Where is the dog?

Dog blog 21 - 1 + 1 = 2?

2011-10-23T12:45:00.002+01:00

1 + 1 = 2?
The Dog has never been that great at maths. Dave - pictured with Sammy in their "Lord of the Sith" poses for their weekly Star Wars night - thinks he's slightly better at it, but only because he can count up to eleven.

One of the most baffling things for the Dog is the idea that "1 + 1 = 2". Dave tried to explain it to me once using apples. We were originally going to try to work out what "2 + 1 = 3" means, but Dave was hungry and mumbled something about that being terribly very complicated - and ate one of them.

Dave tries to explain it all
"So here's one apple. A tasty pink lady apple.", said Dave. "And here's another one.".

"That's two apples. So 1 + 1 = 2". Job done Dave thought.

"But what if one of the apples is green, and the other one is red?", I asked.

Now that didn't make a lot of sense to Dave. He's colour blind for a start, like most dogs, so wasn't really sure what I was getting at: "There'd still be two apples".

"Ok Dave, but what if it was an apple and an orange?".

"Well, there'd be just one apple then."

"Yes", I said. "But there'd be 2 pieces of fruit.".

This was all a bit too much for Dave who, by now, was getting hungry again and decided to see what would happen if he ate both apples. Which unfortunately backfired on our endeavours. And, as it turned out, on Dave a couple of hours later. Apples disagree with him.

Something missing?
What "1 + 1 = 2" doesn't really tell you is what you're counting. With an apple and an orange, you get 2 pieces of fruit - for sure - but it doesn't make much sense to the Dog to describe that as "1 + 1 = 2". It seems more accurate to say "1a(f) + 1o(f) = 2f(a + o)". Where the "f" represents fruit of course.

"1 + 1 = 2", then, seems to be saying that "there are 2 items of the same class". That's easier maybe on the right hand side of the equation. But tricky on the left: 1a is not the same as 1o. It's only when they're accepted as belonging to the same unifying class "f" that they can be counted together.

The loneliest number
And there seems to be a problem for "1" on its own. Are there really 2 identical "1"s? In every way? Can ideas occupy the same space-time? If they can't, are they in fact truly "identical"? The proposition itself seems to suggest that, in some way, the later "1" is an "other" 1.

All that makes the Dog's head hurt, and I think it's because for all its appearance of logical purity, "1 + 1 = 2" is actually more "open textured" a phrase than that: you still need to read in the answer to "well, one what?".

Enough brain hurty for the now. Off to chase rabbits. And to make it easier, I'm just going to chase one.

Dog blog 20 - "no trainers"

2011-10-16T18:05:00.001+01:00

"No trainers"
The Dog went for a little run round the park today, with Lenny, Bonzo and Poppy (pictured here in their finest fettle). Most fun, even though there were no rabbits to chase. Bonzo had his ball though - on one of those springy long stick things that makes it easier to throw. Fab.

Pootling
We then thought we'd pootle along to the Botanic gardens, where we were met by a very interesting sign: "no jogging". This started a lot of yabbering about it, us being of course, along with Dave (indisposed unfortunately today, away off looking for blue mice), all founder members of the Dog Philosophy Club.

We thought of some difficulties with the sign: "jogging" is fiddly to pin down - when does it become "running"?; when does it become "walking"? What if you were chasing after a small child who was about to fall into a pond - would that be "jogging"? More likely "running". What if you were doing something only for a couple of seconds that was faster than walking - would that be "jogging" for at least some of that brief period of time?

"No trainers"
Poppy thought we could save ourselves the trouble by just saying "no trainers". It would be much harder, she thought, to do anything much other than "walking" in shoes. But then we'd stop a lot of owners from being able to enter the gardens - on a straw paw poll, over half were wearing some type of trainer. And we'd then get into the bother about working out what a "trainer" really was. What about those sort of climbing type boots which you see hill runners wearing? Or trendy plimsoles that you wouldn't really want to do anything other than walking in? Tricky.

After a lot of thought, we decided that "no jogging" probably wasn't so bad after all. What really mattered, said Bonzo, was that it stopped most people from jogging round the gardens, and that most people had an idea that it meant something other than walking, and probably something most people would choose to do for fun (if they liked jogging), rather than do to stop children from falling into ponds.

And that, pitched in Lenny, is much the same sort of dilemma for any rule drafting - does it matter so much what the language means in terms of understanding it around the margins, or is what matters more the effect the rule has on the overall constituency of persons whose behaviour you're trying to influence? If what you're really trying to do is stop most people from doing sports jogging or running round the park, "no jogging" is probably as good as any - why not use that one, and see how it goes. "No trainers" goes too far, and stops an awful lot of people from doing anything in the park - as they can't get in.

All very interesting we thought, as we all jumped in the pond - and promptly got banned from the gardens for a day. Even though there wasn't a sign about that.

Dog blog 19 - Courage

2011-06-19T20:20:00.007+01:00

Courage

Look at Dave's friend Sally. She's off to try her new hang-gliding kit in the park.

"Gives you a really good lift for chasing rabbits", she says.

Now flying like that takes a certain amount of courage. Which prompted the Dog to do a little musing or two whilst chewing a Bonio ("the nation's favourite dog biscuit").

Quick sniff in the dictionary

First, just to be a bit sure of himself, the Dog thought he'd double check what "courage" actually means; he'd come unstuck before confusing the, fairly rudimentary, words, "now don't you eat that cake...".

The Oxford English Dictionary ("the definitive record of the English language") had a nice little definition, tucked away at sense 4:

"...that quality of mind which shows itself in facing danger without fear or shrinking; bravery, boldness, valour."

Now, on that definition, Sally is courage-max, for sure, doing her flyings around the park. But what about a softer version? For example avoiding shrinking when faced making a decision to do, or not to do, something; particularly when you don't know the full facts (see Dog blog 8 - how much do you need to know?)? The Greeks thought this was one of the virtues, one of the foundations of being a moral being.

V-Power, unleaded

Courage in that sense is an interesting one. Yes, we could come to a defensible position on something, like: (1) Dave observing Sally making a number of flights safely in her new outfit; (2) Dave being the same size and weight to Sally; and (3) Dave thinking it's probably OK for him to have a go too.

But it doesn't quite feel enough of a motivating force to go and actually do (3). The fuel, if you like, for the decision isn't quite there. And lesser dogs might agree with Dave on the logic of what he's saying, but not have the presence of mind to go and do (3).

You can acquire more courage with experience, but sometimes experience can make us more fearful, and shrinking. As fellow Dog, Tony Grayling, wrote in his nice little book, "The Meaning of Things" (at p21-22):

"Ordinary life evokes... extraordinary courage... because both the chances and inevitabilities of life - grief, illness, disappointment, pain, struggle, poverty, loss, terror, heartache: all of them common features of the human condition, and all of them experienced by hundreds of thousands of people every day - demand kinds of endurance and bravery that make clambering up Everest seem an easier alternative. ... To lie sleepless with pain at night, or to wake up every morning and feel the return of grief, yet to get up and carry on as best one can is courage itself."

And my favourite line:

"Moreover, courage can only be felt by those who are afraid".

And there's the rub. The logical calculations and second guesses we make in our lives to make decisions that matter to us are not enough in themselves. They need the fuel to take us across the line to decide to do something.

In the cases of the things we fear, or shrink away from, we need a little courage. And we should also remember - because we all need a little pat on the head sometimes - that, in making that decision to stay, to go, to stop, or to do, we are being courageous. Just like Sally.

Dog blog 18 - Being Happy

2011-05-30T19:49:00.016+01:00

Being Happy
There are 50 million results if you ask my friend, Mr Google, about "being happy". I suspect though that as you start to get beyond page 5, the results bear no resemblance to what you were really looking for.

Actually Dave (see, e.g., Dog Blog 17 - Semicolons) told me that last stat - which was totally made up. Interestingly, there was still interesting stuff (doubly interestingly, and now triply so) on page 5 of Mr Google's offerings: where, among other things, Michelle Obama suggests that you need to "give yourself permission" to be happy.

Happy thinky

Fellow Dog, Matthew Pianalto, had a thinky about some of this stuff. He points out that there are a number of different ways you might look at happiness: broadly psychological things that lead to happiness (going for a walk with a nice ball to chase, or a zen like state when chasing the ball) and the destination itself. The second bit is very tricky, at least for dogs like me and Dave. The Greeks had a go at thinking what the destination might be, and some of them came up with the idea of Eudaimonia. Which is about the idea of "human flourishing"; which might make you happy (like when Dave's pals Charlie and Mick were on the above day out at Lassie's house); or might be a result of you being happy.

A "state" of happiness

All that is a bit tricky. And fiddly. When Dogs start trying to talk about ideas involving emotions, like happiness, it can be quite hard to disentangle things like reasons why you might want to do something (e.g. chewing a dental bone stick is most probably going to be both fun and good for your teeth) and the state felt when actually doing the thing (e.g. a zen like state of chewing) from more abstract ideas like "human flourishing".

Having good teeth

Dave and I both like chewing our dental sticks, and it results in a state of canine canine flourishing. That is good for dogs, and we both have fun doing it.

But, this broader "state" of flourishing is more than just about me and Dave. And there's the rub: when you start to talk about psychologically motivated terms within a broader Dog community, you necessarily have to remove some of the individual emotion and experience from it: "flourishing" is a different experience for both me and Dave (as a matter of fact, Dave cracked one of his teeth on a real bone the other day, after eating a lot of ice cream).

In other words, "happiness" has different constituents within the broader community, the "state" of happiness. Which makes it a fairly slippery tool when used in that way for analysing ethical reasons why we might want to do something that results in this overall happy state (see for example one of the Dog's faves, Peter Singer, whose philosophy is based on that very idea): you have to compromise, and dilute.

If you were really clever, you might be able to attach different weightings to happiness through something like John Rawl's difference principle; but that is all too hard and tricky for me. And I'm not sure it would do much good: it's tricky enough trying to find out if Dave is really enjoying his dental stick or enjoying it nearly as much as me. I'm not sure what Lassie & Co pictured above would have made of it either.

Dog's breakfast

Having said all that, we were both quite cheery and quiet for about ten minutes while we did our chewings, so there's certainly a lot to be said for being happy. But how useful is it for saying more than that, or to draw meaningful big conclusions from it? Using it as an ethical tool or political tool brings other ideas into the mix, other constituencies; the overall "state" of happiness then becomes a hotchpotch of ideas and experiences.

Maybe then that's just a question of defining your terms. But that's my point: "happiness" is far too woolly on its own; a dog's breakfast of an idea: very nice to eat, but not always so nice to look at... .

Dog blog 17 - Semicolons

2010-03-16T09:20:00.031Z

Semicolons

The Dog has been spending a long sojourn in his bed with his squeaky toys (Dog blog 10 - plugging in); contemplating winter, and exercise. Spring however, like Dave here with his favourite ball, has finally sprung.

In doing his own springings, and writing that first sentence, the Dog thought he'd better have a quick check about when it's OK to use a semicolon.

Sniffy nose; and things

Semicolons fascinate me, and I like to keep my big sniffy nose out for them when I'm doing my readings.

Apparently the ancient Greeks used them as question marks - and they started to be used in English around the 16th Century. Shakespeare used them a bit, but they didn't really catch on till the 17th Century. My copy of the 3rd Edition of Fowler's Modern English Usage tells me that the name "semicolon" was first recorded in English in 1644; by which time, folk, and Dogs, were getting a bit carried away. Then the craze was for dashes apparently. For a short interesting history, have a look at a fun little article by Paul Collins.

