Playing with identities and money - art in Pécs

Check out below the link to a fun art project, carried out and exhibited in my former university town, Pécs.

http://issuu.com/katjamelzer/docs/secretcapital_catalogue_2011

I would especially recommend the works of student Zsófia Tóth, and the result of the - usually very entertaining - collaboration of Csaba Nemes and Zsolt Veress.

Reading Heaney on love

I'll share with you a poem. I originally encountered it in its Hungarian translation by András Imreh, three years ago. There was a huge project culminating in a volume of Heaney's poetry. A team of excellent poets-translators was working on it for years. (But for those of you who aren't very familiar with how these things go: poets, like lawyers or researchers, work on more than one project at the same time, so don't imagine these guys only working on this and doing nothing else.) You can read some of these Hungarian translations here, on the literary journal Nagyvilág's site: http://www.nagyvilag-folyoirat.hu/NV09-11-ok.pdf

Seamus Heaney - Act of Union

I

To-night, a first movement, a pulse,
As if the rain in bogland gathered head
To slip and flood: a bog-burst,
A gash breaking open the ferny bed.
Your back is a firm line of eastern coast
And arms and legs are thrown
Beyond your gradual hills. I caress
The heaving province where our past has grown.
I am the tall kingdom over your shoulder
That you would neither cajole nor ignore.
Conquest is a lie. I grow older
Conceding your half-independent shore
Within whose borders now my legacy
Culminates inexorably.

II                                                                                                           

And I am still imperially
Male, leaving you with pain,
The rending process in the colony,
The battering ram, the boom burst from within.
The act sprouted an obstinate fifth column
Whose stance is growing unilateral.
His heart beneath your heart is a wardrum
Mustering force. His parasitical
And ignorant little fists already
Beat at your borders and I know they're cocked
At me across the water. No treaty
I foresee will salve completely your tracked
And stretchmarked body, the big pain
That leaves you raw, like opened ground, again

The poem can be read in more than one way: the first interpretation suggests itself as obvious. It is a love poem about the union of a man and a woman. Union should be understood in more than one ways: the poem at the beginning depicts their sexual act, as he enters here and her body is 'breaking open.'

"Your back is a firm line of eastern coast

And arms and legs are thrown"

The woman's back is the edge of the country they form together. They extend as far her contours. And then they hug each other, ending in an embrace and the enjoyment of the woman's curvy shapes, described as 'Arms and legs are thrown beyond your gradual hills.'

"I caress

The heaving province where our past has grown"

can be read as him holding her head close, where their past has grown in her memories.

The last four lines begin by claiming that he is not young anymore. He does not want to seduce, or rule, or own the woman. They are partners. Nevertheless they are even more united, as she carries his child now.

The second verse's first four lines talk of pain and conjure battle images. This again can be understood as talking about the pain man cause woman, sometimes physically during the act of passionate sex, sometimes emotionally. But there is one more source of pain lurking in the background, which he couldn't avoid causing her, no matter what his resolution is: that she will be the one who has to give birth.

In lines five and six the theme of unification enters again. The conception of the child has happened and forms now an additional boundary between them.

Lines seven to eleven elaborate on the topic of how fathers fear that their sons will overthrow them - in whatever sense; by being better in their profession, being stronger, more clever or having a larger say in family matters. The son already conquered the mother in a way, in which the father never could. Ruling from the inside and although unconscious and not knowing, already shaking his fists at him.

The last four lines elaborate on the thought that the union of parenthood is paradoxical. It will bind them together, it will leave their relationship in place, but he will never have the same claim upon her as he did before her giving birth, as said here

"No treaty

I foresee will salve completely your tracked

And stretchmarked body"

These lines also stress the contrast between the man's forceful situation in the beginning lines, when the act of entering the woman's body is likened to him being a mighty storm dividing the earth. Whereas in the last lines, he is just a powerless bystander, neither being able to prevent the creation of his successor, nor the pain of the woman. By giving birth she becomes more independent, and it is something only she can do.

Another reading of the poem would stress that it's a play of thoughts on the love-hate, united-divided relationship of Ireland and Northern Ireland. But so much poetry is enough for today morning and I'll leave it up to the reader to look up the fascinating, elevating and sad history of Ireland.

A useful citation relating to our knowledge of moral truth and knowledge of our reasons:

"Strange to know nothing, never to be sure

Of what is true or right or real,

But forced to qualify or so I feel,

Or Well, it does seem so:

Someone must know"

Larkin, Ignorance, 1^st verse

Explanation of action

"An agent who flips a switch, thereby turning on the light, illuminating the room, and alerting a burglar acts only once, but his act has numerous descriptions, intentional under some but not others. Being intentional cannot, therefore, be a property of an act because if it were, an act would both have and not have the property of being intentional. [Davidson's] claim that "there is an irreducible difference between psychological explanations that involve the propositional attitudes and explanations in sciences like physics and chemistry" is an echo of Anscombe's position."

p. 9. Frederick Stoutland, 'Introduction: Anscombe's Intention in context,' in Essays on Anscombe's Intention. Edited by Anton Ford, Jennifer Hornsby and Frederick Stoutland. 2011. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press.

The quotation from Davidson highlights one of the most attractive features that Anscombe's account of intentional action proposes: to understand how we classify and interpret actions, how we explain them, without having to say that all the elements used in such explanations have to be coupled up with real, reducible or emergent, mental states. If we would accept such a strategy then we would have to treat philosophical theories of action and mind as offering a theoretical model that the empirical sciences can use when looking at how the type of animals or organisms that we humans are work.

