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Goldstein on Literary Spinoza

Robbie & Rosie bought me Michael Della Rocca’s “Oxford Handbook of Spinoza” as a birthday gift. It was one of those on the book list, but which was a little pricey as an academic textbook, primarily for my interest in the one chapter mentioned previously, so it is great to have the full text of Rebecca Goldstein’s 40 page contribution on “Literary Spinoza” not just the discussion of it in that linked post.

My interest is quite specific, as with the previous post reviewing Rushdie’s “Victory City”, in narrative inspiration for my own writing project. In this case the philosophical content of Melville’s “Moby Dick” is directly relevant to my own 200 year narrative, but of course Goldstein covers many more Spinoza inspired literary sources. Win, win.

As well as Herman Melville, we have George Eliot, Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Frederich Holderlin, William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Novalis (von Hardenberg), Heinrich Heine, Berthold Auerbach, Matthew Arnold, Erwin Kolbenheyer, Jorge Luis Borges, Bashevis Singer, Bernard Malamud, Zbigniew Herbert, David Ives, Eugene Ostashevsky and Goce Smilevski.

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PS – Link to a critical piece by Galen Barry questioning the audience for and the value of Della Rocca’s book.

“Despite the quality of the contributions, I do wonder whom the book is intended for.”

In many ways this criticism is symptomatic of the problem that Spinoza is helping us with. Why should we value object(ive)s as more important than qualities?

PPS – where did I just see another “Novalis” reference?!?

Everything I want is in my words.

I mentioned Salman Rushdie’s latest “Victory City” a couple of times. First impressions here, and again once I’d got into reading it here.

I noted in that last post that there were already lots of real-life philosophical applications and that the clever narrative tricks in the trajectory of the 250 year first-person story were providing an inspiration to my own story writing.

Well, I’ve completed it.

Although it is essentially fantasy fiction – magical-realism – there are an intriguing number of historical and literary acknowledgements in the end papers (*) – so god only knows how much actual reality is in there?  Pretty tough going for this anglophone – so many “foreign” names and multiple familial / patronymic / gendered / local variations of these, but the style is unmistakable. Flowery classical – ancient & mediaeval Indian – poetry, punctuated with 21st C Anglo-Saxon punchlines and laugh-out-loud wit. Plenty of birth, death and marriage too, especially death and disfiguration as one might expect from 250 years of imperial dynastic family saga, but mostly humanity seasoned with love and wisdom, not to mention more than a little magic and the gods in their rightful places

I never did make notes of the early philosophical gems and it may be some time before I can give it the attention of a full re-read, but I did note a later passage that nicely illustrates the style I had in mind:

[After PK having been banished by the king from visiting her own statue and forbidden from ever publishing her own words and with MA having claimed he had committed a copy to memory anyway.]

‘That’s fine,’ said [PK] ‘My history will not be written in stone.’

Once the king had gone, she turned to [MA]. ‘What you said wasn’t true,’ she said. ‘You risked your life for a lie.’

‘There are times when a lie matters more than a life,’ he replied. ‘This was such a time.’

[-]

‘Sometimes I hate men,’ [TD] said when [MA] had gone.

‘I had a daughter that thought that way,’ [PK] told her. ‘She preferred the company of women and was happiest in [the] enchanted forest. And if by “men” you mean our recent royal visitor, that is understandable. But [MA] is a good man surely. And what about your husband?’

‘[He] is all plots and conspiracies,’ [TD] answered. ‘He’s all secrets and schemes. The court is full of factions and he knows how to set one group against another to balance [his interests].’

[-]

‘Tell me this,’ [PK] said.’I know princesses are imprisoned by their crowns and find it hard to choose their own path, but in your heart, what do you want from life?’

‘Nobody ever asked me that,’ [TD] said. ‘Not even my mother. Duty, duty, et cetera. Writing down your verses is the only thing that fills my heart.’

‘But for yourself, what?’

