Final Notes to ART113 Perception Ecologists

Dear Eco-Artists, a couple of notes:

1. If possible please email me, by 3 PM on Wednesday, an image of your final project landscape so that I can include it in a presentation of all the projects.

2. Unless I hear otherwise, I'm going to include your Narcissus Narcosis self-portrait in a Art113 web portfolio so people can see what our 113 group has been exploring this semester. If you would NOT like me to include your project, or if you would like your project to be posted anonymously, please let me know! Also, if you would like to email me a different, or better, image of your project, please do so. Finally, if you are interested, please email me a quotation from your essay on technology to post next to your portrait. The word-image thing really intensifies the meaningfulness of your imaginative creations.

Good Luck!

A Beautiful Thing is a Tunnel into a Higher Dimension of Reality

"Somehow – whether it be in color, or in a harmonious garden, or in a room whose light and mood are just right, or in the awesome wall of a great building which allows us to walk near it – some placid, piercing unity occurs, sharp and soft, embracing, tying all things together, wrapping us up in it, allowing us to feel our own unity. What, physically, is this unity which seems to speak to us of I?...

"Every center in the matter of the universe starts this tunneling towards the I-stuff. And the stronger the center is, the bigger the tunnel, the stronger the connection to the I. That means, that every beautiful object, to the extent it has the structure which I have described, also begins to open the door towards the I-stuff or the self." - Christopher Alexander
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The Connection between Beauty and Goodness (or between Aesthetics and Ethics)

by Justin Good

The cosmos is not indifferent to you. In fact, every act of creating to witnessing beauty is not only an ethical act. It is also a cosmological act which serves to bring forward the evolution of Reality, the evolution of the Spirit which created and creates the world. Sustainability has a metaphysical significance. The reestablishing of social and ecological coherence within a community as a vehicle for sustainable living is metaphysically identical to a new moment of self-recognition of the Void (the universal self, the quantum vacuum, the Akashic Field). If we can discover our own deeper identity within the world, for example, in the sunlight dancing on the cool waters of a forest stream in the early spring, then the metaphysical conclusion is that the self that you find inside your skin-defined ego body and the self you find in the dancing light are two aspects of a single universal Self. This explains the unity of ethics and aesthetics, or of goodness and beauty.

Ethics and aesthetics are the same phenomenon viewed from reciprocal directions in the flow of energy-information-awareness. Both concern the essence of a coherent system: a system is coherent (has a high degree of life or wholeness) if its activity helps both the systems around it and those which it contains. A coherent system is therefore a just or ethical system, because it minimizes its destructive potential and works to harmonize the beings around which it lives. And when we perceive a coherent system, we experience it as beautiful, because we are naturally attuned to perceive wholeness and naturally directed by Spirit to work to nurture and evolve wholeness.

Ethics looks at information-awareness as informing reality. Aesthetics studies the experience of a reality informed by selfness as the universal medium or self-plenum. Beautiful objects are centers of space-time which create multi-dimensional tunnels connecting their spatio-temporally located, physical matter and properties to the universal self plenum which interconnects all centers in the cosmos, past and present. Since the connection one discovers in a moment of transcendent self-discovery is already there, what is being actualized is simply the recognition of an identity that was somehow forgotten.

This echos the Hindu cosmology. When Spirit creates the cosmos, she decided to play a game of hide and seek with herself by involving her self as the material world. Alongside the process of natural evolution, there is consequently a deeper process of spiritual involution – the process of wholeness. In the phenomenon of wholeness, the past meets the future. The new holistic worldview is more realistic than materialism, more meaningful than religion, more optimistic than capitalism, more idealistic than socialism, more alive than humanism. The cosmos is not only alive, it is conscious.

How does this relate to art? The Theory of Art as Unfolding Wholeness sees art making as in the service of the cosmological evolution of Spirit, of the universal Self-like stuff that unites all beings (every point of space-time) in the universe. On this view, the ultimate effort of all serious art is to make things which connect with the I of every person. This ‘I,’ not normally available, is dredged up, forced to the light, forced into the light of day, by the work of art. The more personal art is, the more universal it is. The more alive it is, the more divine it is. The less Ego it has, the more Self it manifests.

Theory of Beauty as Unfolding Wholeness

We've studied four concepts of beauty that have shaped the development of modern art, design and architecture.

1. FUNCTIONALISM : (e.g. the architect Le Corbusier) To be beautiful is to be well-designed, to exhibit functionality. Beauty is the look of utility. Ornamentation is merely pleasurable, not truly beautiful. The limit of the concept is that: sometimes functionalism isn’t functional.

2. FORMALISM ( or Non-objectivism) : (e.g. the art critic Clement Greenberg) Something is an artwork if it embodies a specific kind of form, “significant form”, or if it allows the viewer to appreciate it from a purely ‘formal’ attitude of aesthetic appreciation. The limit of the concept is that: formalism seems to deny that art can ever be about something other than itself.

3. UGLY BEAUTY : (e.g. the philosopher G. E. Moore) To be beautiful art is to first appear ugly, because of how the artwork violates conventional notions of taste and habituated modes of aesthetic judgment. The value of ugly beauty is that it signals the overcoming of the interia of perception dimmed down through narcissus narcosis. The limit of the concept is that: it is implausible that we can be said to understand or appreciate a work of art only if we see it as beautiful.

4. NON-AESTHETIC BEAUTY : (e.g. the artist Marcel Duchamp) The uniquely new concept of beauty that emerges through the extreme violence and dislocation of the Great War in Europe is that it is immoral and a lie to create beautiful artworlds in a world made ugly through violence and fragmentation. Thistory of appreciation does not always culminate in the appreciation of beauty. Artistic goodness is not identical with beauty and the perception of artistic goodness is not always the aesthetic perception of beauty. The limit of the concept is that: it fails to explain or justify the importance of beauty for a happy, meaningful life.

We are now moving on to a new concept of beauty inspired by the study of the geometry of natural systems and the attempt to design buildings and human living environments which are alive.

5. BEAUTY AS WHOLENESS : (the architect/complexity scientist Christopher Alexander) Construed ecologically, from the standpoint of the holistic science of natural, evolving systems, the perception of beauty is the perception of wholeness. Wholeness is an objective property of nature and natural systems. This is a very deep objective quality of a place, a work of art, an organism, that affects us deeply. Beauty, as the cognizing of wholeness, can be explained in three, related ways.

To be beautiful is:

(1) To exhibit living structure. (to come to exist through a continuous process of unfolding.)

(2) To be a coherent system (to exhibit a high degree of relatedness.)

(3) To manifest the (transpersonal) Self.

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The following points are Christopher Alexander’s summary of his theory of environmental structure as a process of unfolding wholeness. Christopher Alexander is a complexity scientist and architect, and the first thinker in modern times to construct a scientific theory of beauty and its underlying connection to reality. This summary is taken from his recently published paper “Empirical Findings from The Nature of Order” study.

1. A previously unknown phenomenon has been observed in artifacts. It may be called “life” or “wholeness.” This quality has been noticed in certain works of art, artifacts, buildings, public space, rooms, parts of buildings, and in a wide range of other human artifacts.

2. The idea of how much life is in things is objective in the sense of observation, and is thus common to people of different inclinations and different and cultures. This is a surprise, since it seems to contradict the accepted wisdom of cultural relativity.

3. This quality of life seems to be correlated with the repeated appearance of fifteen geometric properties—or geometrical invariants—that appear throughout the object’s configuration.

4. We began to refer to this quality, when viewed in its geometrical aspect, as “living structure.”

5. The appearance of living structure in things—large or small—is also correlated with the fact that these things induce deep feeling, and a feeling of connectedness in those who are in the presence of these things.

6. Degree of life is an objective quality that may be measured by reliable empirical methods. The empirical test that most trenchantly predicts “life” in things, in comparing two things, is a test that asks which of the two induces the greater wholeness in the observer, and/or which of the two most nearly resembles the observer’s inner self.

7. Astonishingly, in spite of the vast variety of human beings, human culture, and human character, there is substantial agreement about these judgments—thus suggesting a massive pool of agreement about the deep nature of a “human self,” and possibly suggesting that we may legitimately speak of “the” human self (at least strongly indicated).

8. The fifteen properties are the ways in which living centers can support other living centers. A center is a field-like centrality that occurs in space.

9. In phenomena ranging in scale from 10-15 to 10-8 meters, on the surface of the Earth again ranging from 10-5 to 105 meters, and then again at cosmological scales ranging from 109 to 1026 meters, the same fifteen properties also occur repeatedly in natural systems.

