Idealism

[fate_faith_change_chains]

<p>For me representation doesn't have to be devoid of interpretation. My use / understanding of the word is that the photographer may use a symbol, or a certain way of photographing the subject and the handling of it afterwards in the post-processing in the way that the photographer deems best to communicate ( represent ) what he or she wanted to express ( or not ). This doesn't cancel out any different significant and personal interpretation that may follow by the viewer afterwards. </p>

[luis_g]

<p>[Fred G] "I don't think the mind is in the brain."</p>

<p> Whole body? Or? Please expand a bit on this, Fred.</p>

[luis_g]

<p> Phylo, IMO, the image retains an indexicality to whatever the photons bounced off of before reaching the film/sensor. The photograph is a transformation of that. </p>

<p>There are many kinds of significance: What the medium does best; cultural significance; personal significance for the artist/maker; significance within the medium; significance for the viewer(s), etc. Many great photographs (and works in other media) are significant on more than the last of these levels.</p>

<p> </p>

[luis_g]

<p>[John K] "I <strong>absolutely</strong> disbelieve that any photographs are made from anyone's subconscious or "spontaneously." Decisionmaking can seem instantaneous and spontaneity can be pretended but <em>they are <strong>always</strong> complex</em> , even if the click takes a microsecond."</p>

<p>[John K] "Europeans had 100% confidence that swans were, by definition, white."</p>

<p><strong>Absolutely, always </strong> white.</p>

<p> </p>

[luis_g]

<p>[Fred G] "It's not like I start with a blank slate or that whatever I create is <em>ex nihilo</em> . What's in the middle somewhere, for me, is me. I inherit, biologically and culturally -- whether it be genes, traits, some habits, rituals, artistic heritage and canons, or some ideals. I live in a world. Those establish a context and set up the tension between working from within the context and breaking free of it."</p>

<p> Is it just me, or are we drifting close to some form of Determinism here save for the 'break free' clause?</p>

[joe_jackson4]

<p>"I don't think the mind is in the brain."</p>

<p>Indeed. I came to a very similar conclusion quite a while ago... ;)</p>

<p>The thing is, if people want to use photos as an excuse to talk crap, well, that's fine. Of course, the viewer is then free to dismiss the pics (and any discussion of them) for what they are.</p>

[Matt Laur]

<p>I, too, Fred, wonder about your assertion that the mind is not in the brain. I'm not being pedantic to focus on the brain as the only organ - the only mechanism - that can support the mind. The <em>output </em>of the mind (whether it's a vegetable garden, a photograph, an Elizabethan sonnet, or this thread) can exist outside of the ol' meat computer, but the minds you're interacting with right now (say, me!) simply wouldn't exist without brains. The brain tissue dies, the mind dies.<br /><br />And it's worth, I might add, to explore iconographic issues in the context of the <em>brain</em>, as well as the cultures that are built on the fact that we have hundreds of millenia of social minds running in those brains in tribal (and larger) groups. We share a great deal in common with other mammals. The more primitive parts of our brains handle a lot of image processing, and pass it upstairs to the more complex suite of neural tools that come together to form the mind. Our reactions to certain images can be primitive and low-level, as well as wildy, culturally complex.<br /><br />A <em>brain</em> <strong><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/13/health/psychology/13face.html">spots the the face in the toast</a></strong>, but a mind labels it as the Virgin Mary. Face recognition is a vital and ancient product of natural selection. Likewise with the urge to map that perceived face, instantly, into the "familiar" or "unfamiliar" buckets. The Virgin Mary part (ironically, a woman whose likeness is of course completely unknown - which always makes these things very funny to me) is strictly mind-stuff, and cultural.<br /><br />Why does this matter, when talking about ideals and icons in photography? Because I think there actually are some iconic visual symbols that operate at a much lower level than the part of the mind that is informed by culture. We are pack animals. A fancy troop of monkeys.<em> </em>We respond instinctively to dominant body language, to soothing gestures. Bared teeth, an infant's proportions, snake-like shapes, dark places, still water - these things all have significance or import to more than one layer of the brain/mind stack.<br /><br />I highly recommend reading Edward O. Wilson's <em>Consilience</em>, if you've got the time and forebearance (bring your cognitive machete to get through some of the weedier parts). In his exploration of when and how the mind synthesizes meaning and memes, and where the cultural evolution overlaps with its biological parallel, he gets into some fascinating discussion of archtypes (I think that he and Joseph Campbell might have really liked each other, or perhaps might have gotten into a very polite bar brawl), and even the notion of beauty - and the way that it is hatched in biology and sometimes upended in culture. <br /><br />As mentioned above, the heroic image - just an example - is, I think, a very primitive icon. It's one of those that is hard-wired into our perception. Our personal and cultural reaction to it (a smile, ironic disdain, what have you) is driven by context and experience. A towering statue of Saddam, or Hitler, or the Buddha, or Thomas Jefferson - even a building by Gehry or an Egyptian obelisk ... all are meant to turn on the part of the brain that demands the analysis of the larger-than-life, or at least the more-impressive-than-little-old-me.<br /><br />What we do once we load invoke that analytical faculty depends on how we came by that piece of software. That part is culture and personal life experience. And when we apply that more careful phase of observation, we're ready to notice the connect-it-to-me little details that really invest it with meaning, or leave us shrugging our shoulders.</p>