[TD] took a breath. ‘In the street of foreigners,’ she said, ‘I get envious. They just come and go, no ties, no duties, no limits. They have stories from everywhere and I’m sure that when they go somewhere else we become the stories they tell people there. They even tell us stories about ourselves and we believe them even if they get everything upside down. It’s like they have the right to tell the whole world the story of the whole world, and then just … move on. So. Here’s my stupid idea. I want to be a foreigner. I’m sorry to be so foolish,’

‘I had a daughter like that too,’ [PK] said. ‘And you know what? She became a foreigner and I think she was happy.’

[-]

‘Can I ask you the same question you asked me?’ [TD] said. [-]

[PK] smiled. ‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘But my time of desiring is over. Now everything I want is in my words, and the words are all I need.’

 

“There are times when
a lie matters more than a life.
This was such a time.”

“But my time of desiring is over.
Now everything I want is in my words,
and the words are all I need.”

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Post Note (*) Fascinating coincidence the day after finishing the book, BBC aired an In Our Time episode on the Sanskrit epic the “Ramayana“. Fascinating because the “Ramayana” arose in the axial age, 500-400 BCE whereas Rushdie’s “Viyanagar” empire sources are writings and retellings from 1000-1500 AD/CE and yet so many of the same elements. Human governance, individual and social morality in the wider cosmos. Divine monkeys in the forest. ‘Twas ever thus.

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How do Baggini, Churchland and Flanagan Think?

Baggini, Churchland, Flanagan in dialogue around the topic of Julian’s latest book  “How to Think Like a Philosopher” – or as he preferred it “How NOT to think like a philosopher” >>> rough notes:

All positive about Dennett, McIntyre, Wittgenstein, Descartes, Hume, etc. More than wondering in vacuo – adjacent sciences matter.

Glad to hear it’s Chalmers who’s nuts according to Churchland, I think they’re both nuts. Sure, thought experiments are useful exercises to clarify thinking but they’re not intuitively privileged pipelines to the truth. (Same with metaphors and understanding.)

Hard problem 2500 years old before Chalmers gave it a memetically catchy name ensnaring a whole generation of contemporary young philosophers in what will turn out to be a mere “itch” along the way. (Debunked idea already IMHO)

Sciences have neighbouring sciences and philosophy is no different. The boundaries, extensions and overlaps need to be understood. (Open systems, complex adaptive systems.)

I actually think in her criticisms of neuro-philosophers Pat is out of touch with 21st C reality in this field – criticising outdated caricatures, strawmen. Pity.

Apart from open-mindedness, avoiding misleading hunches / confirmation-biases, not personalising ad-hominem positions (see Churchland / Chalmers), valuing empiricism in general, but questioning meaning of (seemingly objective / empirical) facts, no dumb questions etc- unarguable really – nothing too mind-blowing.

Thinking 101 – philosophical or otherwise.

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Pat Churchland – “Touching a Nerve (The Self as Brain).”
Owen Flanagan – “The Geography of Morals”

Both added to book list.

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Some Good Writing?

Trying to get back into writing, clearing away some reading after a week on vacation and shaking-off another damn cold, I found myself reading some old posts, prompted by some link hits in the stats.

I’ve written some good stuff, if I say so myself. A lot of it concluding I really should stop noodling around blogging with the ideas and get creative and productive with the writing project itself. Here by way of example 3 consecutive posts from 5 years ago:

The first is simply a review of Baggini’s “How The World Thinks” – but with an exemplary dialogue with Bruce Adam in the comment thread below. Exemplary because we’re both being synthetic, constructive, as dialogue should be.

The expanding scope of that was clearly partly what prompted the second, but it’s a recurring topic, one I call #GoodFences these days but #RoseByAnyOtherName would do just as well. The whole “identity politics” of political correctness or wokeness inhibiting the common sense of – essential need for –  agreeing meaningful names for things. Identity before definition. (And I have a handful of other more comprehensive draft versions of this topic.)