10. There is substantial empirical evidence that the judged quality of buildings and works of art—judged by knowledgeable people who have the experience to judge their quality objectively—are predicted by the presence and density of the fifteen properties.

11. It is possible that the properties, as they occur in artifacts, may originate with cognition, and work because of cognition, and that is why we respond to them.

12. But that cannot explain why they also occur and recur, and play such a significant role in natural phenomena.

13. Centers appear in both living and non-living structures. But in the living structures, there is a higher density and degree of cooperation between the centers, especially among the larger ones—and this feature comes directly from the presence of the fifteen properties, and the density with which they occur (demonstrated).

14. The structure of living things has been shown to have a predictable geometric coherence at least partly governed by the fifteen properties presented in Book 1 (demonstrated).

15. If we examine the origin of the things in nature and in human art that possess living structure, it turns out that this living structure comes about, almost without exception, as a result of an unfolding process, which draws structure from the whole, by progressive differentiation (demonstrated).

16. More particularly, it is possible to define a new class of transformations, “wholeness-extending transformations,” which allow continuous elaboration of any portion of the world, according to non-disruptive and healing acts. [Note: In Book 2, the term “structure-preserving transformations” is used throughout. Since its publication I have adopted the more expressive term “wholeness-extending.”]

17. This progressive differentiation and coherence building can be shown to depend on the system of wholeness-extending transformations that preserve and extend wholeness (demonstrated).

18. In addition, it can be shown that these transformations generate the 15 properties, as a natural by-product of their wholeness-extending actions (demonstrated).

19. It is also precisely the use of these wholeness-extending transformations which has caused the appearance of the greatly loved, and now treasured, traditional environments all over the world (demonstrated).

20. It can also be shown that the environments typically created by commercial development in the last 100 years are generated by an almost diametrically opposed system of wholeness-disrupting transformations (demonstrated).

21. It may be concluded or inferred that healthy environments can only be generated by actions and processes based on wholeness-extending transformations. If we hope for health or living structure in our built environment, it is therefore reasonable to say that the entire social process of project initiation, design, planning, and construction must be revised to incorporate the necessary processes.

22. Not surprisingly, the new methods and processes required to achieve this healing, will have—as a practical matter—to be substantially different from present-day commercial methods, thus requiring great courage, and a widespread willingness to make serious changes in society (demonstrated).

23. Demonstrations have been given throughout Book 2, showing how a great variety of sequential-holistic processes can give rise to effective unfolding and produce new buildings and environments that have greater than normal coherence, adaptation, and harmony with their surroundings.

24. It is shown, above all, that it is the holistic and sequential nature of the unfolding, which governs the coherent quality of what comes out as the end-product configurations. As far as we are aware, only this kind of process places appropriate emphasis on the well-being of the whole.

25. The core quality of an environment which is unfolded through wholeness-extending transformations will be that it is deeply related to human beings—in a way that may be called “belonging.” (demonstrated)

26. This belonging must be and will be something related to people’s everyday inner feelings. The relatedness to inner feelings will not be trivial but leads, rather, to a far deeper substance than the artificial constructions currently hailed as “art.” (demonstrated)

27. Structures created by a process of unfolding are likely, in addition, to have a wider range of physical and human characteristics—far wider, than the range of those visible in the homogeneous commercial projects of our time. They will, by their nature and by the nature of the wholeness-extending transformations of land and people, nourish the land and people, and give rise to a great depth and substance that provides genuine support for human beings (demonstrated).

28. The additional quality that will arise is that the environment made in this way, will be “sustainable” as a whole, and in a deeper and more comprehensive sense than the kind of technological sustainability that has become fashionable in recent years.

Final Project: Eco-Aesthetic-Mediated-Perception (What is life?)

UCONN School of Art • ART113 • Spring 2008

Final Project: Eco-Aesthetic-Mediated-Perception (What is life?)

DUE: Wednesday, April 30th

AIM: This project is an artistic meditation on the experience of beauty and its relation to other concepts we have been exploring this semester, such as the concepts of perception, consciousness, technology, civilization and the environment. The aim is to allow the student a way to try and synthesis some of the many thoughts and feelings and experiences she’s had during the course of our investigations.

REQUIREMENTS: 1. One day of silent exploration of the UCONN campus. 2. A landscape/environmental image (or series of images, video or other expressive medium. 3. A 5-page essay which includes visual studies for your landscape. Note: If you wish your final project returned to you with comments, please include a self-addressed stamped envelope with it when you turn it in.

INSTRUCTIONS:

Part I • THE FEELING OF LIFE

The first step in your project is to spend ONE DAY (approx 8-24 hrs) in SILENT EXPLORATION of the UCONN campus as a PLACE of intersection between a human environment (a built environment within which humans do things, work, study, communicate, eat, etc. and the larger natural environment. Your objective will be to use your intuitive feelings to help you measure the contrasting degrees of LIFE in different places around campus. You are looking to find two places: (1) the PLACE-THAT-FEELS-MOST-ALIVE, and (2) the PLACE-THAT-FEELS-LEAST-ALIVE. What do I mean by “alive”? I do NOT mean the place that has the most biological beings living there, or the most natural place. I mean the place that makes you feel most alive, most at home in the world there, that is relaxing, that allows you to feel connected to the place and to yourself, and that gives you a feeling of living beauty. It is imperative that you DO NOT SPEAK OR VERBALLY COMMUNICATE during your search. Language (a feature of the left-brain) suppresses the feelings (created by the right-brain) and makes it more difficult for your intuitive FEELINGS to guide your perception of living form.

Part II • THE BEAUTY OF LIVING THINGS, THE LIFE OF BEAUTIFUL THINGS

During or after your silent exploration, prepare for creating your landscape image by creating at least two visual studies: one studying the liveliness of the Place that felt most alive, and the other studying the lack of life of the Place that felt least alive. Ask yourself: how do I express/represent life or the lack of life in this Place? Then create a landscape/ environmental artwork which explores, captures, articulates, expresses the life of the lively Place you found during your silent exploration.

Part III • COMPOSTING YOUR PERCEPTION

During or after composition of your landscape, write a 5-page essay explaining and exploring your feelings of life and the lack of life. Use your experiences to address one or more of the following questions:

1. What does it mean to consciously perceive the world?
2. How does beauty reveal truth?
3. Is beauty subjective (in the eye of the beholder) or objective (revealing something deep about the world?
4. What is beautiful about something which is alive?
5. How does technology increase and or decrease the existence of life?
6. Is the Self (the awareness that you experience as your real YOU) something in the brain that is separate from
everything else, or do you share a Self with the world?
7. What can art achieve?

Important note: You do not have to answer these questions. More impressive than answering a question is showing how a question arises naturally from reflecting on your experiences.

NOTE: To better understand question 6, watch this video.

Conclusion: Art as Eco-aesthetic-mediated perception; or, What is Living Form?

"Somehow – whether it be in color, or in a harmonious garden, or in a room whose light and mood are just right, or in the awesome wall of a great building which allows us to walk near it – some placid, piercing unity occurs, sharp and soft, embracing, tying all things together, wrapping us up in it, allowing us to feel our own unity. What, physically, is this unity which seems to speak to us of I?" - Christopher Alexander, The Luminous Ground.

4/7 Aesthetic objects, transfiguration and beauty
• Arthur Danto, Transfiguration of the Commonplace, Chapter 4
• Excerpts from David Hume’s “Of the Standard of Taste” (1757)

4/9 Modernist concepts of beauty and design
• Handout on Modernist concepts of beauty
• Marcel Duchamp, "Apropos of 'Readymades'"

4/14 Design flaws of hydrocarbon society
• The End of Suburbia, film screening
• CT Peak Oil Caucus Report, Nov. 2007.

4/16 Aesthetics of wind farms
• Justin Good, “The Aesthetics of Wind Farms"

4/21 Theory of Beauty as a Structure of Unfolding Wholeness
• Handout on Christopher Alexander’s theory of architecture

25) 4/23 Beauty as wholeness continued.

26) 4/28 Metaphysics of Beauty as Manifestation of a Universal Self: The Holonic theory of art
• Ken Wilber, The Eye of Spirit, “Integral Art and Literary Theory”

27) 4/30 Wholeness project due

The class on the metaphysics of art that didn't exist

Dear Philosophers of Art:

Below are the questions that we would have discussed if our class on Wednesday, May 2nd had existed. Read "Transfiguration of the Commonplace," chapter Four for Monday. If you've already read that chapter and understand it perfectly, go ahead and read chapter 6.

