No mountain too high?

Practice makes the world go round was the essence of my last blog. But is it really so? I wanted to test it, and since for me philosophizing and cycling go together, it would do it by bike. But which mountain would be high enough for examining the truth of the statement? For practical reasons I decided to go to the Vosges in Eastern France. This region is less than a day’s drive from my home and you find there real mountains. Even more, some of them had got some fame in the Tour de France cycle race, and one of these mountains, the Grand Ballon, had always been my secret aim. Therefore my experiment would consist in a climb of the Col du Grand Ballon. And if I succeeded to cycle to this mountain pass of 1325 metres, it would tell me not only something about philosophy but also about myself. So there I went, again with my wife. However, we didn’t go directly to the Vosges but first to the much lower mountains of the Eifel in Germany in order to give me some extra training.

The rides in the Eifel went smooth and the low mountains where no problem for me. Full of optimism I left for the Vosges after a few days, but once I was there, I got nervous. For there is a big difference between a low mountain of 500 m and a mountain pass of 1325 m. I felt like having to run a marathon on the base of thorough interval training and having run some much shorter races. It’s quite well possible, but psychologically it is not the best preparation. But okay, I wanted to do it and I wanted to do it on the first opportunity that the weather was good, for you never know how it changes in the mountains.

The day after my arrival was warm and sunny. When I explored the climb by car that morning and saw the profile of the route, I became reassured a bit. It should be quite well possible for me. Back home, I took a light meal, changed clothes, checked my bike, and left. The first ten minutes were only a warming up on a more or less flat road. Then it went uphill. I’ll save the readers all my feelings, but I can say that it was often very hard and often I had no gears left in order to make it easier for myself. Several times I got the idea: that’s the end; now I have to stop. But I didn’t and when I left the trees behind me and open fields stretched out before my eyes, I knew that the worst was behind me. At the top of the pass I had even the power to accelerate.

The Col du Ballon d’Alsace (1178 m), which I did two days later, was a piece of cake compared with the Grand Ballon. A bit like the climb to the top of the Netherlands but x times longer. Actually I should have done it first by way of training. It appeared to be a real mountain for philosophers, for here I could think over what climbing the Grand Ballon meant for me and my theory. It became clear to me that it’s really true: after having gone up go down again and then up and down and up and down... So you can learn to climb the highest mountains. The highest mountains? For me, the Grand Ballon was the limit. But lots of cyclists and potential philosophers have conquered higher and steeper climbs, like the famous Mont Ventoux (the mountain of Petrarch, but also the mountain where Tommy Simpson died in 1967 during the Tour de France). Or the Tourmalet, the Galibier, the Alpe d’Huez and many more. Maybe it showed that each person has his or her limits. But what are they? Must I simply do the Grand Ballon a few times again and then I can do these other climbs as well?

But now it was the limit for me. Since I had reached the top of a renowned Tour de France col, I appeared to be a good philosopher. But since it certainly wasn’t the top of the tops, I understood also that I am not more than that. In order to check it, I browsed a bit on the Internet and found a website called Blogrank, which ranks all kinds of blogs, including philosophical ones. I added my blog, too, and I came out as #73 in philosophy (see the button right). Not too bad but not the top of the world. What remains then is to try to reach the best 25. How? By cycling on more mountains and writing more blogs, of course. When you’re on the top of the mountain, you can only become better by yo-yoing down and up. It’s true for cycling and it’s true for philosophy as well, not to speak of life.

The top of the hill

The highest point of the Netherlands

There is a saying that runs “When you are on the top of the hill, you can only go down.” It sounds quite obvious. It’s true, you can go to live on the top and then the reverse seems to apply better to you: “When you are in the valley, you can only go up.” But for most people, the saying is plausible. Nevertheless I had my doubts, so I wanted to investigate the truth of it. As my dear readers will know, for me riding on my race bike and philosophizing often go together and sometimes they are two sides of the same coin. So in order to find out how much worth there is in this saying, I took my car, threw my race bike in it, put my wife on the seat next to me in order to have some pleasant company during the trip, and there I went to the southeast of the Netherlands where you find the highest hills of this country. With some effort (for it appeared to be one of the best weekends of this summer), I found a hotel and after some rest and some eating, I got on my bike.

The highest point of the Netherlands was only ten kilometres from my hotel, but I thought that it was better not to take the quickest road to the top. Since most things in life go better after some preparation, I decided to take a roundabout route. It would give me a thorough warming-up and so I could get a bit accustomed to cycling on the hills, for the molehills near my town are hardly worth the name of hill, not to speak of “mountain” as we call them there. However, I had profited by riding on these molehills and actually, and I went up and down without excessive effort. It showed that I was in good shape, for also for pro cyclist the region has some fame; not because the hills are so high, but because you find there hardly one flat centimetre, which makes cycling there very strenuous in the end.