“Just because we don’t want to pigeonhole doesn’t mean we should deny the existence of pigeons.”
Iain McGilchrist, TMWT p863.

The third post, the same day, is a private outline of “the book” sparked-off by the need to write. And here we are again, 5 years later.

Sevilla in Pictures

Don’t take many photos these days – even when being a tourist in a new location – so many others do and share publicly, so what’s the point of adding more? Loved Sevilla for its cafe / bar / bodega society amidst its rich historical geography – warm enough in February. Shout out to bodega Diaz-Salazar – sherries and flamenco on draft. Sevilla’s cathedral is as bonkers as its reputation. The bones of Columbus (aka Colon in this part of Spain) plus Chapels / Altars / Reliquaries-R-us in general.

Anyway – loved the “Giralda” tower that was originally the mosque minaret, complete with internal spiral ramp to allow the imam to proceed on horseback all the way to the belfry to call the faithful to prayer. Had to capture the one image above. ‘Nuff said. “Bring me the head of ….” Barry Cryer.

Value in Victory City

Started reading Salman Rushdie’s latest Victory City during the past week away in Sevilla. But for various reasons didn’t get much concentrated reading time and and am only part-way into Part 2 of 4 (*). It’s very good on so many levels and I want to continue with proper attention and concentration. As a novel, I’m reading it for what it is and not note-taking as I read, so I will have to do another pass to pick-up the references I’m going to need.

[(*) Post Note – fuller review on completion here.]

As well as the historical / mythical story, it is full of wit and practical philosophy from existence, meaning, creation, naming and reality to gender and sex roles. Striking for me, given my own writing project, is how to deal with the long time-scale in a narrative over many generations. In my own case I have a 200+ year timeline from early 1800’s to the present and I’ve been struggling with first-person and/or witness perspective to “narrate” the story. Rushdie’s heroine lives over 250 years which creates some very interesting problems for aging and relationships with other human characters. Also some reliance on the author’s summaries of earlier narrative by the heroine herself and even heads-up references to things that will happen long before they do. Clever. Fascinating inspiration.

Computing Machines?

[HOLD – Stub only …]

Yesterday Philip Ball posted this quip:

And then this was liked by Kevin Mitchell:

And Philip also tweeted these, liked by Kevin:

Image

And after @JustinCaouette shared this Templeton piece by Marcus Arvan a few days ago,

“Can Digital Computers Ever Achieve Consciousness?“

I was prompted to respond:

I skim read the piece and added:

And for good measure:

[This is just a stub for elaboration about biological (living, universal Turing) machines … Suffice to say, the claims to be pointing out misunderstandings are themselves misunderstandings]

And like my previous post …
it’s about properly recognising “complexity”.

Life More Fundamental Than Physics?

What goes around comes around – again – is a recurring feeling that suggests again that I should stop reading and focus on the writing. When I reviewed Unger and Smolin back in 2015 – on meta-laws being more fundamental than mathematical laws of physics – I noted another regular reference of mine – Brian Josephson – had published a paper on “Wheeler’s – Law Without Law”. I never did follow-up at the time, but thanks to a hit on the page above I was prompted to read it more closely (*).

What comes around for me is Cybernetics or “systems thinking”.

Like many physicists, Josephson talks throughout in terms of a “system” quite naturally when describing any set of physical entities and their interactions. The paper actually has a reference to Ross Ashby (1960) “Design for a Brain” but long before that reference occurs in the text, he’s already talking of “viable systems” (after Beer, not mentioned) and of “Yardley’s Circular Theory”. Although I was initially fascinated by the idea of circular causal logic implied in the name of such a theory, it turns out it refers to “circles” as units, unitary things or sets/collections/assemblies of things and their relations/links conveniently treated as wholes … and indeed tending to form or effectively behaving as wholes. Something not rigorously defined but discovered in the processes of participation, interaction and characterisation. Pretty much my working definition of a “system”. (Where is IDEF0 tool functionality when you need it to visualise the system circle<>link<>circle (Peircian semiotic triple) view of this world – aagghh!!)