• Consider the following questions as you read Danto. Ask yourself: which question speaks most deeply to me? Which is most relevant to me as an artist? As a human being?

• What happens to an object when it becomes a work of art?

• If an ordinary object like a urinal can become a work of art simply by being declared to be art by the “art world”, then can anything become art? If so, what is the point of making art out of a mere object?

• If anything can become a work of art, then it is not the object, but your perceptual attitude towards an object – call it “having an aesthetic appreciation” for something that makes it a work of art. But you can find something beautiful without turning it into a work of art. So, what is the particular kind of beauty or aesthetic pleasure that turns things into works of art?

• There are representations – imitations - of nature (e.g. scientific pictures) which are not works of art, so art cannot be defined as the mimesis of nature. So what subset of nature representations are artistic nature representations?

• Is the sense of beauty more like the sense of hearing or the sense of humor?

• Is it possible to observe the world without responding to the world, or is perception intrinsically responsive to the world?

• What is the purpose of art?


In The Know: How Can We Make The War In Iraq More Eco-Friendly?

John Cage's 4'33"

The "what is art?" question is a question about why it is important for us to call some entities 'mere thing' and others 'work of art'

What is art? (Aesthetic-mediated-perception)

Reading:

(18) 3/31 Metaphysics of art objects
• Arthur Danto, Transfiguration of the Commonplace, Ch. 1

(19) 4/2 Content
• Transfiguration, TBA

20) 4/7 Closer look at mimesis
• Transfiguration, TBA

21) 4/9 Interpretation
• Transfiguration cont, TBA

22) 4/14 Modernist concepts of beauty and design
• Handout on Kant’s and Duchamp’s aesthetics

23) 4/16 Holonic theory of art
• Ken Wilber, The Eye of Spirit, “Integral Art and Literary Theory”

Realism is the most mysterious style of art

Ten Concepts of Representational Realism

These are ten different, but related ways of understanding or measuring what it means to be ‘realistic.’ Can all of these be true? Can they be fit into a general theory of realism, or are they mutually inconsistent? Is realism ‘just a style’ or are some styles more realistic than others?

1. Depiction realism: All pictorial representations are realistic, in contrast to non-pictorial or linguistic kinds of representations. Pictures are realistic as pictures, vs. sentences, which represent but not pictorially. A picture represents how things are in the world by having a similar structure to the thing pictured. The general form of a picture is: “This is how things stand.”

2. Evolving realism: A picture which is realistic will only appear to be realistic when we acquire understanding of the object or state of affairs pictured by the representation. Realism depends on what you know as reality.

3. Content realism: Realism comes in degrees. In each image/style, one can distinguish parts of the picture which represent objective features of reality vs. elements which are part of the design. Some pictures are more realistic than others because they have a larger ratio of representational to design elements.

4. Lifelike (naturalistic) realism: An image is more realistic than another if it has features which reflect what it is like to encounter the object itself in ‘real life’. Realism distinguishes things which are actually real from what is unreal.

5. Hyperrealism (Uncanny realism): Images which, although representing objects or situations which are unexperienced in ordinary life, use features which make them seem real.

6. Illusionistic realism: A picture is realistic if it can be confused with what it is representing. The only kind of representation which is truly realistic which be a full-scale replica of the thing.

7. Information realism: A representation is realistic if it offers accurate information about the things it represents.

8. Relevance realism: A representation is realistic if it offers not only information that is accurate, but also relevant, relative to one’s cognitive interests.

9. Revelatory realism: A representation is realistic to the extent that it reveals a non-trivial aspect of reality.

10. Idolic realism: Something is realistic if it is taken as a vehicle for capturing truth. Realism is not a property of pictures, but of how the picture is taken by the spectator.

John Cage on Listening

"Which is more musical: a truck passing by a factory or a truck passing by a music school?" --John Cage

Is realism just a style?

3/26 WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO BE "REALISTIC"?

Reading: Catherine Abell, "Realism and the Riddle of Style"

Narcissus Narcosis Project

If you want to see some Narcissus Narcosis Self-Portraits from last year CLICK HERE.

Plato's Challenge to All Future Artists, Or: What is realism?

In Plato’s still radical book Republic, the first work of systematic political science and one of the greatest works of philosophy every conceived, Plato articulates a scientific-rationalist and political critique of the arts that still holds sway over popular cultural and institutional beliefs about the cognitive and ethical shortcomings of art and the artistic life. In fact, Plato offers a challenge to all future artists in that argument, to justify themselves as a form of human culture. A contemporary artist struggling to make sense of the value of her creativity could do worse than trying to articulate a response to the most incessant and powerful of all dead white males. The following excepted dialogue is a conversation between Socrates and Glaucon from Plato’s Republic, Book 10 where Plato states his case against artistic perception and creativity.

•

Of he many excellences which I perceive in the order of our State, there is none which upon reflection pleases me better than the rule about poetry.

To what do you refer?

To the rejection of imitative poetry, which certainly ought not to be received; as I see far more clearly now that the parts of the soul have been distinguished.

What do you mean?

Speaking in confidence, for I should not like to have my words repeated to the tragedians and the rest of the imitative tribe --but I do not mind saying to you, that all poetical imitations are ruinous to the understanding of the hearers, and that the knowledge of their true nature is the only antidote to them…


You may look at a bed from different points of view, obliquely or directly or from any other point of view, and the bed will appear different, but there is no difference in reality. And the same of all things.
Yes, the difference is only apparent.

Now let me ask you another question: Which is the art of painting designed to be --an imitation of things as they are, or as they appear --of appearance or of reality?

Of appearance.

Then the imitator, I said, is a long way off the truth, and can do all things because he lightly touches on a small part of them, and that part an image. For example: A painter will paint a cobbler, carpenter, or any other artist, though he knows nothing of their arts; and, if he is a good artist, he may deceive children or simple persons, when he shows them his picture of a carpenter from a distance, and they will fancy that they are looking at a real carpenter…


And the same object appears straight when looked at out of the water, and crooked when in the water; and the concave becomes convex, owing to the illusion about colours to which the sight is liable. Thus every sort of confusion is revealed within us; and this is that weakness of the human mind on which the art of conjuring and of deceiving by light and shadow and other ingenious devices imposes, having an effect upon us like magic.

True.

And the arts of measuring and numbering and weighing come to the rescue of the human understanding-there is the beauty of them --and the apparent greater or less, or more or heavier, no longer have the mastery over us, but give way before calculation and measure and weight?

Most true.

And this, surely, must be the work of the calculating and rational principle in the soul…


But we have not yet brought forward the heaviest count in our accusation: --the power which poetry has of harming even the good (and there are very few who are not harmed), is surely an awful thing?

Yes, certainly, if the effect is what you say.

Hear and judge: The best of us, as I conceive, when we listen to a passage of Homer, or one of the tragedians, in which he represents some pitiful hero who is drawling out his sorrows in a long oration, or weeping, and smiting his breast --the best of us, you know, delight in giving way to sympathy, and are in raptures at the excellence of the poet who stirs our feelings most.

Yes, of course I know.

But when any sorrow of our own happens to us, then you may observe that we pride ourselves on the opposite quality --we would fain be quiet and patient; this is the manly part, and the other which delighted us in the recitation is now deemed to be the part of a woman.

Very true, he said.

Now can we be right in praising and admiring another who is doing that which any one of us would abominate and be ashamed of in his own person?

No, he said, that is certainly not reasonable.

And the same may be said of lust and anger and all the other affections, of desire and pain and pleasure, which are held to be inseparable from every action ---in all of them poetry feeds and waters the passions instead of drying them up; she lets them rule, although they ought to be controlled, if mankind are ever to increase in happiness and virtue…


And now since we have reverted to the subject of poetry, let this our defense serve to show the reasonableness of our former judgment in sending away out of our State an art having the tendencies which we have described; for reason constrained us. But that she may impute to us any harshness or want of politeness, let us tell her that there is an ancient quarrel between philosophy and poetry; of which there are many proofs, such as the saying of 'the yelping hound howling at her lord,' or of one 'mighty in the vain talk of fools,' and 'the mob of sages circumventing Zeus,' and the 'subtle thinkers who are beggars after all'; and there are innumerable other signs of ancient enmity between them. Notwithstanding this, let us assure our sweet friend and the sister arts of imitation that if she will only prove her title to exist in a well-ordered State we shall be delighted to receive her --we are very conscious of her charms; but we may not on that account betray the truth. I dare say, Glaucon, that you are as much charmed by her as I am, especially when she appears in Homer?