[jtk]

<p>My first statement refers to easily identified <strong>tangible processes</strong> (brain and other physiological activity that actuates shutter release... measured by technology as early as the Sixties (EEG etc).<br /><em></em><br />My second statement simply refers to a <strong>factoid</strong> that illustrates surprise (Black Swan). Because it's allegedly historic it may be a little better than "urban legend."</p>

<p>There is a <strong>conceptual chasm</strong> between the two parallel statements (bigger chasm than 1 pound of butter vs music).</p>

<p><strong></strong></p>

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</p>

[Norma Desmond]

<p><strong>Phylo--</strong></p>

<p>The reason I, myself, stay away from "represent" is that it suggests "denoting" or "standing for" something. Usually "represent" is used not to suggest personal expression, which you've added in your last post. It is usually more about designation. It has a sense of standing for something rather than being its own thing. That's how Plato uses it and I thought you were aligning yourself with Plato (except for the value judgment about it). When someone says the photograph represents the mountain of which it is a picture, I don't think of self expression, I think of the mountain. Plato talks about the mountain we See as a mere <em>imitation</em> of Mountainness (the Form of Mountain, the Mountain we Know) and the picture of the mountain as a mere <em>imitation</em> of the mountains we see. I might be focused on the imitation part of representation and you might not be.</p>

<p>"Represent," from various dictionaries: designate, stand for, denote, as a word or symbol (the cat represents evil and the bird represents good); to stand or act in place of, as a substitute; to portray or depict, present a likeness of.</p>

<p>Unlike the significance Langer and Bresson are talking about, "represent" generally has more specificity. The cat represents evil. I don't think either of them are talking about such a <em>correspondence</em> between photographer and photograph, photograph and viewer, or photographer and viewer. That "ambivalence of content" Langer talks about, which I think is also reflected in how Bresson talks about the significance of the events or moments he photographs, makes the relationship not like the representative relationship between word and meaning. Instead, she says "it [music, painting, photograph] can articulate feelings without becoming wedded to them." A representation, I think, is more wedded to what it represents.</p>

[Norma Desmond]

<p><strong>Luis--</strong></p>

<p>I will get to "I don't think the mind is in the brain" in a moment, answering both you and Matt.</p>

<p>"Tranformation" and "creation" begins to express how I think about photographs.</p>

<p>Perhaps I didn't emphasize it enough, but the "break free clause" was meant to be the crux of the matter, what the list was slowly building to, Rocky at the top of the museum steps (speaking of iconic scenes). Besides, I probably am as much of a Determinist as I am a believer in Free Will. We often have more choices than we think we have (and make more choices than we sometimes consider we do or take responsibility for) but we also make less choices than we think we do. Not a discussion I want to get into here for its own sake, because I think THE BIG questions like that get us in trouble and don't usually have satisfactory "solutions." I do think there is a strong Determinist aspect to Ideals, Icons, and even Symbols. We often seem to inherit them. They are, as I said, embedded, and we can't seem to escape them. We seem to have to defy them. Certainly for Plato, Ideals are determinative of the true reality. Magritte, Hosoe, Scorcese, and Ford used them and changed them, personalized them, and re-visualized them but they were only able to do that because they were already there.</p>

