[Paul]

Hi Annaloes

Sorry but I have been absent again. First busy with work and basic survival, then taking time to do some serious writing and then this week catching covid, which has been unpleasant but thankfully only that.

Right now I am up to my neck in projects and I’m not keeping up with the basics. As much as I’d love to think I’d contribute to such a group it will probably be a source of regret. But I thank you very much for asking. I really do appreciate it.

One of the things that has come out of conversations like the one I’ve had with you here and with others is that I must somehow begin to collate my thinking and intuitions in some way and so I have begun to do this. At last.

[Paul]

Well, that’s absolutely outstanding Anneloes, thank you. Lovely to hear someone with such commitment to music reflecting on my thoughts in this way.

I must admit my musicianship is fairly primitive… much more so than my internal experience of it. I think this is how it goes: this internal resonance leads you to beauty, whether or not you can execute it as you ‘hear’ it.

[Paul]

I absolutely think you’re on to something there Anneloes.

I’ve been thinking deeply every day about what Iain has brought to my comprehension of being human. My gut feelings and thoughts go something like this:

Language is the problem. Not so much Language itself but the mindset it invokes: Unless we work against it, the default mode of language is always ‘of the past’, i.e. a ‘reproduction’ of something, not a representation of something unfolding anew.

And I think the same applies to music.

As Iain is at pains to point out, both hemispheres are involved in everything, including Language BUT with Language (unlike almost any other function) there is a strict lateralisation to the left hemisphere in terms of reception and production. When it comes to poetry for example he suggests that good poetry subverts language.

My understanding of how this works is that a good poem takes you to the edge of meaning, assembling the allusions such that you unfold the meaning for yourself. This is like being given the formula to solve a maths problem rather than simply being given the answer. Likewise with music: great music alludes to themes and echoes and the listener fills in the spaces, joining the music unfolding just as it did for the composer.

So, it might be that the skill of composition is allowing something to unfold anew and that following rules in order to make this happen spoils the process- because rues take you necessarily to something that has already happened.

And I think such a process, as you rightly point out, is more akin to listening than to speaking: it becomes something that is happening to you rather than something you are making happen.

The skill with the Language and Theory of music would then come to bear upon the writing down of the unfolding, the editing, tidying and structuring of the music overall. At this point there is another unfolding, is there not? In the direction and dynamic of the piece, its development and denouement. Gifted writers of music allow the previous stages of development to resonate within the piece, echoing forward and back, referencing what has gone before.

And again with lyrics.

Throughout there is an oscillation between the dominance of selves, taking turns to bring the piece together, the overarching meaning and direction coming from the RH with the grinding and polishing provided by the LH.

I honestly think this is why music is so beautiful. And I think you are 100% correct: you listen to, and receive what is happening to you, capturing and recapturing those moments of reception.

[Paul]

Hi Mike

Don’t know much about this but I did have a couple of thoughts.

You are not the only one effected- I see a couple of other users with the same issue and it isn’t random but the same users every time. I don’t know enough to understand why you’re getting the same thing on both your ps4 and your tablet but that is interesting. Is the internet connection both cases 4g or are you going via a router to adsl or vdsl? If it is a router connection, is it ‘public’ wifi system (i.e. a shared, intranet connection like you might find in a cafe or university)?

Either way I’d first try a different browser after making sure the tablet software is fully up to date. If it is an old tablet I’d wonder if it is running a legacy version of the browser (still, won’t explain why this happens on ps4 but worth wondering about).

Brave browser and chrome seem to work fine here. If you’re using an Apple tablet you might find that you are defaulting to Safari. I do find Safari a little infuriating and prone to strange problems.

Finally, there is a forum posting app called Tapatalk which is famously awful and worth avoiding at all costs.

Cheers!

Edit: Terrific post title by the way 😆

[Paul]

This is an interesting conversation about Truth and AI that is worth watching I think. I notice how difficult Truth is to define.