Yes, indeed, I am greatly charmed.

Reversal of the Overheated Medium

WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN INFORMATION AND REALITY?

Wed 3/5 Kinds of information

Reading: Albert Borgmann, Holding On to Reality, pp. 1-37.

Spring break

Mon 3/17 Cultural meaning and the sociological imagination

Reading: Holding On to Reality cont.

Wed 3/19 Technological information

Reading: Holding On to Reality cont.

Mon 3/24 Narcissus narcosis project due

Reading: Holding On to Reality cont.

––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

The following is from John Zerzan's book "Running on Emptiness":

"There has been a wholesale revision in scholarly ideas, in the past 20 or 30 years, of what life outside of civilization really was. One of the basic ideological foundations for civilization, for religion, the state, police, armies, everything else, is that you've got a pretty bloodthirsty, awful, subhuman condition before civilization. It has to be tamed and tutored and so on. It's Hobbes. It's that famous idea that the pre-civilized life was nasty, brutish and short, and so to rescue or enable humanity away from fear and superstitition, from this horrible condition into the light of civilization, you have to do that. You have to have what Freud called the 'forcible renunciation of instinctual freedom.' You just have to. That's the price.

"Anyway, that turns out to be completely wrong. Since the early '70s, we have a starkly different picture of what life was like in the two million or so years before civilization, a period that ended about 10,000 years ago, almost no time at all. Prehistory is now characterized more by intelligence, egalitarianism and sharing, leisure time, a great deal of sexual equality, robusticity and health, with no evidence at all of organized violence. I mean, that's just staggering. It's virtually a wholescale revision. We're still living, of course, with the cartoonish images, the caveman pulling the woman into the cave, Neanderthal meaningt someone who is a complete brute and subhuman, and so on. But the real picture has been wholly revised."
______________________

Could things actually have been easier back in the stone age before agriculture and civilization?!!!

According to the conventional Story of Progress, pre-modern or indigenous peoples not on the path to western-style development are living in an evolutionary backwater, still preoccupied with survival, and not able to evolve to their truly human potentialities. But new anthropological information, and new ecological histories of civilization, suggest that the truth may in fact be the opposite: that so-called ‘civilization’ is a form of spiritual captivity that generates scarcity out of abundance, nihilism out of meaningfulness, alienation out of belonging, and inevitable economic expansionism implying an endless series of resource wars. Is there any evidence to back up this shocking verdict?

The famous economic anthropologist Marshall Sahlins looked into this very question in his book "Stone Age Economics", an anthropological study of the economic systems of hunter-gatherer societies. He uncovered overwhelming evidence to support it. Here are some excerpts from the first chapter in that book, called “The Original Affluent Society”:

“Almost universally committed to the proposition that life was hard in the Paleolithic, our textbooks compete to convey a sense of impending doom, leaving one to wonder not only how hunters managed to live, but whether, after all, this was living? The specter of starvation stalks the stalker through these pages. His technical incompetence is said to enjoin continuous work just to survive, affording him neither respite nor surplus, hence not even the ‘leisure’ to ‘build culture.’…

“In fact, this was, when you come to examine it, the original affluent society. Paradoxical, that phrasing leads to another useful and unexpected conclusion. By the common understanding, an affluent society is one in which all the people’s material wants are easily satisfied. To assert that the hunters are affluent is to deny that the human condition is an ordained tragedy, with man the prisoner at hard labor of a perpetual disparity between his unlimited wants and his insufficient means…

“For there are two possible courses to affluence. Wants may be “easily satisfied” either by producing much or desiring little. The familiar conception… makes assumptions peculiarly appropriate to market economics: that man’s wants are great, not to say, infinite, whereas his means are limited, although improveable: thus, the gap between means and ends can be narrowed by industrial productivity, at least to the point that ‘urgent goods’ become plentiful. But there is also a Zen road to affluence: that human material wants are finite and few, and technical means unchanging but on the whole adequate. Adopting the Zen strategy, a people can enjoy an unparalleled material plenty – with a low standard of living. That, I think, describes the hunters…

“Consumption is a double tragedy: what begins in inadequacy will end in deprivation. Bringing together an international division of labor [i.e. globalization], the market makes available a dazzling array of products: all these Good Things within a man’s reach – but never all within his grasp. Worse, in this game of consumer free choice, every acquisition is simultaneously a deprivation, for every purchase of something is a foregoing of something else, in general only marginally less desirable, and in some particulars more desirable, that could have been had instead…

“When Herskovits was writing his ‘Economic Anthropology’ (1958), it was common anthropological practice to take the [Kalahari] Bushmen or the native Australians as ‘a classic illustration of a people whose economic resources are of the scantiest,’ so precariously situated that ‘only the most intense application makes survivial possible.’ Today the classic understanding can be fairly reversed – on evidence largely from these two groups. A good case can be made that hunters and gatherers work less than we do; and, rather than a continuous travail, the food quest is intermittent, leisure abundant, and there is a greater amount of sleep in the daytime per capita per year than in any other condition of society…

“Reports on hunters and gatherers of the ethnological present – specifically on those in marginal environments – suggest a mean of three to five hours per adult worker per day in food production. Hunters keep banker’s hours, notably less than modern industrial workers who would surely settle for a 21-35 hour week…

“One-third to one-half of humanity are said to go to bed hungry every night. In the Old Stone Age the fraction must have been much smaller. This is the era of hunger unprecedented. Now, in the time of the greatest technical power, is starvation an institution. Reverse another venerable formula: the amount of hunger increases relatively and absolutely with the evolution of culture…

“This paradox is my whole point. Hunters and gatherers have by force of circumstance an objectively low standard of living. But taken as their objective, and given their adequate means of production, all the people’s material wants usually can be easily satisfied…

“The world’s most primitive people have few possessions, but they are not poor. Poverty is not a certain small amount of goods, nor is it just a relation between means and ends; above all it is a relation between people. Poverty is a social status. As such it is the invention of civilization…"

Narcissus Narcosis Project

DUE: March 24th

This project is has three parts:

(1) Choose a technology/medium, or a combination thereof, that you use, on a daily basis and that is important to you. DO WITHOUT the use of that medium for a period of 100 hours (approx. 4 days). Some examples of media: email, cellphone, instant messenger, video games, tv, cars, clothing.

(2) Write a 4 page (min) essay • What is Marshall McLuhan’s theory of media and the artist? (What are the implications of his analysis of media for how we understand the role of the artist? USE AT LEAST ONE IDEA ABOUT PERCEPTION FROM YOUR FIRST PROJECT – RELATE IT TO HOW TECHNOLOGY SHAPES PERCEPTION.

(3) Create, in any medium, a self-portrait (of the artist) – that is, of you – as a user of a McLuhan medium? (e.g. car, cellphone, internet, IM, MySpace, television, etc. ) Your self-portrait MUST SHOW THE SENSE IN WHICH THE MEDIUM IS THE MESSAGE.

If you are confused about the second part, do the first part first before you think about it.

Some things that Marshall Mcluhan says about ART:

1. The ARTIST is the person who
invents the means to bridge the
gap between biological inheritance
and the environments created by
technological innovation.

2. The ARTIST is a person who is
especially aware of the challenge
and dangers of new environments.
Whereas the ordinary person seeks
security by numbing his
perceptions against the impact of
new experience, the artist delights
in this novelty and instinctively
creates situations that both
reveal it and compensate for it.

3. The ARTIST studies the distortion of
sensory life produced by new environmental
programming and tends to create artistic
situations that correct the sensory bias
and derangement brought about by the new form.

4. ART at its most significant is a Distant Early
Warning System that can always be relied
on to tell the old culture what is beginning
to happen to it.

5. As the unity of the modern world becomes
increasingly a technological rather than a
social affair, the techniques of the ARTS
provide the most valuable means of insight
into the real direction of our own collective purposes.

6. The audience, as ground, shapes
and controls the work of ART, as figure.

7. Without the ARTIST’s intervention, man
merely adapts to his technologies and
becomes their servo-mechanism. He whorships
the Idols of the Tribe, of the Cave, and of the Market.

8. We become what we behold.
We shape our tools and then our tools shape us.

9. No society has ever known enough about its actions
to have developed immunity to its new extensions
or technologies. Today we have begun to sense that
ART may be able to provide such immunity.

10. In the electric age there is not longer any sense in
talking about the ARTIST's being ahead of his time. Our
technology is also ahead of its time.

