What's Next

It is the second of May, 2011 and I'm thinking about what's next. today, I'm anticipating the results of the current Canadian federal election. More personally, I'm reflecting on what I have just achieved and what I hope to achieve in the future. Much of this is an ongoing process that will just lead to the next thing until there is no more me, rather than no more next. I hope that will be a very long time in the future.

My very good March featured winning a few bucks in a hockey pool; Completing my M.A.; and reconciling with my wife. The latter two help me vindicate myself as an okay guy. I supported myself, and my son, while completing an M.A. and working often as a carpenter, teacher and digital materials developer. My wife asked for the reconciliation, and I immediately said yes, but I didn't approach her. So far, we are all happy to be back together as a couple and a family.
As a family, we're all pretty invested in education. My wife coordinates a medical research group. I'm looking for new/additional teaching opportunities. Developing a focus for a Phd is also on the horizon.

I have started by a very simple statement "The Game is in the player". An analysis of this concept begins with Aristotle and how his doctrine of causes plays out in his discussion of psychology in his De Anima. This theoretical discussion combines my interest in aesthetics and creativity, with my M.A. thesis, especially with regards attributing agency to art objects, a line of thought I derive from the anthropologist, Alfred Gell. It also sweeps up my comparison of Nietzche's idea of Dionysian ecstasos with the experience of 'immersion' that we find in digital games. While I suspect that Aristotlean causes will fail to account for the placement of the game in the player, I think it will fail in an interesting way,setting the stage for games as performances that map onto Husserlian intersubjectivity. The creative elements of play that are discussed by biologists Neil Greenberg, the idea of 'meaning machines' as developed by computer scientist Deb Roy and asynchronous relationship of experiential phenomena to time in the work of neurologist David Eagleman provide data to consider the  digital game as an aesthetic conduit to Husserl's transcendental ego. This relationship between intersubjectivity, time, rhythm and experience would employ Martin Heidegger's Being and Time but also Henri Lefebvre's Rhythmanalysis as relevant text to exploring the interaction of shared experience in digital games.  Aside from continuing to explore the intentional experience, a frustrated goal of philosophy  this work offers the possibility of new means to conceptualising user experience of digital games. The experience of ecstatic temporality always seems to hover around my work, whether it is philosophy, game studies or music.

By continuing to blog my research, you can follow and make comments, if you are interested. I may attempt a more elaborate blogging site for that. This is partially to learn how to use such modern web/internet technologies as PHP, Python, Joomla and Wordpress. As a humanities scholar, I haven't invested in learning such technologies but now I feel I must.

A blog on my dissertation research would be good for a project focused learning experience. I also plan to learn to program/develop games with Unity and the Ios. For fun, create music, including some for games. This all represents an attempt to integrate all my disparate activities into a whole.

                                                                                                                 

Back to the Basics; Philosophy, Art History and what I'm Thinking

It often helps to return to the sources of what we think about, so we can determine how far and how well we have gone. So...

What is True, Good and Beautiful were the classical conceptions of philosophical questions. I would rephrase them tentatively as: Why is there something rather than nothing? How can we know this? How can we evaluate it's relevance to us?

Obviously, we ourselves are included in the set of things that comprise that something. The language we use to ask these questions also comprise part of that something, as does the methods of knowing that we use to ask that fundamental question of why there is something rather than nothing.

Philosophy is the ungainly attempt to tackle questions that come naturally to children, using methods that come naturally to lawyers.
-David Hills

I think Prof. Hills' was being sardonic, but there is a useful approach in his functional definition. The questions are often very simple, but the logic required to precisely structure the question as well as provide criteria to propose and evaluate an answer are torturous.

My broadest question is what does it mean, if anything, that we are here now, looking/sensing/perceiving all this stuff and reacting to it. Why do Joe Pass and Oscar Peterson make me feel good when they play "Caravan"? What does it mean that my consciousness reacts to these apparent perceptions? What does it say about this universe that I can experience these phenomena and then express them? Why can my perceptions apparently err?

These are questions so vast that they seem to defy answers, so they must be analyzed, or deconstructed into questions narrow and sharply defined so the answer has some chance of remaining valid.