An interesting perspective from this discussion is how the breakthough moment for Ai occurred when human feedback reached a threshold of some kind resulting in Ai outputs that were useful and interesting to human users.

https://youtu.be/Zu4y-m9AZ9E

[Paul]

This is a lively an interesting conversation. So many things to consider in all these posts.

Hi @thaumasmus

You ask…

“Does anyone else feel as though metaphysical materialists, and so-called illusionists in particular, often appear to conflate consciousness with its contents – as if thoughts, feelings and perceptions were the whole story?”

Yes, I do feel precisely this and you have put it very eloquently. I notice, even from highly regarded scholars (including those I have a lot of time for, Karl Friston for example) frequently conflate consciousness with cognition, perception or both.

It is clear to me in the Dennett video that his premise, that we are machines made up of smaller machines (or a bag of tricks) is self-fulfilling: he suggests this premise and then simply assumes that everything confirms it. He is quite interested in mis-perception of ambiguous presentations but because of the stimuli he’s chosen he completely misses out on elevating his argument.

He gets closer with the Bellotto that, on approach he discovers has a resolution limit (well I never!) and then follows this catastrophic failure of imagination- he contrasts this with Canaletto whose paintings contain so much detail he can see the clothing. So why doesn’t he extend this and ask, “Why can’t I see the eyelashes in the Canaletto?” In other words, he doesn’t use the very contrast he cites to question his own premises. Instead he abandons the effort at the point he finds an agreement with them.

But this isn’t even his biggest error here: This is a very large painting and we ‘know’ Bellotto was well aware of exactly how he was applying the paint and the effect it would have at various distances from the canvas. I mean, come on Daniel, Bellotto painted it… With a brush, up close, and then stood back as an observer, probably thousands of times. It does not seem to occur to Dennett that Bellotto was actually hoping this effect would be noticed- that the future observer would notice the transition between meaningless, small detail and the meaningful ‘bigger picture’, to wonder at what that meant in terms of their perception, not just of the painting itself but of the world they live in and perhaps the cosmos itself. I don’t think there could be a more eloquent argument against Dennett’s position than this painting and the questions it asks the observer. And Bernardo Bellotto somehow smuggled it from the 18th Century into Dennett’s video. Bravo Barnardo, bravo!

To ground this position in the here and now then: employing a paradigm based on ‘meaning’ rather than ‘effect’, the artist’s intention comes into our present. In very important (and I think intended ways) we are in conversation with that artist. I suspect also that if this was not a possibility, no artist would ever stoop to pick up a brush.

So for me, the lesson here is that the sorts of questions you ask dictate the sorts of answers you get. If I pose questions about the limits of perception, I can generate answers about that. But if I don’t ask questions about meaning then I will not get answers about meaning.

And I might avoid questions about meaning because I think there is no such thing. I might be Daniel Dannett sitting in my office scripting a TED talk about how I don’t think there is any meaning in the universe because the universe is simply a machine and machines are meaningless. Then get in my car and drive home to an environment simply replete with meaning: my wedding photographs, my dog greeting me, a large bill to pay, an unexpected call from a childhood friend- and still be completely untroubled by my view that all of this meaning is totally illusory.

Is this actually rational? No, it is not. I propose Dennett’s arguments are simply an artefact of language, of compartmentalisation and categorisation.

[Paul]

Hi Don

Late to the party here.

Focus

My mind is completely unfocussed when it wanders. When I consider what it is, I find myself concluding that it is a state of receptiveness. This doesn’t seem to be bound to current experience of the moment (although that often happens) and might include past experiences or imagined future events.

If there is worry or anxiety I find I switch to focussed thought which often includes self talk and my mind ceases to wander.

Valence

It can be either of these things. If I have intrusive, anxious thoughts or feelings it is negative but this is self-limiting as it ‘pops the bubble’ of wandering into something that runs on rails, usually with definite goals in mind.

Creativity

It is a definite feature of an open mindset and one I seem to automatically switch to when I am writing or playing music.

