charleswood

<p>Fred - "There's a big difference between why I like a certain picture and why I like what I like."</p> <p>The way I read "Why do we like what we like." equates "what I like" to a particular picture. That which I like (what I like) is a picture. Why do I like it, the particular picture and where the picture is what I like. I wasn't aware that a conflated reading of the question was possible.</p> <p> </p>

<p>About liking a particular picture, some will answer with something like "It spoke to me." I regard that kind of answer as in part an evasion and in part as the best that words can do at times. As at times the best answer that can be produced is "I just do."</p>

<p>I think it is the case that we can't offer to each other a coherent worded narrative of ourselves. Since we can't offer that to each other, we can't offer it to ourselves either, you can't say what you don't know. We can attempt it with worded communication, attempt comprehending and attempt being comprehensible. I say attempt because with the OP question, we don't know why we may like this or that photograph. An example of such a worded attempt is in Fred's response to Lannie: Jun 24, 2016; 03:05 a.m. quoted in part:</p> <blockquote> <p>...my memories of parents' and grandparents' deaths, the crush I had on Gary Schultz in Junior High School. Honestly, what do you expect me to say? Might as well ask why I am the person I am. Any question can be made metaphysically impossible to answer, extra specially deep.</p> </blockquote> <p> <br> That's a good example of how I would respond to the question "Why do you like that picture?" Once asked why, I have no idea why. When pressed for an explanation by an inquirer, I'll produce an unsatisfying inventory of personal factors, influences that aren't really causes of the 'like effect'. When we can't explain ourselves to ourselves we can't explain ourselves to others: yet nevertheless we remain compulsive communicators as a species. </p> <p>So rather than being boring, I think the OP confronts us with the fact of our own incomprehensibility. That incomprehensibility is worth exploring. That's a difficult task because we don't know what we don't know. </p> <p>I'm becoming more certain that we are incomprehensible except to the degree that from necessity we cultivate imagery, metaphor, story, drama, dance, song, etc.</p>

<p>They did find 'gold.' But the gold they found was grace and they found that they didn't need beliefs to experience grace, where grace = philosopher's stone. Hence, they used a metaphor to conceal a heresy. </p>

<p>The question isn't boring, but the invariably the answers to it are.</p> <p>Where I was going to go was to ask, if we accept Banaji's opinion that there are no coherent self-discriptions, is if in art we have a better chance at coherent self-descriptions?</p>

<p>The question "Why do I like what I like" is not the same as asking "Why do I have likes at all?" The OP question calls for an inventory. The latter question doesn't have an answer.</p> <p>As to an inventory, our 'likes' exist in social contexts. Social psychologist Mahzarin Banaji discusses implicit bias <a href="http://www.onbeing.org/program/mahzarin-banaji-the-mind-is-a-difference-seeking-machine/8719">here</a>. A personal example of implicit bias is my statement "I'm white and I had a black uncle." Implicit bias exists in my terming "black" a man that was at least half white and we often aren't aware of our culturally acquired implicit biases. Mahzarin also says in the interview that she doesn't believe we can offer to each other a self-description that is coherent. I agree. It isn't coherent of me to say I had a black uncle, instead marking me as part of a culture that could say such a thing. Nor would I expect a coherent answer to the question: "Why do you like what you like?" Too much guesswork involved in the answer.</p> <p> </p>

