Clearing out some old links

Solution here.

A neural net creating names for British towns. There's an associated Twitter account, though it does lose its charm after a while.

A lovely old profile of Derek Parfit (pbuh) and Janet Radcliffe-Richards. I don't really know the work of the Churchlands, but it's in my links folder so let's unload that too.

A brief discussion of the value of art, very interesting in the light of Hanson and Simler.

HAIL SATAN!

Some wholesomeness for you

Photos of a real war fought with bows and arrows. (Content warning: unpleasant photos of wounded people).

This is the future liberals want.

At least it's not brutalism.

The Elephant in the Brain: some notes

The Elephant in the Brain, written by Kevin Simler and Robin Hanson and recently out in paperback, is best viewed as two books on connected topics. The first is a convincing argument that "the elephant" exists: that we consistently engage in self-deceptive behaviour for purposes of social gain. The second is a serious of arguments, ranging from the highly plausible to the outrageous, that this explains various the function (or malfunction) of various human social behaviours.

The Elephant

The first section of the book presents multiple lines of argument leading inexorably to the conclusion that many of our behaviours are inexplicable in the first person but are on some level intended, in a way that a third party might easily observe, towards attaining social advancement. This is made possible by the modular structure of the brain, in which sections of the brain may have the ability to make decisions but not to communicate them or defend them. Crucially, we are unable to distinguish between those actions caused by the parts of our brain which also control what we say and those caused by other parts of the brain: hence, we will typically invent justifications for such actions which will own nothing to the actual motivations behind them.

The upshot of this is that one section of the brain can engage in devious, cynical scheming, and we are free to act upon this advice while having no conscious awareness of it, and therefore being able to honestly protest complete innocence when accused of holding these devious and cynical motives.

Hanson and Simler present a range of evidence for this, which I won't reiterate partly because other reviews will cover it and partly because I didn't take very good notes and really need to reread this section of the book. What I do remember finding illuminating, however, is the way they placed features of humans in the wider context of nature. Why is the American Redwood tree so tall? On clear and flat ground, being taller doesn't allow a tree to get any more sunlight but it does mean that the tree has to acquire more nutrients and transport them further upwards. The answer, of course, is that redwoods don't originate from clear and flat ground: they have to be as tall as, or taller than, the trees around them in order to have access to sunlight. The redwoods become so tall because of competition with other redwoods.

Similarly, how did humans become as smart as demonstrated by the graph above (taken from the book)? The answer lies in not in the abilities it grants over nature, but in competition against other people. This thesis is not new to Hanson and Simler, of course, but their presentation of it is especially clear.

I have some further thoughts following from the discussion of norms and how we subvert them, but they are not developed enough to appear even in this miserable excuse for a book review.

The Elephant in Practice

There then follow ten chapters, each discussing a different phenomenon from a Hansonian perspective. I don't want to go over all of these, so will briefly look at two that I found especially interesting. Firstly, they argue that laughter - which we often struggle to explain, of course, so looking for hidden motives may well be the way to go - serves the function of signalling that we are "at play". When one laughs, this indicates to those around oneself that one is not in a serious mood, which can allow one to say or do things that would normally be taken as threatening.

This theory is fascinating, and for lack of a better theory has changed my view on at least one issue: rape jokes. The ability to laugh at something is an indication that one is not concerned about it - if this theory is true, then, we should probably consider dark humour to be indicative of a lack of virtue, and indeed to actively discourage such a lack of caring in others. Perhaps this doesn't merit an absolute prohibition on such jokes - humour is a value which can weigh against other considerations - but it does suggest that we should be very cautious with such jokes and should never consider rape in itself to be suitable for a punchline.

There's also a defence of canned laughter, which I don't remember well enough to faithfully pass on.

The second section has already gained some attention when I shared a page from it on Twitter: their theory of art. This theory, originally developed by Geoffrey Miller, is that art developed primarily as a way to show off various attractive traits - in particular intelligence, creativity, and conscientiousness. They draw a distinction, which I assume must have been drawn many times before, between the intrinsic and extrinsic properties of an artwork. Intrinsic properties are those that we perceive in an artwork, extrinsic are those that which cannot be known - primarily facts about how it was created. Quoting directly:

The conventional view locates the vast majority of art's value in its intrinsic properties, along with the experiences that result from perceiving and contemplating those properties... In contrast, in the fitness-display theory, extrinsic properties are crucial to our experience of art. As a fitness display, art is largely a statement about the artist... If a work of art is physically (intrinsically) beautiful, but was made too easily (like if a painting was copied from a photograph), we're likely to judge it as much less valuable than a similar work that required greater skill to produce.

