So here's a funny thing about life that you have already noticed unless you are a dim bulb: you only get to try it one way. No takey-backsies; no trying plan B after plan A turns out to kinda suck, with respect to its longer-reaching consequences. You know this already, but I mention it because of one of its mundane consequences: when you are in some particular situation, you can't tell which of the aspects of that situation are due to the situation itself, and which are due to the conditions under which you entered the situation. And that little epistemological niggle is what's on my mind here, at least to some degree or 'nother.
That was fun to write, which is why I wrote it. It wasn't particularly revelatory or anything like that, but here's me explaining why I not only wrote that, but why I wrote this. I am unsure which of the following best describes my own history. Is it that I should have taken a Metaphysics class as soon as I was able, or is it that I would naturally react to a class this way in the final semester of my undergraduate education? Because how I'm reacting is this: metaphysics--easily my least eagerly anticipated class of the semester--freakin' rocks.
I entered school as a philosophy student not because I am some deeply, broadly read student of philosophy. I don't know shit about this shit, whatever books I've read along the way. I wanted to get a feel for the boundaries of inquiry, so that when I think to myself, "That is some cold, original shit you just woke yourself up with there, Mr. Droid," I would know whether I'm right. Consequently, most of the time I am reading two guys arguing about how it should be this way or the opposite, and they both seem like they are smarter than me, and I want to find a way to make them both right, or something.
That is, while I am indeed discovering the lay of the land, so to speak, I am not also discovering how to classify myself. If you gave me a multi-axial index of philosophical commitments and asked me to place myself somewhere, I would perhaps be able to exclude a few regions from my possible reply, but hell if I could say anything positive.
But reading Kripke in metaphysics, I think: duh! of course. I am scandalized on Saul Kripke's behalf that his Naming and Necessity was at all controversial. But neither Kant nor Lewis is a dummy, nor are their adherents whom I've met, and I'm looking into how Kripke seems to be incompatible with what they said. Wikipedia has all the further details you could hope for. Naming and Necessity: quite a book.
Anyway, usually in a class I read a couple of opposed positions and appreciate what both of them have to say. Nothing wrong with that, I suppose, except that it would be really nice to know what I currently thought had the upper hand in the debates. Something about that really makes it easier to criticize everything else that you read, or at least to keep in mind the landscape which determines the relations between the different positions you've read--a fixed point. But in metaphysics, though I am really taking Lewis and his possibilia seriously, I at least have a very intuitive and obvious-seeming place to plant my flag. Beat Kripke and I'll follow you, but until then, this guy seems so right!
Anyway, usually in a class I read a couple of opposed positions and appreciate what both of them have to say. Nothing wrong with that, I suppose, except that it would be really nice to know what I currently thought had the upper hand in the debates. Something about that really makes it easier to criticize everything else that you read, or at least to keep in mind the landscape which determines the relations between the different positions you've read--a fixed point. But in metaphysics, though I am really taking Lewis and his possibilia seriously, I at least have a very intuitive and obvious-seeming place to plant my flag. Beat Kripke and I'll follow you, but until then, this guy seems so right!
I have similar musing about moments of synchronicity, coincidence, fate, whatever. I usually wonder, "Is this really that surprising, or is actually pretty inevitable and predictable?"
ReplyDeleteComing from the platform that we all transmit a lot more information than we realize--that we have to. We have, most of us, learned to over-communicate because people don't listen.
So when somebody used a key phrase, responds with a known quote, reacts with a certain emotion--is it because they somehow magically arrived at that response? Or are they parroting back something we've been broadcasting, speak to us in our own language, as it were?
I think I intended to go somewhere with this, but my brain just petered out on me. Are you quits on this blog, or just taking an extended break?
