Photographs and events

Found photograph, US, circa 1950s

A photograph records a moment (not a instant) as an event, but it's limitation is to represent an event just as an image, which events never are. If we look hard and long enough we can recover something of the texture and weight of the moment, its presence and live-ness, the smooth solidity of the TV cabinet and the light roughness of the net curtains, the fact that there was a life before it and a life after, and motion was continuous; as soon as it happened it was over. Each object (as it appears to us) had a birth and death, a moment of conception, production, distribution, acquisition, a term of use and a then rejection. Each was handled and positioned (the spotty cushion was placed on the armchair), each was part of the great vibration of surrounding events. Each absorbed and generated the ambient noise of its time, which filled the space as much as the objects did. Everything in the scene was anticipated and remembered, everything was the material of experience.

In order to recognise the photograph I actually have to have been 'there', which is to say I have to have experienced something of sufficient similarity for the image to make sense. I have to relive the moment which occurred in another country even before I was born.

Reading unconsciously

Sometimes while reading a book aloud to my child I find myself thinking about something else, entirely different from that which I'm reading. I can do this so long as I'm not aware I'm doing it, because as soon as I realise I'm thinking about something else I can no longer read one thing and think another.

If I happen to hear two distinct pieces of music at the same time I can only pay attention to the structure of one at the expense of the other. In a similar way I cannot think about reading and be thinking something else simultaneously, I cannot consciously hold two distinct streams of thought. But this raises the question of whether I am aware am I thinking — or just thinking. I can be aware after the fact, by which time it is too late. There is the thinking, and the fact of my awareness of the thinking, which are distinct and incompatible trains of thought.

It seems to be a characteristic of consciousness that we can be aware of one stream of thought — one concatenation of meanings — at a time. However, this is by no means the same thing as a 'unity of mind.'

Multiple personal realities

To appeal to an objective world of extrinsic objects, as distinct from the subjective world of personal experiences, as the place where reality resides seems convenient until we have to take into account the huge variation in the way different people perceive the same events; the same arrangement of interior decor may seem to one person to be highly attractive while to another it may appear quite ghastly; looking through the customer reviews on a movie rental web site reveals that the same film can evoke diametrically opposing responses. Clearly in such cases different people have quite different subjective experiences when presented with objectively identical events. This weakens the case for a clear distinction between objective and subjective layers of reality and strengthens the argument that reality and subjective experience are synonymous, albeit different from person to person.

Braque on objects

Braque, Still life with purple plums, 1935

"Objects don't exist for me except in so far as a rapport exists between them, and between them and myself. When one attains this harmony, one reaches a sort of intellectual non-existence— what I can only describe as a state of peace— which makes everything possible and right. Life then becomes a perpetual revelation."

'Metamorphosis and Mystery', based on John Richardson's conversations with Georges Braque, in Georges Braque: An American Tribute, Edited by John Richardson, Public Education Association, NY, 1964. Originally “The Power and Mystery of Georges Braque,” Observer (London), December 1, 1957

Highlights and touch

Sometimes the specular highlights in illustrations are meant to tell you not so much what the object looks like but how it would be touched.

Movie people

In general, people in movies look and behave like actors.

My brain is a banana

It seems misleading to say 'my brain thinks of a banana' since the brain and the thought are one – at least if we accept the view that the brain is responsible for the mind. The mind is what it conceives, and so if I conceive a banana then my brain is a banana, at least in part.

The function of philosophy

Philosophy creates questions rather than answering them.

Discard by adult

Mind and representation

It is not at all certain that perception 'represents' the world, as many theories of mind would have it. According to such theories, the world is an external reality with various properties that are represented by the perceptual apparatus of our brains, or put another way, the external world is 'modeled' internally and it is the model we have access to rather than the external world itself.

But in order to justifiably be a representation, or a model, in the sense normally understood the representation would need to be different from what it represents; there would need to be two states: the world in itself and the representation of the world. The latter is, in a sense, an imitation of the former, they would share certain features in common but would also display certain differences. The model is a semblance of what it models, and we are used to thinking of the model as the artificial or virtual version of the original.

But is there any need to 'represent' or 'model' the world if it is the case that the world is its representation, the world is its own model? This moves closer to the enactivist position, which is essentially anti-representational. One could say that the way the world appears is the way the world is, and ask what is gained by adding a distinction between a 'real' and a 'virtual' space, except possibly more confusion?

Me as Mind

I don't have mind — I am a mind.

The present world

There is the world that is present to us when we are thinking and the world that is present in us when we are not.

Everyone is a universe

Every sentient being exists at the centre of a universe. It is a universe that is at the same time quite distinct and entirely common.

Judging the merits of art

It is much easier for artists to convince themselves of the merits of their work than others.