<p><a href="http://www.onbeing.org/program/frank-wilczek-why-is-the-world-so-beautiful/8565">Nobel physicist Frank Wilczek</a> interviewed by Krista Tippett, my transcription beginning about 9:12 into the episode where Wilczek expounds on our being accomplished practitioners of projective geometry:</p> <blockquote> <p>Humans do an astonishing feat routinely and very quickly. That is, they interpret the messages coming through little little openings in their eyes and projected on a two dimensional screen - the retina at the back - which then the light gets turned into electrical signals. And from that crazy, scrambled encoding we reconstruct an external world of three dimensional objects in space. We recognize that if we move our heads they're still the same objects and we determine these effortlessly.</p> </blockquote> <p>So our 2 dimensional sensors, our retinas, provide sensory data in the form of 'flat' electrical signals from which the brain creates 3D visual representations, an interpretation. A photograph is then a 2D representation of a 3D representation of what biologically will always to us be 2D sensory data hitting our retinas. That distinction is somewhat trivial given how well vision works. My point in bringing it up is to emphasize how deeply interpretation is linked to sense perception.</p> <p>I like <a href=" Tan's Ted Talk</a> on creativity. About 5:30 into the talk she discusses herself as a writer who delivers a narrative world within the pages of a book. So too a photograph captures its author's narration.</p> <p>Tan also considers that, in her writing process, the more she focuses on what a story is about the more the story becomes only what the story is <em>about</em>, such excessive focus on "what it's about" dampening Tan's creative writing process.</p> <p>Tan also offers that she creates a world in a novel and offers that she develops a cosmology for the narrative universe she creates. Regarding arriving at a cosmology of her created universes, 6:23 into the talk she says "And you see there's a lot of back and forth in trying to make that happen, trying to figure it out. Years and years often times."</p> <p>Supriyo "I feel I am a minority in thinking that blemishes and imperfections could be aesthetic elements. Is that a true feeling?"</p> <p>It's an interesting feeling, true enough. Where will that feeling lead you and will it be exciting as you develop your own cosmological interpretations photographically? How are we to interpret our worlds?</p> <p>I drifted away from photography when I got a second dog. My wildlife/bird subjects would flit off before I could stand the tripod and settle two dogs. I then started hand tool woodworking and took a couple years of Sunday classes at community college. The first aesthetic dilemma I ran across was similar to that raised in the OP.</p> <p>I wanted a uniform clear finish, whether an oil, varnish, shellac. Some species, like cherry, don't take such finishes uniformly and there are ways to treat raw wood such that absorption of a clear coat is more uniform, less blotchy. But an aesthetic question. Is blotch really blotch, or is blotch really 'character'. At first I was appalled by the person who posed that question to me. Later I came to like character in finished wood. Wood isn't uniform, it's a mess and interpreting a piece of wood is part of the creative process. How to frame it, how use reveals as design elements for show.</p> <p>Now I'm getting active in photographs again, partly because I want to integrate a photo with a wooden frame I design and make for a photo. It fun playing with a photograph and customizing a frame for it, where the frame becomes part of a narrated world I author.</p> <p> </p>

<p>Here's a <a href=" </a>of photographer Narayan Nayar talking about his photographing the <a href="https://www.google.com/search?q=tool+chest+studley&rlz=1C1KMZB_enUS521&espv=2&biw=1310&bih=1236&tbm=isch&source=lnms&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiY8evHx7nMAhVEKWMKHRjaAWc4ChD8BQgHKAI">H.O. Studley tool chest</a>. <br /> <br /> Wouter "The seeing is essential as we're dealing with graphical art, but the image is formed through the smorgasbord of impressions, emotions and sensory reading that sit in the photographer's brain."</p> <p>I would add 'narative' to Wouter's enumeration, believing that it is from a visual, sensory, emotional, and narrative field that a photographer extracts a photograph. About 2:12 into the video Nayar says that the subject (a tool) is "a really beautiful item". Nayar selected those spoken words from his own ongoing and mostly unspoken internal narrative. Nayar, at some point in the progress of his continuous internal working narrative, forms intent, intent which we see at the moment when Nayar trips the camera's shutter.</p> <p>Julie: "Slicing. Coldly, surgically with a razor, slice, slice, slice, slice; or brutal, visceral, with an axe, messy, greedy; or gently, tenderly, feeling for natural boundaries with my fingers, like transplanting an orchid."</p> <p>Nayar's process seems surgical. Yet his process isn't cold <em>really</em>. It isn't cold because he loves his subject and its beauty. His process isn't brutal. I think that the video shows Nayar feeling for natural boundaries and that is like transplanting an orchid into an image. All subject to final approval from Don Williams. And Don too has a <a href="http://lostartpress.com/products/virtuoso">publisher </a>to please.</p> <p>Another <a href="https://blog.lostartpress.com/2016/02/20/the-last-of-the-studley-art-prints/">image </a>from Nayar of the tool chest. The image is included in his blog post, part of which is: https://blog.lostartpress.com/2016/02/20/the-last-of-the-studley-art-prints/</p> <blockquote> <p>This particular image does not appear in the book; the one we used on an opening spread features an empty tool cabinet and moodier lighting. I arranged the lighting for this particular photo with a yearbook or school photo in mind and refer to the image as the “yearbook photo.” I wanted an image that presented the ensemble elegantly but honestly, without drama — a portrait. When people see this print they usually describe it as “amazing” or “incredible” and though I agree wholeheartedly with those comments, the image evokes different feelings for me. This particular image usually makes me smile in the same way that school photos of my children make me smile. Perhaps because this was one of the last photographs we took in the four-year project of documenting these objects, and as such the image captures a period of time in the same way that the annual school photos do. But also because after working with the photo as much as I have in the last year, I revel in the tiniest of tiny details that I discovered when processing the image, like the grain of the workbench or the legible numbers on the wire gauge or the fact that if you look closely, you can see the felt we used underneath the cabinet to protect the workbench top.</p> </blockquote> <p>I like that he points out how others see his picture contrasted to how he sees his picture. I appreciate that he sees that shot in his blog as part of his narrative self, his autobiographical self and as representing a summation of the four year photographic project itself.</p>