Tricky

Using semicolons can be a bit tricky. The Dog mainly uses them for separating closely connected clauses. As in, "Dave gave one of his woofy sighs; he was a bit bored.". You also see them in lists, and Americans in particular like to use use them like a "big comma" (more on that below). Here's Carol Courtwright explaining when she thinks you're supposed to use them:

Semicolons and proper grammar, like.

I find the social attitudes to punctuation interesting. Particularly because I think they're slightly different to the attitudes to grammar.

Take grammar, Black English Vernacular (or "BEV") for example, which is a dialect of English. It's looked down upon by non-dialect English speakers (i.e. "pure" English speakers) as ungrammatical. But it's actually entirely grammatical, in terms of the deeper structure rules it obeys. One of the theories of one of the Dog's faves, Steven Pinker, is that our brains are geared to create language. We have, in the title of one of his books, a language instinct. So as children learn BEV from their parents, the children's brains do all the necessary sorting and grammarings. Here's a bit from Steven on how our brains approach thought.

Why do some speakers of pure English look down on BEV? For many different reasons. Some might be labelled "cultural" (a perceived an eroding of the pure language), or "protectionist" or racist. And, I think many are to an extend guilty of a lack of understanding about the deeper structure of language; about the way we process and learn it.

But I think the attitudes towards punctuation are bit different. Punctuation obeys the rules we set down for it, socially constructed and preserved by our education and printing systems. And they're completely made up (you'll remember they started out life as question marks): I doubt there is a "semicolon instinct".

The key difference with grammar, I think, is that the dislike of semicolons is a kind of inverted snobbery. Take writer Kurt Vonnegut, who once said, “never use semi-colons. What are they good for? What are you supposed to do with them? You’re reading along, and then suddenly, there it is. What does it mean? All semi-colons do is suggest you’ve been to college.”.

And because they are so much more an artificially constructed practice, versus grammar, social attitudes will be more prevalent in determining whether semicolons will survive.

Semicolons are alive; for now.

From what my friend Mr Google tells me, there's quite a fondness out there for semicolons. There's a lot of stuff about them on the web. And proper fans too:

Bonkers.

I've kept hold of a nice story from the New York Times. Neil Neches, a worker for the New York Subway, was commended for his use of the semicolon in the placard he wrote. Neil said, "Please put it in a trash can; that's good news for everyone". Nice. (Though I have, until now, privately wondered whether he might have used a colon instead.)

And some very prominent folks still use them. Have a look at anything written by Barack Obama. He uses them a lot. American Dogs particularly like to use them for prosodic (the Dog's favourite new word) purposes. Like you're doing your speakings, and you're being instructed to take a breath. Or in a less fancy way of speaking, like a "big comma".

So are semicolons dying out? Just like their early days, I suspect they'll go in and out of fashion for a while. But I think they'll gradually die out from their original use, and survive instead as winks in "emoticons". Like Dave puts in at the end of one of his text messages when he says:

"someone has stolen the cake from the table ; )" .

Meaning of course, Dave. Which reminds me, I'd better scoot; Dave is outside, together with owner and favourite ball. Rabbit chasing beckons... .

Dog blog 16 - Christmas time!

2009-12-20T20:47:00.029Z

Christmas time!

That time of year again. And it's great for most of us Dogs - there's so much food around. And it's actually been snowing today - hooray!!! Some Dogs have a bit of a tough time of it though over Christmas, so I'm pleased to see that my pals at Pedigree Chum have an adopt a puppy project. Have a look.

'tis the season

Us Dogs don't take this time of year too seriously; we sometimes even take a short break from philosophy. Maybe have a sniff at what's on the table, check no one's looking - and pinch a sausage or two. Or a bit of cake. Then maybe do a bit of philosophizing about will, responsibility and accountability.

Dog chaos avoidance

On a serious note, throughout the festive period, it's crucial that Dog chaos avoidance is observed at all times. Above left, I've put on a photo of an evening spent with my fellow Dogs, Masie and Mike, at their house last New Year. Masie is wearing the hat. It was very, very good fun. Drink was taken - as you can see; but Dog chaos avoidance was observed. Unlike yesterday, when Dave and I went round to Barry's house:

Poor Barry. Dog chaos: to be avoided at all costs.

Dave at Christmas

Dave has been primarily focusing on two things this week. Firstly, he's been spending a lot of time learning to impersonate Christopher Walken (Dave loves impressions). He's been particularly taken with this one:

Secondly, Dave's been getting very excited about the prospect of Santa coming to visit: he's written to Santa asking for a pair of smelly old shoes to chew.

Stories

Throughout, we've been wondering what Santa might look like.

Dave thinks he really looks like Casey, pictured left: Dave's been convinced for some time there's been some sort of cover up. So, being Dogs, we decided to do a bit of Christmas digging. And, sure enough, we found this little story: straight from the coca-cola company themselves.

There's certainly a bit about elves in it. But not really much to support the whole gamut - or even a bit of a gamut, or a gamutette (an entirely made up Dog word) - of Dave's Santa Dog conspiracy.

Mercifully though, Dave's been quite distracted by the whole Christopher Walken thing this week, so we've managed to avoid the palaver and rigmarole that was the blue mouse investigation (see Dog blog 11 - blue mice).

Interestingly, we also unearthed this story in our diggings:

Clearly, there's plenty lot of stories around at this time of year. I'll ponder these two, Santa and Horus, once I've pinched another bit of cake - and chased those rabbits round the garden... .

Dog blog 15 - ice cream

2009-11-28T10:58:00.031Z

Ice cream

Dave and I have been immersing ourselves recently in the philosophy of language.

There's a lot of stuff in it like: Smith says "A" to Jones; what does Smith mean by "A"? Can Smith successfully communicate "A" to Jones? And what does "meaning" itself mean?

Tricky. Although Dave and I were both delighted to discover that philosopher Willard Van Orman Quine bases one of his theories on a thought experiment involving rabbits.

Worry

Anyway, in doing all our readings, Dave and I managed to get ourselves quite worried about whether we were actually understanding each other at all.

I mentioned to Dave one afternoon that I was "particularly fond of vanilla ice cream, on a cone". But could we be confident that we really knew what each other meant? A worry indeed.

Incidentally, that's Bernard above, demonstrating the Dog's preferred ice cream eating technique. Getting it all over your face and nose. And making a bit of a mess. Brilliant.

The philosophical problem of vanilla ice cream

Vanilla ice cream poses a classic problem in philosophy of language. John Locke was wondering about it way back in the 17th Century, in his book An Essay Concerning Human Understanding. John used flowers as his example (violets and marigolds); Dogs prefer ice cream though.

I might have in my mind the idea of a lightly flavoured vanilla ice cream, on a cone, like Bernard is eating; Dave on the other hand (not unlikely, I might add), might be thinking of something utterly bland, sitting atop a banana. Perhaps on a banana split, like this (but in Dave's case with vanilla ice cream scoops only):

Towards understanding

Faced with such possible levels of confusion and misunderstanding, what were we to do?

Dave had the idea. We'd go down to our favourite local ice cream van. And order two pretty (in both senses) identical cones, with a similarly sized scoop of vanilla ice cream. From the same tub. And then we'd eat our ice creams, and the cone, in Bernard's make-a-mess-all-over-your-face style.

And that is exactly what we did. Here's Dave getting his ice cream and cone:

I then said, again, I was "pretty fond of vanilla ice cream on a cone" and added "much like this one". Dave and I were now reasonably confident that we had a sufficient level of shared experience with which to make sense of "vanilla ice cream", "cone" and "much like this one". Although we then started worrying whether and how I might communicate the idea of "fondness"... .

Communication breakdown?

A problem in philosophy of language is whether we can successfully communicate with one another. Like me and Dave yapping about our ice creams: can we really understand one another, or are we doomed to misunderstand?

I think we can. Language is practised and interpretative. By "practised" I mean that I don't just talk at Dave: I have a conversation with him. By "interpretative" I mean that, whatever I say to Dave, both he and I still have to work out what each other means. And if we're being diligent, check that each other has "got the gist" of what the other is saying.

Tolerance

In doing all that interpreting, I think we need to accept (and not worry) that there is a natural tolerance in language. I'll try to come back to this idea in another Dog Blog.

When I say "I am particularly fond of vanilla ice cream, on a cone", the words "fond", "vanilla" and "cone" are flexible. Dave and I can have fairly different experiences of these concepts, and yet (I think), I can still successfully communicate to him the overall idea, or sense, behind the sentence. Which is, that based on my experiences of "vanilla ice cream" and "cones" (both of which vary depending on what and where I'm eating), I generally find eating them pleasurable.

It's not critical to the success of the communication of the overall idea that Dave and I share identical experiences of the underlying constituents of the sentence: similar is enough. And that's where the tolerance bit comes in: the overall sense of the sentence is still successfully communicated even if I'm thinking of my ice cream on its cone and Dave is thinking of one of his fairly bland ice creams on a cone. We can calibrate our understanding of these flexible words, if need be, by checking with one another what we think each other means. By talking to one another.

That's a lot of thinky think for one morning. Rabbit time now. I'll leave you with a young John Searle on philosophy of language, his interesting idea of "speech acts", and his dog:

Dog blog 14 - being nice

2009-09-06T08:47:00.028+01:00

Being nice

Some moral philosophers talk about words having "thick" and "thin" moral meanings.

Bernard Williams (guest starring in Dog blog 6 - multi-dimensional morality) used to talk about that sort of thing.

The thin (and thick) of it

Thin words are words like "good", "right" or "ought" .

They can very slippery. Like one of the Dog's squeaky toys (see Dog blog 10 - plugging in) if the Dog left it outside in the rain. And maybe on the grass too - very slippery indeed.

Not a lot sticks to a toy like that, and different Dogs can mean different things when they get one of those in their mouths.

Ought

Take "ought" for example. That can mean a lot of different things. Here's an interesting talk by Judith Thomson on some of them:

Judith also talks about toasters. And, importantly, Dogs get a mention too.

Thick words
Thick words are much much stickier. Just like my old blue rubber ball that I've been chewing on and off since I was a pup: grass, dirt, slobber - they all stick to it. And it's a bit smelly.

Thick works might be "betrayal", "brutality" and "cowardice". These are some of Bernard's examples in my yellow Philosophy book (see the Dog's faves on the right). Like my blue rubber ball, a lot of meaning sticks to these, even if a different Dog has the ball in his mouth.

Telling it like it is

These thicker moral chew toys tell you a bit more about what's going on without you always having to get other chew toys in to understand them. Thin toys need other toys around (and usually a few thick ones) for Dogs to understand what each thin toy is supposed to mean, or do.

Take "right" or "good" for example. As in "it's right (or good) to help old ladies carry their shopping".

"Right" is hanging a bit on its own there: it needs other ideas to help explain it. And it gives very little away on what psychological factors might be kicking around to motivate you to help an old lady with her shopping.

Why be nice?

An interesting thing to think about thicker moral words is how much motivation they have built in for doing the thing they're referring to.

Which got me to wondering about the moral use of "nice". As in "that was a nice thing to do". Or "be nice to Dave and don't bite his ears" (Dave features in Dog blog 10 - blue mice). Or "it's nice to help old ladies carry their shopping".

I think there's moral content (or "value") in "nice" when used like that.

And I think it's a bit thicker and more sticky a chew toy than "good" is: "being nice" to others has more psychological content. "Being nice" to people is usually done to make others feel better, feel valued, or just a bit cheerier. Like me bringing Dave a slice of cake if he's feeling a bit down. You might think of that as "being nice". It might make you (or, in this case, me) feel nice too.

In the (cake) mix

Importantly, I think "being nice" has psychological content necessarily mixed up in its action; which "being good" need not.