Of course one might be drawn to a way of understanding action-explanation as non-reducible for many reasons. Many of the researchers working on Anscombe nowadays do so because they hold that there is some way in which agents act for reasons, and this way cannot be adequately captured by causalist, naturalist accounts. Thus we should look for alternatives and maybe Anscombe's Aristotelianism is such a way.

Another motivation might be to take her theory as a good outline of the model we employ to explain and understand actions. We might add that this model is not at all adequate to what is going on in the world. Thus we might be antirealists or fictionalists about the mental and agents, while trying to make understand what pattern people employ when they talk and think about actions. We employ many models that do not correspond to reality and aren't correct. But that doesn't mean that they cannot serve as if our interests are superficial in actions, i.e. if we are not scientists doing work on motivation, social interaction, neural coding, etc.

Just consider the following two examples of information lacking any correlate in reality influencing our actions:    one might plausibly hold that the value or art is not a natural property artworks possess. It is rather something we attribute to them. Nevertheless, these values can influence our behavior in significant ways. For example if I believe that the Mona Lisa is an especially valuable painting, I would like to own it, or at least see it and I may even exert a significant amount of energy to travel and have a quick look at it.

Also, we might think, rules of politeness are not grounded in reality in a way that anything in nature would decisively determine what these rules are. But this does not mean that we shouldn't adhere to such rules, or that they cannot make our lives easier and more pleasant (as well as they can be frustrating and form all sorts of obstacles, but nevertheless they only do so because people take them to be real and act accordingly). 

Inspiring lives, inspiring ideas: Whitehead and the beautiful life

"In December 1890 my marriage with Evelyn Willoughby Wade took place. The effect of my wife upon my outlook on the world has been so fundamental, that it must be mentioned as an essential factor in my philosophic output. (...) Her vivid life has taught me that beauty, moral and aesthetic, is the aim of existence; and that kindness, and love, and artistic satisfaction are among its modes of attainment. Logic and Science are the disclosure of relevant patterns, and also procure the avoidance of irrelevancies.

This outlook somewhat shifts the ordinary philosophic emphasis upon the past. It directs attention to the periods of great art and literature, as best expressing the essential values of life. The summit of human attainment does not wait for the emergence of systematized doctrine, though system has its essential functions in the rise of civilization. It provides the gradual upgrowth of a stabilized social system."

p. 8. Whitehead: Autobiographical Notes in The Philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead, ed. Paul Arthur Schlipp. 1941/1951. New York: Tudor Publishing Company.

You sir, merit my appreciation and inspire me.

Of course certain qualifications are in place: let's understand 'avoidance of irrelevancies' as avoiding and preventing all that can ruin our chances for conducting a morally and aesthetically beautiful existence. One way of attaining that moral beauty is of course to help others avoid such irrelevancies, as does a doctor, or a pharmacist. On an interesting approach to how to make use of your working time so as to shape your life in an ethical manner see this website with some practical suggestions: http://80000hours.org/

Of course the 80000 hours organisations approach should be qualified too: making good use of your time by having a high impact is just one among the many of the moral and aesthetic factors that play a role in achieving a beautiful life. You need to find that work or the goals you achieve by them to be at least so personally fulfilling that it makes sense for you to carry on. Also, such a conduct should not make too large demands against aspects of your life that are essential to its being a happy life. That is, you should still have time left for hobbies, friends, family or if you are that type of person who likes to spend his hours on his own, for your private sphere.

An explanation of the title and editorial welcome

Dear Reader,

Welcome to this blog. I intend this place to serve as an outlet for all sorts of ideas I encounter. Some of them may come from my readings and studies in science, in philosophy, in arts, some just strike me while reading about politics or social issues, whereas other are about works of art.

Not all of the views and positions aired here will be ones I endorse. Some of them will be just presented to elicit discussion, draw comments and to get help by finding arguments for or against them.

Also, as this is to a certain extent a personal blog, I'll from time to time feel free to post a picture taken during my travels. As is our experience of consciousness, this blog will be fragmented. In contrast to professional writing I feel no obligation to pursue a line of thought until its end, or to look at an issues fairly from all sides. Rhetoric, the intent to convince and emotional outbursts may creep in.

If you still bear with me my thanks go to you and I hope you'll find some entertainment.

For last the explanation of the title:

I find the world to be very strange and surprising. I get ideas from all sorts of people - my parents, my teachers, professionals from other fields, academics and students, scientists and writers. I even listen to interviews with soldiers, criminals and people involved in the porn industry.

But the ideas never seem to admit of a generality, they always seem to encounter resistance from some other person or the world falsifies them.

The kumquat is a fruit with a peculiar sweet and sour taste. As Tony Harrison writes in his poem 'A Kumquat for John Keats':

"I'm pretty sure that Keats, though he had heard

'of candied apple, quince and plum and gourd'

instead of 'grape against the palate fine'

would have, if he'd known it, plumped for mine,

this Eastern citrus scarcely cherry size

he'd bite just once and then apostrophize

and pen one stanza how the fruit had all

the qualities of fruit before the Fall,

but in the next few lines be forced to write

how Eve's apple tasted at the second bite,

and if John Keats had only lived to be,

because of extra years, in need like me,

at 42 he'd help me celebrate

that Micanopy kumquat that I ate

whole, straight off the tree, sweet pulp and sour skin—

or was it sweet outside, and sour within?

For however many kumquats that I eat

I'm not sure if it's flesh or rind that's sweet,

and being a man of doubt at life's mid-way

I'd offer Keats some kumquats and I'd say:

You'll find that one part's sweet and one part's tart:

say where the sweetness or the sourness start."

As far as I understand the kumquat stands as a symbol of the controversial qualities of life that unite in a strange whole. Keats died young and never grew to know to value else then sweetness, but as time goes on one arrives at seeing how the two parts complement each other, the sourness helps you value the sweetness.