<p><a href="http://www.albertoalicata.com/">Alberto Alicata</a> . <a href="http://www.imaging-resource.com/news/2016/04/22/40-of-the-very-best-photos-sony-world-photography-awards-2016-winners">Sony World Photography Awards</a>, a staged shot winner. It's an interesting photo and I'm not sure why. I suppose it reminds me of how photography can also be about how we sense how others see us as 'a man', 'a woman', going back to Phil's reference to the world being a stage. I recently spoke with a 13 year old girl. To her I mentioned the gap between how people see us and who we are. I said that we can consider if there's an advantage at times to just let some think what they want about us. She replied "Let's not talk about that!" Not talk because it gets so complicated I suppose. I had wanted her to talk about it.</p> <p>The second link begins with Iranian photojournalist Asghar Khamseh "Fire of Hatred" portrait series, Alicata's work following below it. Who can assert that they haven't felt hatred, it being part of how we see, hopefully not often.</p> <blockquote> <p>"Until the day I die people will keep saying, 'Leni is a Nazi', and I'll keep saying, 'But what did she do?"</p> </blockquote> <p><br /> That's horrifyingly human. But to me she is now a tainted character in an unfortunately ageless play. Fortunately the world is not but a stage. Like my teenage friend, we all hold something in reserve. I used to think there was some way I could find to tell it all. I now don't think there is and that many such things only find their place in artistic expression.</p> <p> </p>

<p>I'm not sure on those points either, if motivation attribute to trees and where motivation does attribute, as in Julius, what the motivations are. As to trees, quoted above: "It’s possible that it is only a passive effect of a source-sink scenario, where the douglas-fir dumped food into its mycorrhizae for safe-keeping in light of severe stress, and the excess resources simply moved from an area of high concentration to an area of low concentration (the growing, resource-hungry ponderosa pine). " Pure mechanism - something like osmosis - or not? Who knows. <br> <br> Here's Arthur Zajonc v Michael Mccullough, the latter mechanistic, the former makes his case for another category. <a href="http://www.onbeing.org/program/arthur-zajonc-michael-mccullough-mind-and-morality-a-dialogue/7316">Mind and Morality: A Dialogue</a> , introvert v. extrovert in a familiar sounding dialogue since some of the predispositions toward either point of view surface in this thread where introvert and extrovert are less about behavior (action v. bookish) than an attitude. Mccullough lives well without the category that Zajonc can't live well without. <br> <br> </p> <p> </p>

<p>Speaking to the dogma about plants is <a href=" Mancuso</a>, a founder of the study of plant neurobiology, a Ted Talk.</p>