I need to make Dave cheerier, to have had some postive feeling created at least, to have succeded in being nice to him: if the cake effort had been a disaster, and made Dave worse (and a bit grumpy), I might have met his reaction with a (slightly hurt) excuse, "I was only trying to be nice!".

I think "being nice" also hints at some of my psychological drivers for being nice; why I might have brought the slice of cake. For example, out of my concern for him.

Being nice - and not getting carried away

"Being nice" helps with the softer relations between folk. The low-level, day to day stuff: being pleasant; a smile; a bit of thoughtfulness; showing bit of concern; a small act of generosity or helpfulness. I think these are all examples of being "nice", and quite a lot of folk probably agree about that.

Now the concept of being "nice" cannot of course on its own provide the basis for a theory of distributive justice or morality: that's for other chew toys.

But "nice" serves as a useful check to getting too fancy and clever too quickly about thin words like "right" and "good". You need quite a few other chew toys around before they can start to make sense. And, to be fair, you'll need a few smooth ones too to help group the sticky ones - otherwise they'll all just get stuck together.

Right - rabbit chasing now. Which is nice for me. I might even be nice to the rabbits and let them get away... .

Dog blog 13 - nooks

2009-08-20T13:24:00.024+01:00

Nooks

The Dog is on his holidays this week. Hooray! And, as a treat after chasing some rabbits, the Dog took himself for a special holiday walk this morning to his favourite local cafe.

Coffee

The Dog decided, since the cafe is Dog friendly, to stop there for a while. And have a tip top coffee; thankfully and mercifully, not burned. (A lot of coffee making places seem to be doing that nowadays with worrying and increasing regularity.) With scrambled eggs, toast, sausages, tomato and - controversially - spinach.

Spinach

Now I like spinach. Either wilted slightly in a pan, or raw. Tail waggingly yummy yum. But, I wasn't altogether convinced by the Spinach's wentingness (a completely and entirely made up Dog word) with the rest of its breakfast companions.

To give you an idea, let's calibrate the lower end of a continuum of convincingness (a real word, dating in print back to at least 1647) of the spinach's wentingness.

That is, the spinach's compatibility with the rest of the aforementioned breakfast. Which makes you wonder why I couldn't just have said that in the first place instead of making up a completely unnecessary definition. Well, that's just what Philosophers do.

Really pretty low

So, back to the continuum. Towards the lower end of its lower end, I've decided to place the Star Wars Ewok spin-off film, Caravan of Courage. Clearly space (see Dog blog 5 - space). But, quite honestly, a dreadful affair.

Pretty, pretty low

Slightly further up the lower end of the continuum appears, surprisingly, Brian May's Star Fleet album experiment with Eddie Van Halen. Now, I'm a massive fan of Brian May (see Dog blog 9 - time travel). And undoubted, fine, guitar playing features. But, to be fair, it's just a "no".

By way of a slight aside, here's Eddie at work, playing Eruption. Many players consider Eddie took the electric guitar along the next stage of its memetic evolutionary journey (see Dog blog 12 - work) from where Jimi Hendrix left off.

Brilliant? Or a din? I'll leave that to you.

Anyway, back to the continuum. If a mid-point were to usefully appear between the Ewoks and Star Fleet, spinach would feature slightly past the mid-point, towards the Star Fleet marker side.

Water tanks

While I was sitting in the cafe pondering the spinach's overall wentingness, I noticed a wooden sculture hanging from the ceiling, in one of the cafe's corners. It rather caught my eye; a gnarled, elongated synapse of a thing.

But then, equally as interesting, if not more, I spotted the cafe's water tank not far from it, on the same wall. The tank looked like it was made of old tin (who knows, I'm not a metallurgist); sheet metal roughly wrought into shape. And you could see where the bashing tools had made their bashings (another made up Dog word) all along it to get the tank just so.

Looking for beauty

All this brought to mind Alain de Botton's very entertaining and recent book, The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work. Alain has been travelling around the place, looking at the various types of work we get up to, and our attitudes to it.

Here's Alain on biscuits.

Good stuff. I've managed to find the full talk here, if you're interested.

Logistics

It was a line in Alain's chapter on logisitics that got me to thinking about the cafe's water tank. Alain describes a visit to a bunch of grey warehouses in the centre of England used to distribute all sorts of goods - and wares of course - across the UK. He refers to these buildings as "the logistics hub":

"... Yet it would be foolish to describe the logistics hubs as merely ugly, for it has the horrifying, soulless, immaculate beauty characteristic of many of the workplaces of the modern world. ...".

This theme appears several times in Alain's book: do we deliberately not appreciate the beauty of industrial objects, even when there is clearly something aesthetic to engage with? Something that can be admired. Or thought beautiful even.

I'm sure you've heard stories of visitors to modern art galleries looking at radiators, or piping, or light switches. Thinking them to be exhibits. But find out afterwards it was "just" the radiator, etc - and, I'm sure, feel (or are made to feel) a bit foolish.

But why?

Parking meters

I've just been looking out of my flat's kitchen window, and spotted the parking meter that lives on the other side of my street.

I've walked past that thing every day for the last 6 years or so. So, assuming I walk past it on my way to work and back every day, that's a minimum walking pastness (an entirely made up Dog phrase) of 4380 times. I worked that out on my Dog calculator, with its extra big paw sized buttons. And I didn't count trips to the local corner shop for milk. Or biscuits of course.

That's quite a lot of times. Especially for a Dog. And I've only just really looked at the meter properly today: looked at it to admire it, that is.

So what's with it? Isn't it "just" a parking meter?

Well, it's got small solar panels on the top which, for one thing, transports the imagination to far away places, like Mars - and the Mars Rover still trapped in a martian sand dune and still, bravely, trying to get unstuck. And these panels effortlessly and unassumingly sport 126 years of scientific progress (interestingly, the first working solar cell was made earlier than you might think - in 1883 by Charles Fritts).

And the meter could have been fashioned with a functional straightness, just a plain old grey box. But it wasn't: it has a pleasing, almost feminine curve to it. Almost like you might expect to see on a modern art sculpture of a human body.

Also, there's two buttons, a big green one to get your parking ticket, and red one (presumably if you make a mistake). Which manifests years of assumptions (except for the red-green colourblind) about the sense and reference of red and green, almost hardwired into our brains, as symbols of safety and danger. Of stop and go.

And it has a mysterious identifying mark, "N265" - which makes you wonder what that's about. Does the N signify "North"? Or "New" maybe? Or all they all numbered with a letter of the alphabet and a number from 1 to 999?

Finally, it symbolises something wider, a symbol of a form of justice: it is a silent, gentle, stationary policeman.

Meaning - and beauty

And all that in a parking meter.

That got me to wondering just how many things do we walk past and not think about or appreciate, on our way to chase rabbits in the park? Things that lurk quietly and unprepossessingly in the corners, the nooks, of the industrial world?

Here's to door handles, light switches, parking meters, hubcaps, manhole covers, traffic lights, double yellow lines, television aerials, kerbs, radiators, pipes and drains.

The unsung art of the ordinary, day to day.

Dog blog 12 - work

2009-08-17T10:54:00.060+01:00

Work

Until he gets that sponsorship deal from Pedigree Chum, the Dog, like most Dogs, has to leave his squeaky toys behind every weekday morning (see Dog blog 10 - plugging in).

And get out of his cosy dog bed. And go to work.

Now the Dog mostly enjoys his work. And that is a lucky thing: lots of Dogs would rather be doing something else, like chasing rabbits or chewing one of those chewy bone things that Pedigree Chum make.

Jostling

But there can be frustrations with it.

These stem, I think, from the effort of the politics of work. Trying to make yourself heard; trying to influence and increase your influence; trying to curb others' influence over you: there's always a certain amount of jostling for position.

That got me to wondering: what exactly is being jostled when we're doing all that jostling? Which then got me to thinking about memetics.

Memetics

Memetics is a fairly recent way of thinking about the evolution of culture. It's drawn from evolutionary biology, and began in 1976 when Richard Dawkins suggested the idea in his book The Selfish Gene.

Biological evolution

So I can explain memetics, let's start with a very rough Dog's guide to evolutionary biology.

The basic building blocks of life are called genes. They're bundled into packages called chromosomes and are made of DNA (which looks like two really long chew toys wrapped and wrapped round one another). Genes contain the instruction manuals for putting together the various bits and pieces of an organism. Like a tail or a nice wet nose. Individual genes instruct tiny, tiny bits of the overall job - like eye colour for example.

The entire genetic instruction manual for putting an organism together (like a Dog) is known as the genome.

With me so far? So far so good.

So how does biological evolution happen? Broadly, the main theory is that genes try to get replicated. And, they also mutate (that is, vary) over time when they manage to do that. If particular mutated genes have an advantage over other variations, they will be more likely to get selected for replication than the less advantageous ones.

This theory is evolving itself, and not everyone agrees about it: see for example Rowan Hooper's article in the New Scientist.

All very tricky stuff. Especially for Dogs.

Cultural evolution
So now to cultural evolution.

One of the ideas in Richard Dawkins's book The Selfish Gene is that our culture (e.g. ideas, language, religion, music, fashion) is adaptive and evolves similarly to biological processes.

The Blues
Take for example, the evolution of Blues music during the 20th Century. Here's Robert Johnson, playing Sweet Home Chicago in Texas, around 1936:

And here's Buddy Guy, Robert Cray and Eric Clapton playing the same song, also in Texas, in 2004:

Now that's good geetar from all concerned.

Memetics
In The Selfish Gene, Richard coined the term meme to describe the units of culture that could be likened to genes. One of the memes in Robert Johnson's song might be his Blues guitar riffs. Other examples of memes might be ideas, words, phrases and fashions.

Like genes, these units of culture, these memes, try to survive through replication - through recordings, through books, through language. And, as Buddy, Robert C and Eric were doing with Robert J's song, through performance. And, like genes, memes can vary (i.e. mutate) when replicated.

Richard Dawkins's idea of memes has itself evolved over the years. It's now an area of study in its own right, called memetics. Susan Blackmore is one its strongest advocates. Here's Susan at work:

Interestingly, I discovered that Susan's partner is Adam Hart-Davis who often does fab presentations on his bicycle about history and inventions. And, Adam is a member of many weird and wonderful societies, including the British Toilet Association.

I wonder if there's any connection between the BTA and the several photographs of toilets which appear in Susan's presentation? Are there memes lurking there too?

Replicators and selection criteria

Memes replicate in many ways. For example, through books, clothes, writing, the internet, television, language and Dog blogs.

Some memes can mutate rapidly. Others are slower to do so, and may even be reinforced against change - to avoid mutating out of all recognition. Religion is usually given as an example of having slow-to-adapt memes.

Religion is an interesting case, and makes me wonder more generally what selection criteria pick out particular memes for replication over others? Presumably some of the selection (and creation) of memes has to do with our hardwiring? The language of nature/nurture in biology applied to culture?

Cargo cults

The South Pacific cargo cults for example started without any "cross-fertilisation" from other cults. They arose independently, on different geographical locations. And apparently without awareness of one other. Here's an example of them at work:

Another cult worth looking into is the cult of John Frum:

Identity

We participate in the evolution of culture, and act as replicators for the cultural genome (a memenome?):

We participate through the songs we like and listen to, the books we read, the television we watch, the choice of words we use and the clothes we like to wear.

We replicate and mutate culture by making a bit of it our own, by contributing something of ourselves too. And in picking and choosing from the memepool (or memeplexes) - i.e. our selection of memes - we do so partly as a result of our hardwiring (i.e. nature) and partly as a result of a complex feedback relationship with our society (i.e. nurture).

And I think an important part of that participation - i.e. one of the reasons we do it in the first place - is because it contributes to our sense of identity.

