PEOPLE

Just a thought that occurred to me the other day while in a local town. Nothing original about it. The streets were full of people walking up and down beside me. A thought cropped up in my mind. It seemed strange to be reminded that all of us have bodies that are entirely composed of bits and pieces, of many compounds and chemicals that derive from the physical stuff of the earth with its origin going back billions of years into the age of the first stars and before them just hydrogen and that somehow these bits and pieces had come together and coalesced into odd moving shapes with arms, legs, ears and eyes and, furthermore, that somehow these conglomerations of matter had become conscious of their surroundings and had thoughts like the one I was now experiencing.

How very strange indeed!

Neither left nor right

We indicate the location of objects in many different ways, often by the use of prepositions in phrases such as beside the table, in the cup, outside the house, above the trees, beyond the stars. And we also have at our disposal the terms ‘here’ and ‘there’ and ‘left’ and ‘right’. ‘Here’ is distinctive in that the place to which it refers is not a particular location but of no fixed abode, that is to say, I might be in a house, on a mountain or at the bottom of the sea, but wherever I happen to be that is ‘here’. ‘Here’ moves as I move. And, of course, since everyone is at the centre of their conscious domain, there are as many ‘heres’ as there are conscious beings equipped with language. ‘Here’ is an egocentric term; it is defined by my presence. Similarly, when we use such words as ‘on my left,’ ‘on my right’ and so on, location is being indicated with reference to my position.

This must be true, I thought, of all languages with their equivalents for ‘here,’ ‘on my left’ and so on. That is until I read about the Gurindji language spoken in northern Australia. According to an article in Aeon magazine (‘Does language mirror the mind? An intellectual history’ by James McElvenny, January 2024) in this language ‘locations are usually described using the cardinal directions, north, south, east and west’. An English speaker might note that the dog is by my right foot. But a Gurindji speaker would say that the dog is in the north west of the foot.

I have some questions about the implications of this difference. First, I wonder how they can be sure of the geographical direction. Are they simply better at remembering where the poles are than English speakers tend to be? Or is it possible that Gurindji speakers are, as has been suggested, inherently sensitive, in the way that migrating birds are, to the earth’s magnetic field? Second, and this is the more interesting philosophical question, by identifying location in terms of non-personal language like GPS or map coordinates are theses people less egocentric by nature than speakers of most other languages in this particular way and perhaps in other ways too?

Umwelt

(From reading the opening pages of ‘An Immense World’ by Ed Yong)

Today I have learned a new word, ‘Umwelt’.

In the Introduction to his book Ed Yong asks the reader to imagine a room containing a set of animals: an elephant, mouse, robin, owl, bat, rattlesnake, spider, mosquito, bumblebee, a human and with them a sunflower. He then explores what each might perceive of its surroundings. I have summarised some of the key points below

sound: 
mouse’s squeak too high for elephant but audible to bat
elephant voice too low for mouse but felt by rattlesnake
owl hears steps of mouse 

vision: 
elephant sees only shades of blue and yellow
bird and bee see ultraviolet in centre of sunflower
rattlesnake sees infrared radiation from warm bodies

touch: 
spider feels vibrations in web

sonar: bat

earth’s magnetic field: ‘felt’ by mouse

Many of these perceptions are beyond the capacity of humans.

The different species in the same place perceive their environment in different ways by virtue of their different sense organs. Out of all the sensory information being transmitted, as Yong puts it, ‘every animal can only tap into a small fraction of reality’s fullness. Each is enclosed within its own sensory bubble, perceiving but a tiny sliver of an immense world.’

Which leads to my new word ‘Umwelt’ which in this context (first used by the zoologist Jacob von Uexküll in 1909) refers to the perceptual range of each species. All species have limited sensory perception with particular deficiencies and particular strengths. Humans are no different. Beyond the human range but within that of some animals are, for example: electric fields, magnetic fields, ultrasonic and infrasonic sounds, infrared and ultraviolet radiation.

Some thoughts about this topic:

1.The world as it appears to a perceiver is a fragment of the whole, the dimensions of that fragment determined by the nature of the sense organs. The function of the sense organs is to filter out of all the vast array of sensory information impinging upon them a narrow band of what is of practical usefulness to a particular species.

2. One capacity that distinguishes humans from other animals is awareness of Umwelt. All animals perceive within narrow constraints but only humans are aware that there are such restraints on themselves and on other species. 