Does aesthetic experience some how touch "reality" in the noumenal(Kantian), Dionysian(Nietzschean) or phenomenological (Merleau-Pontian) senses? That question arose from some logical problems I had with Emmanual Kant when I studied him with Gerry LaVallee over twenty years ago. My questions were not original, as I learned later, because Arthur Schopenhauer had asked them and provided his answers in 1500 pages or so. My questions were creative, I think, because I had never read or encountered Schopenhauer's thought prior to ten years after I raised my questions about Kant's Critique of Pure Reason.

Now I'm asking a very specific question, set in very defined temporal(because I am doing Art History) and spatial locus. Can the relationship between linear perspective and the feeling we often call immersion better be defined as "Ekstasos" when we consider games such as Prince of Persia juxtaposed with Piranesi's Carceri drawings?

Evil or mere justification; thinking about reasons and motivations

One feature of many juvenile arch villains is that they "Wish to destroy the World!" I always wondered why these characters would do such a thing. After all, it sort of renders them rather dead, too. The typical world destrying arch villain never seemed suicidal- on the contrary, they obviously placed a huge value on themselves. The early James Bond arch villains had big plans, but they wanted to do things like contaminate the US gold supply, a la Goldfinger. This would ruin the world economy, and vastly increase Goldfinger's assets in terms of the gold he owned. An implausible plan, but a recognisable motivation. Greed, simply put and driven by megalomania.

An essay on writing, and forgive me if i don't remember the author's name, said that all characters act feeling justified. All characters have a reason for their actions. The eessay went on to point out these reasons didn't have to be, good, reasonable or even rational. The character merely had to believe they had a reason for their actions. I'll compare two real life characters, even though both have been critised and lauded by other for their actions. Mother Theresa devotes her life to the poor. It is true that Christopher Hitchens wrote a highly critical essay, characterising her as a hypocrit. Be that as it may, I will continue assuming that her enunciated mission, to aid the poorest of the poor, stems from a desire to help the weak. She had a reason. Even if it was really a self-serving ploy to get into heaven, she had a reason.

Inn the same way, the 9/11 hijackers didn't set out to commit evil- they argued that the US was so corrupt it was worth terrorising millions of people, and killing themselves and thousands of others. As I noted , such reasons need not be reasonable, or even rational. But irrational hatred of a perceived injustice is a reason.

In fiction, a character may have an enunciated reason. In Robert Ludlum's The Bourne Supremacy, aging super agent Jason Bourne must confront a fictionalised carlos the jackal, loosely based on the real life terrorist/mercenary assasin. Carlos' reason for hunting down and killing Bourne is to prove that he, carlos, is the greatest assasin of all. All though the character has little depth beyond a vaguely portrayed narcissism, he does have a reason, and ludlum hints that that reason arises from motivations Carlos may not even recognise in himself. Through out the story, however, Carlos committs murder and mayhem without remorse. He does not see his actions as evil, but as neccesary or even desirable. The injury he causes are as acceptable to his character as, say, a store clerk making a customer wait while the clerk does a price check. The fact that in the case of the store clerk most people understand the neccessity of price checks, most people are appalled by the brutality and injury caused by terrorists such as the fictional carlos the jackal and the real life terrorists associated with the Al Queda network or any other of a long list of terror organisations.

These characters become unbelievable when they wake and decide to commit atrocities for no other reason than to commit atrocities. But these characters become believable when we read or watch them justifying their greed, for example or their hate. "The US prevented my country from offering me the opportunities I so richly deserve" "My greatness is diminuated by that fraud Bourne". The believability of a well motivated( that is to say one of believable motivation) fictional character suggests in turn that attributing evil as the motivation for a criminal, a terrorist or a wrong doer will lead us to misunderstand the situation.

Failing to understand that much of the support for Al Queda stemmed from a belief within the Muslim world that the USA intended to corrupt and destroy them lead to successful recruiting drives after the ill-advised invasion of Iraq. Recognising that that sentiment was fomented by clerics looking for power and embraced by spoilt young men without opportunities in their often medieval societies(Most of the 9/11 hi jackers were university educated Saudi's, who had not found suitable employment) would have lead to more fruitful security policies.

perhaps more generally, understanding that everyone acts with a reason, good, bad or irrational, we can better examine our own choices, as well as consider our own underlying motivations as well as those of others. This is not to deny responsibility for our actions, but to consider our actions in light of our ethical and practical responsibilities.

Swing: Experience, timing and knowledge

What is "swing" - that quality that makes music danceable?