This has the consequence that as our ability to produce things has improved, artists have had to find new ways to make art difficult for themselves. They offer this as an explanation for why theatre continues to be popular, despite the various capabilities (camera angles, numerous takes, vast amounts of post-production editing) that film offers: it has the chance to go wrong, and so demands greater skill of the performers. I think this is not the whole story (and nor, for that matter, is Michael Story's theory that theatre serves to make lowbrow comedy acceptable for the middle and upper classes) - theatre offers advantages in terms of one's ability to focus on whichever section of the stage one prefers (regardless of whether or not, artistically speaking, it is the best), and the ability to tailor to particular performances (theatre actors can wait for laughs to subside, film actors can't). But it's a fascinating view on the topic.

As I suggested on Twitter, I am only partially sold on this. How good are audiences at realising that mistakes have been made? Sometimes it's clear - for example, a playgoer may see an actor requesting a line from the stage manager (I didn't see this happen when I saw Twelfth Night at the RSC the other day, but it happened very obviously a couple of months ago when I saw an amateur production of Arcadia) - but much modern art is highly abstract. If one of the lines on Jackson Pollock's No. 5 is out of place, how shall we know? If someone gets the timing wrong or plays the wrong note in some atonal piece of music, will anyone without a score be in a position to check?

I have some other thoughts on this in regard to popular music, which will be a post of their own because they're worth actually developing. For now I'm just going to raise three questions which I think are worth asking of the authors:

How sophisticated is the elephant, anyway?

Some of the signalling stories which Simler and Hanson tell are very complicated. For example, they argue that much advertising works not by influencing us as individuals, but by causing us to expect others to be influenced by it:

When Corona runs its "Find Your Beach" ad campaign, it's not necessarily targeting you directly - because you, naturally, are too savvy to be manipulated by this kind of ad. But it might be targeting you indirectly, by way of your peers. If you think the ad will change other people's perceptions of Corona, then it might make sense for you to buy it, even if you know that a beer is just a beer, not a lifestyle.

The classic strawman of evolutionary psychology is that almost no-one has a conscious aim of maximising their genetic footprint. The chain of reasoning "I will do X, because X will make me more attractive, which will allow me to attract a higher quality mate or to attract more mates, which will increase my genetic footprint" will almost never include the less clause, and may not even go beyond "I will do X" if X is something we are inherently motivated to do. The answer, of course, is that we don't need to think everything through - so long as a category of action reliably leads to higher fertility, we may well find ourselves inherently motivated to do it. This explains desires to eat and drink, to have sex, to parent our children well, and many other things. But these things which we are inherently motivated to do are fairly broad classes of action, with no particular cultural knowledge required. The Corona example is actually highly sophisticated cognition, involving not only instrumental rationality but also a theory of other minds. Do Hanson and Simler think this is all being done non-verbally, by evolved instincts - or is there a portion of the brain thinking thoughts, in a verbal fashion, but entirely detached from our stream of consciousness?

How far do signals rely on common knowledge?

Another example from their chapter on consumption:

Blue jeans, for example, are a symbol of egalitarian values, in part because denim is a cheap, durable, low-maintenance fabric that makes wealth and class distinctions hard to detect.

I had no idea about any of that. Indeed, I doubt most people consciously pick up on most of the signals which Simler and Hanson allege we send. So how far can we actually be expected to react to them?

Signalling vs. Creating Meaning

Depending on what kind of story we tell, the same product can send different messages about its owner. Consider three people buying the same pair of running shoes. Alice might explain that she bought them because they got excellent reviews from Runner's World magazine, signaling her conscientiousness as well as her concern for athletic performance. Bob might explain that they were manufactured without child labour, showing his concern for the welfare of others. Carol, meanwhile, might brag about how she got them at a discount, demonstrating her thrift and nose for finding a good deal.