Work

Getting back to work, and jostling for position.

Work is very much part of our culture too. And very much contributes to our sense of identity. How many social occasions have you been to and been introduced to someone, and not asked - or been asked - "what do you do"?

Jostling

So, why jostle? Why try to make yourself heard, try to influence others, or try to curb others' influences over you? Why participate in the politics of work?

Is it just about replicating our genes?

I think there is something separate going on to genetic power play. Something more than genetic survival, something more than trying to produce offspring.

Now, we almost certainly have evolutionary hardwiring by-products of our decision tens of thousands of years ago to organise ourselves in groups. As Mark Rowlands says in The Philosopher in the Wolf, it's extremely difficult to stop playing politics of the ape: jostling is in our nature.

What about replicating our memes?

But I think work politics, like culture more generally, is more than just about replicating our genes.

Part of the hardwiring our memes try to latch onto for replication is, I think, our sense of self, our sense of identity. The more closely a meme is associated with you, if someone attacks it or tries to make it their own, or adapts it way beyond what made it your idea in the first place, that person also affects your identity.

And so, there is a built-in drive to to help our memes survive too.

I think this explains some of the power play and politics we see at work. The jostling for position we see is, partly at least, our memes jostling to be replicated. Which doesn't make the jostling at work seem quite so frustrating.

A final thought before I go for my walk: if we become aware of the memetic process happening at work, and work politics becomes less frustrating because of that, does that weaken a meme's chance of replication - and so survival? And, if it does, does a meme's demise still affect your identity to the same degree?

Tricky.

Dog blog 11 - blue mice

2009-08-08T10:59:00.049+01:00

Blue mice

Professor Hugh McLachlan wrote a very interesting article in the New Scientist earlier this week about miracles. Have a look.

Professor Hugh said:

"People might accept a scientific account of why a particular event occurred, yet ask similar sorts of questions about why there are particular juxtapositions of occurrences. Much of this speculation and theorising will be baseless, but there seems no justification for saying all such thinking is nonsensical. By analogy: most conspiracy theories are groundless, but not all of them are.

So some people might think of "miracles" as particular juxtapositions of events, each of which has a correct and acceptable scientific explanation. This might be nonsensical, but it would be interesting to discover wherein the nonsense lies. We should be open not only to possible observations and experiences that might dislodge some of our accepted theories but to thoughts and ways of thinking that may challenge our notion of what acceptable theories and explanations can be like. We deceive ourselves if we imagine science has established that only scientific explanations are valid or that scientific explanations can take only one particular form."

Interesting stuff. And nice to see a highly philosophical debate about methodology getting an airing in such a popular magazine. Lots commented. Even the Dog got involved.

How useful is truth?

Professor Hugh's article got the Dog to thinking about a handy tool that we often pick out from the methodological toolbox without really thinking about it: truth.

But just how handy is it really? Is it better than a hammer or an adjustable spanner? Or whatabout those extendable tape measures? You know the ones - they're usually yellow and made of floppy metal and come out of a box. Some Dogs like to chase it back in too. Though, to be fair, that's more of a "cat thing".

Is it always useful to ask whether something is true or untrue? Can you get a bit stuck with it?

Now that might sound a bit daft, especially when one of the goals of science or mathematics (and Dogs generally) is to find out the truth about things. Please bear with me on this one.

Keith

Take this example, based on one in Richard Dawkins's God Delusion book.

Say may pal Keith comes round to my flat for a few beers. During the course of the evening, he tells me that he believes there is a blue mouse living in my flat. Yes. A blue mouse. In the flat.

And, Keith tells me, he's seen this mouse too. And it looks a bit like this:

Now, say I generally trust Keith. And, like him a lot. Except when he's had a few drinks too many and gets a bit annoying and overstays his welcome. You know the type.

Dave

Finally, Keith eventually leaves the flat (hooray!). But I'm utterly curious about this blue mouse business - and I'm not too tiddly at this point. So, I look everywhere for it. Under my bed, in my cupboards, in the loft space and under the floorboards. Everywhere. But I just can't find it.

Now suppose I get one of my other pals, Dave, to come round the next day with his fancy scanner equipment (I keep odd company) - and scan the flat. (There's a picture of Dave at the top of this blog. That's him on his holidays, pretending to look reflective and wistful. What you can't see though is there's someone just off camera waving a dog biscuit at him.)

But, again, we can't find this blue mouse Keith is going on about.

SETI to the rescue

Now I go back and tell Keith all this, but he insists "no, it's definitely there. The blue mouse probably heard you dragging that scanner about and knew what you were up to, so it would have just skirted round you. It's so obvious! Amateurs.".

So, I get Dave back round again. This time with a really fancy scanner array type thing - that looks like something SETI would use (see Dog Blog 7 - Moonwalking to see SETI at work). Now Dave uses this bubba to scan the whole flat at the same time. No prisoners.

But, again, nothing shows up. Nothing. At all.

And I tell Keith about this latest escapade. But Keith insists "no - it's there. Trust me. You can't be using that thing you nicked from SETI right. Or something." And so on.

Proving a negative

The point of this story is that it can be very difficult to prove a negative. It may be that there just isn't a blue mouse in the flat. And Keith is simply mistaken, or having me and Dave on (he's never really liked Dave that much, so there may be something in that).

Should we put truth back in the toolbox sometimes?

Is it a more useful exercise to bin the "yes/no"/"true/untrue" debate for now about this blue mouse? And look instead to some another criterion - i.e. some other tool in the toolbox?

Because this yes/no business isn't getting me and Dave very far. And my electricity bills are costing me a fortune running all this "borrowed" SETI stuff.

Is another tool more helpful?

Might it be more useful for Dave and me to put truth back in the toolbox, and take out probability instead? And if we did that, might it be a reasonable, and defensible, working assumption that the more Dave and me look - and just can't find this blinking blue mouse - that the less and less probable the mouse is there?

Or even exists at all?

Keeping ourselves in check

I think it's important with such an assumption though to remember that it is still an assumption.

As well as commenting on Professor Hugh's article this week, I also managed to watch this fascinating 2 hour long discussion between Christopher Hitchens and his pals, Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett and Sam Harris.

Sam asked Christopher (I think it's in the second hour of the discussion) whether he would like to see religion completely argued out of all utility (or defeated). Surprisingly, Christopher said no - because then he wouldn't have anyone to argue with!

Humility

I think there's something in what Christopher says. There is an obvious ulitility to being challenged - it spurs us to re-evalutate out theories and our data. And defend, modify or, if necessary, bin them. To the extent Christopher means that (which I think he probably does), the Dog agrees with him.

Challenge helps us retain a degree of humility, and leaves us open to questioning things, and ourselves. And maybe restrains us from poking (too much) fun at Keith. Not a good idea - he gets a bit angry when we do that.

Having said that, why should Keith be allowed to be so defensive about his Blue Mouse Theory? Why should it be so off-limits as a topic of conversation round the Dog bowl?

But that's for another Dog blog. Another time.

Columbo - 9 out of 12

Just one more thing (as Columbo would say). What if me and Dave get to such a stage with our blue mouse investigations that we're really incredibly doubtful about any of this blue mouse business?

And by that I mean 9 or 10 out of 12 doubtful (out of 12 so you express things in thirds rather than recurring decimals. Try it - it's much more intuitive and fun).

Would it be a much better, far more defensible, judgement for me and Dave to base our decisions - and generally live our lives (bar blue mouse investigations) - on the basis that the blue mouse just isn't there? Or so unlikely as to be completely discounted from our decision making? Rather than assuming that Keith is right?

Drawing the sting from truth

In other words, is it possible to draw the sting from the "yes/no"/"true/untrue" debate that often surrounds these sorts of issues by admitting the unhelpfulness of it all?

Interesting stuff.

Professor Hugh

Just before I go for my pre-lunchtime walk, here's what Professor Hugh thinks (writing in New Scientist). I put my most favourite bit in bold.

"The Dog has written a very interesting post about probability and blue mice. In some contexts the notion of 'probability' can be useful. In others, it is not.

The term 'probability' has, I would suggest, two sorts of precise technical scientific meanings. In neither sense can we claim to know whether or not the existence of God is probable or improbable far less try to quantify the level of its supposed probability or improbability.

In the logical, statistical sense of probability, we can calculate, for instance, the probability that any particular number will be the winning number in a lottery draw if we know the number of digits it contains and if we assume that the draw is random. We cannot talk about the probability of the existence of God or of any thing else in this sense of the term.

In the empirical sense of the term, we can know from experience the probability that, for instance, someone or other will have blood belonging to a specified blood group. However, we do not in a similar sort of way know from experience the probability that the universe in which we live is one which has or does not have a God. We do not know from experience that, if God exists, there would be evidence of His existence. We do not know from experience what would count as such evidence. We are not able to isolate a random sample of universes and discover how many of them have and how many of them do not have a God.

Probability in these senses is not the polar opposite of uncertainty. One can be justifiably certain about the precise probability that a particular number will win the lottery just as one can be justifiably certain about the precise specifiable probability that a person, chosen at random, will belong to a particular blood group.

Of course, improbable things can and do happen and the improbability of the existence or occurrence of something or other should not be mistaken for evidence that it does not exist or has not occurred. For instance, it is improbable that my blood group is AB positive but possible that I might be justifiably certain that it is. Similarly, if we heavily backed a horse with long odds, we would not be impressed by a bookie who told us, after the race, that it probably did not win."

Stay in check

I love Professor Hugh's fab point: exactly what evidence counts towards thinking about the probability of something that we don't know about?

Like Christopher Hitchens having someone to argue with, Professor Hugh's point keeps us - and the Dog of course - in check. But I don't think we should be put off by Professor Hugh's point.

Sure, Dogs don't know everything. And Dave and I should be open to re-evaluating and reinterpreting our data, and refine our theories. And actively do so from time to time. And if necessary bin them.

But Dave and me started off believing Keith about his blue mouse (well, to be honest, open to the possibility at least). And we got Dave's fancy scanner stuff in to look for it. But we just couldn't find it.

Calling time

There is a separate point here, nodded to in Dog Blog 8 - how much do you need to know?. To what extent is it defensible to base our actions on claims which we only have a limited amount of time to investigate? Or which are undergoing constant investigation?

In other words, if you accept that there's a "lot of work still to be done" in this field or that, is it defensible to base your actions on what you think is most probable on the basis of the evidence that you have at the time?

Steven Pinker makes a similar point in Dog blog 7 - Moonwalking about the existence of a soul. In the ealier centuries where the wheelbarrow was emerging technology (that's Sam Harris's joke in the Christopher Hitchens discussion - it made me laugh out loud), people didn't have the understanding of neuroscience that we have today. So, in their time, it would have been defensible to think that there was a soul. But it isn't nearly as defensible today to claim that there is an "out there" soul, based on what we now know about how the brain works.

Here's Steven on the psychology of religion more generally:

Great stuff.

Can we bin the blue mouse theory (for now anyway)?

Say Dave and I leave my flat to go for a walk and chase rabbits. But we only remember when we're out that we left a really tasty bit of cheese out in the kitchen - which we were hoping to have a bit of when we got back (the cheese, that is: Dave and me only chewed the kitchen furniture when we were puppies). Would it be silly to spoil our walk worrying and worrying that Keith's blue mouse would get at the cheese when we were away?

I think it would. The more we learn, and the more we find out about how this and other universes work, if it still doesn't help me and Dave find this blue mouse, then I think it becomes more and more defensible to play down Keith's blue mouse as nothing more than a highly improbable possibility.

Of course, we might get back and find the cheese is gone. Then Dave and me would have to have a really big think about stuff. And, importantlty, revisit our cheese-leaving-out-policy. But, on the basis of what me and Dave have found out at the moment, it's highly unlikely that the cheese won't be there.