<p>Self Comes To Mind – Constructing the Conscious Brain by Antonio Damasio. Excerpt: Page 269 paperback, [Damasio is on <a href="https://www.ted.com/talks/antonio_damasio_the_quest_to_understand_consciousness?language=en">Ted Talks </a>and gives an outline of his book there for anyone interested.]</p> <blockquote> <p>When We Feel Our Perceptions<br /> Anyone interested in the matters of brain, mind, and consciousness has heard of qualia and has an opinion regarding what neuroscience can do about the issue: take it seriously and try and deal with it, or consider it intractable and table it, or dismiss it outright.<br /> <br />In the text ahead, qualia is treated as a composite of two problems. In one, qualia refers to the feelings that are an obligate part of any subjective experience – some shade of pleasure or its absence, some shade of pain or discomfort, well-being, or lack thereof. I call this the Qualia I problem. The other problem cuts deeper. If subjective experiences are accompanied by feelings, how are feeling states engendered in the first place? This goes beyond the question of how any experience acquires specific sense qualities in our mind, such as the sound of a cello, the taste of wine, or the blueness of the sea. It addresses a blunter question: Why should the construction of perceptual maps, which are physical, neurochemical events, feel like something? Why should they feel like anything at all? That is the Qualia II problem.</p> </blockquote> <p>Dennett dismisses the Qualia I problem outright and I didn't see where he addressed the Qualia II problem. Damasio writes on page 272 that "although the qualia issue is traditionally regarded as part of the consciousness problem, I believe it belongs more appropriately under the mind rubric. Qualia I responses concern objects being processed in the mind and add another element to the mind. I do not regard the Qualia I problem as a mystery." As to the Qualia II problem, after exploring some properties of neurons [specifically not those neural quantum effects pursued by Penrose] Damasio uses "evolutionary reasoning":</p> <blockquote> <p>If perceptual maps of the body are to be effective in leading an organism toward avoidance of pain and seeking of pleasure, they should not only feel like something, they actually <em>ought</em> to feel like something. The neural construction of pain and pleasure states must have been arrived at early in evolution and must have played a critical role in its course.</p> </blockquote> <p>Evolutionary reasoning is strong, yet can we fully explain a sense of self-existence by its functions? And to the layman me it is intriguing to look at Laura's rendition (photo in her post) of what amounts to nature's solution to the <a href="https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Travelling_salesman_problem">traveling salesman problem</a> (TSP) where I can't help but side with those who suspect that quantum effects may be involved in the solution. Again, as a layman I can't help but analogize a 'wood wide web' to our own wiring. All those connections and fibers in Laura's photo: we might as well be looking at a nervous system in an animal.</p> <p>Laura, in a separate exchange provided a link <a href="http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/artful-amoeba/dying-trees-can-send-food-to-neighbors-of-different-species/">Dying Trees Can Send Food to Neighbors of Different Species - No tree is an island, and no place is this truer than the forest</a> .</p> <blockquote> <p>To my surprise, I discovered when researching this post that it has been known for a while that trees of <em>different</em> species can communicate with and support one another via their mycorrhizae. I had already known that plants can communicate with unrelated species through the air; plants getting chomped by herbivores release volatile chemicals that are sensed by neighboring plants, who up their defenses pro-actively. But communicating — and even sharing resources — through mutual root fungi was news to me.