<p>John's Black Swan thread, I thought, might head in the direction of considering who may have created brand new icons, symbols, and ideas. I don't know if brand new ones can be created, or if they always have to piggy-back on a previously recognized icon, etc. So the scene in Rocky has become an iconic scene in itself, but does it become that because of other icons it reminds us of, including the music, the structure of the staircase and building, the sense of cinematic climax that is already so Ideally familiar?</p>

[Norma Desmond]

<p><strong>Matt and Luis--</strong></p>

<p>Regarding "I don't think the mind is in the brain":</p>

<p>I wasn't actually thinking about the mind being associated with other organs of the body, but it's a good point to make, Matt. I do think we should leave room for the mind, rational thought, to be affected by emotions and that emotional responses are stimulated by all sorts of physical events and body parts.</p>

<p>See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Descartes'_Error for a brief description of Antonio Damasio's in-depth studies on the matter.</p>

<p>The word I focused on in rejecting the statement is "in." "The mind is <em>in</em> the brain" is dualistic, an inheritance of conceptualization and language which modern studies in neuroscience and philosophy of mind are rejecting and reformulating. Descartes's mind/body distinction has caused lots of problems and we are really just beginning to understand the physicality of the mind and consciousness. Thinking of the mind as something separate from or <em>in</em>, yet on the same general category level as, the brain, is not something at all taken for granted anymore.</p>

<p><!--StartFragment-->From a cursory description in an introduction to Gilbert Ryles thoughts from 1949:</p>

<p><em>The "ghost in the machine" is British philosopher Gilbert Ryle's derogatory description of René Descartes's mind-body dualism. The phrase was introduced in Ryle's book The Concept of Mind (1949) to highlight the perceived absurdity of dualist systems like Descartes's where mental activity carries on in parallel to physical action, but where their means of interaction are unknown or, at best, speculative.</em></p>

<p><em>Category mistakes are made by people who do not know how to properly wield the concepts with which they are working. Their puzzles arise from the inability to use certain items in human language. The theoretically interesting category mistakes are those made by people who are perfectly competent to apply concepts, at least in the situations with which they are familiar, but are still liable in their abstract thinking to relocate those concepts to logical types to which they do not belong.</em></p>

<p><em><strong>One paradigm set forth by Ryle that is exemplary of an archetypal category mistake, is that of a foreign student visiting a university. As the student is shown the various campuses, buildings, libraries, fields, et cetera, the student asks, "But where is the university?" This is to equate the level of existence of the university with that of buildings, libraries, and campuses. However, the being of the university exists above such a level, as an encompassing whole or essence of such things, extending beyond mere plants and buildings (to include staff, students, curricula, etc.), and not among them (i.e., on the same categorical level).</strong></em></p>

<p><em>The dualist [mind/body] doctrine establishes a polar opposition between mind and body. At the language level, the mental properties are logical negations of the physical properties. So they belong, in accordance with the concept of category, to the same logical types, given that the expressions that are used for the descriptions of mental events are always mere negatives of the expressions used for the descriptions of material events. Ryle then says that such use implies a 'categorical mistake' for the descriptions of mental events that do not properly belong to the categories used for describing the corporeal events. Hence, 'mind' and 'matter' [body, brain] cannot be the polar opposites that Dualism suggests. Ryle writes that this would be comparable to claiming that "She came home in floods of tears" and "She came home in a sedan chair" (from the sentence "She came home in floods of tears and a sedan chair") to be polar opposites. Such mistakes turned out to be, from the Rylean standpoint, the dogma of the mental ghost in the corporeal machine. Then, dualist doctrines are mythic in an analytical sense.</em></p>

<p><strong>Matt-- </strong></p>

<p>I appreciate your bringing up the biological aspect and importance of meaning as relates to ideals and icons. My statement about the mind not being in the brain was in no way intended against this aspect. It was intended solely to dispute dualism, that the mind and body are separate or that one can be <em>in</em> the other. I think the brain is, of course, stimulated by particular forms and that is probably a much more basic consideration in terms of our responses to Ideals, icons, and symbols than the cultural phenomena that may simply be more accessible to or more easily understood by most of us.</p>

<p><strong>Luis--</strong></p>

<p>That may well be why there is such a Deterministic bent to a discussion of these things. There is hard wiring involved.</p>

