maldv/crabcanon · Datasets at Hugging Face

text stringlengths 0 174
as a whole. In this case, the art is self-defeating in the short run, since the viewers do
ponder about its meaning, but it achieves its aim with a few people in the long run, by
introducing them to its sources. But in either case, it is not true that there is no code by
which ideas are conveyed to the viewer. Actually, the code is a much more complex
thing, involving statements about the absence of codes and so forth-that is, it is part code,
part metacode, and so on. There is a Tangled Hierarchy of messages being transmitted by
the most Zen-like art objects, which is perhaps why so many find modern art so
inscrutable.

Ism Once Again

Cage has led a movement to break the boundaries between art and nature. In music, the
theme is that all sounds are equal-a sort of acoustical democracy. Thus silence is just as
important as sound, and random sound is just as important as organized sound. Leonard
B. Meyer, in his book Music, the Arts, and Ideas , has called this movement in music
"transcendentalism", and states:

If the distinction between art and nature is mistaken, aesthetic valuation is
irrelevant. One should no more judge the value of a piano sonata than one should
judge the value of a stone, a thunderstorm, or a starfish. "Categorical statements,
such as right and wrong, beautiful or ugly, typical of the rationalistic thinking of
tonal aesthetics," writes Luciano Berio [a contemporary composer, "are no longer
useful in understanding why and how a composer today works on audible forms
and musical action."

Later, Meyer continues in describing the philosophical position of transcendentalism:

... all things in all of time and space are inextricably connected with one
another. Any divisions, classifications, or organizations discovered in the universe
are arbitrary. The world is a complex, continuous, single event .2 [Shades of Zeno!]

I find "transcendentalism" too bulky a name for this movement. In its place, I use
"ism". Being a suffix without a prefix, it suggests an ideology
without ideas-which, however you interpret it, is probably the case. And since."ism"
embraces whatever is, its name is quite fitting. In "ism" thL- word "is" is half mentioned,
half used; what could be more appropriate? Ism is the spirit of Zen in art. And just as the
central problem of Zen is to unmask the self, the central problem of art in this century
seems to be to figure out what art is. All these thrashings-about are part of its identity
crisis.

We have seen that the use-mention dichotomy, when pushed, turns into the
philosophical problem of symbol-object dualism, which links it to the mystery of mind.
Magritte wrote about his painting The Human Condition I (Fig. 141):

I placed in front of a window, seen from a room, a painting representing exactly
that part of the landscape which was hidden from view by the painting. Therefore,
the tree represented in the painting hid from view the tree situated behind it, outside
the room. It existed for the spectator, as it were, simultaneously in his mind, as both
inside the room in the painting, and outside in the real landscape. Which is how we
see the world: we see it as being outside ourselves even though it is only a mental
representation of it that we
experience inside ourselves.'

Understanding the Mind

First through the pregnant images of his painting, and then in direct words, Magritte
expresses the link between the two questions "How do symbols work?" and "How do our
minds work?" And so he leads us back to the question posed earlier: "Can we ever hope
to understand our minds! brains?"

Or does some marvelous diabolical Godelian proposition preclude our ever
unraveling our minds? Provided you do not adopt a totally unreasonable definition of
"understanding", I see no Godelian obstacle in the way of the eventual understanding of
our minds. For instance, it seems to me quite reasonable to desire to understand the
working principles of brains in general, much the same way as we understand the
working principles of car engines in general. It is quite different from trying to
understand any single brain in every last detail-let alone trying to do this for one's own
brain! I don't see how Godel’s Theorem, even if construed in the sloppiest way, has
anything to say about the feasibility of this prospect. I see no reason that Godel’s
Theorem imposes any limitations on our ability to formulate and verify the general
mechanisms by which thought processes take place in the medium of nerve cells. I see no
barrier imposed by Godel’s Theorem to the implementation on computers (or their
successors) of types of symbol manipulation that achieve roughly the same results as
brains do. It is entirely another question to try and duplicate in a program some particular
human's mind-but to produce an intelligent program at all is a more limited goal. Godel's
Theorem doesn't ban our reproducing our own level of intelligence via programs any
more than it bans our reproducing our own level of intelligence via transmission of
hereditary information in
DNA, followed by education. Indeed, we have seen, in Chapter XVI, how a remarkable
'Godelian mechanism-the Strange Loop of proteins and DNA-is precisely what allows
transmission of intelligence!

Does Godel’s Theorem, then, have absolutely nothing to offer us in thinking
about our own minds? I think it does, although not in the mystical and [imitative way
which some people think it ought to. I think that the process of coming to understand
Godel’s proof, with its construction involving arbitrary codes, complex isomorphisms,
high and low levels of interpretation, and the capacity for self-mirroring, may inject some
rich undercurrents and flavors into one's set of images about symbols and symbol
processing, which may deepen one's intuition for the relationship, between mental
structures on different levels.

Accidental Inexplicability of Intelligence?