And now - rabbit chasing!

Dog blog 10 - plugging in

2009-08-01T11:13:00.032+01:00

Plugging in

The philosophy of mind brigade have an interesting thought experiment.

It goes like this: suppose the boffins eventually manage to advance cybernetics so far that they can actually replace your entire brain with a mechanical version. And suppose this process takes place over a few years, gradually replacing your old grey cells with a fancy you-MK-II. The machine would replicate exactly the part being replaced. The point being that you'll still feel like it's you while all this is happening.

Although, when you get the upgrades after the process is finished, you'll be fantastic at chess, and always remember where you left your keys. Whenever, wherever. As Colombian singer-songwriter Shakira might say. Sing, even.

Assumptions

Now there's a lot of assumptions there.

Which makes a good point in itself: if you want to pick holes in an argument, one of the things to look at is the premises. That's where arguments live. And where the British Police always find you on if you're up to no good.

For example, if I say, "All dogs like going for walks", and I am a dog, it must follow that I like going for walks.

Which I do, and so do most dogs. But some dogs are very lazy, and just like to sit inside and watch Dog telly, like Scooby Doo, Snoopy or One Man and his Dog. Or do snoozings (which is nice too). So that argument only works if my first premise (all dogs like going for walks) is right.

Modal logic

Modal logic is a fancy way of looking at the musts, mights and coulds of an argument.

Modal logicians use a lot of symbols. The Dog likes two in particular. Mainly because they look like the Dog's squeaky toys. They are: (a must be right bit of an argument) and this one: (a maybe/might be right bit).

And using these squeaky toys you can see where the weaknesses are. Here's where they are in the first bit of my "all dogs like going for walks" argument:

"All dogs like going for walks". (Logician Dogs might keep one toy in the Dog bed, and just use one toy at the front of the sentence).

Unless we had absolutely fabby evidence from the real world to make this first bit of the argument a "goodun", we'd need to go back and rethink the premise. We might even have a think about putting it in terms of probability. (So: "Nearly all dogs like going for walks. I am a dog, so it follows that it is highly probable that I like going for walks too. You still need to back up your premise though.)

Anselmo d'Aosta

Fun toys eh. They might have been useful to Anselmo d'Aosta who was the Archbishop of Canterbury in the 11th century and beginning of the 12th. Interestingly, Anselmo's dad was called Gundulf. Seriously.

Which reminds me, Sir Ian McKellen based his version of Gandalf in Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings on John Tolkein. Especially his voice. Here's JRRT yapping to YouTube:

Back to Anselmo. He and some other philosophers thought that they could come up with a proof that God exists. Just by using a Derren Brown type of magic number game: think of a number, times it by two, take away six. What are you thinking of? It's God, isn't it?

Here's Derren chatting to Richard Dawkins about cold reading and mind control techniques used by "psychics". Interesting stuff.

Anselmo v squeaky toys

Anselmo's Derren Brown game is called the ontological argument. Mark Sainsbury has a modern version of it in my yellow Philosophy book which I mentioned in Dog Blog 8 - how much do you need to know? And it's on the book wheel on the right in the Dog's faves. Mark's version goes like this:

The notion of God, as a necessary being, is conceivable.

Whatever exists of necessity exists.

So, God exists.

People were convinced by Anselmo's argument for a long time. Rene Descartes tried something like it too. But when you start applying the squeaky toys to it, it becomes about as convincing as my pals at Pedigree Chum making rhubarb and custard flavour dog food. No thanks.

Here's Anselmo's argument with squeaky toys:

The notion of ((God, as a necessary being)), is conceivable.

(Whatever exists of necessity exists).

(So, God exists).

It's the diamond squeaky toy in the first sentence that skews it: God might be a necessary being. But only might. Or maybe. The diamond toy shows the bracket bit in the sentence is really saying: "it might be right that it must be right".

Anselmo can't have any diamonds in his argument if it's to work as a proof for God. And he has two. Squeak, squeaking away.

Plugging back in

Anyway, back to the philosophy of mind experiment. One of the assumptions it makes is that the brain is the end of the story for consciousness. That there is no soul "out there" hovering around in space, in some quantum field or another dimension that can (and does) exist separate to the brain. Steven Pinker talks about whether a belief in a soul is a justifiable assumption in the face of neuroscience in Dog Blog 7 - Moonwalking. He doesn't think it is.

Which is an interesting story for another day in another Dog Blog: what sorts of jumps are justifiable, rational or defensible in the face of what we observe in the world? Do they become less justifiable the more we learn that discredits the jump? For example (taking an example from Richard Dawkins's The God Delusion) say I believe there is a blue mouse in my kennel. Is it less defensible to believe it the more places I look - and just don't find it?

I had a quick think about defensible jumps in Dog Blog 8 - how much do you need to know? To what extent is it justifiable to trust someone's explanation for something based on our past experience of reliability? And if you don't have a lot of time to investigate the claim being made yourself?

Some philosophers call the jumps we make from what we observe "projectable induction". An example might be that I close my jaws round one of my squeaky toys (better make it the diamond one) and it makes a squeak. And I do this forty times in a row, because it's fun and I'm enjoying making a noise. If I do it a forty-first time, is it a rational and defensible jump to say, right before I do that, that the diamond toy will squeak?

Plugging back in

Until I complete my neuroscience degree at the Open University for Dogs, you'll just have to humour my assumption that we can replace the brain bit by bit.

If we could, wouldn't that be fascinating? We could, for example, really become just a brain in a vat (see Dog Blog 8 again). Our conciousnesses could be transferred to robot vehicles on other worlds, like a fancy version of the Mars Rover vehicle (which I think is still stuck in a Martian sand dune). And we could have a look around. Which might be fun (if we had our fun algorithms loaded in). Or we could have a go at being the Asimo robot:

And we might (with the right parts and maintenance) be able to exist and expand our knowledge for a very, very long time. There'd be very interesting questions about the philosophical and ethical status of your "back up". Say you went to Mars for a look, but the transmission got stuck, and the boffins had to load up your backup. Would that be you? So tricky.

And there's another possibility: this has happened already. And I am choosing to re-live my life as a dog. Which means that I really am just a brain in a vat.

Whatever the answer to that one is (and as a response to the brain-in-a-vat brigade), I'm going to take my brain in a vat for a walk now.

Because, like most dogs, I love going for walks... .

Dog blog 9 - time travel

2009-07-23T20:40:00.038+01:00

Time travel

If you could, would you go back in time? Where to? When? Would you take anything with you? Knowledge? A flask of tea? Or would you just go back to have a look?

There's some very interesting ethical questions about time travel. Assuming you could, would it be justifiable to disturb the timeline? Would stopping a tyrant like Hitler, for example, be defensible? Doing that might save millions of lives. But it would also pull the rug from under the various Human Rights Conventions and ideas about liberty and control on state power that sprung up in direct reaction to Hitler's reign.

A tough one. And here's another: if you could disturb the timeline and create a mini-multiverse with two possibilities, would your choice to go back in time and create a different timeline have any moral value anyway? On the basis that the original result would still have taken place in one universe? At best, would your choice be morally neutral?

Maybe that's not how time works (I'm a Dog, Jim, not a theoretical physicist). And all that's really far too much thinky-think for a Dog.

Where I'd go

If scientists made a time machine and put in a seat in it for Dogs - and let us stick our heads out of the window - I'd love to go back to the old Wembley Stadium, on 13th July 1985. At 6.43pm (British Summer Time).

And watch this band come on one minute later to do their set:

Above: the master at work.

The Beatles

I was born in the 1970s, so by the time I was getting interested in music, the Beatles were long disbanded (in band terms). I keep meaning to look into the story of the Lennon/McCartney feud, and whether it was as bad as all that. But I keep getting distracted by the thought of being taken out for a walk and chasing a ball. And philosophy and stuff like that.

I asked my friend Mr Google, who knows about these things. He told me that apparently Paul and John did play together in the 1970s, but that they didn't meet up that much.

So no Beatles for me. Only on records.

Queen

But I did have Queen. And I loved the albums they made in the 1970s. Especially News of the World, which has 3 of my favourites on it (and not well known Queen songs): who needs you, sleeping on the sidewalk (great blues guitar soloing by Brian May) and, it's late.

Queen were fun (although they took their music very seriously) and really good musicians. They were fans of the Beatles too, and you can hear that in their music, especially in the harmonies. Compare for example Killer Queen on Queen's Sheer Heart Attack album, with John Lennon's I'm only sleeping on the Beatles's Revolver Album.

In fact, I'll do it for you. Here's Freddie:

And here's John:

Puppy dog obsession

The Dog, and many other Dogs (and humans too) have great affection for Queen. They are my Beatles. I was obsessed with them in my pup days. Particularly with Brian May who inspired me to learn guitar. He always comes across as a very level headed and gentle person, unaffected by his fame. The sort of person you could really enjoy a cup of tea and a chat with. And a beer of course.

The Red Special

Brian May's guitar is called "the Red Special". I particularly like it because he made it with his dad, and that always reminds me of my dad too.

Here's how bad my Queen and Brian May obsession is (and I've not checked this with Mr Google - this is all in my Dog brain): Brian May's Red Special guitar is made from a mahogany fireplace and uses an old knitting needle for the tremolo arm (known in the post-Eddie Van Halen era as the "whammy bar"). Brian and his dad designed the RS especially to feed back, and you can hear that in a lot of Brian's playing. The RS was typically played (I believe) in the old days through a Fox phase pedal, with treble boost, through a Vox AC 30 Amp. And Brian uses a sixpence coin as a plectrum.

Radial Velocities in the Zodiacal Dust Cloud

Brian also has a PhD in astrophysics from Imperial College London, which he started before Queen took off, and completed finally in 2008. Interestingly, it was the first PhD to be submitted to Imperial College after it broke away from the University of London and became a university in its own right.

Sorry - am I boring you? I can go on and on about Brian. No?!?! How nice of you to say so. Here's some more then.

Hammer to fall

Brian May also wrote my favourite Queen song Hammer to Fall which at one point last year I was listening to every day on my way into work, and on the way home. I reckon I've listened to it well over a 1000 times during my long Dog's life.

I do like other music. Alan Menken's songs for one, which guest star in Dog Blog 8 - how much do you need to know. But I am obsessed with Hammer to fall.

The main version I listen to is on The Works album. Which also has it's a hard life (well worth listening to). I'm not such a fan of the reworked version on the Queen Greatest hits albums. Brian's guitar solo in the original Hammer is much heavier.

The version of the song I'm going to share with you is a Queen/Paul Rodgers version. That's quite controversial for a Queen fan. But I love what the boys are doing - and I love this take on the song. You can also hear the Burns pickups at work as Brian lets the Red Special feedback just before the song breaks into the heavy rock part:

Anyway, that's probably quite enough Brian May obsessing for you for one day.

Freddie

I would also like to go on and on about Freddie Mercury, who was an absolute legend and true Dog Hero. I'll save that delight for another Dog Blog. But just before I go for my afternoon walk and chase some rabbits, I'd recommend this nice documentary to you on Freddie's life:

Fab. And, finally, if you ever want a pick-me-up, listen to Queen's One Vision. If you're not even moderately energised by the start, there's something wrong with you. Seriously.

Here's Freddie at work in his famous yellow jacket (designed by Zandra Rhodes):

Right. Rabbit chasing time now... .

Dog blog 8 - how much do you need to know?

2009-07-19T10:36:00.021+01:00

How much do you need to know?

As ever, Disney continues to pioneer moral and epistemological philosophy in its 2007 film Enchanted.