So when I reached the climb I had came for, I had got already some feeling for the right gears and the right tempo, albeit that I was still a beginner. Nevertheless I was quite nervous. But it was without reason for the road to the top of the Netherlands appeared to take me somewhat less effort than the last long and sometimes steep slope I had past, so when I was there I was very self-satisfied. However, I was not the only philosopher on the top. Anyway, there were lots of other cyclists and it seemed that an organised bike tour was going on with this hill as its summit. There were many old cyclists, too, but when you looked well, you could see that most had bikes with electric drive, so in my view they were not of the right philosophical type. Moreover, there were several cafes, a watchtower and a maze. It was almost as an amusement park. But I didn´t was there for amusing myself. So I rode around the monument indicating the top of the Netherlands and also around the flags that indicated the place where this country, Belgium and Germany meet, which was some 50 metres from there, so that I had been in three countries. Next I went downhill and back to my hotel.

Until now I hadn’t got any philosophical feeling, and I was a bit disappointed. Most what looked like it was that I had thought of Petrarch climbing the Mont Ventoux. But there had already been many Petrarchs before me on this hill. Then, I got the idea that I had to do it again, like Sisyphus, although the main difference between Sisyphus and me was that he would never reach the top, and I could go there as often as I liked. Happily my wife and I had booked the hotel for two nights, and since the next day I was not too tired from the effort the day before I got on my race bike again, and since I needed again a warming-up and some more experience, I did the same route as the day before. It was a good idea, for although I didn’t ride really better, I was more relaxed, better changed gears and felt more at ease. And I knew the route already a little bit. So after an hour I was again at the top of the Netherlands, and now I smiled, for now, a brain wave told me: not yesterday’s ride but today’s ride taught me a lot of philosophy. It is true, when you are on the top of a hill, you can only go down. But here the story doesn’t end, for after you have gone down, you can go up again. And again. And again. And each time you’ll be better and enjoy it more and you’ll learn from it. “When you’re on the top of the hill, you can only go down” is not true. Even more, when you are on the top of the hill, you must go down, and up and down, and up and down… And so you become prepared for higher hills and for real mountains. And now I am prepared for it, too.

Free will and responsibility

Actually the Frankfurt cases are already rather old. Not as old as Plato’s philosophy, of course, but Harry Frankfurt presented them in 1969. It was his contribution to the discussion on determinism and moral responsibility. So the debate lasts already more than 40 years. What’s new now is that the discussion on determinism has changed because of recent developments in brain research. If our hormones make do what we do, as some brain researchers say, or if our behaviour and actions are nothing but programmed reactions of our neural networks to the inputs from the world around us (what we see, what we hear and so on), what does remain then from the idea of free will and, in line with it, the idea that we are morally responsible for what we do? In view of this, the Frankfurt cases illustrate, under a certain interpretation, that determinism and freedom can go together. Right now, I don’t have the idea that I can give a substantial contribution to the debate, but nevertheless let me brainstorm a bit about it.

Basically it is so – and I think that nobody will deny it – that a person is morally responsible for what she does by her own free will. But say that I am riding uphill with a friend in the case in my last blog. First we decided to go straight on, but then I changed my mind, as I explained, and I decided to go to the left where the road splits, so that I am sure that I’ll be home before dark. My friend doesn’t care, for he has light on his bike, which I haven’t. So he says: “I’ll go straight on and tell you later how the road is like.” But because the road straight on was blocked, my friend had to turn to the left, too. What’s the difference between my turning to the left and my friend’s turning to the left? Can it happen that in a non-trivial case I will be held responsible for my action (and with right) and my friend will not, even though we did the same action at the same place under the same circumstances, but only for the reason that we had different intentions for our actions at the moment we couldn’t yet foresee the consequences of the alternative decisions?

Secondly, does our moral responsibility for an action depend on the moment we have taken the decision to act in a certain way? Or are there, for instance, levels of responsibility depending on the moment the decision has been taken? In the trivial case of me riding uphill and downhill: Is my responsibility for turning left before I could see that the road straight on had been blocked different from my responsibility for turning left at the moment I could see the blockade, although I had the intention to turn left anyway?

To end this quite abstract blog (which is a bit unusually for me, I think, but the readers may protest) I give an example, adapted from the philosophical literature. There are better cases, but presently I cannot find them: A locomotive is running downhill. I don’t know what went wrong but what I do know is that there is no engine driver in it. There is a man on the track who doesn’t see the loco coming. I cannot stop it but I can shift a switch and lead the loco to another track and the man will be saved. As for the responsibility question it’s a simple case, you’ll think. But there are many variations possible. For instance, there is a man on the other track, but you cannot see him from your point of view. Or you can see him, but one of the persons is your son. Or you see the second man at the last moment. Or your daughter is on one track, and on the other track there are 2, 3, 4 … persons. With some creativity you’ll be able to think up a lot of cases, but are you able to solve the responsibility problem? I wonder who can.

