Rational Philosophy

I toyed with the idea of posting this piece under the title “Global Warming.” But I expect that it will be far from my last post related to global warming, so I ended up with a more specific subject.

The New York Times Science Section today reports on the retreat of sea ice. The link I’ve posted takes you to an interactive page with a sobering depiction of just how rapid and unprecedented the retreat has been. In 2006, for the first time since records began in 1979, Arctic sea ice coverage has shrunk so much that areas consistently iced over year-in year-out for those 28 years of measurement are now sea.

Thankfully, even though some myopic politicians and public figures still choose to ignore and even take steps to suppress or downplay the evidence of global warming, the balance of the collective consciousness seems to have tipped. We are now beginning to act. Everything these days, it seems, is a shade of green.

Ironically, and with curious appropriateness, the signs that we’ve reached a tipping point (even though maybe we’ve reached it too late) are showing themselves through the lens of consumerism. When I ride the subway in New York City, I see ConEdison ads focused on energy-saving (for an energy company to be agree or be forced into this position is wonderfully telling). And today Walmart stores, following through on a strategy committed to earlier in the years, touts the sale of 100 million energy efficient light bulbs.

Here are a couple of statistics to round out the picture: The energy contained in the sunlight that falls on the earth in one day equals the energy consumed by human beings in one year. And the energy consumed by the US is half the total energy consumed by human beings in one year.

To borrow a phrase from that esteemed philosopher Donald Rumsfeld: “It’s the things that we don’t know that we don’t know that most concern us.”

With the advent of the industrial revolution and in the decades that followed, the effects of fossil fuel consumption seemed local rather than global. We knew that burning wood and coal and oil produced smoke and smog and dirt, and consumed limited natural resources, but very little attention was paid to whether there would be long lasting adverse consequences, such as global warming. Those who tried to stem the tide of modernization or industrialization were simply swept away.

Human beings are natural innovators. Our ability to manipulate concepts means that we have the ability to reframe problems and challenges. But that skill is usually aimed at removing the immediate obstacle, without giving too much attention to future problems or challenges. We are not so far removed from the unindustrialized man felling a tree to cross a stream — the immediate goal is to cross the stream.

And, unfortunately, since society doesn’t do so well with applying reasoned analysis, even when there is hard scientific evidence that tells us we’re on a dangerous path, we tend to ignore it if we can’t see the signs for ourselves. If parts of the United States were underwater now, you can bet we would have paid attention to global warming much sooner.

The same conceptual problems exist with the use of nuclear energy. There really is no good solution to rid us of radioactive waste. What kinds of problems are we creating for ourselves there? And even looking beyond the immediate problems of global warming, how will we sustain the worlds energy needs without turning away from the use of fossil fuels?

If society is to act more rationally, it needs to create systems whereby planning and forethought can become part of our governing process, and separated from ideology and politics. Logically, it makes no sense that a political administration appointed for a term of four years should be determining policy that affects our future ten fifty or one hundred years from now. Such policy should logically be determined differently, with the much more significant involvement of the scientific community.

 

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The bra, apparently, turns 100 years old today. Apart from a few dicey years when the poor things were getting burned left and right, the bra has enjoyed a pretty robust first century. That most women now wear a bra on a day-to-day basis seems unremarkable; but that easy conclusion struck me differently when I saw the news today of its relative youthfulness as a piece of clothing. It caused me to wonder about the philosophy of our societal relationship with the bra.

I’ve been told that women wear bras for two reasons: To present their breasts in a way that enhances or optimizes their appearance, and to support their breasts so that they will not sag as much or as early in later life.

Like so many of our practices in a society, wearing bras modifies our concept of what is normal or natural by revising or reassociating our concept of what is normal or natural.

The process is something like this: People draw an association between perky breasts and youthfulness and beauty. This is a reflection of an innate conceptual process that has evolved over the development of the species: sexual desirability during the period of prime fertility. Some person devises a mechanism (the bra) to enhance, both short term and long term, the perkiness and shapeliness of a woman’s breasts. Society extends the innate concept of perky breasts being associated with desirability during peak fertility. Now perky breasts become associated with desirability, regardless of peak fertility. We have coopted the innate concept and transformed it into an explicit abstract concept.