[Norma Desmond]

<p><strong>Matt--</strong></p>

<p>I meant to thank you for the Edward Wilson reference. I will look into it.</p>

[jtk]

<p>A central idea in Black Swan: the mind/brain is a retroactive <strong>explanation</strong> and <strong>pattern seeking/pattern-inventing machine</strong>. It absorbs data, finding or inventing patterns and explanations <em>because </em>order allows more <strong>efficient, rapidly accessed data storage</strong>.</p>

<p>Explanations need not be correct, they must simply "seem" to make sense..we feel better with explanations than we do without them. Same with <strong>icons and myths</strong> which serve organizational and book-marking purposes. Same with<strong> "meaning" and "significance."</strong></p>

<p>Black Swan line of thought "feels like it makes sense" <em>because </em>it echos the way we understand computers.<em> </em> </p>

<p>Taleb, Black Swan's author, notes that it can be literally exhausting to avoid <em>"because"</em>... less physiological work to accept <strong>"because"</strong> formulations <em>"because"</em> our physiologically-structured "mind" works more efficiently with organization, correct or incorrect, than it does with unrelated factoids. It's easier to believe in gods, for example, than to disbelieve. Easier to believe in one than a bevy of them (but it's at the price of losing Athena).</p>

<p> </p>

[fate_faith_change_chains]

<p>Fred, yes, it's probably more a case of the difference in our own use and definition of the word " representation " then a case of<br>

disagreement.</p>

<blockquote>

<p> John Kelly : It's easier to believe in gods, for example, than to disbelieve.</p>

 

</blockquote>

<p>I once tried to believe in a God, "gods", whatever, it sure wasn't easy and I gave up. But I wan't to believe I didn't tried hard enough.</p>

[jtk]

<p>Phylo, read the Mandelbaum translation of Ulysses. I'm sure I've met Athena, here and there. Not always fun, but always close to the action.</p>

[luis_g]

<p> Ah, much clearer, Fred. Thanks for making that clear.</p>

[luis_g]

<p>[Fred G] "That may well be why there is such a Deterministic bent to a discussion of these things. There is hard wiring involved."</p>

<p>There is hard wiring involved, and perhaps more significantly, re-wiring. When one sees that a person who goes blind and learns to read braille's brain rewires most of the visual cortex to the center of the finger's pad that they read Braille with, we realize how individuated human (and likely animal) brains become. And it happens in a relatively short time.</p>

<p>Our own approaches and exposure to life and art literally change the way we think and see. This can take place randomly, by happenstance, or a very few people literally do cultivate themselves.</p>

<p> </p>

[aplumpton]

<p>Late to this conversation, but I would simply state that for me ideals are to the mind what food is to the body. </p>

<p>That governs all, photographically or otherwise.</p>

[Norma Desmond]

<p>Arthur--</p>

<p>What's the relationship between Ideals and your photographs or those of others?</p>

[aplumpton]

<p>Fred, I think more of ideals in regard to my own photographs, as the latter can be influenced drectly by my ideals, whereas those of others simply react with them. Do my ideals always become part of the composition or message of my photographs? Not often. </p>

[Norma Desmond]

<p>Got it. Thanks, Arthur.</p>

[jtk]

<p>Luis is right about hard-wire/re-wire.</p>

<p>It's interesting that we confine "philosophy" to talk that excludes matters of science (including psychological science)... itself, by definition, a philosophic approach to knowledge. </p>

<p>We are steadily learning how the physiological brain organizes perception / thought / memory / information ... it literally creates "mind" unless one declares that "mind" does not substantially entail perception / thought / memory / information. </p>

<p> </p>

[fate_faith_change_chains]

<p>The brain wiring / rewiring is an interesting subject that's also been dealt with in the philosophy / science documentary What The Bleep Do We Know !? Philosophy is science and science is philosophy.</p>

<p><a href="http://www.whatthebleep.com/whatthebleep/">http://www.whatthebleep.com/whatthebleep/</a></p>

[gt1]

<p>Wow, it's threads like this that make me grateful I have time for the photo.net forums. My thanks to Fred, John, et al.</p>

[Norma Desmond]

<p>Greg. Glad you got something out of this. I think we all did.</p>