Month: June 2005

Hofstadter’s variation on Nagel’s Bat. His “Ant Fugue” seems to say it all. More later.

Said “All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.” which reminded me of Arthur C. Clarke’s 3 stages of reaction to technological breakthroughs: (a) It’s completely impossible. (b) OK, it’s possible, but it’s practically useless. (c) Well, I said it was a good idea all along.

Anyway I’m browsing the BBC In Our Time / History of Ideas “Greatest Philsopsopher” debate / vote.

I’m well through Godel, Escher, Bach.
(Started Hofstadter’s “GEB” here.)

Hofstadter is almost apologetic in his introduction about his apparent espousing of Zen philosophy, almost distancing himself from it to maintain credibility with serious scientific peers. It’s actually pretty clear in the book that he is not ultimately sympathetic to it anyway, but he does provide a good summary of where it fits as a world view, which for me suggests he does really “get it”.

His baffling “MU Offering” dialogue does not itself actually provide much enlightenment on the Zen koan and string folding stuff, but the following chapter “Mumon and Godel” is excellent.

“Zen is holism, carried to its logical extreme. If holism says that things can only be understood in wholes, not as sums of their parts, Zen goes one further in maintaining that the world cannot be broken into parts at all” [by the duality of the words we subjects use to name distinct objects within it.] “Zen, eg in its koans, is trying to break the mind of logic.”

Zen breaks this logical comfort zone, but doesn’t itself provide any real alternative. To study it is to miss the point of it. The “way” is unattainable, to name it is to lose it.

As well as drawing parallels in subject matter and ways of looking at reality between Zen and Escher, he also draws on frequent examples of Magritte and I notice also that “The Mind’s I” has Magritte’s “The False Mirror” on the cover. Magritte is a recurring theme.

[Post-note : If M hade been a note in post-Bach musical notation, as is E, my guess is Hofstadter could just as easily have named his book Godel, Magritte, Bach with no loss of meaning. Ultimately, he makes almost as much reference to the work of Magritte as he does Escher.]

It’s becoming apparent that GEB is mainly about languages, mathematical and typographical, the communication of information, and the properties of encoding on multiple levels, patterns within and upon patterns. ‘There is no such thing as an uncoded message. There are only messages written in more or less familiar codes; when familiar it ceases to appear like a code.” Reminded me very strongly of all language being metaphors, just that some metaphors are so long established they are dead, are no more, ceased to be, fallen off their perch, pushing up the daisies, gone to meet their maker. (Pythons, with apologies to Lakoff)

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[Post Note: Hofstadter takes his linguistic, syntactical, algorithmic ideas to the extreme in the creation of semantics here “Fluid Concepts and Creative Analogies“. Some things do get “created”. Recommended.]

Huxley (Darwin’s bulldog) – The physical world has causal closure. Physical things are caused by physical things. The biological brain is part of that physical world. IF the mind is not physical, then it cannot cause physical things to happen, and must just be a by-product, and epi-phenomenon, of the physical. Mind and mental things are just the “hum” of the brain machine, not the cause of anything.

Yeah, close. Of course the theological response is that divine intervention closes the causality between the spiritual and the physical. The real problem is the word IF. Better conclusion is that mind, free-will, intention, etc are also physical. Where’s the problem ?

This one is running and running …. more on the decision making behind the Iraq invasion from The Downing Street Memo.

The point of interest for me is not so much the outrage that this clearly happens (happened) at high level, but that it is in fact how most decisions are reasoned in real life.

Julian Baggini article at Butterflies and Wheels. Subject close to my heart, but this article is mainly pointing out the rhetorical extremes between explanation and none, rather than the relative qualities of arguments.

Some good points in the article about the human need for an explanation to accept, even where there there isn’t one available of any quality.

[This is an christian evangelical example again, Billy Graham in this case. See also Scary Ted Haggard arguments justifying proselytising in the US Air Force academy story, reported here at BBC, and more references to US government and president links.]

Interesting logo from Chevron built up of the word “energy” in many languages, decoded for us by Language Hat.

According to Cringley [via Jorn] Last week’s news, but intriguing. You read it there first.