Commonsense and the concept of philosophy

When Giere asserted that human science should not stray too far from ordinary ways of speaking he was referring to the difference between the idea of memory in the debate on extended cognition and the commonsense idea. But how about free will, a concept that has been discussed regularly in these blogs?

When we would ask an average person to circumscribe “free will”, I think s/he would give a simple version of Dick Swaab’s definition in his Wij zijn ons brein (We are our brain), which he borrowed from the American researcher Joseph Price: “Free will [is] … the possibility to decide to do or not to do something without internal or external limits that determine this choice” (p. 379). I think that hardly any philosopher will endorse it, for how naïve it is. Why? The fox got the cheese from the raven by a trick. Although the fox is smarter than the raven, he isn’t free, for he cannot fly and take the cheese by force. Who would accept this reasoning? Freedom is only possible within limits that determine the choice. I wonder whether my average person realizes it. And if s/he would realize it, what would s/he think then of this:

One of my favourite routes when making a bike ride goes somewhere uphill and then halfway downhill I take the asphalt bike path to the left, for according to my map the road straight on changes into a sandy path after a kilometre or so. But does it really do? I never checked it, although I have planned to do it sooner or later. So once riding uphill, I thought “Let me check it now”, but then a few minutes later: “Let me do it another time, for if the road is really sandy after a kilometre, I have to go back and it is already nearly dark”. However, at the point where I had to turn into the bike path, I saw that the road straight on had been blocked for a reason I didn’t know. So I had to turn into the bike path anyway. But no problem, I had already decided to do that.

Cases of this type have been discussed first by the American philosopher Harry Frankfurt. Therefore they are often called “Frankfurt cases”. In the instance just described I hadn’t the feeling that my options were limited, since I had skipped the plan to go straight on. Does it mean that my choice to turn left into the bike path was my free will? For before I knew that the road straight on had been blocked, I had taken already the decision to choose for the alternative: to take the bike path to the left. I guess that my average person would judge that I wasn’t free, for in the end I had no choice. However, most philosophers think otherwise: Before I had reached the top of the hill I had two possibilities to choose from, and before I could know that one wasn’t real, I had already chosen the road that hadn’t been blocked. In philosophical terms: I could choose from alternatives and I had control of my decision (at the moment of my decision), and it was this that made that I was free to choose. But in my instance, the idea that I was free is quite counterintuitive, and I doubt whether it is in keeping with commonsense. But if it isn’t, does it mean that we have to dispense with this philosophical idea of free will? Maybe in this case, but if it would imply that we have to drop philosophical ideas in general, in case they don’t agree with commonsense, the concept of philosophy as such would be at stake.

Philosophizing about ordinary concepts

At the end of my last blog I quoted Giere with consent where he said that human science must not develop ideas that are too far away from pou common sense notions. In this case that we must not defend an idea of memory that is too different from what the man or woman in the street thinks it is. But can we maintain this in general? If it were true, philosophizing would not be more than asserting what everybody already knows, albeit with some nuancing and in a clearer wording. But take this example, which is not from philosophy but from the natural sciences (although in those days, the natural sciences were seen as a kind of philosophy). Galileo defended the idea that the earth moves around the sun instead of the other way round. This view was contrary to what most people (and not only the Roman Catholic church) thought. As we know now, Galileo was right and the public idea was false. Why might such a turn in thinking not be brought about by philosophy? Why might philosophy not be able to undermine false ideas? In a certain sense philosophy can. One task of philosophy is correcting errors in reasoning, not only errors made by scientists but also those made in public reasoning. As such, these corrections can have radical consequences, in case it comes out that just the opposite of what always was held to be true is the case. However, there is a fundamental difference between what facts in the natural sciences are and what facts in the social sciences are. In the natural sciences facts exists independent of what we, the observers of these facts, think of it. It is our task as observers to find out what these facts “really” are (I put the word really between inverted commas since also in the natural sciences what we see as facts must pass through the filter of manmade concepts and theories). In human society, however, facts that are independent of us do not exist. Social facts are literally “made” by us. When we play chess, we don’t simply move wooden objects, but we play a game and we move pawns, rooks and queens etc. When humanity dies out, the wooden objects may still exist and they may be found by a roaming animal, but the idea of game and the idea that these pieces of woods “actually” are pawns, rooks or queens has been lost. Such meanings belong to, using Giere’s words, “our shared conceptual scheme and culture”. Social facts are ways we think about what is around us in the social and in the material world and ways we react to them, but when we think differently about these ways, they change with our thoughts and get another meaning. And just that is, I guess, the reason why Giere says that our philosophical ways of speaking and our philosophical interpretations must not be too distinct from our common sense ways of speaking and interpreting. If they would be, they’ll lose touch with the social reality as it exists for us, and they’ll not affect what the ordinary man or woman thinks but only exist as separate interpretations at most; interesting for philosophers, scholars and scientists, but of only marginal value for what people actually do and think. Then for most people our memory will remain to be only something that in the head, although some philosophers think that’s on the front doormat, too.