Edward Willet discusses the question in his article "Why Jazz swings".  The "why" was a question studied by Swedish physicist and jazz pianist Anders Friberg.

 

Willet presents Friberg's research this way:

"The basic rhythmic unit in jazz is the quarter note. That’s usually what defines the "beat," what you tap your feet to. Melodies are superimposed over the beat, and are often made up of eighth notes, which, in classical music, are exactly one half as long as quarter notes. However, the jazz musician would play those notes alternately long and short, with the long note on the beat, and the short note off the beat...

Friburg found the ratio between the notes varied with the tempo. In slow pieces the long eighth notes were extremely long, and the short notes were clipped so short they were almost 16th notes. But at faster tempos the notes were practically even. Only at a medium-fast tempo of about 200 beats per minute did the drummers use the 2-to-1 ratio. (Of course, there were variations caused by the drummers’ styles and the group with whom they played, but the basic principle held true across the board.)...

Friburg found that, instead of synchronizing with each other on the beat, as classical musicians do, jazz musicians unconsciously synchronize on the off-beats, the short eighth notes of the swing pattern."- Edward Willet

Aside from providing an analysis that could suggest how to make electronic music more compelling, or to provide a yardstick as to why a given player or group's performance fails to excite it also suggests a case study for testing phenomenological methodologies. However, this technical analysis doesn't detract from the experience of hearing music 'swing'. Indeed, it confirms that the subjective experience is a legitimate epistemology based in aesthetic experience not mystical thus suggesting a pathology.

an exploration of the video game as architecture using phenomenological methodology

Phenomenology is an attempt to make rigorous accounts of subjective experience. One way of briefly illustrating the problem is by considering the following quote attributed to musician Fats Waller regarding what Jazz is;

"…if you hafta ask, you ain't never gonna know!"

Phenomenology attempts to offer a rigorous approach to getting answers to such questions without resorting to mysticism or metaphysics on one hand or reducing experience to the denigrated status of qualia. Qualia is term used to refer to experience as a minor phenomena produced by the physical universe.

When we play a video game, if it is successfully executed, we become immersed in a two dimensional representation of a two or three dimensional space. We may become a medieval Persian prince as in the game Prince of Persia, even though we are female. We may become immersed as an acrobatic Asian female leaping across the roof tops of a futuristic Tokyo, as in the game Mirror's Edge although we are clumsy, Caucasian males.

Our identity then becomes briefly mirrored on either side of the screen. Within that screen we have both landscapes and and architecture, whether it is the expansive worlds of games such as Myst or the multiplayer online worlds of games such as Second Life or World of Warcraft.

And at what point does the game itself become an architecture? We experience moving through an environment that we interpret as "Bricks and Mortar"

Why do you want to do what you do? the Intentionality of snacktime

"It's time for a an orange" I said.
"Why's it time fo' an orange?" said Anton.
"because I assert that I want an orange."
"Why do you want an orange?"
A good question. I had just stirred the soup and hadn't been thinking about oranges. But there were a small basket of clementines. Why did I want one?

Where did my intention come from?

Recognizing the immense costs of mortality for a meaning machine.

Trying to define "personess"- sometimes called philosophical anthropology- has occupied philosophers since Plato defined man as a featherless biped and Diogenes of Sinope held up a plucked chicken as a response.


I'm going to say we are meaning machines. This term was coined by Prof. Deb Roy of MIT and is used by artificial intelligence researchers to refer to computers that think.
In my case I'm trying to respect modern empirical science as regards human biology, while addressing our experience of, well, experience and how we interpret that experience.We are, from a biologist's point of view, organic machines. Yet we seem unable to go through life as if our choices were pre-programmed. We(I can't speak for chickens, featherless or otherwise) create meaning- we assign value to phenomena.We manufacture meaning and this seems safer to ascribe to a biological rather than metaphysical origin. My approach is that we are biological computers that create meaning. This has implications for both epistemology and ethics.

Meaning has both a linguistic sense such as when calling a dog, a dog, I'm attaching meaning to a generally four legged mammal. But meaning has its ethical dimension, as when a dog is a bad movie or a poorly engineered car. I wonder how much there is a difference between meaning as to identify and meaning as to evaluate. We experience both as we go through life, but unlike in critical, philosophical thinking we don't necessarily separate the objects of meaning strictly into is and ought as we create meaning for the phenomena we encounter.