<br /> ----<br /> This amazes me. On the face of it, it appears as if the douglas-fir is acting altruistically (without expectation of return) to help neighbors of a completely different species in light of its own probable demise. Even without the altruism, that trees as widely unrelated as douglas-fir and ponderosa pine can transfer resources to each other for any reason through fungi from a completely different kingdom is a shocker to me.</p> <p>Did the douglas-fir “intentionally” and altruistically send food and defensive signals to the ponderosa pine, or did the fungus act to take them there? It’s possible that it is only a passive effect of a source-sink scenario, where the douglas-fir dumped food into its mycorrhizae for safe-keeping in light of severe stress, and the excess resources simply moved from an area of high concentration to an area of low concentration (the growing, resource-hungry ponderosa pine). It’s also possible the douglas-fir is behaving somewhat altruistically and somewhat pragmatically, since exporting carbon to its root network may benefit nearby trees that are close relatives (offspring, even?), and any spillover to trees of completely different species that keeps them healthy may also benefit these same relatives by keeping the entire forest system healthy.</p> <p>Finally, it’s also possible the fungus played the more calculated role of a broker with its own interests in mind and “acted to protect its net carbon source,” in the words of the authors, “by allocating carbon and signals to the healthy, more reliable ponderosa pine.”</p> </blockquote> <p>Fungus in the calculated role of a self-interested broker versus motivated by love, confirming what I wrote earlier "If we knew that a tree had subjectivity, we would divide into two camps: those who regard the offerings of sugar to an old stump as motivated from either self-interest of the offerers or as motivated by love." Of course, we still don't know if a tree or if a fungus has a sense of itself, has a lived experience of itself. That's a big if, a real big one. IF IF IF IF for emphasis to those who might see nothing but 'woo' in such speculations.</p> <p>In other words, I can't help but suspect that Damasio's argument as to the origins of consciousness proceeds upon lines I imagine as objectionable to Griffin, who Julie quoted "It involves instead the alleged emergence of an "inside" from things that have only outsides." That's termed a category mistake and I tend to agree with Griffin's view. I do think generally, in asking allowances from a resistant reader, there's a natural tendency to overstate one's case.</p> <p>Damasio doesn't in that book find, as I do, a problem in regarding consciousness as originating in exclusively evolutionary/mechanical processes. The way I state that problem is in terms of relative motion where my view is that an organism's (which ever Kingdom) adaptive motion can't occur without a fixed point of reference from which to measure motions of bodies relative to it. When a single celled organism with a tail moves it tail, it isn't random motion, it's advantaged motion. William Jame's statement that to an infant human, the world is a blooming buzzing confusion is also a description of the world that a single celled organism inhabits within its 'skin' and Damasio apparently doesn't see a cell membrane as intelligent despite that a cell membrane evolved into the nervous system he respects in animals as housing a protoself, at least beginning with the jellyfish which I take is the first organism with a persistent nervous system, sea sprites eating theirs all up when they set down roots. But if a sense of itself is a sense like a sense of touch, taste, hearing and if a single celled organism has to have a sense of self for adaptive motion to occur, then consciousness starts looking like a fundamental property of nature, provided Penrose's non-computational is ever fleshed out more fully.</p> <p><a href=" Krause </a>finds a qualia type response in a sea anemone in a Ted Talk. I tend to take a sea anemone's feelings seriously, not dismissively.</p> <p> </p>

