What is "Mind?"

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eeyonkee

Trad climber

Golden, CO

Mar 31, 2015 - 12:12pm PT

Aristotle was a lousy scientist.

paul roehl

Boulder climber

california

Mar 31, 2015 - 12:15pm PT

Yeah, he was an idiot... don't you think?

cintune

climber

The Utility Muffin Research Kitchen

Mar 31, 2015 - 12:27pm PT

[Click to View YouTube Video]

paul roehl

Boulder climber

california

Mar 31, 2015 - 12:43pm PT

When a bird creates a re-presentation or creates a nest with obvious decorative elements of an aesthetic nature give me a call.

BLUEBLOCR

Social climber

joshua tree

Mar 31, 2015 - 12:47pm PT

Paul should take over the Jon Daley show:D

cintune

climber

The Utility Muffin Research Kitchen

Mar 31, 2015 - 12:50pm PT

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3419115/

Abstract
Male bowerbirds create and decorate a structure called a bower which serves only to attract females for mating, and females visit and choose one among many bower owners before deciding which male to mate with. Is what they do art, and do they have an aesthetic sense? I propose operational definitions of art, judgement, and an aesthetic sense which depend upon communication theory which allow one to get explicit answers to this question. By these definitions Great Bowerbirds are artists, judge art, and therefore have an aesthetic sense.

paul roehl

Boulder climber

california

Mar 31, 2015 - 01:01pm PT

By these definitions Great Bowerbirds are artists, judge art, and therefore have an aesthetic sense.

Nonsense. This is like saying the feathers of a peacock are a work of art. The bower bird creates through instinct the kind of thing all Bowerbirds create in the same way that a gopher creates holes or a bird does a courtship dance. To say these things are based on aesthetic considerations is to demean the word. All of this is simple anthropomorphism. You bestow on nature qualities and interests like art that are uniquely human.

Call me when you see a bird in the art store picking up supplies.

cintune

climber

The Utility Muffin Research Kitchen

Mar 31, 2015 - 01:17pm PT

To say these things are based on aesthetic considerations is to demean the word.

To say these things are based on instinct is to demean the word. And the little guy in the video sure seems to be showing some discrimination in picking out his supplies.

Jan

Mountain climber

Colorado, Nepal & Okinawa

Mar 31, 2015 - 01:23pm PT

That's an old philosophical conundrum isn't it? It's also one that climbers are often faced with. Is it better to live a long and boring life of security or a short and interesting one for which you'll be remembered? We have the choice but ants don't. We also have the possibility to imagine an interesting and creative life that is long.

Tvash

climber

Seattle

Mar 31, 2015 - 01:32pm PT

Actually, the art of shipbuilding (which Aristotle apparently knew little about) is very much in the wood (or, more generally, the materials and their selection). Select the wrong oak for the keel, or hemlock for the mast, and you'll get a ship alright - a sunken one.

Art is defined by man, and, more accurately, the individual person.

If I say a spider web is art produced by the trial and error of evolution, then it is art. Agree or disagree - get your control freak on if you need to, but that's entirely my call. This is precisely why artists so often to turn nature for inspiration. The art is already there.

You're not wired for this kind of meta thinking Paul, that much has become obvious. You're a conservative thinker who relies on pre-existing norms. I am not and do not.

If we consider that evolution produced both a spider web and Starry Night, as we must (unless an alternative source process is offered - so far, nothing yet), then we can say that evolution arrived at both works in different ways over different time scales. The variety and ingenuity of spider webs is stunning - as stunning as anything man has produced (we still cannot artificially replicate these works) - it simply took evolution millions of years to produce the various species to produce this variety. Yes, a given species of spider is mostly hardwired to produce a certain kind of web. I'm not so sure this is all that different from many artists, who typically develop a small number of styles - some only one, and basically produce small variations on a theme over and over again.

Sounds a lot like evolution, no? Yup.

Tvash

climber

Seattle

Mar 31, 2015 - 01:42pm PT

Bushy tailed woodrats also create installations of nice, shiny things they've pilfered from us. My jumars and the fuel cup to my old whisperlite are gracing some rodent's Cascadian love nest as I type.

Paul knows what is or isn't going on there, even if no one else seems to.

Ain't that right Paul?

Or, more accurately, ain't that your ridiculous need to be right there, Paul?

paul roehl

Boulder climber

california

Mar 31, 2015 - 01:44pm PT

To say these things are based on instinct is to demean the word. And the little guy in the video sure seems to be showing some discrimination in picking out his supplies.