How I greet my small son is different from how another greets him. A brief review of recent history reveals how the the beloved child of one person could be a toy to another and considered an evil affront to another. In each case a very specific identification and evaluation are attached to this child.

Often these values we create conflict both within us and amongst us. After all the Choice vs Abortion debate is keenly felt by people on both sides, and yet there are others who feel it isn't worth arguing about. On another issue I prefer to lead a simpler life with modest material assets- but I still feel envy for those who own a convertible, especially the late model T-birds with the retro paint jobs. Still, my conflict finds me saying 2 feet good, 4 wheels bad.



Moreover, the reasons why a person attaches a particular meaning can vary. Those reasons can even evince a 180degree shift in position.

Now, if life is finite then how does that inform the meaning that one brings to life? So how do we build an ethical system that reflects the creative nature of human values? How do we deal with a need to create meaning that doesn't dismiss that need as an epiphenomena of biological processes nor ascribe meaning as a metaphysical entity separate and ineffable from our biological nature?

empathy and guilt

I was watching the news, this afternoon. It seems that someone has abducted a three-day old infant from a hospital in Texas.

What was this person thinking? Were they mentally ill? Or was there some bizarre sense of entitlement? Or something truly sinister?

I thought about how we try to avoid guilt, and especially avoid arousing feelings of guilt in others. However, as I imagined the situation of this child abductor, it occurs to me that guilt is a feeling related to empathy. Perhaps this person was never encouraged to feel guilt.

So I'm asking the question, without offering more than the notion, that guilt is the emotion that allows us to experience the pain we inflict on others. Thus from experiencing guilt we learn empathy.

Knowledge and experience: Plato vs Kant

The notion of reality - what really is apart from what we think is- presents problems. Plato , regarding the amount of error in what we perceive as real, asserted the notion that our perceived world is a flawed and limited image of the "real" world of "Ideas". These ideas constitute a true essence of everything we see, in Plato's system. What we see however, is not real, because it can change, as do our perceptions. This notion of the possibility of erroneous perceptions also informs Emmanuel Kant's thesis, that there are three realms of reality- the subjective, which we know but cannot share(I can feel pain, and know that I feel pain, but you can only speculate that I feel pain); the objective, which is that which we can agree upon(Fred over there is in pain because he's screwed up his eyes, is rolling on the floor and moaning while clutching his bloodied knee) and the nuomenal, which is really what's going on (indeed, Fred is in pain, and not playing an elaborate joke on us; or fred is a really good actor; or fred comes from a culture which expresses pleasure that way; or.....).

Which concept better represents the more accurate representation of reality?

Both Plato and Kant attempt to explain the interaction of knowledge and experience. Plato's theory posits a metaphysical realm of "Ideas". In these "Ideas" the true essence of things lies. There are problems with the concept of his Idealism; there are an infinite possible number of ideas( an Idea for man, and idea for blogger an idea for adam, and idea for Adam as blogger, an idea for someone reading Adam's blog.........). Secondly there is the lack of explanation how these "Ideas", however imperfectly, touch our conciousness.

Kant's idealism has the advantage, in terms of coherence, of saying the noumenal realm is probably beyond our understanding. Indeed, much of kant's work is based on creating criteria to judge whether a system of knowledge actually reveals the noumenal. The nature, the ontology, of the noumenal is really not asserted.

The reach of human ignorance.

I suppose I'm rather a Kantian in my opinion of what we can know about reality. After reading this article about 'quantum flapdoodle', I've become more confirmed in my view that the inability of the human mind to fully to grasp the universe is as certain as is the physical reality of it's existence.

The result of this starting point is my search to find ways to describe reality that don't ignore the important stuff e.g. physics offers a description of reality but not the wisdom as to how to deal with it. Spirituality offers guidance, but based on highly questionable assumptions. As a popular song put it two men claim to be Jesus- one of them must be wrong. The shear breadth of competing religions, mystics and charalatans, all presenting arguements based essentially on an appeal to authority, leaves that field as a maelstrom of human confusion and ignorance.

A bright friend of mine suggested that this situation was temporary, and that exact knowledge would triumph. I replied that I was more interested in asking what we could learn about the universe, given the parameters of human ignorance. What do our limitations indicate about the nature of the universe we live in?