11. The ARTIST can correct the sense ratios before
the blow of new technology has numbed conscious
procedures. He can correct them before numbness and
subliminal groping and reaction begin.

12. ART holds out the potential for communicating exact
information of how to rearrange one's psyche in order
to anticipate the next blow from our own extended faculties.

Extending the Nervous System

The Outsourced Brain

By DAVID BROOKS
Published: New York Times, October 26, 2007

The gurus seek bliss amidst mountaintop solitude and serenity in the meditative trance, but I, grasshopper, have achieved the oneness with the universe that is known as pure externalization.

I have melded my mind with the heavens, communed with the universal consciousness, and experienced the inner calm that externalization brings, and it all started because I bought a car with a G.P.S.

Like many men, I quickly established a romantic attachment to my G.P.S. I found comfort in her tranquil and slightly Anglophilic voice. I felt warm and safe following her thin blue line. More than once I experienced her mercy, for each of my transgressions would be greeted by nothing worse than a gentle, “Make a U-turn if possible.”

After a few weeks, it occurred to me that I could no longer get anywhere without her. Any trip slightly out of the ordinary had me typing the address into her system and then blissfully following her satellite-fed commands. I found that I was quickly shedding all vestiges of geographic knowledge.

It was unnerving at first, but then a relief. Since the dawn of humanity, people have had to worry about how to get from here to there. Precious brainpower has been used storing directions, and memorizing turns. I myself have been trapped at dinner parties at which conversation was devoted exclusively to the topic of commuter routes.

My G.P.S. goddess liberated me from this drudgery. She enabled me to externalize geographic information from my own brain to a satellite brain, and you know how it felt? It felt like nirvana.

Through that experience I discovered the Sacred Order of the External Mind. I realized I could outsource those mental tasks I didn’t want to perform. Life is a math problem, and I had a calculator.

Until that moment, I had thought that the magic of the information age was that it allowed us to know more, but then I realized the magic of the information age is that it allows us to know less. It provides us with external cognitive servants — silicon memory systems, collaborative online filters, consumer preference algorithms and networked knowledge. We can burden these servants and liberate ourselves.

Musical taste? I have externalized it. Now I just log on to iTunes and it tells me what I like.

I click on its recommendations, sample 30 seconds of each song, and download the ones that appeal. I look on my iPod playlist and realize I’ve never heard of most of the artists I listen to. I was once one of those people with developed opinions about the Ramones, but now I’ve shed all that knowledge and blindly submit to a mishmash of anonymous groups like the Reindeer Section — a disturbing number of which seem to have had their music featured on the soundtrack of “The O.C.”

Memory? I’ve externalized it. I am one of those baby boomers who are making this the “It’s on the Tip of My Tongue Decade.” But now I no longer need to have a memory, for I have Google, Yahoo and Wikipedia. Now if I need to know some fact about the world, I tap a few keys and reap the blessings of the external mind.

Personal information? I’ve externalized it. I’m no longer clear on where I end and my BlackBerry begins. When I want to look up my passwords or contact my friends I just hit a name on my directory. I read in a piece by Clive Thompson in Wired that a third of the people under 30 can’t remember their own phone number. Their smartphones are smart, so they don’t need to be. Today’s young people are forgoing memory before they even have a chance to lose it.

Now, you may wonder if in the process of outsourcing my thinking I am losing my individuality. Not so. My preferences are more narrow and individualistic than ever. It’s merely my autonomy that I’m losing.

I have relinquished control over my decisions to the universal mind. I have fused with the knowledge of the cybersphere, and entered the bliss of a higher metaphysic. As John Steinbeck nearly wrote, a fella ain’t got a mind of his own, just a little piece of the big mind — one mind that belongs to everybody. Then it don’t matter, Ma. I’ll be everywhere, around in the dark. Wherever there is a network, I’ll be there. Wherever there’s a TiVo machine making a sitcom recommendation based on past preferences, I’ll be there. Wherever there’s a Times reader selecting articles based on the most e-mailed list, I’ll be there. I’ll be in the way Amazon links purchasing Dostoyevsky to purchasing garden furniture. And when memes are spreading, and humiliation videos are shared on Facebook — I’ll be there, too.

I am one with the external mind. Om.

The special role that artists have in healing the planet

ART113 • Introduction to Aesthetics

Dr. Good’s Beginner’s Guide to Marshall McLuhan’s theory of media and art: How to study media-technologies ecologically? Or, The special role that Artists have in healing the planet

§1. Ecological definition of medium-technology. Technology as an environment.

Media (technology) always must be understood as an extension of the human mind-body. This is a broader definition of a medium than is usually meant, since it applies not just to communication but every technological innovation starting with language. By altering the relationship between our self-system and the environmental systems within which we live, we unintentionally cause changes to both our self and the environment. Because media are extensions of our mind body, We shape our tools and then our tools shape us.

E.g. Clothing extends skin, shoes extend soles of feet, chairs extend the back, automobiles extend legs and stomach, phonetic literacy extends eyes and mind, electric media extend the entire nervous system.

§2. Psychological obstructions to studying media-technologies. The medium is the message.

As extensions of our body-mind, our use of media technologies changes us psychologically and socially. There are two basic reasons why it is very difficult for us to become aware of these changes.

• Rearview-mirror view of the world
The immediate sensory environment – the context within which things are experienced - is itself very difficult to experience because it ‘saturates the whole field of attention so overwhelmingly.’ Perception is always only aware of changes in the field of awareness. Unless the field of awareness is itself changing quickly, it cannot become an object of perception. So we tend to experience the present in terms the prior environment which is visible from the outside.

• Narcissus narcosis, or Auto-amputation
Extensions of the human mind-body result in new relationships between our perceptual and bodily capacities, disrupting our self-system and giving rise to auto-protective measures, i.e. numbness (psychic anaesthesia, emotional dissociation, PTSD. One part of the system is isolated from the other parts in order to protect the whole nervous system. Our use of technologies easily becomes addictive, where we block out the psychic dissonance of the new media environment by absorbing ourselves in sense of control offered by the new technology.

§3. Ecological study of technology requires holism. Pattern recognition vs. classification

Because the environment is not a thing but a changing network of relationships which itself shapes our attention and awareness, there is no technical or specialized study of media ecology. An effective approach must be flexible, creative, not rooted in a particular theory or fixed point of view, and general enough to ‘encompass the entire environmental matrix which is in constant flux.’ Traditionally Artists have been the only people to develop this approach to perceiving ground rather than just figure.

§4. Art as anti-narcotic. Aesthetics is the new ethics.

Technical knowledge cannot solve the problem of numbness since technical knowledge is always about how to do something, not why something should be done or how personal and social identity are unconsciously altered by the use of a technological solution to a problem. So what kind of knowledge can help us avoid cultural narcosis? Only ART can. Art is the ability to overcome perceptual dissonance, not by becoming numb to the dissonance, but by REVEALING it, and therefore discovering a new way to reach a DEEPER LEVEL OF EQUILIBRIUM with the environment. The artist bridges the gap between past and future, reveals the dangers of the new media environment to others, unifies her experience rather than remaining fragmented, studies the distortions of experience created by our OUT-OF-BALANCE RELATIONSHIP WITH NATURE, is the canary in the mineshaft warning us of spiritually-poisonous ways of relating to each other and the world, allows us to accept our experiences for what they truly are, frees our mind. Artists are the only people who actually live in the Present. The technical side of art is the technology of creating effects. The artist can see the present environment because she studies how to reproduce effects of the environment, but in a way that slows down the process to make it perceivable.

§5. Mcluhan’s conceptual toolbox for enhancing pattern recognition. Ideas as probes.

Marshall Mcluhan’s approach is pragmatic, not about explaining technological change but exploring and revealing its unconscious effects on personal and social behavior, experience and self-awareness. His many obwservations can be fit into three basic ways to approach the study of technology: (1) historical studies of the interface between technological innovation and social/psychological change, (2) hot-cool information interface characteristics, and (3) the tetrad form, or the four laws of media.

(a) Environmental history of technology

Looking at the history of technology is a powerful way to see patterns in experience which are otherwise impossible to perceive in the present environment. An overview of western history reveals that societies have always been shaped more by the nature of the media with which men communicate than by the content of the communication. Mcluhan’s analysis reveals four basic technological epochs which are defined in terms of the primary vehicle of communication: oral, phonetic-literate, typographic, and electric.

Pre-literate 1.00,000 - 4000 BCE
Phonetic Literate 4000 BCE -1500 CE
Typographic Literacy 1500 - 1950
Post-literacy (retribalized) 1850 - 2010?