Indeed his examples are homeo/thermo-static systems and “computer” systems. The two-way influence between systems as components in larger systems is self-reinforcing, tending to create and preserve such systems. Very much like life.

“the point is that the coupling between the systems concerned reduces the range of variation available to the joint system, while still making degrees of freedom available”

This reduction can be learned, or can be a natural phase-locking resonance.

And finally of course, the reason I made the Smolin<>Josephson connection he acknowledges Smolin as one of those already having suggested that “meta-laws” closer to those of biological evolution might underlie what appear empirically and mathematically to us as “laws” of physics.

Nothing new under the sun (again!)

[(*) Also I notice that whilst I didn’t follow-up the 2011 paper I did quite independently pick-up a speculative Brian Josephson lecture on the same content back in 2009. I really am going round and round, and need to get off the carousel so I can deliver some writing! – NB the presentation isn’t a great delivery by the Nobel prize-winner, so focus on the content if you can 🙂 Whole networks of connections model in there too. Even more significant in this 2023 context, the Ilexa Yardley contribution is explicitly in the space of systems thinking as an organisation response to complexity. ‘Twas ever cybernetics. Here she is in 2023 – all dreadfully self-promoting “I’ve found the secret to the universe” stuff, oh dear, what a pity. Still, she does pick-up on yet another angle where I do too. Navier-Stokes at all scales. Weirdly fascinating.]

[Aside – that self-reinforcement / preservation put me in mind of another meme that’s been nagging at me in recent days – what’s the name for the processes within typical microprocessors that error-correct over clock-cycles to keep interpreted digital values in range as the analogue values of actual electrical potentials drift? My claim the other day that even digital computers are analogue at root – it’s their architectural / systems design that generates the binary digital behaviour. There’s nothing alien about treating information in living things – mental states of living things – as “digital”.]

Deutsch Optimism

I hold David Deutsch to be one of the smartest thinkers I know.

Deutsch over Rovelli and Carroll

“Experience the thrill of the highest level of discourse available on the planet.”

Certainly his two books – “The Fabric of Reality” and “The Beginning of Infinity” made huge and permanent impressions. Also his constructor theory – with humans as the ultimate creative force – and collaboration with Chiara Marletto on this.

I don’t know any more about “Naval” (see footnote) but this chat is very enlightening on Deutsch’s position. Some of Deutsch’s recorded conversations can be difficult and disappointing – his geeky style without the benefit of editing for public consumption 🙂 – but as he says himself this interviewer asks good questions, and has clearly done his homework.

Anyway a few immediate notes, but a recommended listen either way, also with a complete transcript. Humans are special – a species by definition, as I keep pointing out – with our ability to use knowledge beyond mere Darwinian evolutionary information processes. Uniquely special in that regard. We have the wherewithal to create any future we value, but are always prone to making wrong decisions with the knowledge available to us. Which is why my focus is and always has been on what makes for a good human decision, a good collective human decision processes. Governance, cybernetics and systems thinking in my ongoing agenda. And in this conversation we pick-up quite early on whether that means rational, and what does rational mean anyway. (Lots of the power of AGI / ChatGPT is the human ingenuity in selecting which pieces of output are valuable & interesting.)

Optimism is about what we can do with the right motivations, NOT what will necessarily happen.

One more note: He very carefully qualifies “falsifiability” as part of a good explanation in science (as opposed to a general fact) and goes on to explain why knowledge beyond this aspect of science is part of constructor theory work “with Chiara”. (Uncomfortable with narrow Popperian view on criticisable / falsifiable – highlighted “reach” as a key feature in previous readings.)

[Is this the dialogue where the Everettian “Many Worlds” question arose most recently? Nope, time sequence wrong.]