If so many different messages could be sent by the same purchase, then none of them will be sent. I think these are far better explained as the stories we tell ourselves in order to create a sense of meaning and purpose in our lives. Once one raises this spectre, one wonders how much of their theory it could take over. Is the extrinsic value of art not that it could go wrong and is therefore a display of fitness, but that the process of creation is a way of creating meaning? Perhaps creating meaning is just another form of signalling, but this is something that has to be actually argued for.

One piece of evidence in favour of signalling over meaning-creation theories of fashion is a dog that hasn't barked - decorating the inside of clothing. The underside of a shirt could have many messages, verbal or pictorial, that would be understood by the owner but not by observers. The fact that we worry greatly about the outside of clothing but not the inside suggests that it the impression given to observers that we care about.


Conclusion

The book is very readable, and if you like Robin Hanson's other writings you'll like this. That said, it didn't quite live up to the praise given to it by other sources (e.g. Tyler Cowen) - there are some excellent passages, and some wonderful ideas, but there are also many ideas which are in sore need of greater defence. It's worth reading, quite possibly more than once, but it is not - in my view - Book-of-the-year level good, which is the level I feel it has been hyped to.

The Cult of the Composer: in lieu of an essay

NB: This is something I want to write as a proper essay, but have no idea about how to phrase. For this reason, I am simply stating the main claims and arguments here, with a view to converting them into an extended piece of writing at a later date.

• Music is like cookery, and different from most other art-forms, in that it is (a) reproduced from a "recipe", (b) generally not seeking to represent anything in particular - and even when it is, does so in a very abstract way
• There are very good reasons for not messing with non-reproducible artworks (such as the originals of paintings). There are good reasons to be careful about how we treat many representational artworks (such as poetry).
• However, when these do not apply, we are generally very happy to modify, deface, and do whatever we like to artworks. Example one: we are happy to adapt cooking recipes, even when they come from very good chefs. Example two: we are happy to deface posters and prints of paintings. (Remember the Joseph Ducreaux meme from a few years back?)
• We should be more willing to carry out this kind of modification for music. By this I mean not just the kind of wholesale changes we already make (e.g. remixes, various classical pieces) but micro-changes.
• By micro-changes I mean deciding that a certain chord is wrong and changing it, modifying a tune slightly, and all sorts of other small changes.
• Composers are presumably good judges of what is good music, but the judgement of the composer is not infallible, and we should be willing to overrule them in cases where we think they have erred (or where tastes have simply changed!)
• See for example these eight beautiful bars in Schubert's Unfinished Symphony, and the two-bar fart that follows them. (from 1:20 in) I don't have a ready suggestion for how to continue the tune, but am quite certain that there are option much better than what Schubert went with.

• Obviously if you are performing pieces for the public then you should make changes only after careful consideration, but this does not mean you should not make changes at all!
• A good performer or composer can definitely improve on an already good piece, and this need not entail any disrespect to the original composer. See, for example, Marc-André Hamelin's excellent cadenza to Liszt's Hungarian Rhapsody no.2 (cadenza starts at 8:26, runs to around 11:40):

• We're past the days in which books are the ideal medium for this, but it's sad that there's no book of "Mozart's piano works, as adapted by __". Nowadays, why not have a website of suggested micro-changes to pieces?
• Try to come up with more suggestions for micro-changes. e.g. I reckon we could improve the descending lines at the climaxes of Finlandia (occurs more than once, e.g. at 3:56)

My philosophical views

Having an hour to spare and nothing better to do, I've decided to write down my current answers to the questions on the PhilPapers survey of philosophers' views. First, a couple of notes and caveats:

• At first, I wasn't going to look at any (potentially new-to-me) arguments for the positions while doing this. However, upon reflection it seems strange to reject a chance to be motivated to learn.
• One of the options on the original survey was "insufficiently familiar with the area." This really ought to be my default answer - I am, after all, a mere undergraduate student - but where would be the fun in that. Instead, for any given issue you should assume that I am probably not as familiar with the issue as I ought to be.

A Priori knowledge: yes or no?

Umm... lean no, maybe? I lean towards the view that logic, maths etc are constructed rather than discovered, and given that they are supposed to be the paradigm cases of a priori knowledge, I guess that places me in the No category.

Abstract objects: Platonism or nominalism?

Is this asking whether I believe that there are no abstract objects, or which of these positions I lean towards on a greater number of subjects? I'm not willing to completely rule out abstract objects (fictional objects in particular strike me as things which might exist but be abstract) but I don't believe in the existence of numbers, of propositions, or of many of the other abstract objects which have been postulated to exist. Put me down as leaning towards nominalism.