People living within these different periods have different experiences of space/time, different sensory balances, different ideas about knowledge, reality, causality, different social,political and economic institutions, and different self-conceptions.

(b) Hot-cool information interface characteristics

All media technologies can be compared with respect to the quality of their interface with the human mind.

HOT medium:
• extends a single sense
• offers high definition (complete filling in of) information
• little completion or active participation by recipient req.
• tends to exclude (sense from awareness, individual from group)
• leads to specialization, fragmentation
• numbs larger awareness, lessens total perception
• short, intense experiences
• tends to hijack attention

COOL medium:
• extends multiple senses
• offers low definition (incomplete filling in of) information
• requires high participation, active completion
• tends to include/integrate information and individuals into communities)
• leads to generalization, consolidation
• engages background awareness
• longer, sustained experiences

Note 1: The temperature of a medium is relative to the comparison and the terms are not meant as categories but as tools of comparison.
Note 2: Since every medium, with the possible exception of human awareness or consciousness, takes another medium for its content, one must be careful to distinguish the interface medium from the content medium when determining the temperature of the interface.

(c) Four ecological laws of media.

The environmental effects of technological innovations can be classified according to four laws of media which articulate four aspects involved in technological change. Normally, we only think of the first two categories of change.

• ENHANCE: What does the new medium improve or enhance, make possible or accelerate
• OBSOLESCE: What is pushed aside or obsolesced by the new medium?
• RETRIEVE: What earlier action or service is brought back into play by the new form? What older,
previously obsolesced ground is brought back and becomes an essential part of the new form?
• REVERSE: When pushed to its limits, of its potential, the new form will reverse what was its original characteristics. What is the potential reversal of the new form?

E.g.
Automobile: enhance speed, obsolesces horse and buggy, retrieves nomadism, reverses into gridlock.
Cellphone: enhances voice, obsolesces phone booth, retrieves childhood yelling, reverses freedom into being a leash.
Capitalism: enhances liberty (of trade), obsoleses community responsibility, retrieves hunter-gatherer patterns, reverses abundance into starvation-scarcity.

§6. Themes from the environmental history of technology

(a) Visuality, literacy and detribalization •

Many of our modernist assumptions, regarding either the neutrality or the intrinsic goodness of technological development, have obscured the cultural sacrifice we made in leaving oral-tribal society, which had established a balance with the environment, a harmonious internal balance of sensory experiences, a stable economic and political order, a deeply immersive involvement in the world. Literacy and symbolic consciousness generally, spreads our awareness past the present into the past and future, and into abstract possibilities which empowers us while at the same time impoverishing and dimming down the fullness of our experience. Literacy extends vision into a master sense, leading to the detached, linear, systematizing mentality of rationalism. Vision can touc h without being touched.

(b) Civilization has been a process of imbalance, ecological Instability, system slippage •

Depression, mental illnesses, apathy, drug addictions and other compulsive-obsessive behaviors occur in ‘civilized’ or ‘modern’ societies, i.e. societies suffering from a continuous process of uncontrolled explosion/implosion, creating perpetual disequilibrium and stress from constant perceptual dissonance. Some technologies that are involved with our current civilizational disequilibrium with the world: phonetic literacy and typography, automobiles, paper/digital currency system, electricity, internet, totalitarian agriculture, certain ideas about: development, what it means to be human, to be happy, to be in control, to be alive. The ills of technology have nothing to do with it being unnatural, but with its introducing perpetual disequilibrium into a process which strives for equilibrium or BALANCE. Is there a way out of this pattern?

(c) Electric culture, space-time compaction and retribalization

Electric media do not merely extend one sense, they extend the entire nervous system, therefore extending self-awareness or consciousness past the body-defined self. The virtually instantaneous effect of electricity speeds up the form of every technology, leading to the establishment of a truly global consciousness (noosphere). We are now faced with trying to understand the infinite ramifications of INFORMATION SOCIETY while we still have time to effect its development. A key tension concerns the differences between the SELF as a disembodied, placeless cyberanimal which simply processes information and the self as a living being connected, and needing to be connected to a place and a time.

(d) Ethics of technology: comfort versus joy

Ignorance is not blissful, it is at best comfortable. True bliss requires optimal experience: i.e. a balance between being challenged and being in control. Technology presents us with a basic problem: how do we avoid narcissus narcosis in the use of new technologies?

Image above by Daniel Buttrey

The Dalai Lama on Technology

"The Paradox of our Age"

We have bigger houses, but smaller families;
more conveniences, but less time.
We have more degrees, but less judgements;
more experts, but more problems;
more medicines, but less healthiness.
We've been all the way to the moon and back,
but have trouble crossing the street
to meet the new neighbor.
We build more computers
to hold more information,
to produce more copies than ever,
but have less communication.
We have become long on quantity,
but short on quality.
These are times of fast foods,
but slow digestion;
tall man, but short character;
steep profits, but shallow relationships.
It is a time when there is much in the window,
but nothing in the room.

- His Holiness the XIVth Dalai Lama

Classifying Objects Versus Recognizing Patterns

Chapter Three: How media technologies shape perception and self; Or, What is information?

10) 2/25 Introduction to media ecology

• 1968 Playboy Interview with Marshall McLuhan

• How Television Works



11) 2/27 Narcissus narcosis

• Handout on Mcluhan’s theory of art

12) 3/3 The concept of “progress”

• Learning from Ladakh, film screening.

• John Zerzan, “Running on Emptiness: The Failure of Symbolic Thought”

13) 3/5 Natural information and pre-literate experience

• Albert Borgmann, Holding On to Reality

Spring break

14) 3/17 Cultural meaning and the sociological imagination

• Holding On to Reality cont.

15) 3/19 Technological information

• Holding On to Reality cont.

16) 3/24 Narcissus narcosis project due

• Holding On to Reality cont.

Integral Theory of Consciousness and Self

2/18 Integral Epistemology: Ways of Knowing
• The Eye of Spirit, Chapters 2, 3, 11.

2/20 Integral Psychology: Holism and models of the self
• The Eye of Spirit, Chapters 8, 12.

What's your epistemology dude?

Do you believe that there is some ONE way of getting REAL KNOWLEDGE, like in a controlled experiment in a scientific laboratory, or are there MANY ways, many METHODS for getting real knowledge? Consider the EPISTEMOLOGICAL ANARCHISM, the view of knowledge that there are many ways to justify beliefs. The following is from a great scientist and epistemologist Paul Feyerabend.

Outline of an anarchistic theory of knowledge

by Paul Feyerabend

• Science is an essentially anarchistic enterprise: theoretical anarchism is more humanitarian and more likely to encourage progress than its law-and-order alternatives.

• This is shown both by an examination of historical episodes and by an abstract analysis of the relation between idea and action. The only principle that does not inhibit progress is: anything goes.

• For example, we may use hypotheses that contradict well-confirmed theories and/or well-established experimental results. We may advance science by proceeding counter-inductively.

• The consistency condition which demands that new hypotheses agree with accepted theories is unreasonable because it preserves the older theory, and not the better theory. Hypotheses contradicting well-confirmed theories give us evidence that cannot be obtained in any other way. Proliferation of theories is beneficial for science, while uniformity impairs its critical power. Uniformity also endangers the free development of the individual.

• There is no idea, however ancient and absurd, that is not capable of improving our knowledge. The whole history of thought is absorbed into science and is used for improving every single theory. Nor is political interference rejected. It may be needed to overcome the chauvinism of science that resists alternatives to the status quo.

• No theory ever agrees with all the facts in its domain, yet it is not always the theory that is to blame. Facts are constituted by older ideologies, and a clash between facts and theories may be proof of progress. It is also a first step in our attempts to find the principles implicit in familiar observational notions.

• As an example of such an attempt I examine the tower argument which the Aristotelians used to refute the motion of the earth. The argument involves natural interpretations - ideas so closely connected with observations that it needs a special effort to realise their existence and to determine their content. Galileo identifies the natural interpretations which are inconsistent with Copernicus and replaces them by others.

• The new natural interpretations constitute a new and highly abstract observation language. They are introduced and concealed so that one falls to notice the change that has taken place (method of anamnesis). They contain the idea of the relativity of all motion and the law of circular inertia.

• Initial difficulties caused by the change are defused by ad hoc hypotheses, which thus turn out occasionally to have a positive function; they give new theories a breathing space, and they indicate the direction of future research.