Who Naval is – remains mysterious – but he blogs lots of interesting stuff, shared via Twitter (2m followers!) – aha, I see previous stardom Naval Ravikant.

Defining Concepts – Not

Mentioned Matt Segall (Footnotes2Plato / @ThouArtThat) in an aside note to this recent post on Rudolf Steiner. and I have acknowledged him before here. (He’s a Whitehead scholar with whom I’ve engaged once or twice on questions of process philosophy and McGilchrist space (?) – in comments and tweet threads, but I realise I probably don’t give him enough credit because I’ve not really sought out his work directly until now.)

He shared this little (under 10 mins) talk in that aside above – on the face of it about Steiner and his Philosophy of Freedom – but it’s well worth it for his discussion of some very basic distinctions at the root of so much philosophy within the scope of my own agenda. There are some philosophical questions that are frankly at the root of any and all human endeavours.

I captured a few notes/quotes/paraphrases I find relevant:

The relationship between percepts and concepts, between observation and thinking, is a “dilemma” present in all of philosophy. The dilemma of philosophy that turns up in many different ways – mind-body dualism, relations between ideas and things in the world generally.

Oh yes. Been one of my musings recently that all our bigger problems (yes even the god-awful poly-perma-crisis) rest on just two or three fundamental ontological and epistemological questions – about what we know about or mean by “exist in reality”. (I was motivated to summarise these somehow, and may do so after listening to this.)

The difficulty of defining concepts. Concepts are different to their names, concepts cannot be reduced to words. We run into problems when we attempt to define anything (as the friends on the other dialogue are clearly discovering, and the reason Matt captured these thoughts in a separate video essay).

We can never get to the essence of the concept in our attempts at definition, we can only ever arrive at descriptions of certain sets of characteristics and aspects of “an entity” – even though we seem to be able to intuitively grasp the concept as we come to know it. This difficulty is frequently vexing.

Oh yes. Hold your definition (Dennett). Definition as a coffin (Levenchuk). And this is frankly the point my #GoodFences mantra. The whole post-post-modern / meta-modern stance in reaction to the logical positivism project.

Are we discovering or creating the essence of such concepts? There’s clearly a participatory process happening. Steiner and Barfield. Clearly something has happened in the evolution of human consciousness – since the Greeks – that has created this distinction between percepts and concepts.

Biblical allegory with Adam before and after the fall. Previously he “knew” the other animals in the garden, could name them and “speak” with them. But “epistemologically severed” after eating of the fruit of knowledge, lost direct access to the Logos.

Oh yes. Knowing in the biblical sense. The Savoir/Connaitre or Kennen/Wissen distinction we’ve lost in English. Fundamental to my own metaphysical scheme.

We had to invent “isms” to recreate connections between the knowledge and the known. Physical science has continued to advance its mathematical understanding, but somehow happy to leave intrinsic nature as something absurd (Feyman again) that can’t necessarily be understood at a human level. Another symptom of “the fall” – the split between percept and concept.

So now – Goethe & participation, something new, we can’t “undo” the fall. We have to artistically / creatively participate. An alchemical call to collaborate with nature on this task. Steiner (and Barfield?) are drawing our attention to this problem of separation and the need to bring them back together again. A problem of the “I” – being our identification within the world that connects these halves. Pre-fall symbolic activity of creating our whole self with our “thinking” (in the most general sense). Holy task, a sacrement?

Oh yes. Whatever we arrive at as our “worldview” and however we get there, having re-integrated percept and concept in “us” we are not going to be able to represent it as simply one or the other, or one empirically proving or wholly defining the other, and there must remain an element of “faith” in the value of the integrated view we’ve achieved. In my position this is “Sacred Naturalism” or natural theology.

Nice one – beautifully done Matt. I’m going to have to take a look over at the original Steiner discussion this spun out of.

(PS – will add refs to my points in those inserted thoughts above at some point.)