Aesthetic value: objective or subjective?

I have actually put serious effort into trying to work out why anyone might think that aesthetic value is objective, and the closest I've seen to an argument is SEP's mention of the fact that "people tend to agree about which things are beautiful." Sigh. Accept subjective.

Analytic-synthetic distinction: yes or no?

I don't believe in it, the only question is whether I go down as Lean No or Accept No. Quine was very convincing... go on, put me down as Accept No.

Epistemic justification: Internalism or Externalism?

I can never remember which is which. Assuming I correctly understand the issue, one of them is the view that knowledge-seeking has intrinsic value, the other is that we should seek knowledge because it is useful to us. Yudkowsky put this very nicely in the Sequences, saying that seeking knowledge out of curiosity has a certain purity to it, but the advantage of seeking knowledge because it is useful is that it creates an external criterion by which to measure our success. Accept whichever one it is which says we should seek knowledge because it is useful.

External world: idealism, skepticism, or non-sceptical realism?

Accept non-sceptical realism. You can't achieve absolute certainty that you aren't being deceived by a demon, but (a) there is no reason to believe you are either and (b) in any case, suppose you were. You don't know anything about what the demon wants, so there's no particular reason to change the way you act.

Free-will: compatabilism, libertarianism, or no free will?

I'm fairly well convinced that if determinism is true, then (a) people cannot act differently than they do but (b) they are still morally responsible for their actions. I believe this makes me a compatibilist, although it strikes me as a bit weird that this is counted as believing in free will rather than denying that free will is necessary for moral responsibility.

God: theism or atheism?

Damn, no option for deism. Lean deism if that's acceptable, otherwise I place higher probability mass in atheism than in any of the "revealed religions".

Knowledge: empiricism or rationalism?

Given that I deny a priori knowledge, it would be rather odd if I were to say rationalism. (At least, it appears that way; perhaps this is one of the many things on which I shall come to be corrected.) Accept empiricism.

Knowledge claims: contextualism, relativism, or invariantism?

No familiarity with the subject area.

Laws of nature: Humean or non-Humean?

Accept Humean.

Logic: classical or non-classical?

This is an interesting one. As said above, I lean towards the view that logics are constructed rather than discovered, and that different logics may be appropriate for different purposes. The philosophical justification for intuitionistic logic is something I find very appealing, so let's say Lean non-classical.

Mental content: internalism or externalism?

No familiarity with the subject area.

Meta-ethics: moral realism or moral anti-realism?

I lean towards constructivism. I believe this makes me a moral realist, although that's a bit weird since I started working out my metaethics by explicitly assuming there were no genuine moral facts floating around.

Metaphilosophy: naturalism or non-naturalism?

Is the question "Which is it more fruitful for us to assume as a default?" or "Which do I beliee is actually true?" Accept naturalism on the first, lean non-naturalism on the second.

Mind: physicalism or non-physicalism?

Next to no familiarity with the subject area.

Moral judgement: cognitivism or non-cognitivism?

I looked at this at some point, but I can't remember much of what it was about.

Moral motivation: internalism or externalism?

Is this related to the amoralist's challenge? I've been thinking about that for ages, and still don't have a satisfactory answer despite reformulating my metaethics at least partially in an attempt to produce an answer to this question.

Newcomb's problem: one box or two boxes?

Accept one box. Although even if I were the type of person who would two-box, would I go around telling people that?

Normative ethics: deontology, consequentialism, or virtue ethics?

Virtue ethics, subject to deontological constraints, and with the choice of virtues justified on pluralist-consequentialist grounds. Yes, really.

Perceptual experience: disjunctivism, qualia theory, representationalism, or sense-datum theory?

When I studied this in first year, it seemed like a slam-dunk for sense-datum theory. However, given that (a) that was before I had read The Sequences, (b) I can't even remember what the first two of these were or if they were even mentioned, and (c) I have rejected almost every other view I picked up on that course (belief in the a priori, epistemological foundationalism, free-will libertarianism, near-universal scepticism... I must just about hold to a sensitivity condition regarding knowledge, so not quite everything), I'm inclined to take that past belief with rather a lot of salt.

Personal identity: biological view, psychological view, or further-fact view?