In one scene in the film, the (very, very fab) Amy Adams and Patrick Dempsey (I can never remember their characters' names) go for a walk in the local park. Controversially for Disney, Patrick is seeing someone else at this particular point. In a going out with another girlfriend sense. And, he has a child from an unsuccessful marriage.

Tricky stuff

Anyway, at this particular point in our story, Amy asks Patrick how does he know that he is in love with his girlfriend. Tricky and interesting stuff. Admittedly, Amy does rather make a song and dance of the whole thing:

Knowing

All this got me thinking about the epistemological classic: what does it mean to "know" something? There's a good discussion about this sort of thing by Dr Scott Sturgeon in the first chapter of AC Grayling's Philosophy. It's a good book. My copy is a nice yellow colour too, which looks cheery on a sunny day.

All that stuff is very tricky. At least for a Dog.

Are we in the Matrix?

Before looking at what it means to know, let's put a stop right here and now to the "ah-but-couldn't-this-just-be-a-dream-or-imagined-by-someone-else" brigade? You know the ones. Carrie-Anne Moss and Keanu Reeves types.

I don't think that kind of argument gets you anywhere. At all. If you really think this is all a big dream, not only are you being a tedious spoilsport, you're also ruling yourself out of the game. I'll come back to this.

So let's ignore Keanu and his pals. This is not a dream - seriously.

Justify yourself

I'm attracted to the idea that when we say we "know" something, what we really mean is that our belief in something (I am a Dog), or that something is the case (I ate chicken flavour Pedigree Chum for my tea), is justified.

So how do you justify your belief? Dr Scott suggests we need adequate evidence for it, and that evidence needs to tie in consistently with what else we know.

Dr Scott's idea is called "mixed coherence theory". Which sounds very tricky indeed. But I think that's how we think on a day to day basis. How do you know that there's a bottle of beer in the fridge? Well it was there last time I looked, and no one else is here. And on the basis of my day to day experience of sitting in my kitchen near the fridge, there is an extremely low probability that someone, or indeed magic forces, could have removed the beer.

You're either in or you're out

I said Keanu and his pals rule themselves out of the game by asking "ah but isn't this a dream?".

I think what really matters about knowing stuff, i.e. having a justified belief in things, is doing something about it. If you think it's all a dream, you lock yourself into a stalemate. Why bother trying to dodge bullets or fight Hugo Weaving?

You're either in the game or you're out. Even if it is a dream.

How much do you need to know?

All that's pretty quick Dog thinking. And really just by way of background to the main thing I've been wondering about: how much do you need to know to have justifiable grounds for doing something? How much time do you need to spend finding stuff out? How much expertise do you need to have? Is it OK to trust other people? Or Dogs even?

I was wondering about this in Dog Blog 6 (Multi-dimensional morality) in the case of ethical decision making: are some decisions (e.g. switching train tracks to save lives) more ethically defensible if you're pushed for time?

Trust

Take the moon conspiracies in Dog Blog 7 (Moonwalking). I don't have the time to invest heavily in finding out the truth about the moon landing, to go over to NASA and ask them what's what, look through photos and interview Neil, Buzz and Michael. To be quite honest, I can't really be bothered, and I suspect NASA won't allow Dogs into the Kennedy Space Center anyway.

So is it OK in cases like that to adopt the belief that Neil & Co. went to the moon in July 1969? Is it OK to look at the evidence presented by NASA, and take the view that NASA and the US Government don't usually lie about space? And that the evidence looked at by a respectable body of scientists kind of backs up the idea that the evidence hangs together and looks genuine?

I think it is. And this is really Dr Scott's mixed coherence theory in action.

What if you're wrong?

There's another part I think to justified belief: it depends what you need the belief for. i.e. what you're going to do (or not) on the basis of your belief.

Knowing whether or not man went to the moon in 1969 makes no difference to how I live my life. Living in the UK as the Dog does, it's diverting and a reasonably fun thing to look at on YouTube now and again.

But some things count much more. Such as whether or not to turn off a ventillator supporting a person the doctors claim is brain dead. How reasonable is it to rely on what someone else says? What if you're not a doctor and can't make head nor tail of what the MRI scans are showing you?

What if the truth being presented by the Government is so fundamental to a decision (e.g. WMD in Iraq)? Surely there, the Government's belief needs to be justified to those who don't have the time by those who do? And be sufficiently coherent (e.g. peer reviewed) to be defensible?

And how much time should I invest in investigating the evidence? Is it defensible to rely on the media for example?

I think trusting someone else in authority is justifiable (amongst other reasons) to the extent that you know someone has a track record on something. E.g. a particular newspaper or commentator has a reputation for being honest, balanced and thorough. And, like I was rambling in Dog Blog 6 (Multi-dimensional morality) for ethical decisions, I think there is leeway in the amount time individuals need spend investigating a claim in order to decide to take action (or decide not to) on the basis of that claim.

Thoughts and feelings

Tricky stuff. And one more tricky thing to finish off: when is your belief that you're experiencing a particular emotion justifiable? Like love for example? How do you know you're in love? What does it feel like?

I'm not really sure. I hope it feels something like this. Cue my favourite Alan Menken song (who wrote the Enchanted soundtrack), particularly between 1:48 to 2:27 mins into the track:

Dog blog 7 - Moonwalking

2009-07-18T12:44:00.023+01:00

Moonwalking

I love a good conspiracy theory. One of my favourites is the one about the Titanic: it was a massive insurance job.

Aliens

And there's plenty conspiracies about aliens of course. Although they're not quite as fashionable now as they were in the mid-1990s when the x files was on telly. Which was good and definitely "space" (see Dog Blog 5). I liked the first film too: Bees. And aliens.

I have a conspiracy theory of my own. Was the popularity of alien conspiracy theories, in part, a reaction in America to the break up of the Soviet Union in 1991? There's nothing like a common enemy to help define a group. When the Commies started to think about democracy, the conspiracy theorists swapped them for the US Government. One of the main threads to the conspiracies being that the US Government, and NASA of course, are in collusion with these aliens. And lying to the citizens.

Imagine. A coverup. A conspiracy of the highest order. A new enemy: our own leaders.

You need to read that last bit in the voice of the late and fabulous Don LaFontaine to get the full effect. Here's Don at work:

Incidentally, why do alien conspiracy theorists not pick on SETI more? They're actively looking for aliens. That's all they do. Have a listen to this stuff. Signals from space. Seriously.

The Moon

With the 40th Anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing coming up in 2 days time there will, inevitably, be plenty of conspiracies bubbling up about that too. There's loads on YouTube. Take your pick. I particularly like French Film director William Karel's Dark Side of the Moon:

The truth is out there

Conspiracy theories fascinate me. Because I think they can tell us a lot about how we interpret and understand the world. A few well made twists to the narrative and you have a completely different story altogether.

That's what lawyers do in court. "Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I put it to you here's what really happened..." . Perry Mason and all that.

William Karel's moon video makes this point well. The entire documentary is itself a hoax. It deliberately uses footage taken out of context and some of the interviewees are scripted. William's point is to show the power of the media, how beguiling a well polished presentation can be. Watch for the credits at the end of the documentary to see who was reading the film script.

Like a case in court, conspiracy theories can be tested. They all rely on evidence to back the claim being made, and a particular narrative of events holding together well enough to persuade you.

The moon conspiracies rely on discrediting the claims of all those involved in the Apollo 11 space programme. Including (now) Professor Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin. Buzz always appears to be in reasonable mental health when he says he and Neil stood on the moon, walked around on it, and left a whole load of junk there. And brought back moon rocks. And took quite a lot of holiday snaps and made a video too. The conspiracy theories also have to discredit the testimony of Major General Michael Collins who flew the command module.

The conspiracies will also have to discredit the photos taken recently by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter of the moon landers, and the footprints left behind.

But then again, they were taken by NASA. I guess we'll just have to wait till the next lot of astronauts go up there and tell us what's really what. Click here if you fancy joining up.

What's so seductive about conspiracy theories?

I think part of the reason is the way we persuade each other about things. A fact is either right or wrong. Neil and Buzz either walked on the moon on the 21st of July 1969. Or they didn't. So far, so good.

But if there's doubt about an explanation for a set of historical events, you can't really rely on a yes/no mathematical type of proof. It doesn't do for that sort of thing. So you have to look instead to probability. What is the most probable explanation for what happened? What evidence do you have to back up the claim you are making (moonrocks, footprints on the moon, Professor Plum's revolver found in the library, etc.)? How credible and reliable are your witnesses (an ex NASA Major General versus an "unnamed source" on www.abovetopsecret.com or similar website)?

The problem with probability

Unfortunately, the problem with probability is that it doesn't give you quite the comfort blanket that going to the moon right now and seeing Neil and Buzz's footprints for yourself would do. Equally though, probability doesn't slap you quite as hard in the face for being an such an obstinate oaf (which, interestingly, is an old English word for elf).

Ghosts in the machine

I also think conspiracy theories hold sway because of the way our brains are hardwired. Even the most rational of us are running an operating system that's not much beyond (as a distinctly human brain) the 200,000 year mark in evolutionary terms. A bit better than a Pentium 2 PC running Windows 3.1. But far from perfect.

Derren Brown gives a number of interesting examples of this hardwiring in his excellent book Tricks of the Mind. One of these is an experiment carried out in Japan where (students, probably) were asked to sit in a room which looked through a window to a light, which would go on and off, and a counter. There were three levers in the room, and students were told that they had to collect as many points on the counter as they could in 40 minutes.

There was no connection between the levers and the light. But nevertheless the students developed elaborate techniques with the levers, convinced that somehow that influenced the light. Have you ever had a similar feeling waiting in the car at the traffic lights that you can magic them green? Be honest. It always works, though sometimes it takes a bit longer if you're not in the zone.

Derren also mentions work in this area carried out by Stuart Vyse. Stuart wrote a book called Believing in Magic, which is well worth having a look at. You can read some of it at Google Books (I've put the link to it for you. What a helpful Dog.). Stuart also blogs and has a lot of interesting things to say. Here's his website: www.stuartvyse.com.

Social conditioning can also reinforce this evolutionary hardwiring. Here's what Steven Pinker has to say about the idea held by some of us that we have a soul existing independently of the body:

Unavoidable human prejudice

I think we need to be much more mindful (and even wary) of our hardwiring, our built-in prejudices. It affects so much of our thinking. Like in ethical reasoning for example (I borrowed the phrase "unavoidable human prejudice" from Bernard Williams who guest stars on Dog Blog 6).

Think you're not hardwired? Have a look at this, taken from a clip by CNN News at the house of another moonwalker:

What's your initial reaction? Feel the hardwiring kicking in? Does the spooky music tip the balance for you? A shiver down your spine?

The more probable explanation

Now, reboot your brain, and watch this:

See what I'm getting at? The first video completely taps into your hardwiring. The second is measured and dispassionate. And given the highly unusual nature of the claim being made in the first video, you'd need much more convincing evidence to displace the probability that what you're looking at is a shadow of a living person walking in the next room. It's not Michael Jackson.

Though, having said that, Jacko was in a lot of debt: did he fake his death to boost record sales? Were you there? Did you see his dead body? How do you know for sure?

It's perfectly legitimate to be sceptical about a particular version of events. But for goodness sake test it against probability. And watch out for fancy lighting and sound effects, and generally any rhetoric that's tapping into your hardwiring. You could be falling victim to a conspiracy... .

Dog blog 6 - Multi-dimensional morality

2009-07-16T12:56:00.032+01:00

Multi-dimensional morality

Recently, I've been thinking about how much time people have to make decisions about things. And, being the Dog, particularly about decisions which have significant moral content.