What is in my mind and what isn’t?

Once in a blog I discussed Andy Clark’s thesis that the mind is not only in the head, a thesis that I also endorse (see my blog dated May 31, 2010). It involves that thinking and the storing of knowledge does not only take place within the head, but also outside the body. We write memos or tie knots in handkerchiefs in order not to forget things that are important for us. Or nowadays we often use digital gadgets for it. These are simple examples of a phenomenon that is common practice. The digital revolution seems to have made our storage capacity unlimited and through this our minds, too.

In a recent article, Ronald N. Giere rejects this thesis (like some others do as well in this special issue on “Extended cognition and epistemology” of Philosophical Explorations (15/2, June 2012)). He summarizes his viewpoint by relating the following personal incident:

“Some years ago, my wife and I were in Europe for an extended period. Given communication technology at the time, the best solution for mobile communication was to acquire new ‘chips’ for our phones … One day someone asked me for my wife’s number. I replied … that I didn’t know it. I had seen it, but I did not now remember it. However, I continued, ‘Not to worry. I have the number in my phone’. Whereupon I reached for my ever present phone and produced the number. It would have been very odd for me to say, ‘I remember the number’, and then reach for my phone. Even less would it have made sense to say ‘We remember the number’, where the ‘we’ referred to myself and my phone. It was not odd to say, ‘I have the number in my phone’ ”. (id. p. 205)

It seems that Giere has a point here, especially since his example is much like one used by Clark somewhere. Here it is not the place to discuss Giere’s case and article extensively, but I want to make a few comments that may cast some doubt on his conclusion. Indeed, it is odd to say ‘I remember the number’, and then reach for my phone, but take this case. I always forget my wife’s phone number but by chance it is her birthday in reverse order plus the compulsory 06. So, I know the trick how to produce it, like Giere knows the trick that he can find his wife’s number in his mobile. What’s the difference then between my case and his? I think that also in my example it is odd to say that I remember the number, even though I can produce it without an external aid.

One thing that Giere in his example does is confusing person and brain. As I see it, what Clark contends is that the physical aspect of the mind is more than what is only in the head; that it’s more than what is only in the brain. Take his example in which I put a beer can on my front doormat in order to remember that I have to buy beer (see my blog dated May 31, 2010). In this case I cannot say that I remember now that I must buy beer, for I don’t. But I have made tags inside and outside my mind in order to remember at the right moment that I have to buy beer, and it is just the fact that some of the tags are outside my mind that makes that I can say that the mind is not only in my head. Physically (bodily), I have only tags and representations of tags in my brain, but seen from the viewpoint of me as a person, we can say that the buy-beer-tags are both in my brain and on my front doormat. Just the latter adds something essential to my having to buy beer. It is a bit like this: I am a bundle of muscles, bones, neurons and a few things more. But what makes me am a Dutchman or a philosopher is the society I live in and my relation to that society.

It is difficult to say where in the brain the memory is located, for there is no exact place for it, but let’s for simplicity reasons say that it is in our temporal lobe. I think that it is as odd to say then “Yes, I remember my wife’s phone number. It’s in my temporal lobe. Just a moment, I’ll bring it up”, and after some deep thinking I say the number, as it is odd to say “Yes, I remember it. I have it in my phone” and take my mobile, whereas the first action is what we often do, usually automatically. What isn’t odd, however, is to say “Yes, I know, it is 06---” or to say “Yes, I know the number. Just a moment”, and without saying something else I take my mobile and show the number to the questioner. It is often a matter of perspective, wording and context whether we can say that we “remember” or “know” something.

As I see it, these objections show that it is not odd to say that the mind is not only in the head. I think that there is more that supports the idea than there is that rejects it. Nevertheless I agree with Giere that “ordinary ways of speaking [in this case that the mind is only in the head - HbdW] are indicative of models deeply engrained in our shared conceptual scheme and culture. To be successful, a human science should not stray too far from that shared experience”. (ibid.) And we need to keep that in our minds.

Travelling without a destination

Meuse Source number 1

When you say that you are going to make a travel, the first question always is: where are you going to? The question seems obvious, but is it really so? I mean, of course, we have to go somewhere when travelling, but is it a matter of fact that the destination is its most important aspect? Is it so that a travel is intrinsically unsuccessful when we don’t reach our destination, i.e. the geographical purpose or purposes of our trip? That we must say that we don’t have made a travel, if we hadn’t at least planned to reach a certain location, even if we don’t reach it for one reason or another?