3. Furthermore, humans try to extend their perceptual range by inventing such devices as spectacles, microscopes, telescopes, microphones and are even able to enter into areas no other animal has access to with, for example, radio telescopes, Geiger counters and MRI scanners.

Nothing

You don’t find it by chance under a cushion,
or in the shed beside some bicycle clips.
You can’t reveal it
by subtracting all the somethings one by one,
or by shrinking them smaller and smaller,
or dissecting them into nano-sized chunks
and then some,
or by turning down the volume to its lowest,
by blocking out the light;
by slicing, syphoning off, peeling away, scraping,
sliver by tiny sliver.
None of that works.
We’ve not seen it, heard it, touched it.
But there between plus and minus,
between the debit and the credit
we recognise it:
somehow we know nothing.

(Published in ‘Philosophy Now’ Issue157 August/September 2023)

More on Free Will

I heard on the radio a conversation between the Archbishop of Canterbury and psychologist, Susan Blackmore. The talk ranged over many topics but one in particular struck a chord with me. The two clearly disagreed about the question of free will. The Archbishop did not explain why he believed that free will was real. Susan Blackmore, on her side of the issue, recalled an experience from many years earlier. She was driving her car when she came to a T junction. Turning right would take her on the shorter but much busier route through a built-up area: turning left led to a more scenic road. She had to decide which way to go. A typical instance where free will supposedly operates. But she remembers not choosing, not intervening in the moment and directing her course by the exercise of will but more of seeing the decision being made. I take it  to mean that she realised that she was the observer rather than the initiator of the decision.

There is obviously much more to be said about the free will v determinism debate, a great deal of intellectual  argument on both sides. But what intrigued me about her report was that it was an empirical approach to the subject. Instead of, or rather in addition to, thinking about whether there is free will or not why not pay close attention to the experience of deciding and see what conclusion is reached?

Out of sync

When I returned to my hometown, it was a comfort to see that very little had changed, the buildings unaltered, most of the shops much as I remembered them, perhaps a few more hanging baskets with their bright blue lobelia and puddles of water underneath. I called at my favourite café, had my usual cappuccino. Hilary served me as she had done many times over the years. We talked, caught up. Yes, it was as though I had never been away — except for one thing, some detail I could not identify. Something about Hilary, and I don’t mean those few strands of grey hair, was different. I walked along the High Street, nodded at a few old timers. I called in at Jimmy’s and had my hair cut. Most of the time as he made the best of my receding locks, I had my back to him. But at the end when I paid, although it was the same old Jimmy, now, he told me, looking forward to retirement, there was something a little strange about him too, something added, something gone, hard to tell. Nothing I could pin down.

When I sat down on one of the benches in the pedestrianised street, it wasn’t long before a middle aged woman laden with heavy Tesco bags perched on the far end. ‘You don’t mind if I sit here, do you? Must take my breath.’ The same slight feeling of unease on my part as I looked at her and heard her. I wanted to find out what it was. I mentioned the weather and she was off: the summer we hadn’t had, the leaves already turning, the heatwave when the kids are back at school.

Now it was becoming a little clearer but at the same time it really made no better sense to me. You know when you watch a news item transmitted from half way around the globe and notice that the reporter’s facial movements, the opening and closing of the lips, don’t quite tally with the speech. In other words sound and picture are slightly out of sync. That is the best way I can think of to describe what I was witnessing, a slight, a barely perceptible dislocation between voice and mouth. And that, I realised now, was what I had noticed about Hilary and Jimmy too.

I called back at the café, pretending I had left my hat, popped in at the barbers to wish Jimmy all the best for the future. I was right. In both cases that same weird discrepancy of timing. I made a point of going into other cafes, the library, anywhere just to initiate a conversation, to look and listen. The same phenomenon everywhere, not so pronounced as to be too obvious but now that I was on the lookout for it, most definitely evident.

My first assumption — after all it was so absurd, so bizarre — was that the cause must be something that had gone wrong in me, in my perception. But my eyesight and hearing are perfectly normal. Was I beginning to have some sort of breakdown? I have read a little about the strange workings of the mind and the imagination but never come across anything remotely like this. My case would be a challenge to any psychiatrist. No use googling. I tried but no luck. A memory kept coming back to me. I was a boy with my father in a jeweller’s shop. There were clocks on the wall. At the turn of the hour a cuckoo clock called out, a grandfather clock chimed and then another slightly, just a moment afterwards. They struck eleven, each chime separated by the slightest of spaces like grace notes in a piece of music. I put my hands over my ears and I saw my father and the assistant laughing.