Does this kind of transformation serve society or the species?

That’s a much more difficult philosophical question to answer. One could say that it serves neither society nor the species because the conceptual link we’ve to some extent manufactured or extended between perkiness of breast and sexual desirability clouds and inhibits the functioning of the innate concept. Crudely put, it messes with the hardwiring of sexual desirability with fertility.

I don’t want to pick on the bra. It’s the same with so many other aspects of society and in so many areas. Us men shave our beards, clip our nose hair, or wear toupes. Men and women dye their hair. We often engage in physical exercise to enhance our physical appearance. The list is practically endless.

What’s interesting is that consciousness, almost like a disease, creates a rampant, chaotic and overwhelming system of concepts that control our lives and our responses to a degree that often shrouds or obliviates our innante reactions and responses.

As an adaptive mechanism, consciousness has certainly been an enormously powerful mental function; one that has permitted humans to further the ends of the human species with incredibly effective results. We live in naturally inhospitable areas in comfort. We have removed innumerable threats from natural predators, sickness and disease. We have systems for harnessing natural resources. We organize our societies in ways that permit the vast majority to benefit from the highly specialized work of the few, each of us contributing work in our specialty.

But all of this produces layer upon layer of insulation from the innate and non-conscious operation of the species. It also allows us to wreak harm and havoc without fully understanding or while ignoring the consequences (deforestation, global warming, warfare).

In contrast, the bra perhaps seems like a relatively harmless affectation of modern society, and one which many of us, on balance, would choose to continue to live with, notwithstanding its unnatural function.

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Last night I watched Being John Malkovich with my family. I’d seen it when it first came out about seven years ago, but remembered very few of the specifics. As he typically does, Charlie Kaufman uses the forum of his screenplay to tease up some interesting philosophical insights and dilemmas.

Early on in the movie Craig Wright (played by John Cusack), miserable and unemployed, bemoans the curse of consciousness to his wife’s chimpanzee. Without consciousness, he says, we wouldn’t feel pain and suffering; consciousness brings just one solace — the joy of doing one’s work; when we’re denied that, what do we have? (Later on in the movie, Kaufman wryly pokes fun at Wright’s self-indulgence by showing a scene in which the chimpanzee recalls the emotional pain and trauma of being captured with his parents in the jungle, after failing to save them.)

As with all traits and capabilities of living things, consciousness evolved because it provided an advantage to survival. As I explore in considerable detail in LIFE!, consciousness allows us to manipulate abstract concepts to our advantage (and to our disadvantage, of course, when we don’t fully follow through on our rational convictions!) Without trying to read too much into Kaufman’s intentions in writing his script, Being John Malkovich presents us with the interesting question — “what is self?”

Craig discovers a portal that can transport people inside John Malkovich’s head, seeing what Malkovich sees, feeling what Malkovich feels. Later in the movie, Craig — a puppeteer — manages to wrest control of Malkovich, living through his body and mind, ousting Malkovich and relegating Malkovich’s “self” to position of passive, subconscious (and incredibly frustrated) observation.

What is the self? Can it be modified? Is it definable? Are we what we think or what we do?

Kaufman neatly points to the perspective that our sense of self is a concept that arises out of consciousness. We have a sense of ourselves through our perception of ourselves. If we stop for a moment and imagine living without conscious reflection we can glimpse the feeling of “no self.” Before the onset of consciousness the concept of self wasn’t relevant.

Our sense of self then must be a combination of many things — our awareness of physical sensations, our mental processes both conscious and subconscious, our awareness and reflection upon our actions in the world, and our perception of our being in relation to the being of others. So although we feel that we are who we are, that some unchanging aspect of ourselves defines us, this can’t be true.