I don't hold to a biological view, but I' not greatly satisfied by the leading psychological accounts (though if I had to choose one, I would go with Schechtman's). I don't even know what the further-fact view is, and looking at the relevant SEP and Wikipedia articles suggests that either I'm misunderstanding the question, or that there is something odd about it. I was reading section 3 of Reasons and Persons, but my Kindle has gone missing.

Politics: communitarianism, egalitarianism, or libertarianism?

Accept libertarianism. Have you read my blog?

Proper names: Fregean, or Millian?

I prefer the Millian view, and I believe that Nathan Salmon's discussion of "guises" solves most of the problems for it; that said, I need to do more reading, so put me down as merely leaning Millian.

Science: scientific realism or scientific anti-realism?

Scientific realism. Because, you know. Duh.

Teletransporter (new material): survival or death?

Can I suggest the answer is somewhat subjective? Personally I would regard it as survival, but I'm very open towards difference of intuitions and I think that the disagreement is more to do with people having different values than to do with some (or all) people being wrong about an actual fact in the world.

Time: A-theory or B-theory?

B-theory is the one which holds all times to be equally real, and suggests that we move through time rather than time itself moving, right? Accept that one.

Trolley problem (five straight ahead, one on side track, turn requires switching, what ought one do?) 

switch or don't switch?

I would lean towards switching. I'm not entirely comfortable with it, but David Friedman's variation on Fat Man (in which both the Fat Man and yourself are required to does a fair job of convincing me that we should probably be willing not only to turn the trolley, but to push the fat man in its way.

Truth: correspondence, deflationary, or epistemic?

I read The Simple Truth and it sounded sensible. Then again, I haven't done a great deal of engagement with the views other than correspondence - certainly I could not explain what they are - so I'll have to just say I have insufficient engagement with the subject area.

Zombies: inconceivable, conceivable but not metaphysically possible, or metaphysically possible?

Again, especially insufficiently familiar, but leaning towards one of the not-metaphysically-possible positions.

Judging Book Covers, Part One

Is the picture above the perfect book cover? Simple, attractive, and pointing towards the book's role as a work of combat, primarily against religion (but with a few jabs at what Voltaire viewed as some of the less important areas of philosophy). Certainly far better than the stodgy hardbacks which fill up every shelf of academic libraries. Far better than any of my textbooks, past and present, whose pictures seem to compete for which can be least relevant to the actual topic.

One of the jabs Voltaire makes is at the study of Aesthetics. His view can roughly be summarised as, "Of course beauty is subjective, morons!" Quoting from the article entitled "Beau, Beauté" (translation by John Fletcher, from the edition linked to above):

I was at the theatre one day with a philosopher: 'How beautiful this tragedy is!' he said. 'What's so beautiful about it?' I asked. 'It's that the dramatist has achieved his aim,' he replied. The next day he took some medicine that did him good. 'It achieved its aim,' I said, 'what beautiful medicine!' He realised that a remedy cannot be said to be beautiful, and that to apply the word 'beauty' to something, it must arouse our admiration and give us pleasure. He agreed that this tragedy had inspired both feelings in him, and that was to kalon, the beautiful.

I would suggest that Voltaire's companion's idea of beauty as "achieving its aim" is in fact more valuable than either of them realise. The picture of Voltaire wielding his quill in a duelling position achieves the aim of indicating what the book is about. Another cover which achieves this aim is that of my copy of Ernest Gellner's Nations and Nationalism. I picked it up in a second-hand-book shop and cannot find an exact replica, nor any copy of the painting adorning it, but it is quite similar to this:

A cart of aristocrats rides through a torchlit public square, surrounded by cheering crowds. Flags - I presume Italian, though possibly French - are festooned everywhere. It is less simple than the Pocket Philosophical Dictionary cover, but is equally attractive and is so nationalist that can almost hear the trumpets just by looking at it. Sometimes using a classical painting might be interpreted as rather pretentious but this is a sufficiently weighty topic to merit it. Compare it to a more recent cover of the same book:

This is plain ugly. Admittedly nationalism is pretty ugly too, but given that Gellner seems to be advocating it this cover seems rather out of place. Moreover, what is inherently nationalist about building projects? Perhaps this aims to show the role of industrialisation in promoting nationalism, but there are more obvious ways of doing this.