Promises, promises

I wonder how and why the practice of promise making arose. At what point in human development was the first promise made? It is a practice deeply embedded in discourse of many kinds. Witnesses swear on the Bible or some other holy book before giving evidence in court. On banknotes we read, ‘I promise to pay the bearer the sum of…’ How many times do we append our signature to a document? To say, ‘Next week I will pay back the money I am borrowing today’ is not enough. We must add, ‘I promise.’

To be known as ‘a man of his word’ is to be accorded a high commendation. Such a person is not fickle or slippery but remains the same through the course of time. He can be depended upon.

Am I the same person today that I was last week, last year? Will I be the same person a week, a year into the future? I may seem high-minded and principled in March but have become by September petty and underhand. One day one personality is dominant, tomorrow a different one.

I suspect that the word ‘promise’ weakened in its effectiveness over generations and society demanded a more forceful expression of consistency:

Because men knew their own frailty
they invented the promise.
But because a promise sometimes was broken
they invented the pledge.
But because a pledge sometimes was broken
they invented the vow.
But because a vow sometimes was broken
they invented the oath.
But because an oath sometimes is broken
men still seek an unbreakable bond
between words and action.

The function of a promise is to ensure that the promise maker can be called to account. People can say to him, ‘Look, here is the proof. There are witnesses to what you said.’ To make a promise is to submit willingly to such a summons. ‘But you promised’ is a phrase to dread. It strikes deeply into our sense of worth and evokes waves of guilt.

The institution of promise making is a recognition of human frailty, a verbal sticking plaster.

Furthermore, promise making implies that there exists a ‘me’ that can make reliable assurances about future behaviour at a time when, it is presumed, the same ‘me’ will be in control. A promise expressed solely in the passive voice has no weight. ‘A promise has been made’ on its own is an empty expression. There must be a name, a promise making agent invoked to make it work.

A brief enquiry into promise making uncovers a deeper question about the self and its endurance through time.

NETS AND THE NATURALIST

Suppose I come across a lake and I want to find out how many and what sort of fish live in it. I decide to take a boat across and pull along a net to trawl through the water. I set out and sail from one side of the lake to the opposite side, land the net and take out the fish. There are a hundred fish of medium to large size. The next day I repeat the same journey but on this occasion with a different net. Again I land the net and count the fish. In addition to the medium and large ones I find a great number of small fish.

How do I make sense of the results? How is it that there is such a contrast between the two days? I had not mentioned the difference between the nets. The net I used on the first day had a very wide mesh: in the net used on the second day the holes were much smaller.

So the difference between the two catches of fish was a measure less of the number and type of fish in the lake and more of the size of the mesh of the nets.

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Out in the countryside a keen naturalist regularly listens to bird song and keeps a precise tally of the numbers and species of birds in the vicinity. He carries out his count for decades from his youth to old age. Although for many years the number and range of species has stayed much the same, he now is noticing that more and more there is a decrease both in overall numbers and in types of birds. In other similar habitats other naturalists record continued stability in the bird population.

What accounts for this discrepancy? Was there some feature of his particular locality that was the cause? One day the naturalist has a hearing test. A deficiency in his hearing is detected and hearing aids are prescribed and worn. Remarkably, he finds that when he resumes bird watching and recording, the figures he used to note are now restored. Similar number and types of birds as in his earlier days.

During the period when his hearing was impaired, his ears did not register bird song at a high pitch. With the hearing aids, these sounds became audible again. The point? His record making was shaped by the quality of his hearing and his records were partly evidence of the bird population but also partly of his auditory apparatus.

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Questions: To what extent do we perceive the external world as it really is?
To what extent do the limitations of our sense organs determine our perception of the external world?

“We do not see things as they are, we see them as we are.” Anais Nin

“If you always wore blue spectacles, you could be sure of seeing everything blue.” Bertrand Russell

PAYING ATTENTION

When we listen to music — I am thinking of pieces in which several instruments play together, each following its own line: a small wind ensemble, a string quartet, traditional jazz, for example —it is possible to put attention on to one instrument in particular so that it moves to the foreground while the sound of the other instruments recedes a little, still heard but not as prominent. For me this works well if the bass line is singled out.