Instinct in this case is a natural inclination for which the animal needs to tend for survival and as a result all so called works of art by that species are remarkably similar. Those works serve a specific and necessary purpose as with out them there is genetic failure.

Oscar Wilde said all art is, and must be, useless... of course he was a bad scientist.

Which animals create useless designs in the forest for the exclusive purpose of aesthetic pleasure? Which bird species create portraits of their families? Which animal species place art in their burrows as elements of decoration or as ritual objects? Where are the great artworks of the animal kingdom (sans humanity) beyond the practical habitats and simple tools like sticks and unmodeled stones?

WBraun

climber

Mar 31, 2015 - 01:44pm PT

Tvash -- unless an alternative source process is offered - so far, nothing yet

Yes ... so far nothing to the big know it all, Tvash .....

Tvash

climber

Seattle

Mar 31, 2015 - 01:45pm PT

Frankly, I don't see much variety in your work, Paul. Pretty stayed. Very safe. I'd call it well executed commercial.

Largo

Sport climber

The Big Wide Open Face

Topic Author's Reply - Mar 31, 2015 - 01:52pm PT

Yes, that Aristotle was a fool with the figures. Right? And who's next to get browbeat with the old slide rule? William S? To be or not to be? Bollocks. Shut up and calculate.

Oh, the humanity...

And Ed, you know I didn't miss that junior high class. But I'm an amateur at measuring so I trotted your Einstein quote past a friend over at JPL (and former Muni bad ass I used to ride with) who referred me to this:

"Newton gave us the whole business about the greater the mass and the closer the two objects are, the stronger the force of gravity. However this only described the phenomenon in party. It basically was a more detailed description than just something makes any object that is unsupported to fall to the ground. Einstein took the next step in describing it with his Theory of Relativity, that space and time were one and the same and served as the fabric of the universe, that gravity was simply a curvature in space-time "created" by a mass object pretty much in the same way a piece of cloth would be curved if it was stretched out and a heft object was placed on it. This curvature in space "created" by an object with greater mass than the objects surrounding it would "cause" these objects of lesser mass to fall toward the more massive object. But even this only describes the ACTION of gravity on the large scale. Quantum physics proposed a theoretical particle called the graviton believed by some to control gravity. Unfortunately it has never been found - and never will be because only old farts believe gravity can be classically explained per a "cause." What's more, if a graviton did exist, it would "be" massless, so materialism would not in this instance "explain" how gravity was supposedly created, because said graviton would by definition be "sans material." It is far more accurate to say that gravity occurs when certain values and phenomenon are in play. Fact is, gravity still remains one of the biggest mysteries of physics and the biggest obstacle to a universal theory that describes the functions of every interaction in the universe accurately. A posse of younger scientists are coming to realize that the dead end, the scientific cul-de-sac so to speak, most likely involves searching for the assumed physical mechanics "behind" gravity.

I bother quoting this not to show that I have some young, know-it-all scientist at my beck and call. I don't and it wouldn't matter if I did. But I feel there is something to her idea that it's a dead end to believe that physical mechanics alone "creates" gravity from nothing, as opposed to the fact it simply is, and is not "created," any more than the brain "creates" mind - entirely. So I think the fly in the ointment is the idea of "creating." Note how the discursive mind cannot handle the idea that some-thing can exist and not be "created," if not by matter, or by some massless Double Spin super duper Boson, then by a God, or some external "agency."

Perhaps its time to bust a move with Boehm and his Implicate Order. I pent a wleek with him at GGS but he was getting old and couldn't make his ideas really clear to anyone.

JL

paul roehl

Boulder climber

california

Mar 31, 2015 - 02:03pm PT

Art is defined by man, and, more accurately, the individual person.

What defines art historically is human consensus.

Your individual opinion is, unfortunately, just that.

"Frankly, I don't see much variety in your work, Paul. Pretty stayed. Very safe. I'd call it well executed commercial."

You're a poor troll who seems to turn to personal attacks when confronted with his errors which I suppose is only natural in the troll world .

Frankly, I don't think you have the ability or certainly the insight to even understand what I do in my own work. You've demonstrated repeatedly a rather pathetic knowledge of the aesthetic so I'll take your comments as compliment: the validation of the vulgarian, yeah, I'll take it.

healyje

Trad climber

Portland, Oregon

Mar 31, 2015 - 02:13pm PT

...as opposed to the fact it simply is, and is not "created," any more than the brain "creates" mind

Well, in syllables and the occasional word we can at least attempt to infer what Largo believes given our man of letters seems wholly incapable of stating or reporting it. One can only wonder what painful disability prevents him from just saying the [magic] word: panpsychism.