Mindfulness

I am not sure that I engage in mindfulness as such. Certainly not intentional mindfulness. But there are many times in a day when I step back and consider something more fundamentally that I might otherwise. This tends not to be routine things like driving or unlocking a door but would include really tasting something I am cooking and wondering at the flavours and whether they can be improved. When I am playing music, I will listen intently and openly to the timbre of notes and to the sensations in my hands as I play. If I have no clear objective (fixing a part or practising a piece) I will improvise. At the moment I am trying without much success to sing what I play as I play it.

Is Mindfulness Valid?

I am not a practitioner of mindfulness but I have studied it in the past. From what I know I would say that it is simply guidance to a mindset that I use all the time for the most important things I do every day. By the most important, I don’t mean the most material but actually the opposite of this- the more ephemeral, hard to define things: helping my partner or my son at a difficult time, playing music, listening to music, writing and sometimes thinking, often about philosophy and mind.

I think therefore that it is valid if this is what it achieves. It occurs to me I am fortunate to have enough time for these states of mind at the moment. It has definitely been otherwise in the past. I can imagine being caught up in the exigencies of a professional or work environment in which I must concentrate solely upon matters arising therein to the exclusion of this. Making time with intention for these states of mind would likely be necessary and welcome under these conditions.

The Purposes of Mind Wandering and Mindfulness

This is a tricky thing to consider from my perspective. I am defining Mind Wandering as unintentional, undirected internal experience. If it had a purpose, then I wonder if it might drift into unwandering, goal-directed activity.

I am defining mindfulness as attempting to evoke the same mindset present during mind wandering with the objective of at experiencing with at least some frequency. I would se the role of mindfulness as ‘kick starting’ the mindset by providing a focus (usually a stimulus or experience to be attended to) and from where the mind can wander.

However, I am aware that in the training I have undertaken sometimes direction is given to remaining focussed on the target experience and I do think this might militate against my answer to the question above. On the other hand some of the training was more open ended and self guided which would support my conclusion.

The Purpose of Life

Short answer: I don’t know.

Long answer: Inherent here is the supposition that the question can be answered. This is a bit of a paradox: If there is a purpose to life then, rationally, that purpose should be obvious and it is clearly not obvious because we ask the question.

It seems to me one logical issue here is time. When we remove the future from being, we still exist in this moment. And further, to define a purpose to being would intrinsically involve defining a future state in which the purpose was regarded as met, unless we meet the purpose already by simply being. So I suppose the question that arises here is, is time fundamental or it is a construct, in other words can we really separate time and existence? Can we exist in this moment without a future?

My instinct (and I can’t really justify this) is that time is a construct, Now it may be a construct fundamental to consciousness. In other words, one cannot exist without the other.

Now that really would be a paradox, wouldn’t it?

Finally though I think that really it is ‘purpose’ that is the important construct in the question (rather than the implied construct of time). I tend to the idea that purposes depend on the separation of objects. It is language and associated perceptions that gives rise to the idea of separate objects via naming and categorisation.

But this is just an instinct I think.

So, these are the best answers I can muster Don. I hope you find them useful.

[Paul]

Thanks Charles.

Amongst the first songs I learned for guitar and voice were from Paul Simon’s Songbook and Still Crazy. Such an influence on me in my early teens.

Incidentally, I got to know Kathy (Kath) from Kathy’s song in my twenties. A profoundly lovely human being.

[Paul]

You are more than welcome Andrei, thanks for replying.

Feel free to start a subsection in this sub-forum if you like, or not as you prefer. It may just keep the conversation going- I hope the settings allow it.

[Paul]

Fascinating Don.

I’ll have to set some time aside today to listen. Thanks for this 😍

[Paul]

Lucy:

“When the writing isn’t happening in this way, it is never really enjoyable, it is a chore.”

So true!

It’s the process of writing (creating, playing), not the objective of ‘having written’. I don’t think this feeling can be bettered honestly. It’s a wonderful experience.