The impression given is that somehow I have power over my mind and that I can direct its focus, like using a spotlight in a theatre, on one feature of a conscious experience while slightly fading others. I wonder what is going on here. What, to begin with is happening in the brain? The sound waves, the data from all the instruments, continue to stream into the ear as before. But at some point it is as if a dial has been turned to raise the volume of one instrument and another dial turned to lower the other instruments.

I don’t think for a moment that there is a separate me with access to the metaphorical dials. At the level of the brain there must be physical correlation amongst some of those billions of neurons to what is happening at the conscious level. Would a brain scan reveal this correlation? How does it happen?

I suppose that there is a similar process as regards visual experience. I look up now and can see four pictures next to one another and while they all remain within my visual field, one in particular can become my special focus.

Of course, this problem is only one aspect of the much wider one, namely, why there is a conscious experience of hearing or of seeing in the first place since it has no place or explanation within the physical world.

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Another thought on this. I think that this sort of attention shifting is quite different from the process of acclimatisation (there is probably a technical name for this in psychology). What I am referring to is the common experience of ceasing to notice a feature of a familiar environment once one has become accustomed to it: wallpaper, a clock ticking, the sound of a nearby motorway. The examples above feel deliberate, intentional whereas this acclimatisation seems to just happen in due course of its own accord, as it were.

THE REAL ME

You hear people say that once they gave up one career or form of life and adopted a new one, they then knew that this was ‘the real me.’

What does it mean to say ‘the real me’?

I have heard musicians who had enjoyed illustrious careers as virtuosi, when reviewing their early days, recall such memories as ‘when I first saw and heard the violin I knew that was the instrument for me and that to play it was what I wanted to do’. My impression is that they have not been plagued by doubts about this early decision. I may be wrong, of course. Only they can know. But I get the sense that from childhood they had found what people call ‘the real me’. Think of Mozart and Hokusai, childhood prodigies. Was there ever any doubt about their essential natures and the fact that they would spend their lives devoted to their particular art? Had they found ‘the real me’?

But most of us do not have such a strong sense of vocation.

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What about the other side of the coin, the unreal me? It might be difficult for some of us to know what is ‘the real me’ but we may more easily identify what is definitely not ‘the real me’. Here is an example. I remember that some years ago when I was involved in a few DIY jobs around the house, it was suggested that I buy and wear overalls. For some reason this idea felt quite wrong. Why? I think it was because I regarded overalls as the uniform of the working man, of plumbers, decorators, joiners. To wear overalls would be a sort of copying of them, of trying to appear to be one of their number. It would be false, an act of pretence, trying to wear a uniform that I had not earned.

So I had perhaps found out more of what I felt was definitely not the real me but I wasn’t much wiser about what was or is the real me.

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I wonder if the notion of ‘affinity’ is close to whatever ‘the real me’ is. An affinity is ‘a natural liking for and understanding of someone of something’. Can I use the word ‘affinity’ in connection with plants? I was thinking of the idea that some plants ‘prefer’ to grow in full sun, partial sun or even in full shade, in more acid or more alkali soils. In this sense affinity means having an inclination for an environment which allows the plant to reach its full potential, to produce the maximum of vigorous flowers, blossoms, fruit or whatever. In short, they have an affinity for whatever is conducive to their flourishing.

Are people like that? Is finding ‘the real me’ a question of entering the milieu in which one can best fulfil ones talents?

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On similar lines I have heard people say that the first time they visited a particular house they immediately knew that it was the right place for them, a special place, another sort of affinity, perhaps.

I have never had any experience of that type. But when I reflect on the point perhaps I have but in my case not as regards a building but more a sense that one stretch of countryside in particular is my natural home or where I belong. But the problem is that I have had such a feeling in more than one place, in quite a few in fact, and certainly enough to make it unreliable to say the least.

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There was an item on the news the other day about a young footballer who had come out to announce that he was gay. I think that one journalist or sports commentator said of the statement that it allowed him to be ‘his real self’ for the first time.  I suppose that this is another way of saying that he had found ‘the real me’.

In this sense becoming ‘his real self’ was to cease living under a pretence. It implies that is possible to know aspects of your self and because of social pressures to need to conceal them. Bringing to the end of acting that false role comes as a great release.