• In addition to natural interpretations, Galileo also changes sensations that seem to endanger Copernicus. He admits that there are such sensations, he praises Copernicus for having disregarded them, he claims to have removed them with the help of the telescope. However, he offers no theoretical reasons why the telescope should be expected to give a true picture of the sky.

• Nor does the initial experience with the telescope provide such reasons. The first telescopic observations of the sky are indistinct, indeterminate, contradictory and in conflict with what everyone can see with his unaided eyes. And, the only theory that could have helped to separate telescopic illusions from veridical phenomena was refuted by simple tests.

• On the other hand, there are some telescopic phenomena which are plainly Copernican. Galileo introduces these phenomena as independent evidence for Copernicus while the situation is rather that one refuted view - Copernicanism - has a certain similarity with phenomena emerging from another refuted view - the idea that telescopic phenomena are faithful images of the sky. Galileo prevails because of his style and his clever techniques of persuasion, because he writes in Italian rather than in Latin, and because he appeals to people who are temperamentally opposed to the old ideas and the standards of learning connected with them.

• Such 'irrational' methods of support are needed because of the 'uneven development' (Marx, Lenin) of different parts of science. Copernicanism and other essential ingredients of modern science survived only because reason was frequently overruled in their past. (continue reading)

Chapter Two: What is awareness?

2/6 The mind-body problem
• Rupert Sheldrake, The Sense of Being Stared At
• Rene Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy, 1 and 2.

2/11 Introduction to Holistic Philosophy
• Ken Wilber, The Eye of Spirit, Introduction.

Easy and Hard Questions about Consciousness

Excerpts from David Chalmer’s paper “Facing Up to the Problem of Consciousness”

“Consciousness poses the most baffling problems in the science of the mind. There is nothing that we know more intimately than conscious experience, but there is nothing that is harder to explain. All sorts of mental phenomena have yielded to scientific investigation in recent years, but consciousness has stubbornly resisted. Many have tried to explain it, but the explanations always seem to fall short of the target. Some have been led to suppose that the problem is intractable, and that no good explanation can be given…

“There is not just one problem of consciousness. ‘Consciousness’ is an ambiguous term, referring to many different phenomena. Each of these phenomena needs to be explained, but some are easier to explain than others. At the start, it is useful to divide the associated problems of consciousness into "hard" and "easy" problems. The easy problems of consciousness are those that seem directly susceptible to the standard methods of cognitive science, whereby a phenomenon is explained in terms of computational or neural mechanisms. The hard problems are those that seem to resist those methods.

“The easy problems of consciousness include those of explaining the following phenomena:

• the ability to discriminate, categorize, and react to 
environmental stimuli;
• the integration of information by a cognitive system;
• the reportability of mental states;
• the ability of a system to access its own internal states;
• the focus of attention;
• the deliberate control of behavior;
• the difference between wakefulness and sleep.

“All of these phenomena are associated with the notion of consciousness. For example, one sometimes says that a mental state is conscious when it is verbally reportable, or when it is internally accessible. Sometimes a system is said to be conscious of some information when it has the ability to react on the basis of that information, or, more strongly, when it attends to that information, or when it can integrate that information and exploit it in the sophisticated control of behavior. We sometimes say that an action is conscious precisely when it is deliberate. Often, we say that an organism is conscious as another way of saying that it is awake.

“There is no real issue about whether these phenomena can be explained scientifically. All of them are straightforwardly vulnerable to explanation in terms of computational or neural mechanisms. To explain access and reportability, for example, we need only specify the mechanism by which information about internal states is retrieved and made available for verbal report. To explain the integration of information, we need only exhibit mechanisms by which information is brought together and exploited by later processes. For an account of sleep and wakefulness, an appropriate neurophysiological account of the processes responsible for organisms' contrasting behavior in those states will suffice. In each case, an appropriate cognitive or neurophysiological model can clearly do the explanatory work.

“If these phenomena were all there was to consciousness, then consciousness would not be much of a problem. Although we do not yet have anything close to a complete explanation of these phenomena, we have a clear idea of how we might go about explaining them. This is why I call these problems the easy problems. Of course, "easy" is a relative term. Getting the details right will probably take a century or two of difficult empirical work. Still, there is every reason to believe that the methods of cognitive science and neuroscience will succeed.

“The really hard problem of consciousness is the problem of experience. When we think and perceive, there is a whir of information-processing, but there is also a subjective aspect. As Thomas Nagel has put it, there is something it is like to be a conscious organism. This subjective aspect is experience. When we see, for example, we experience visual sensations: the felt quality of redness, the experience of dark and light, the quality of depth in a visual field. Other experiences go along with perception in different modalities: the sound of a clarinet, the smell of mothballs. Then there are bodily sensations, from pains to orgasms; mental images that are conjured up internally; the felt quality of emotion, and the experience of a stream of conscious thought. What unites all of these states is that there is something it is like to be in them. All of them are states of experience.

“It is undeniable that some organisms are subjects of experience. But the question of how it is that these systems are subjects of experience is perplexing. Why is it that when our cognitive systems engage in visual and auditory information-processing, we have visual or auditory experience: the quality of deep blue, the sensation of middle C? How can we explain why there is something it is like to entertain a mental image, or to experience an emotion? It is widely agreed that experience arises from a physical basis, but we have no good explanation of why and how it so arises. Why should physical processing give rise to a rich inner life at all? It seems objectively unreasonable that it should, and yet it does.

“If any problem qualifies as the problem of consciousness, it is this one. In this central sense of "consciousness", an organism is conscious if there is something it is like to be that organism, and a mental state is conscious if there is something it is like to be in that state. Sometimes terms such as "phenomenal consciousness" and "qualia" are also used here, but I find it more natural to speak of "conscious experience" or simply "experience". Another useful way to avoid confusion is to reserve the term "consciousness" for the phenomena of experience, using the less loaded term "awareness" for the more straightforward phenomena described earlier. If such a convention were widely adopted, communication would be much easier; as things stand, those who talk about "consciousness" are frequently talking past each other.

“The ambiguity of the term "consciousness" is often exploited by both philosophers and scientists writing on the subject. It is common to see a paper on consciousness begin with an invocation of the mystery of consciousness, noting the strange intangibility and ineffability of subjectivity, and worrying that so far we have no theory of the phenomenon. Here, the topic is clearly the hard problem - the problem of experience. In the second half of the paper, the tone becomes more optimistic, and the author's own theory of consciousness is outlined. Upon examination, this theory turns out to be a theory of one of the more straightforward phenomena - of reportability, of introspective access, or whatever. At the close, the author declares that consciousness has turned out to be tractable after all, but the reader is left feeling like the victim of a bait-and-switch. The hard problem remains untouched…

“Why are the easy problems easy, and why is the hard problem hard? The easy problems are easy precisely because they concern the explanation of cognitive abilities and functions. To explain a cognitive function, we need only specify a mechanism that can perform the function. The methods of cognitive science are well-suited for this sort of explanation, and so are well-suited to the easy problems of consciousness. By contrast, the hard problem is hard precisely because it is not a problem about the performance of functions. The problem persists even when the performance of all the relevant functions is explained.”

The Blindness Project

DUE: February 13th.

AIM: This project is an experiment which aims to defamiliarize the student to the experience of sight in order to understand better its question-ability. In this experiment, you must blindfold yourself and then ask yourself certain questions about the experience.

QUESTIONS: The student should consider the following questions before performing
this experiment then address ONE or more of them when you write your report.

What is it like, to see? What is the experience like?
What is the difference between your sense of place, location, and spatial layout when you can see as opposed to when you are blind? What is the difference between visual space and acoustic space?
How do your non-visual senses change when you cannot see?
How do your relations to others change when you cannot see?
What perceptual sensitivities are seeing people blind to? What things can blind people see/perceive/experience that ‘seeing’ people cannot?
What does it mean, to see?

INSTRUCTIONS: 1. Blindfold yourself for a min. 4 hours. The longer, the better response you’ll get. 6-8 hours is ideal. Locate your self in an environment that is very visually familiar to you, some place like your dorm room or living space that you know very well. If you work with a partner, then you can walk around and do some exploring.

2. Spend the first three hours of the experiment just trying to be receptive to your new condition. Think about the ways your other sense experiences change when you cannot see. Try to get into the strangeness of it.

3. After at least 3 hours, while still in a state of artificial blindness, you must perform a specific set of memory observations. You must record as many details about the visual look and contents of the space you are familiar with as you can remember. This is essentially a test of your visual memory. Try to think of everything you remember about what you can ordinary see and notice about the space, such as for example: photographs or images you have on the wall, the colors of surfaces, objects, odd visual details you customarily notice. Make a list of observations.