Most of the time we alter, adapt and adjust in small ways, reaffirming the sense that some core ’self’ exists that must be unassailably “us.” This serves us by providing a solid ground for our personality and sense of self, for our ego. Without this sense of a solid foundation, we would flounder or sink. But it also limits us. When we’re too stuck on the idea that our self is fixed and unchanging, we start to use it as a crutch to avoid stretching ourselves or working hard to adjust destructive habits or unwanted modes of behavior. If we refuse to believe that we can change ourselves, we remain static and stuck with the selves we have.

When I was a teenager and started drinking, I used alcohol as a way to avoid my self, to get out of my self, to try to be more engaged and engaging than I thought that I was when sober. This abuse became habitual. Right up until eight or nine years ago I regularly drank too much, often to the point of throwing up and passing out. By that point I hated this aspect of myself. I wanted to try to understand it and, if possible, change it. I had a young daughter and I felt ashamed and embarrassed for her to live with me like that. I went to see a therapist for the first time in my life (something that in the past I hadn’t believed in). Over the course of the next several years I was able to come to terms with the things that I felt so uncomfortable about that I wanted to drink them away. I now have a different self, a modified self.

I won’t give away the ending of ‘Being John Malkovich.’ I highly recommend it (and Kaufman’s other movies) for those who like to think as they watch.

Does art (any kind of art — painting, sculpture, literature, music…) serve a purpose? And if so, what is that purpose? Why do we create art? And must the judgment of art be entirely subjective?

On Sunday, I visited the Brooklyn Book Festival. One of the booths housed The Aesthetic Realism Foundation. (I misread the sign at first and thought it said Atheistic Realism — this brought me up short. But even after I’d read it correctly I stayed to ask what Aesthetic Realism is.) Aesthetic Realism proposes that we can better understand our lives through the application of aesthetic principles. The booth staffer gave the example of the aesthetic practice of balancing heavy and light — being aware of the need for this balance in life can come through an understanding of its balance in art.

To me, this approach seems fascinating and insightful (and very worthy of the foundation’s efforts — for instance, they are hosting a forum on the social and personal value of Rock ‘n Roll, how cool is that?), but completely backwards philosophically; wherefrom do aesthetic principles derive if not from life?

When we ask whether art serves a purpose we ask a conceptual question. Can we relate art to a concept or set of concepts, and do these concepts give us insight into art’s possible purpose?

The answer to the first part of this question seems obvious if we think about who creates art — primarily people (and some particularly intelligent animals — larger primates and elephants). Since art requires the abstraction of ideas or impulses, it requires a conceptual process (whether subconscious or conscious). Without the product of the artistic process, which is not itself but what it represents, we have no art, therefore art relates to a set of concepts.

And herein, I believe, we have the answer to the second part of our question: The concept to which art consistently relates is abstraction! (This would still apply to representational art, in which the artist abstracts the idea or impulse of what he or she observes and transfers it to the medium of their choosing in a representational manner.)

And we also now have a clue as to a possible purpose of art. If art rests on the concept of abstraction of an idea or impulse. The artistic urge is the urge to abstract an idea or impulse. What is to be gained by acting on this urge?

Does the artist gain anything from acting on the urge? Do others gain anything from the result of the abstraction?

If we again go back to the concepts we can delve further into the concept of abstraction. Abstraction is the recreation of certain elements in another form. Abstraction is a form of reduction or refocusing. It draws out and emphasizes some aspects of the original idea or impulse.

We can say that the product of the artistic process aims to communicate this refocusing. It communicates the artist’s particular point of view on the idea or impulse. And these ideas or impulses similarly become concepts or representations themselves as they are abstracted.

If it is successful, art helps us better understand the world around us and ourselves. The more successful it is at aiding this understanding, the more valuable it is.

Hence, we have a dilemma. Art that is derivative and of little deep value in helping us better understand life’s complexities may still have mass appeal (most pop music). Whereas art that delves deeply and profoundly into complex matters may have very limited appeal.

Does the value multiply out over the number of people affected? Can an equation be drawn this simply?

More for later!