Like the philosophical classic: kill 1 person to save 50? Or, a more day to day example, what about lying? Or, whether to give blood? Or stop eating burgers? Or other meat? Or what about giving part of your income to charity? Or - seriously - giving up Heinz tomato ketchup and going for supermarket own brand?

This also made me think about the way we make practical moral choices. Do we look at that kind of decision making too three dimensionally?

Three dimensions

When we're wondering what to do in a situation, I think we often take into account: (1) ourselves, (2) the person(s) our decision will immediately effect, and (3) what the wider society might make of it.

There's overlaps between (1) , (2) and (3). And a lot of things to think about in each. In (3) for example, what counts as the "wider society"? Is it, for example, your neighbours, the police, the media, the people in the village, town or city you live in? Or everyone on the planet? Are you thinking about men, or women, or both? Or people of a particular social class? Or people of a particular religious belief? What about animals?

A fourth dimension?

All that's pretty complicated. But I think it's even more complicated than that. I think we need to bring in at least another element: time.

Time

The clock is always ticking when you're thinking about something. Does the amount of time you have to think about it matter?

I think it does. Richard Hare thought so too. If you haven't heard of him, have a look at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two-level_utilitarianism to see what he has to say about this sort of thing.

Trains

Back to the "philosophy classic": the kill 1 to save 50 examples. You know the ones. They usually involve trains. You have to make a split second decision: do you switch the train over to the other track?

Or take a more day to day example. Do you lie to your friend if she's just asked you out for a beer tonight? You like her loads but, quite honestly, you'd rather stay in and watch telly. And you don't really feel like talking about ethics with her. Again. And you saw her last Tuesday. You've also a strong suspicion that she fancies you - and you definitely don't feel the same way. And you're going to have to have an awkward conversation at some point very soon...

No time to think about it

You don't have a lot of time to weigh up the consequences. Your consideration of dimensions (1) to (3) is likely very limited. And you're probably just thinking about dimensions (1) and (2), if you're being honest about it.

What if there's more time?

Say you do have more time. What if you've got a few hours to think about your decision? Or a few days? Or months?

You'd have much more time to weigh things up. You'd also have more time to think about any similar cases. And just chat about the whole thing with your pals. And any really sensible people if your pals are a bit silly. Or, to be quite blunt, they're just not really that interested in you or your so called "problem".

You could also find out what the probable consequences of your actions might be. Google is handy for that sort of thing.

Cutting corners

And, maybe if you had a lot of time, or were just really clever, you could even come up with your own Theory of Justice. If you weren't so clever, or didn't have the time or, to be honest, you just couldn't really be bothered, you could cut a few corners and speak to someone else who'd come up with their own Theory of Justice - and maybe shamble together your own view from that.

Or, instead, you might come to the view (and not just because you were being lazy and wanted to cop out) that it's difficult to come up with a very good watertight moral theory - and all you're doing is really offering your own point of view about things. Which I think was Bernard Williams's point of view about points of view. Here's one of his lectures:

Bernard starts his lecture about 7 mins into this clip. In Part 4, he gives his point of view on Peter Singer's point of view. And in Parts 6 and 7, he talks about Star Wars, Independence Day, Close Encounters and alien invasions. Interesting stuff.

Is the Golden Rule all that golden?

So where does time take us in practical moral decision making? For me, for now, just to this (Dogs take small steps): I think that the longer we have to think about decisions, the less defensible they are for lack of time (at least).

Which makes me wonder, if you bring time into the mix, does it affect the idea held by quite a lot of people that you can make universal claims about what do in every case? The Golden Rule for example (put yourself in other's shoes; or - "how would you like it if they did that to you?"). How useful is that rule for time critical decisions - are you really comparing like with like? Are you and the other person(s) (into whose shoes you're putting yourself in) really on the same timeline?

It seems to me that, at least in some cases in which you're short of time, the final decision may be more defensible than it would be for someone who had more time. If that's right then, necessarily, different claims different persons make about the same thing could be similarly, if not equally, morally defensible.

Tricky stuff.

Dog blog 5 - space

2009-07-13T18:54:00.033+01:00

Space
Right. Enough of this philosophy rubbish. Here’s what really matters: space. At the cinema. And going to see space with my pal Martin after we’ve both been for a curry. It’s a tradition. It’s fab. In a word (or, technically, two): it’s space.

"Space" for me is a film with the following characteristics:

Usually, a science fiction or fantastic premise

I'd also include supernatural films, but not pure, totally scary, horror. And not films about Christmas. Cartoons are in a fairly grey area, unless they are set in space, like Final Fantasy.

Again, usually, set in space

But, the film need not be, provided it has all of the other characteristics listed here. Phenomenon for example would have a good chance of being included within “space”.

Special effects

And ideally lots of them. Gadgets and computers are always good too.

An entertaining plot

But, the plot can be fairly rubbish, provided the special effects are really, really good. Like The Day After Tomorrow. Or Independence Day. Or anything else really by Roland Emmerich. Having said that, Stargate is actually quite good storywise. 2012 looks good too, and it's nice to see Roland going back to his roots and doing a really low budget film for a change:

Stop being so serious

If you haven’t already, get yourself a space companion and indulge yourselves. You don’t want to read philosophy and watch New World Cinema all the time.

Even Wittgenstein had a break from the Tractatus, and took himself off to the cinema to watch westerns. But only because there wouldn’t have been much good space on when he was around. Incidentally and, to be honest, irrelevantly, Wittgenstein's brother Paul was an accomplished professional pianist, and lost his right arm in the First World War. Undaunted and unabashed, when the war ended, Paul went back to his old job and commissioned pieces for left hand only. Ravel wrote a piano concerto for him. Britten also wrote music for him.

Classic space – The Dog's quick top 5

The Battlestar Galactica remakes. Sci-fi at its best, exploring philosophy, humanity, post 9/11 social commentary, reason and will - and all from an empathic point of view. This gives the show its strength – you understand the characters ordering suicide bombers, carrying out military coups, switching loyalites - and why they’ve come to the decision they’ve made. Even if you don’t agree with them. And great acting. Especially from Eddie (wait while I take a pause before I finish this sentence to create even more dramatic tension) Olmos. And plenty of robot babes, and the lovely Katee Sackhoff as Starbuck.

Predator. My favourite Arnie film. An alien tries to take out a team of crack green berets in the jungle. Van Damme plays the alien in some scenes. Great special effects. Directed by John McTiernan, who also did the Hunt for Red October. Which is so good, it could be space.

Dark City. If you’ve not heard of this, you’re in for a treat. It should be in anyone’s top space top 5 (well, OK, top 10, or maybe 15). All is not what it seems in the city. I won’t tell you any more. I wouldn't want to spoil it.
Silent running. Man in space, going a bit crazy about biospheres. And stuff.

The Matrix. Existentialism, kung fu and ground breaking special effects (the “bullet time” shot has been copied in many, many films after it). There is only one film. The Wachowski brothers did not make 2 middling sequels. No, no, no.

Amazon.co.uk Widgets

Dog blog 4 - genies

2009-07-11T18:39:00.036+01:00

Genies in court

Looks like a Saudi family is taking a genie to court. It must be true. It was on the BBC. Seriously.

I think the case would be a civil action if it happened here in the UK. And the standard of proof in our courts for that sort of thing would be on the "balance of probabilities". Which means the person suing the genie would have to prove, amongst other things, that the genie existed.

Inter alia

As an aside, lawyers usually say "amongst other things" to avoid saying "inter alia", which lawyers here used to use, and pretty much means the same thing. But they got told off for saying that because it was Latin, and makes lawyers sound like they think they're superior to Johnathan Average and his Friends. Which, of course, they do.

Would the Saudis win in the UK?

I doubt the evidence would stack up if the case were heard here. But you never know. You might get very credible witnesses and completely coherent evidence from them that survived under cross-examination. Who would represent the genie though?

Doubtful indeed

I would be surprised if one of our courts would find the witnesses' spoken evidence sufficient to tip the balance of probabilities in favour of the genie's existence. I'd have thought the courts would want to see some sort of photographic or other physical evidence of the genie. Especially given the highly unusual nature of the claim the plaintiff/pursuers were making. A court could always decide to chicken out and avoid the issue altogether by throwing the case out on a technicality: on the basis that the law doesn't usually give the living enforceable rights against the supernatural for this sort of thing. Which would, in fairness, be a bit boring. The law could always be changed I suppose.

I'm sure you'll see where I'm going with this.

Maybe out there someone does have that overwhelming, convincing proof. We'll see. I wonder what American trial lawyer Clarence Darrow would have made of the Saudi family's case.....

Here's the BBC's Genie story:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/8145862.stm

One of Clarence Darrow's cases that's worth Googling is State v Scopes 152 Tenn. 424, 278 S.W. 57 (Tenn. 1926). There's some stuff at:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scopes_Trial

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USAscopes.htm

And here's Hollywood's take on the Scopes trial:

And what Ali G has to say on these sorts of issues:

Watch Sacha Baron Cohen keeping a straight face saying "9" over and over again. "You don't even know what I'm going to say". Brilliant.

Dog blog 3 - insects

2009-07-11T11:25:00.042+01:00

Robot crickets

New Scientist is reporting a story about Pentagon backed researchers creating cyborg crickets. Will these crickets speak too? Would they say "I vant your clothes, your boots and your jam"? Will they take over the world? And maybe do a lot of time travelling just to make whatever they're planning to do really complicated to follow?

You can see the New Scientist story here: http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20327165.900-cyborg-crickets-could-chirp-at-the-smell-of-survivors.html

And there's plenty of other stories in New Scientist about experiments on animals. Mice for example: http://www.newscientist.com/search?doSearch=true&query=mice.

Scientists do lots of experiments on mice. They give them cures for cancer, improve their intelligence, extend their lifespans. Maybe one day these super mice will bite back and give us a good bashing. Or maybe they'll rise above that and just give us a nice piece of cheese. Like a good cheddar. Or maybe a brie. But if they went for the brie option, I think they'd really need to give us that with grapes and proper crackers: it's a big ask though.

All animals are equal.......

Peter Singer writes about the ethical case for giving animals more respect in our moral decision making. Have a look at this article for example: http://www.utilitarian.net/singer/interviews-debates/200106--.htm. He writes:

"People often say, without much thought, that all human beings are infinitely more valuable than any animals of any other species. This view owes more to our own selfish interests and to ancient religious teachings that reflect these interests than to reason or impartial moral reflection. What ethically significant feature can there be that all human beings but no nonhuman animals possess? We like to distinguish ourselves from animals by saying that only humans are rational, can use language, are self-aware, or are autonomous. But these abilities, significant as they are, do not enable us to draw the requisite line between all humans and nonhuman animals. For there are many humans who are not rational, self-aware, or autonomous, and who have no language—all humans under 3 months of age, for a start. And even if they are excluded, on the grounds that they have the potential to develop these capacities, there are other human beings who do not have this potential. Sadly, some humans are born with brain damage so severe that they will never be able to reason, see themselves as an independent being, existing over time, make their own decisions, or learn any form of language."

Are humans worthy of respect? And more so than other animals?

We could start by saying we're worthy of respect "because we're human". But that sounds like saying "we matter because we matter" or "we're special because we're special". Which sounds a bit circular, and doesn't really feel very solid ground on which to stand an argument. Might someone making a statement like that be doing it more for subconscious reasons, like a religious predisposition for example?

If we're looking for a more solid base on which to set up our argument tent (and maybe have a stall outside it for tea and biscuits), I think we'd want to point to characteristics that we think are worthy of respect in humans. The sorts of things that explain why other humans "count" when we're working out what the best thing to do in a particular case is. Or when we're trying to come up with, or agree a more general rule for, dealing with something.