4. After the time is up, take off your blindfold. Now look over your list and check it with what you can now see. Record any differences, distortions or omissions.

5. Write a short 4 page analysis of your experience relating it to what we’ve discussed in class, in particular the writings from Sacks, Gregory and Sheldrake.

What does this tell you about visual perception?

From the vision psychologist Richard Gregory's website.

Chapter One: What is perception?

1) 1.23 Introduction to aesthetics as the ecology of perception.

2) 1/28 Kinds of blindness
• Oliver Sacks, “The Mind’s Eye: What the blind see”
• Oliver Sacks, "To See and Not to See"


3) 1/30 Standard model of perception
• Richard Gregory, “Knowledge in perception and illusion”

4) 2/4 The mind-body problem
• Rupert Sheldrake, “The sense of being stared at”

Additional texts:
• Rupert Sheldrake, “The Extended Mind” video.
• Quantum Physics Double Slit Experiment video.

Art 113 Syllabus

Spring 2008
University of Connecticut
School of Fine Art

Art 113
Introduction to Aesthetics
Philosophy of Consciousness,
Media Ecology
and Theory of Art

Dr. Justin Good
vood@cummings-good.com
(617) 733-9270

Section 001: Mondays and Wednesdays, 6 – 7:15 PM
Section 002: Tuesdays and Thursdays 7:30 – 8:45 PM

We meet in Room AB106.

COURSE DESCRIPTION

This course offers an introduction to the philosophical discipline of aesthetics as the ecology of perception. While term is often used to mean beautiful or pleasing to the senses, the word aesthetics carries a broader meaning, derived from the Greek word aesthesis which simply means sensation. The discipline of aesthetics, which began in the 1800s, was conceived of as the study of perception, and it studied the arts as involving a special kind of perception. We shall be approaching the study of aesthetics in a broader and more exciting sense as the interdisciplinary study of perception, involving such disciplines as information theory, philosophy of art, media ecology, consciousness studies and ecological design.

AIMS AND INTENTIONS

While this is a philosophy class, it is designed for art students and is meant primarily to stimulate the artistic and design work of the student by introducing her, in a systematic and holistic way, to the theoretical study of perception. By learning the many ways that visual experience and visual images can be questioned, the student is given conceptual resources for discovering new expressive possibilities that her work can take. When all of its possibilities are unlocked, art can be a powerful force for change in the world.

OUR CONCEPTUAL MAP

This course is designed as a story of concepts, a continuous unfolding of questions and ideas which begins with the simplest (but still very complicated!) concept – perception – and goes on to address increasing levels of complexity and cultural meaning.

I. Perception
II. Mediated Perception
III. Aesthetic Mediated Perception
IV. Environmental Aesthetic Mediated Perception

The following outline of our philosophical inquiry into perception and art indicates some ways that answering basic questions about what it means to see requires that we address many other difficult philosophical questions about human life and existence.

What does it mean to see?

(1) TO SEE means (2) TO PERCEIVE which necessarily involves (3) BEING INFORMED and hence (4) BEING SELECTIVE of some larger domain of information, and hence, (5) BEING BLIND to other aspects of the collection, which requires both (6) KNOWLEDGE, as the purpose of gathering information, as well as grasping the (7) MEANING of what is experienced, and also (8) CONSCIOUSNESS of what is being gathered, which needs to be understood as an (9) EVOLUTIONARY PROCESS taking place within the even larger context of the (10) NATURAL WORLD, which we experience through a form of life called (11) HUMAN CULTURE, and more specifically,(12) WESTERN CIVILIZATION, which has shaped perception most directly through its (13) MEDIA TECHNOLOGIES, which must themselves be understood ecologically as (14) COMMUNICATION ENVIRONMENTS, within which we live, whereas (15) ART is a special way of approaching our communication environments by creating (16) ARTWORKS, which are a special kind of production which induces (17) AESTHETIC MEDIATED PERCEPTION involving the use of (18) REPRESENTATIONS of reality, but representations of a special kind which concern (19) THE FORM of the experience or object which interests (20) THE ARTIST, who is a person interested in this kind of experience, which has (21) AESTHETIC PROPERTIES which bear mysterious relationships to (22) TRUTH and also (23) GOODNESS and to the (24) NATURE OF THE SELF, and which have been given very powerful interpretations by (25) MODERNISM as a theory of culture and a way of life, which has in turn shaped our (26) ARCHITECTURAL LANDSCAPE in ways which are (27) ALIENATING but also (28) LIBERATORY and WHOLENESS ENHANCING and which hold open the possibility for (29) SUSTAINABLE LIVING and a revolutionary new (30) ECOLOGICAL CONCEPT OF BEAUTY, which helps us to understand in a new way (31) WHAT IT MEANS TO SEE (1)

Together we shall build a conceptual map with which to navigate the amazing ways that questions about perception ramify throughout every dimension of human life and specifically, the life of the Artist.

COURSE REQUIREMENTS

1. Three projects for the class on selected problems we will discuss and explore during the seminar. (60%)
2. Student participation in class discussions (30%).
3. Some short writing assignments (10%).
4. Regular Attendance.

REQUIRED TEXTS

1. Arthur C. Danto, The Transfiguration of the Commonplace: A Philosophy of Art (Harvard University Press, 2006) ISBN-10: 0674903463.

2. Albert Borgmann, Holding On to Reality: The Nature of Information at the Turn of the Millennium (University Of Chicago Press, 2000) ISBN-10: 0226066231

3. Ken Wilber, The Eye of Spirit: An Integral Vision for a World Gone Slightly Mad (Shambhala, 2001) ISBN-10: 1570628718.

Recommended: Patricia Wallace, The Psychology of the Internet (Cambridge University Press, 2001); ISBN-10: 0521797098.

In addition there will be a number of online writings • Readings and additional information for each class are posted on the course weblog art113.blogspot.com one class in advance.

COURSE SCHEDULE

What is perception?

1) 1.23 Introduction to aesthetics as the ecology of perception.

2) 1/28 Kinds of blindness
• Oliver Sacks, “The Mind’s Eye: What the blind see”

3) 1/30 Standard model of perception
• Richard Gregory, “Knowledge in perception and illusion”

4) 2/4 The mind-body problem
• Rupert Sheldrake, “The sense of being stared at”

What is awareness?

5) 2/6 Theories of consciousness
• Ken Wilber, The Eye of Spirit

6) 2/11 Perennial philosophy
• The Eye of Spirit cont.

7) 2/13 Blindness project due
• The Eye of Spirit cont.

8) 2/18 Mythos and logos: ways of knowing
• The Eye of Spirit cont.

9) 2/20 Holism and models of the self
• The Eye of Spirit cont.

What is information?

10) 2/25 Introduction to media ecology
• Marshall McLuhan, 1969 Playboy Interview

11) 2/27 Narcissus narcosis
• Handout on Mcluhan’s theory of art

12) 3/3 The concept of “progress”
• Learning from Ladakh, film screening.
• John Zerzan, “Running on Emptiness: The Failure of Symbolic Thought”

13) 3/5 Natural information and pre-literate experience
• Albert Borgmann, Holding On to Reality

Spring break

14) 3/17 Cultural meaning and the sociological imagination
• Holding On to Reality cont.

15) 3/19 Technological information
• Holding On to Reality cont.

16) 3/24 Narcissus narcosis project due
• Holding On to Reality cont.

What is art?

17) 3/26 Plato’s challenge to artists: The relation of beauty to truth
• Handout on Plato’s Republic.

18) 3/31 Metaphysics of art objects
• Arthur Danto, Transfiguration of the Commonplace

19) 4/2 Realism and the riddle of style
• Transfiguration cont.
• Handout on ten concepts of realism

20) 4/7 Art history and the end of art
• Transfiguration cont.

21) 4/9 Aesthetic objects and transfiguration
• Transfiguration cont.

22) 4/14 Modernist concepts of beauty and design
• Handout on Kant’s and Duchamp’s aesthetics

23) 4/16 Holonic theory of art
• The Eye of Spirit, “Integral Art and Literary Theory”

What is wholeness?

24) 4/21 Design flaws of hydrocarbon society
• The End of Suburbia, film screening
• Richard Heinberg, “What will we eat as the oil runs out?

25) 4/23 Aesthetics of wind farms
• Justin Good, “The Cosmology of Beauty”

26) 4/28 Theory of form as unfolding wholeness
• Handout on Christopher Alexander’s theory of architecture

27) 4/30 Wholeness project due