[Paul]

Hi Anneloes,

So sorry not to reply earlier. Life is a bit of a roller coaster at the moment everything seems a bit tangential but thanks for your reply. I really appreciate it.

Yes, I am applying what Iain is proposing. But, I think like a lot of people, Iain’s work represents for me a distillation of many years of thought and consideration into which his ideas have ‘clicked’ like a key into a lock. There has been a longing in me to find something as coherent as this for much of my life. There is no word but ‘longing’. Nothing else comes close.

I wonder, in your search for a new philosophy of music, how you are approaching this? I seems to me that the materialistic world has a way of migrating into everything over time, like sands into an ancient ruin. To mitigate against this I have been moving away from structured music into simple improvisation against a metronome or looped drum part.

I’ll start anywhere on the fretboard (I’m currently playing electric bass) and pick out an arpeggio, then expand this to a few phrases, adding more looped phrases as they occur.

It seems the experience of ‘getting out of the way’ is very much the aim. I incorporate everything as I expand what I’m doing to more phrases, accidents, mistakes, wild guesses… allowing the music to decide its own course. To navigate I only have my aesthetic sense to guide me, trying to find something beautiful by successive approximation rather than planning or thought.

I am also applying this to life away from the instrument, considering all ‘things’ (-not-things) as continua… chairs, doorframes, everything… as connected processes happening now, unfolding now, everything in motion.

Pets are amazing if you interact with them in this way. I try to feel them as continuous with me, non-separate but co-located in experience. Our dog then helps me to learn this state all the better… becomes my teacher, directs me to the sensory and away from the mental and synthetic.

This goes beyond dissociation of language into something quite profound for me fairly quickly, where things seem to present with more meaning… they stop being ‘things’ and become forms or shapes; there’s an experience of connection.

In music similarly… I’m not thinking of scales, chords or theory except in passing. I ignore it and go back to the experience finding something playful in the intersection of time and sound: something fundamental rather than developed, something unfolding rather than fixed.

[Paul]

Yes, perhaps this is right Rodney.

Certainly the history of humanity would serve as a strict reminder of our collective foolishness.

On the other hand, are we to always assume a repetition of our past mistakes, that things will always go the way they always have? Is there not perhaps some way we can use each novel gateway as the opportunity to learn, collectively, what it is we need to know to live harmoniously? Should we simply think we are doomed or should we try to be hopeful? After all, AI is here whether we think it is good or not.

I certainly hope this is possible.

[Paul]

Hi Rodney

All excellent points. I think part of what LLM AI’s tell us about ourselves is that the crystallised intelligence represented by language is immensely useful but on its own is not enough to create a self sustaining natural system, i.e. a system that humans and other life can thrive in.

People see such systems as ‘beautiful’- ecosystems, biomes etc. yet materialists dismiss beauty as merely an anthropocentric illusion, preferring ‘objective’, ‘functional’ definitions of these systems. It seems to me they try to recreate these systems, or ‘models’ of them using these definitions. They fail. They improve the systems, they fail again. Are they edging closer to success, or getting further and further from the whole point?

Perhaps our grasp of the Beautiful is precisely this kind of discrimination, expressed as well as we can manage given the limitations of language itself.

I think this illustrates what Iain is driving at, that there needs to be an overarching ‘point’ or ‘meaning’ to a system for it to be truly functional. As to whether it could never be achieved, I can’t subscribe to that but I am sympathetic to the general thrust. We are certainly missing something from our collective, explicit, verbal construction of who we are and how we work.

[Paul]

“Aren’t we always aware of more than we can say?” That is a fundamental observation I think Whit.

And likewise this statement:

[Of AI] “…or might it be offloading some of the over-use of language on our own parts, so as to all us to become less programmed by it ourselves.” I have had this exact thought myself. Wouldn’t it be nice if this was how it goes? That there might be something of a letting go of a burden?

History would suggest otherwise perhaps but then I don’t think there has aver been a moment in history quite like this one.