Although I must go somewhere when making a travel (not counting a travel in my mind), I think that it is quite well possible to go on a trip in which the geographical destination is a redundant aspect. In the Netherlands, the summer this year is rainy and cool. It’s not the type of weather that you would like to go to the beach and take a sunbath. So, sun-worshippers want to go away, to the south, where it is warm and sunny and where you can sunbathe when you like. At present, the Dutch newspapers are full of advertisements with travels to the beaches of Spain, Greece, Turkey or Gambia or wherever they have warm sunny beaches. But is it really important for our sun-worshippers to which of these countries they’ll go? I think it isn’t. What counts is whether there is a good beach, whether the weather is good, the price of the trip and maybe a few things more, but the geographical destination is secondary for most people. They simply want to sunbathe and that’s the actual purpose of the trip.

Or to take another instance, my wife and I just returned from Northeastern France, where we followed the River Meuse from Sedan till its sources. Once we had seen the sources, we directly drove home. Does this mean that the Meuse sources were the destination and primary purpose of our trip? That the first question to ask about our travel is “Where have you been?” with a “to the Meuse sources” as its obvious reply? No, for what we really have done there is making photos of towns and villages on the Meuse with a pinhole camera. We had allotted two weeks for the project, and when we wouldn’t have reached the sources of the river, we still would have made a lot of pinhole pictures and we might go there later again for doing the last part of the river. Moreover, my actual project is not so much taking pinhole photos of towns and villages on the Meuse, but making such photos along any river. Since such a purpose is too abstract, this time I had chosen the Meuse in France as the river and then its sources as the logical final destination of the present trip. So we can say that travelling along the Meuse was the secondary destination of our trip and seeing its sources the tertiary destination. The purpose of the trip or, if you like, its primary destination, was taking pinhole photos of towns and villages on a river, in this case on the Meuse.

The upshot is: There are many ways to travel. Travelling to a geographical destination is only one way, and often this aim is secondary at most.

For some of my photos with my pinhole camera of river towns and villages see http://www.flickr.com/photos/photographybytheway/sets/72157619959769582/ and http://www.flickr.com/photos/photographybytheway/sets/72157625378290041/

Happy holiday?

“If our lives are dominated by a search for happiness, then perhaps few activities reveal as much about the dynamics of this quest – in all its ardour and paradoxes – than our travels” (Alain de Botton, The art of Travel). Maybe the real reason for the post holiday syndrome (the blues when back from vacation) is that we don’t know how to translate the holiday happiness into a hapiness of our daily life? Or is it that we actually didn’t find such a happiness when travelling, but only a seeming happiness?

Happy holiday

It’s summertime now (as you see, I live in the northern hemisphere), so everybody is on the move, at least in Europe, or at least in the Netherlands. And those who haven’t yet gone will go during the weeks to come. There is a name for this mass migration: holiday. In my country, hardly anybody stays at home during the summer, and if you belong to the 20% that stays at home you have to explain why. You are too old or you are ill, or you don’t have the money for it. Or you prefer to travel in a quieter season (but then, you do go, albeit in another time of the year). Or you have to take care of someone. Anyway, you must have a reason not to go and not a reason for going.

But why do we go? Actually, what we do not say is that we go because everybody goes, for we are one of the herd, like cows. No, we go, we say, because it is good for us to smell another atmosphere. Or because we want to take a break from our boring job. Or we go in order to see other worlds or worlds that are a bit different; of course not too different for then we can get ourselves too easily into unpleasant situations or it can even be dangerous. An adventure is nice but not too much of it. And because the Netherlands is a small country, most of my compatriots have at least some adventure, for most Dutch spend their holidays abroad.

Back home from a tour, not too adventurous but a little bit, or after a few weeks spent in a holiday home, in a hotel, or on a camping site, far away from the daily worries, it is too be expected that we’ll feel relaxed. Fresh for a new start with enough energy for bridging the time till our next holiday, which can be already as soon as two or three months later for some. Alas, reality is different. For many people holiday is the basis of a depression. After a few weeks away from home, people often have problems to find back their normal routines, the so-called post-holiday syndrome. It would be normal if it would last only a few days, for haven’t we left a situation of happiness behind us and exchanged it for a state of unhappiness? But things are not as simple as that. For some the post-holiday depression can last for weeks, forgetting the happy things they also experienced before they went away (and there were a lot of them). Moreover, the depression is pure. It’s is not because of a looking back at the happy time they had on holiday, remembering the new things they have discovered, or how they had been taken up by local people. It’s not a depression caused by a paradise lost they remember. No, they are depressed just because they are depressed, which in the worst cases goes together with physical complaints. And some people that, when still on holiday, had taken the decision to change their lives just don’t do it when back home. They have forgotten their idealistic plans, they do not have the courage for it, or they are absorbed again by the daily routine. Oh no, this is not entirely true: some people decide to divorce. After each summer the number of divorces increases.