Like forming a queue for a bus. Or letting people go in front of you in the queue if they're a bit poorly, or very old and it's difficult for them to get on the bus. Some folk in the queue might complain a bit if you did that, because they'd been waiting a long time (and might have lots of shopping to carry). But others in the queue would just look round at the complainers and give them a bit of a "look". And then, probably, the complainers might back down a bit. Not just for an easier life (and to get on the bus sooner), but also because they might feel a bit ashamed.

Picking out some things about each other. For starters (in making a moral argument sense, rather than a dinner sense).

Some of the characteristics I think are worthy of respect in humans are:

(a) our self awareness: in many of us at least (Peter S. gives us some examples of the less fortunate in his essay);

(b) the nice things: planning (in a nice way) for the future, looking after our young and the sick, helping plants to grow, making things (like jam, constitutional statutes and telly), our ability to feel nice things (like being cheery, enjoying jam, getting excited about things - like jam (again)), or going out for a nice walk, or a new series on telly (like when the re-envisioned Battlestar Galactica was at its height towards the middle of season 2);

(c) the not-so-nice things: our capacity for violence, for example. And a propensity to behave very differently in groups: which could be nice if the thing(s) we were doing were nice. I'm talking about behaving in groups here because, I believe, the conscious bit of our brain is sitting on top of at least 150,000 years of evolution through violence and struggle for survival. And occasionally those bits of our brains kick in when we're thinking about what we should do. You know, some of the bad bits about us. And also our ability to feel bad things (like pain for example, or sorrow, or loss. Or sad about something).

These characteristics are mostly abilities

I think these characteristics are all abilities of one sort or another. If you're in the "it's just because we're human that makes us special" camp, then I think you're more in an "identity first, reasons why that is, for later" camp. And we'll just be talking at cross purposes if I can't persuade you to at least to point to some other reasons.

If you're following me, and (even better) agreeing with a good bit of what I'm saying, it's difficult to say why these characteristics, these abilities, single us out particularly when thinking about what to do about something. Especially when that what to do about something particularly involves or affects other species too.

A continuum of development - a reason to treat things differently?

Peter Singer and Richard Dawkins had a chat about this sort of thing. It's on YouTube:

Richard Dawkins makes an interesting point: different species could be seen as being at different stages along a continuum of ability. Could we therefore argue that the more developped these abilities are, the greater the weight these abilities should play in our moral thinking?

We'd need evidence of course and people always disagree about whether animals suffer or get sad. In the case of dogs at least, as Mark Rowlands says in his book The Philosopher and the Wolf, people who think that dogs don't suffer or get sad have obviously never owned one.

The lower end of the continuum

So what about the lower end of this continuum? Back to our "terminator" robot crickets. Say crickets are mildly self aware (say they have a hive mentality), do like jam a bit, but don't feel pain (because say their nervous systems are different - I don't know either way, I'm just using it as an example), and don't plan for the future. Might it be defensible to give them less weight in thinking what to do about something? Say, controlling a very small number of their species to help find injured humans, or indeed other animals (like a trapped dog or cat) trapped under a collapsed building?

I think there is some merit in that. And I think it would be defensible (if the facts are right about crickets feeling pain, etc.) to give less weight to those characteristics than we might do in humans. But it wouldn't get us out of thinking about alternatives though. What about developing an entirely robotic cricket? It's an interesting one.

And moving along the continuum...

A harder one is where abilities are far more adapted. Like in mice. Or monkeys. Or other animals that we experiment on. Or eat.

Once you've picked out some characteristics, how do you then do your weighings when thinking about your doings?

To me, the characteristics bit I've picked out above is only a part of thinking about lives, and thinking about your doings with them. It's just part of an even more complicated reasoning process where we bring in other things and thinkings too. And weigh them all up to come to a decision.

I'll need to come back to this in another Dog Blog. And I need to have a right good think before then about whether it's a defensible form of reasoning to talk about "weighing" things up at all. I'm running out of time, and I really need to pop into town to pick up a new suit for work that I got adjusted, and something for lunch. And a present for a pal of mine I'm visiting tomorrow.

The sorts of things to throw in the mix that I'm thinking about here come from the purpose of the thing you're doing. Take some examples:

Swatting a wasp that looks angry and about to sting you. You see them around autumn/fall. You know the type. I got one up my tee shirt last year. It stung me. And it hurt. Quite a lot.
Killing a bull for the pleasure of it (e.g. bullfighting in Madrid. I went to a bullfight there. I had mixed feelings about it. The final death bit looked pretty quick. But these are just quick reaction feelings, not an argued out, defensible moral position.).
Scientists doing experiments on a very small number of mice relative to the overall number of their species, to help find a cure for cancer. But say they were not just trying to find it for humans, but also for mice and other animals too?
Farming cows for milk and/or meat.

Thinking about your doings: putting an "arbitration kit" together

To think about these, I think we also need to put in our weighings what the alternatives are, what the impact on our global society might be if we go down that road. What would be the overall impact on the animal and plant kingdoms? What would it do to our own development?

In doing that thinking - or more logically, before we come to that - we also need to have some criterion for arbitrating between these various factors. We're not really comparing like with like (e.g. love of jam versus bullfighting versus how a mouse might best survive cancer).

Some people talk about this arbitrator being a "theory of the Good". Or "Justice". John Rawls made his own "arbitration kit", and called it the "original position" . Have a look at http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/original-position/ (which is a bit heavy) or http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Original_position (which is a bit easier to read).

The Original Position starts with a thought experiment. It's a bit like imagining you're hovering about in the afterlife, waiting in the departure lounge at Reincarnation Airport. (Maybe with a fun magazine to read (like "Heat") and a coffee and panini from Costa). And, you don't know what you're going to be reincarnated as. You might be reincarnated as a human, say, into a rich family. Or you might be reincarnated severely disabled, or as a different race, or gender. You might be very clever. Or really daft. You might be reincarnated as a cat, or a dog. Or a bee.

And then, in putting your kit together, you need to think about the sorts of values you would want to see in a society that you might be born (and bourne) into.

It's a tricky one if you're born as a dog, but what about as a human? Would you want a system of government? Would you want equal respect regardless of your age or gender? What sorts of things would you want to see for frail people? Or children? Or the severely mentally disabled?

I'll let you have a think about that one: I need to scoot now. And I'll need to have a think in a later Dog Blog to what extent an "Original Position" type of arbitration kit can really factor in animals other than humans into it.

Since, as far as we're aware, it's doubtful that other animals would have a similarly evolved system of justice. Though, there is some evidence that chimpanzees, for example, do have a sense of society and their place in it. Franz de Waal writes about "Chimpanzee Politics" (which you can buy on Amazon at http://www.amazon.com/Chimpanzee-Politics-Power-among-Apes/dp/0801863368) - and to be able to play politics, chimps need to have some developed sense of what makes other chimps tick. And what makes them happy. Which is the beginnings of moral reasoning.

An answer may be that we humans need to start from the point of view that we might be reincarnated on Earth as a dog. But reincarnated as a dog in which humans live in a reasonably developed society. In that case, how would we dogs want humans to treat us?

Later, Dog followers..........

Dog blog 2 - lists

2009-07-10T20:27:00.014+01:00

Lists of things that don't get much of a mention these days

If they ever did. Here's a list I just made up. In no particular order. Other than the order I've just put them in:

1) Peas. Good with pesto in a soup. Fun to ping over the table at someone. And a nice green colour.

2) Fizzy sweets. Good in the cinema if you've got one of those boxes, and you think you're getting a toffee bonbon, but actually, it's a pink cola bottle. That's a nice thing. Unless the film you're watching is scary, then it probably doesn't quite have the same impact. But generally fizzy sweets = happy days.

3) Marmalade. Marmalade on toast. I put dried chillies on it. Good with a coffee too. That is, drinking a coffee to accompany your eatings of toast with marmalade. And chillies on the marmalade. Not marmalade in coffee. That would be silly. You could try it. But it will be rubbish. Honestly.

4) Dialing an old telephone. You know, the ones that have a round dial. I don't have one. But it might be fun. Or, it could be fun for a minute or two, then you'd realise that you'd just wasted quite a lot of money. And it probably wouldn't work properly with one of those funny broadband phone thingys. You might grow to like it though, after you'd got over the initial annoyance.

5) Sticky stamps. Licking envelopes or old stamps was a bit minky. The stamps that you get in a book are better. Don't leave them in a back pocket though and forget about them. They don't wash well.

6) Tapes. For your stereo. Anyone under about 25 won't have a clue what I'm talking about. Google it. Making your own tapes. It was quite fun. And maybe making your own cover for the box too.

7) Staying in the bath till the water has gone. Lay in the bath. Pull the plug. Wait till it's all gone. Amazing feeling. And you can rock back and forwards when the water's almost away and make tooty noises. Like you were doing a big toot toot out of your bot bot.

8) Making lists of things that end at 8.

Dog blog 1 - walks

2009-07-09T18:38:00.029+01:00

Is there something out there?

On my way into work in the mornings, I have a very nice, rambly walk along an old railway line. It's summer where I live. And at the moment, all the flowers are are out in bloom. And whatever trees are out in. Terribly very pretty. Seriously.

Looking at the trees got me to thinking about intelligence. Particularly, is there any "out there"? In the universe, that is. In space. And stuff.

If there is something out there, could that intelligence be a bit like a big tree, rather gently pootling along about its own business? And perhaps only vaguely aware of more complex consciousnesses skittling around and about it?

Pantheism?

That's probably a kind of pantheism. I'm never quite sure what "pantheism" means (I usually mix it up with "deism" and I'm not sure I'm even doing that right), but I think it's broadly the idea that an intelligence filters through everything. A bit like a tree's roots through the ground. But it doesn't really need to do terribly much in its growings. It mightn't even push the soil away much. Or even at all. And runners, joggers and dogs might quite happily step on one of the tree's roots, which was just poking out of the ground. And they mightn't even feel it through their trainers. Or their paws.

Is it like cake?

In fact, the runners and joggers probably wouldn't notice it was there. Dogs might have a sniff though, if some really interesting smell got onto the tree's root. Maybe from one of the jogger's trainers. Like a bit of cake or something that someone else dropped while trying to eat it on his way to work. And then that bit of cake got itself crushed right into the tread of the jogger's trainer when he jogged over it (although not on purpose - he didn't see it). And the bit of cake only finally got dislodged onto the root - in a one-er though - when the jogger put one of his trainers onto the log as he jogged over it.

As an aside, people shouldn't really be eating cake at that time of the morning. If you're doing that, save it for coffee time at about 11 o'clock. And you could maybe keep a bit of it for the afternoon, depending on how big a slice you were carrying in the first place.

Deism?

I think "deism" is more of a "light blue touch paper, stand well back" affair. Setting off a firework on bonfire night on a cold autumn evening. And maybe have a sit down after that and watch it. With a nice hot roll. Like a burger or something. And Heinz tomato ketchup. And/or a mug of soup. Nice.

I'm maybe thinking of a bit of both of these things - pantheism and deism. Come to think of it.

Should it affect the way we think about things?

Anyway, I also got to wondering in amongst all of that about these sorts of questions: if the universe has a tree sort of intelligence, would it make a difference to how we think morally? Does it matter at all? Would it make a difference if the universe was in fact an awful lot more intelligent than a tree? Like a bee maybe? Or maybe even an otter? I also wondered why a lot of people feel the need to justify or reason out their thinking with such an intelligence? Is it something to do with language itself - that because most of us think in a language (which presupposes a conversation between at least two people), it's kind of hardwired into our brains? Even if, maybe, there isn't an intelligence "out there" at all.

All terribly very interesting I thought.