<p>Supriyo - "I am not discounting it, but I am skeptical of the claim that the above description is evidence of non-mechanical consciousness."<br /> <br /> I agree, and Penrose's contribution to the study of consciousness/intelligence is to offer a few interesting observations, raise some questions, and suggest areas where there might be empirical evidence.<br /> <br /> Supriyo - "Related question: Is love really non-mechanical, or is it being non-mechanical an inspirational feeling?" And hence, mechanical after all since inspirational feelings have a purpose in the mechanism?? <br /> <br /> Another way of asking that question, if I understood it correctly, might be "Is love an irreducible?" </p>

<p>So just to be clearer, as Fred has shown us photographically that to be human is to love, perhaps Mr. Wohllenben has shown us that a tree also loves.</p>

<p>I don't see from Penrose the category mistake attributed to him by Julie. Starting with Bohm: "Consider, for example, an attempt to assert that all of man’s actions are conditions and mechanical." That is, consider the assertion that all people's actions are 'computational', derive from heredity, environment or both heredity and environment combined. So when Penrose suggests instead that there is something 'non-computational' going on in quantum mechanics, he takes Bohm's point that intelligence is not merely conditioned. Consequently, I read Penrose as agreeing with the notion that intelligence is in a category of its own, Penrose terming that category 'non-computational'. I think that Penrose's conjecture implies that our environment and our heredity aren't entirely conditioned and mechanical, that at a fundamental level, something non-computational is going on there too.</p> <p>Penrose, in the Q&A, leaves open the artificial intelligence question. Despite his 'non-computational' conjecture, he leaves open the question of whether or not a submarine could swim as opposed to just following an existing algorithm. That's fair of him since, after all, the answer to that question, as Supriyo points out, is not known.</p> <p>Are all of a tree's actions conditioned and mechanical? <a href="/bboard/German%20Forest%20Ranger%20Finds%20That%20Trees%20Have%20Social%20Networks,%20Too"><em>German Forest Ranger Finds That Trees Have Social Networks, Too</em></a></p> <blockquote> <p>PRESENTING scientific research and his own observations in highly anthropomorphic terms, the matter-of-fact Mr. Wohlleben has delighted readers and talk-show audiences alike with the news — long known to biologists — that trees in the forest are social beings. They can count, learn and remember; nurse sick neighbors; warn each other of danger by sending electrical signals across a fungal network known as the “Wood Wide Web”; and, for reasons unknown, keep the ancient stumps of long-felled companions alive for centuries by feeding them a sugar solution through their roots.</p> </blockquote> <p>If we knew that a tree had subjectivity, we would divide into two camps: those who regard the offerings of sugar to an old stump as motivated from either self-interest of the offerers or as motivated by love.</p>

<p>Regarding Bohm's take on intelligence try a different take: <a href=" Roger Penrose</a> - “Consciousness and the Foundations of Physics” where as a materialist Penrose offers the conjecture that "intelligence" is in quantum mechanic's wave function collapse, intelligence is something non-computational going on. Penrose is taking the 'woo' out of discussions of consciousness and if his conjecture is ever confirmed, intelligence would become a fundamental property of matter and not a product of evolution per se.</p>

<p>I feel ethereal, form-able and unencumbered.</p>

<p>Supriyo "Is this analogy going anywhere? "<br /> <br /> I'm suggesting that uninfluenced mental processes exist as evidenced by Ramanujan's self descriptions.</p>

<p>Agreed, same for photos or any personal expression.</p> <p>Yet a Ramanujan confronted uninfluenced structure rolling around as independent objects within his mind, objects that had nothing to do with his personal contexts. Those objects weren't him, were in him, and influence him. If an objective mental process can move numbers around in the head, why not that those processes move little birds and branches around that also exist as mental images in the brain?</p>

<p>Fred - "Mozart grew up surrounded and influenced by music. I suspect that's important."</p> <p>Sure. And music isn't pure form in the way that mathematical equations are pure form. Music has content and structure, music distinguished from a content-less mathematical equation, the latter being an expression which is structure waiting for content. For example, Ramanujan in his final illness wrote some functions that much later were used to help explain the entropy of black holes. I don't think of music as pure form. Consequently I don't see how it would be possible for musical compositions to be free of influence. Perhaps it's only in mathematics that pure form exists.</p>

<p>"<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Srinivasa_Ramanujan">Srinivasa Ramanujan</a> FRS was an Indian mathematician and autodidact. Though he had almost no formal training in pure mathematics, he made extraordinary contributions to mathematical analysis, number theory, infinite series, and continued fractions."</p> <p>Where in a play Harding's character describes Ramanujan as having had 'numbers' dancing in his mind, 'pure form' that I conjecture to have been uninfluenced by human history, culture, etc. Uninfluenced pure form that however did influence Ramanujan and subsequently the rest of us due to Ramanujan's great efforts.</p> <p>The play reminds us that Mozart is said to have heard 'whole symphonies' in his head and I note that the relationship between mathematical gifts and musical gifts has been to some extent explored. Regarding Julie's claim, note that Julie has called our attention to her appreciation of geometry and its having some relationship to her photographic work.</p>

<p>"Just think about it"? You called for her to think, not to express her feelings. </p> <p>"Just think about it. If you were a cavewoman with a computer and a camera, would your content have guided you in the exact same way that they do now?<br> <br> </p>

<p>Thanks Phil. I now love you.</p> <p>Supriyo I will love you too if you agree with me. And apology to David for what I said about him.</p> <p> </p>

<p>Fred, are you happy? You sound like an old crab.</p>

<p>Because I don't like to see bullying going on about someone's declared 'beliefs.' Why don't you talk about you're own inspiration and enthusiasms and where they come from instead of probing Julie uncomprehendingly.</p>