In view of this, one wonders why so many people go on holiday, year after year. Why they plan a depression, by way of speaking, for they can know that it will come, from experience. It is as if they see only one solution for ending it: taking another holiday. And so the cycle goes on.

The illusion of the free will problem

Choice

In the free will discussion – the discussion whether man is substantially free or whether his/her actions are determined in some way – generally man is seen as free when two conditions apply. The first one is that I must have several options to choose from, and the second one is that the choice I make must also be really my choice, in the sense that I am not determined to choose for one of the options I theoretically have. The extreme case of determination is that everything happens as it happens, including men’s actions, from the Big Bang onward: it’s impossible that the world and everything in it would have developed differently once it has started.

Much has been said about whether we have or haven’t a substantially free will, but now I don’t want to talk about that. Let’s just suppose that man is free in this sense and that the two conditions apply. As for me, I think this is so, at least to a certain extent. But what does it mean to us? I see here an analogy with what Wittgenstein wrote in his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus and what I quoted already in another context (see my blog dated August 2, 2010): “We feel that even if all possible scientific questions have been answered, our problems of life have still not been touched at all.” (id. 6.52) Here we see the same: If man is substantially free and if this freedom is not, for instance, an illusion, as some say (like Wegner in his famous book), does this involve that man is also free in the concrete situations s/he is in? As the case in my last blog makes clear, even if we can say that we are substantially free, even then the practical question whether we are actual free has not yet been answered. For although in the abstract I am as much or as little free as my neighbour, in practice there is a difference. In reality our freedom is enlarged or limited by the factual options of the situation plus our personal psychological make-up. Also in case we are free in the substantial sense and in case this freedom is not an illusion, it doesn’t imply that we are free in our actual actions, even if we feel so. Free will is a multilayered concept, and at the moment that all our substantial questions have been answered, our practical questions remain. That’s what life is about (and some other philosophy, too).

Choice and freedom

Suppose that I am a poor man; or rather, I am not really poor, but a car is beyond my means. When I want to go somewhere, I always use a bus, the train or another means of public transport, or I take my bike or I simply walk. I have no problems with it, for walking or riding a bike is good for my health and taking a bus or train is better for the environment than using a private car. Now I have to go to a town nearby, because I want to go to a lecture in a conference room near the central railway station. I take the train, which brings me within fifteen minutes to this station, and from there it is just five minutes walking to the conference room. All in all it takes me less than half an hour to attend the lecture.

My next-door neighbour is a rich man. He is quite an arrogant person and I don’t like him much and he doesn’t like me, so we never exchange more than a greeting. My neighbour has an expensive car and never takes a bus, the train or another means of public transport for going somewhere. The bike in his garage has become rusty, because it is already ages ago that he used it. Moreover, he is the type that likes it to drive around in his car so that everybody can see that he can afford such an expensive one. When I have taken my seat in the lecture room, to my surprise I see my neighbour a few rows in front of me. I had not thought that he is also interested in a lecture on the free will. Anyway, I am happy that there was no chance to meet him in the train, because I am sure that he has taken his car. Undoubtedly he has an aversion against taking the train. I guess that it has cost him an hour or so to come here: About half an hour to drive to the centre of the town. Once there he needed, I think, another fifteen minutes to look for a parking place, and then he had to walk, say, ten minutes to the conference centre.

When the lecture has finished my neighbour sees me, nods as a greeting and walks outside, while I take the door to the passage that connects the conference room with the railway station.

Which man is freer: My neighbour or I?

Our situational mind

In my blog last week we have seen another instance of how important the situation is for what we do: In a certain sense it is the situation that steers the mind and so what we do. Of course, I do not want to say that only the situation steers our actions, but to a certain degree – and maybe to a high degree – it does. I think that most of us have an image of man, and especially of himself or herself, as a rational being finding his or her way through the world by his or her own choice as long as s/he isn’t hindered by other persons or by physical obstacles and the like. But is that a correct picture? If it was, why then would I have a creative block sometimes, for instance, that I can push away by changing my physical environment for a moment, for example by taking a cup of coffee or walking a few minutes in my garden? If I really had my creative actions in my own hands, why then couldn’t I reshuffle the data in my head or see them from a wider or more abstract perspective on my own, while just staying in my study? No, sometimes we have to change our environment for being able to go on. I think that this is just one instance that shows that the situation guides our actions and doings, at least for a part. Saying it succinctly: It’s not we who find our way through a situation but it is the situation that finds the way for us.