Before suggesting a philosophically intriguing "application" of Godel's proof. I would
like to bring up the idea of "accidental inexplicability" of intelligence. Here is what that
involves. It could be that our brains, unlike car engines, are stubborn and intractable
systems which we cannot neatly decompose in any way. At present, we have no idea
whether our brains will yield to repeated attempts to cleave them into clean layers, each
of which can be explained in terms of lower layers-or whether our brains will foil all our
attempts at decomposition.

as a whole. In this case, the art is self-defeating in the short run, since the viewers do

ponder about its meaning, but it achieves its aim with a few people in the long run, by

introducing them to its sources. But in either case, it is not true that there is no code by

which ideas are conveyed to the viewer. Actually, the code is a much more complex

thing, involving statements about the absence of codes and so forth-that is, it is part code,

part metacode, and so on. There is a Tangled Hierarchy of messages being transmitted by

the most Zen-like art objects, which is perhaps why so many find modern art so

inscrutable.

Ism Once Again

Cage has led a movement to break the boundaries between art and nature. In music, the

theme is that all sounds are equal-a sort of acoustical democracy. Thus silence is just as

important as sound, and random sound is just as important as organized sound. Leonard

B. Meyer, in his book Music, the Arts, and Ideas , has called this movement in music

"transcendentalism", and states:

If the distinction between art and nature is mistaken, aesthetic valuation is

irrelevant. One should no more judge the value of a piano sonata than one should

judge the value of a stone, a thunderstorm, or a starfish. "Categorical statements,

such as right and wrong, beautiful or ugly, typical of the rationalistic thinking of

tonal aesthetics," writes Luciano Berio [a contemporary composer, "are no longer

useful in understanding why and how a composer today works on audible forms

and musical action."

Later, Meyer continues in describing the philosophical position of transcendentalism:

... all things in all of time and space are inextricably connected with one

another. Any divisions, classifications, or organizations discovered in the universe

are arbitrary. The world is a complex, continuous, single event .2 [Shades of Zeno!]

I find "transcendentalism" too bulky a name for this movement. In its place, I use

"ism". Being a suffix without a prefix, it suggests an ideology

without ideas-which, however you interpret it, is probably the case. And since."ism"

embraces whatever is, its name is quite fitting. In "ism" thL- word "is" is half mentioned,

half used; what could be more appropriate? Ism is the spirit of Zen in art. And just as the

central problem of Zen is to unmask the self, the central problem of art in this century

seems to be to figure out what art is. All these thrashings-about are part of its identity

crisis.

We have seen that the use-mention dichotomy, when pushed, turns into the

philosophical problem of symbol-object dualism, which links it to the mystery of mind.

Magritte wrote about his painting The Human Condition I (Fig. 141):

I placed in front of a window, seen from a room, a painting representing exactly

that part of the landscape which was hidden from view by the painting. Therefore,

the tree represented in the painting hid from view the tree situated behind it, outside

the room. It existed for the spectator, as it were, simultaneously in his mind, as both

inside the room in the painting, and outside in the real landscape. Which is how we

see the world: we see it as being outside ourselves even though it is only a mental

representation of it that we

experience inside ourselves.'

Understanding the Mind

First through the pregnant images of his painting, and then in direct words, Magritte

expresses the link between the two questions "How do symbols work?" and "How do our

minds work?" And so he leads us back to the question posed earlier: "Can we ever hope

to understand our minds! brains?"

Or does some marvelous diabolical Godelian proposition preclude our ever

unraveling our minds? Provided you do not adopt a totally unreasonable definition of

"understanding", I see no Godelian obstacle in the way of the eventual understanding of

our minds. For instance, it seems to me quite reasonable to desire to understand the

working principles of brains in general, much the same way as we understand the

working principles of car engines in general. It is quite different from trying to

understand any single brain in every last detail-let alone trying to do this for one's own

brain! I don't see how Godel’s Theorem, even if construed in the sloppiest way, has

anything to say about the feasibility of this prospect. I see no reason that Godel’s

Theorem imposes any limitations on our ability to formulate and verify the general

mechanisms by which thought processes take place in the medium of nerve cells. I see no

barrier imposed by Godel’s Theorem to the implementation on computers (or their

successors) of types of symbol manipulation that achieve roughly the same results as

brains do. It is entirely another question to try and duplicate in a program some particular

human's mind-but to produce an intelligent program at all is a more limited goal. Godel's

Theorem doesn't ban our reproducing our own level of intelligence via programs any

more than it bans our reproducing our own level of intelligence via transmission of

hereditary information in

DNA, followed by education. Indeed, we have seen, in Chapter XVI, how a remarkable

'Godelian mechanism-the Strange Loop of proteins and DNA-is precisely what allows

transmission of intelligence!

Does Godel’s Theorem, then, have absolutely nothing to offer us in thinking

about our own minds? I think it does, although not in the mystical and [imitative way

which some people think it ought to. I think that the process of coming to understand

Godel’s proof, with its construction involving arbitrary codes, complex isomorphisms,

high and low levels of interpretation, and the capacity for self-mirroring, may inject some

rich undercurrents and flavors into one's set of images about symbols and symbol

processing, which may deepen one's intuition for the relationship, between mental

structures on different levels.

Accidental Inexplicability of Intelligence?

Before suggesting a philosophically intriguing "application" of Godel's proof. I would

like to bring up the idea of "accidental inexplicability" of intelligence. Here is what that

involves. It could be that our brains, unlike car engines, are stubborn and intractable

systems which we cannot neatly decompose in any way. At present, we have no idea

whether our brains will yield to repeated attempts to cleave them into clean layers, each

of which can be explained in terms of lower layers-or whether our brains will foil all our

attempts at decomposition.