film Love and Death, when a highly affected aristocratic opera attendee says, “there’s something about Mozart,” and Allen’s character responds, “I think you’re referring to his music.” I think it goes beyond that, though. We look for more in an artist than just their art… I’ll save this idea for another post.

I first learned of Fry about seven or so years ago one summer when I bought his novel The Liar on a whim. I loved it, so I bought his other books as well, including his recent The Ode Less Travelled, a fun, very well put together text in which Fry teaches us the ins and outs of poetry. I eventually discovered that he was also an actor, performing in Blackadder, Wilde (in which he plays Oscar Wilde), Jeeves and Wooster, A Bit of Fry and Laurie, and, more recently, Kingdom (a TV show in which he stars, and the first season of which is available for free and legal streaming at Hulu.com).

So, as you can see, I am a fan of Fry, and would recommend the abovementioned podcast as a great introduction to his output. Here again is the link: Stephen Fry discusses his language.

On a related note, Fry mentions in this podcast/blessay Noam Chomsky’s idea of innate linguistic faculty. I’m currently reading the fascinating book The Chomsky-Foucault Debate on Human Nature, which touches on this and other ideas related to the question: Is there such a thing as “innate” human nature independent of our experiences and external influences? The book also includes various individual discussions with Chomsky and Foucault that happened outside of the debate. Highly recommended!

Don Cupitt on Jesus as Philosopher