In my blogs we have met more instances that support my thesis. One of the most extreme ones has been described and analyzed by Philippe Zimbardo. While not denying that everyone is responsible for his or her own actions, Zimbardo showed that we do many of the cruel things we do because the situation makes us act that way. But the opposite is also true: Most heroes are not heroes by heart but because the situation made them to behave like a hero (more in my blog dated March 14, 2011). We get the same “situational effect”, as I could call it, when we place a person in a dull, non-stimulating environment. The most extreme case of such an environment is a room with white painted walls and without a window but only a single bulb on the ceiling. When a person stays long enough in such a room, s/he becomes mad. In other words: We need stimuli from the environment, anyhow, in order to survive but once they happen to a lower or to a higher degree these stimuli guide also the way we survive, so the line our actions follow, for the better or for the worse. The logic of our actions follows the logic of the situation. However, as I explained at the end of my last blog, once we are aware how creativity works we can create creativity. Here we have an analogue case. Once we are conscious of the way the situation influences us, we can employ this for influencing the situation and for avoiding the pitfalls the situation has dug for us, and bend the situation to our wills … as far as it goes.

Creating creativity

Thomas Edison said: “Creativity is 10% inspiration and 90% perspiration”. I had to think of it, when I read an article in Scientific American about how to increase your creativity (http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=an-easy-way-to-increase-c). Edison’s saying implies that creativity is not just a trait of some persons. Everybody can be creative, even if s/he does not have a special talent for it. I do not want to deny that some persons do have such a talent for creativity in certain fields, a kind of creativity gene by way of speaking, but fundamentally everybody can produce something intrinsically new and something intrinsically special: simply work hard.

There are more factors that stimulate it, however. In my last blog, we saw already one of them: to relax. And if it is hard to do that spontaneously, organise your relaxation: take a holiday or spend a weekend in a totally different setting. But that is not the only thing you can do. The article in Scientific American just mentioned points out that creativity is to a large extent dependent on the situation and the context, and that is something you can influence, too. The question then is, of course, what those situations are. When and where are we more creative?

It sounds a bit contradictory, but sometimes it can be good not to go too much into your subject and not to try to master all details and aspects hoping to be able to combine them to something new. Do just the opposite: take distance. This needs not to be physical distance from the problem solving activity, as in my last blog. You can also try to look at your theme from another perspective, such as by taking another person’s perspective of. Or it can be a matter of doing mentally a few steps back. Try to see the wood and not only the tree. Or just change your physical situation for a while. When I am working on a problem like writing this blog and my mind has become blocked and I don’t know how to go on, I often just leave the room for a moment, for instance for taking a cup of coffee or walking a few minutes in my garden. When I am back, usually the blockade has gone. I do not need to stop thinking about my activity. Just the physical change helps. The psychological theory behind it is that by taking some physical distance, your problem becomes more abstract for you and your more abstract thoughts might make you contemplate other, less striking sides of it. The distance you take doesn’t need to be physical, however. It can also be a virtual distance in time. Studies show that thinking how you would approach the question next year can help as well.

So being creative is not just being a special person. Everyone is intrinsically creative; it is only a matter of how to take it out. In the past I have written several blogs on the zombie (our unconscious part) in us and on the free will. In a certain sense, creativity seems contradictory to our free will. Creativity is a kind of “Aha Erlebnis”, an “aha” moment. It looks as if it happens to us and that we can’t help that it happens. The creativity “theory” as exposed above says something different. Maybe, we are not completely free to be creative. Maybe it is not something we can literally choose to be. But we are free to “create” the circumstances that enhance the chance that we get creative results. Creativity may be an unconscious process, executed by our zombie while we do not have a real say in it, but we can steer our zombie by pampering it and making itself feel comfortable so that it finds something splendid. And isn’t that already quite a lot? For if we could produce creativity at will, we could ask whether it exists, and whether we weren’t more than complicated machines, just executing what has already been programmed, albeit a program as yet unknown to us.

Source: see the link above and the one in my last blog.

Sweeping your mind

People who regularly read my blogs will know that I am often on holiday. Usually I spend two or three holidays abroad, not counting the shorter trips, both within the Netherlands and on the other side of the border. This year I was already a week in France and also one in Hungary and I have been in six countries. And the summer vacation yet has to come. Although my holidays are not long – most last only one or two weeks – when I am back, there is always the same “trouble”: How to adapt again to the daily routine. I think that many other persons have this experience, too. In fact, it doesn’t make much difference whether a holiday was short or long. What counts is that there was a clear break with the daily routine. This makes that also just a weekend away from home in a totally different setting can have the same effect, for example an intensive course or a training camp with people you do not know in another town or somewhere in the countryside. Also then it can take some time to adapt to normal life again.