As regards your last question... Far from it, my dear Hawkeye! In fact, methinks (respectfully) your brain had truly petered out(!), else you had some, er, calendrical difficulties... or else you consider a few hours an eternity. Or else, must a feller update his blog per quarter-hour lest he be called a layabout? Nay, this blog is of the freshest vintage (such that even The Jerk would be content), to such a degree such that I would venture as to the plausibility that you, alone among the human race proper (counting myself amongst the mutant population of homino-fuckwads), are yet aware of this blog.
ReplyDeleteNow on to what you were interested to discuss--synchronicity. (For my part, I gave up on the Loch Ness Monster a while back. A reference just for you!) I think there are some really interesting things going on in what you are bringing out, but hardly any of them, in any interesting sense, can be called "a description of the universe" (as I take metaphysics to be concerned with). Rather, I believe that these all collapse into quite interesting accounts of human psychology.
First off, we all suck at English (or whatever) as compared to our capacity to transmit and interpret body language. I don't know what to say to my imagined opponent on this point, unless my opponent is not human--in which case, my response is, "If you were human, you surely would agree." I do not care to count the number of times (except to confess that it was well positive) that I was aware, as either manufacturer or audience, of a discrepancy between verbal and body language messages. This is a significant factor, I think, in purt near all human communication.
Then there is the fact that, given our common humanity, we are likely to respond to common cues in a common fashion. Since you and I have inhabited the same culture for our entire lives, we may draw the same associative conclusions from the same sensory input. This is likely to result in our arriving at the same conclusion effectively simultaneously, such that I have thought x just as/before you express thought x.
At the same time, the theories of Asimov, or Clarke, or someone like that, that brain waves are transmitted like radio waves, seems plausible to me. Here is a story I have relayed several times, and which interests me whatever its actual explanation. Once, my brother (who is more like me, creatively, than anyone I've met) and I played hangman. And, to make a whatever-length story shorter than whatever length, we independently and simultaneously chose to offer ANEMONE as our next clue, with seemingly the only contextual cue that no one had yet offered any challenges remotely related to `anemone.' That blew my shit out of the water, and I suppose it still gives me pause. I can't say if it is an illustration of coincidence, of our similar psychology, or of the `brain waves are like radio waves, and you guys are dialed in to the same station' theory. I mention this just to confess to one of the more compelling bits of evidence that I have encountered for magical beliefs.
Did I have another point to reach? Who can say? But my brain has closed shop for the evening.
I'm not quite sure how, but I misinterpreted the timestamps on your entries and though I had stumbled onto something Lucasian (is that a word? it is now) in nature (long ago and far away). I see now the undeniable freshness of this endeavor--it's positively minty!
ReplyDeleteYes, the things I was talking about def fall into the realm of psychology/sociology. Sometime I wonder if everything doesn't. If not psychology, then neuroscience. Isn't it all about perception. We are back to cats and boxen with that question.
Brain waves like radio waves...interesting thought. I can relate anecdotal evidence of the same type--like two people guessing the exact same wrong answer during Trivial Pursuit. And I mean a totally random wrong answer. Have you ever seen the movie "Always?" It had a neat little conceit in it for where there crap we just blurt out comes from.
I'm at work, which instantly makes me stupider. But even with that caveat, I must admit--I haven't the foggiest idea of what you speak in many of these entries. The math aspect of your classes sounds like it would make my brain melt and run out of my ears, but the other stuff sounds cool. As you know, I've taken one philo class, and it was a mess.
But I did manage to work Star Trek references into two of my papers.
Do you know Derren Brown? One of his distinctions is expertise with NLP. He's bigger across the pond. I recommend checking out this video:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZyQjr1YL0zg
in which he basically gets a couple of guys to "create" exactly what he wanted them to create. From there, check out the related videos. He'll convince Simon Pegg that his deepest wish is a red BMX bike, convince NYC merchants to sell him jewelry which he pays for with blank slips of paper, and so on. There's also a nice long stand-up thing he does with a large-scale suggestion-planting schtick. It really makes you think about the influence of context on our creative processes. Great stuff!
Oh genius. Here's me more politely pointing you along to that video.
ReplyDelete