All this sounds rather negative, as if daily life is the norm. But of course, you go away for the break, for the difference, for what you can learn during the discussion weekend, and so on. And then, as you certainly will have experienced, it often happens that the break gives you a fresh start, and, if you are a thinker like I am, new ideas. This is often explained by the rest and relaxation you got (and isn’t that also the reason that you have your best ideas at the moment you are taking a shower?). But in Psychology Today, which is often a source of inspiration for me, I found another interesting explanation: Doing something different is a good way to clear your mind. For the main difficulty of problem solving can be that you try to do it in the old way. Your mind is often full of old problems with old solutions and what is more obvious than trying to solve new problems with old approaches? Isn’t it so that this often works? For in many cases new problems are not really new, but they are variations on an old theme. But sometimes, a new problem, a new question, is really new, or it is different enough from the old stuff that old answers do not work. If that is the case, we have to clear our mind and sweep away what is old. Throw the old stuff in a corner of your mind, stow it away in a mental cupboard and keep it out of sight. Take distance from prior experiences for they inhibit new ones. But your daily routine often impedes this. So by a break, a holiday (or a shower), your mind will be swept. A holiday and also a short break function like a broom: They sweep away old ideas in your mind so that you can take distance from them. And then, the disturbance of your daily routine that you feel when you are back home is no longer a trouble but it is an asset. For now there is room for something new, for new ideas and for new solutions.

Source: http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/your-brain-work/201205/back-vacation-dont-waste-your-clear-mind-the-small-stuff

The peaceful tenor of books

In his book on nationalism Caspar Hirschi quotes the following story from Johannes Aventinus’ Bavarian Chronicle, written around 1500: “After they [the German tribes] had conquered Athens … they amassed a large numbers of books on the market, piled them up and wanted to have them burned. At this point, a soldier stood up and dissuaded them from it, saying: ‘leave the books to those fools, the Greeks; while they are occupied with them, they all become unfit for war and womanish creatures who cannot defend themselves; it is better and more convenient for us if they are equipped with books and pens than with harness and weapons’ ” (Hirschi, The Origins of Nationalism, 173).

This story has a clear morality, anyway seen from the side of the soldier: Reading is a foolish, naïve activity that is innocent by nature. I think that there is some sense in it: When people are reading, they cannot do something else. Moreover, reading leads to thoughts with an “effeminate” content that make that readers are not prepared to take up arms, also at those moments when their minds are not distracted by it. In other words, reading leads to peace.

If this were true, we would have discovered a new way of making an end to war: Establish libraries and bookshops all over the world, in every corner. Make that people love books and that they spend a big part of their time on them, as readers and as writers. Then we’ll get peace on earth, at last. But alas, reality is more complicated. According to Hirschi, Aventinus had probably taken his story from the East Roman historian Petrus Patricius (c. 500-565). Patricius gives a slightly different version and then he comments: “Had [the soldier] been aware of the virtues of the Athenians and Romans, how renowned they were both in word and in war, he would not have said so” (quoted from Hirschi, 172-3). I am afraid that this remark is nearer to the truth than the implicit morality of Aventinus’ version. Books can have an inherently peaceful tenor, indeed, in spite of what they actually are about, but how often doesn’t it happen that books just stimulate war and violence? Or that they make that people are more prepared to use violence or to go to war, even when this wasn’t the intention of the author? And isn’t it so that there are also many books about the way how to wage war? The thought is so wonderful: reading distracts from war and leads to peace and it would have been so nice, when the soldier who stopped his comrades burning the books on the market of Athens would have been the first to have formulated an effective theory of peace, despite himself. Unfortunately reality is different.

Dangerous ideas (4)

Trying to suppress “dangerous ideas” is of all times. In my last blog I wrote about a recent case. One of the first known cases in history is the process against Socrates. Socrates was sentenced to death among other things because he introduced new gods and had a bad influence on the youth. Galileo had to retract his idea that the earth circles the sun, because it conflicted with the ideas the Roman Catholic Church had about the world order. In 1674 Montaigne’s Essays were placed on the Index, although when Montaigne visited Rome in 1581 and had to show all books in his luggage to the authorities, the Essays passed the censor and he got only a few advices for changing the text here and there (which he didn’t). This raises the question: What is a dangerous idea? For, to take the example of Montaigne, what wasn’t dangerous in 1581, was considered to be so a century later, at least by some (the book was still legally for sale in England, for instance, but not in France).

Actually, the answer to the question is quite complicated. In order to keep it simple, one could agree with Steve Pinker (and many others on the Internet with the same view), who writes: “By ‘dangerous ideas’ I don’t have in mind harmful technologies, like those behind weapons of mass destruction, or evil ideologies, like those of racist, fascist, or other fanatical cults. I have in mind statements of fact or policy that are defended with evidence and argument by serious scientists and thinkers but which are felt to challenge the collective decency of an age.” (quoted from here) But if one would agree with this, why then fight against nazism or a rogue state that wants to have an A-bomb, if the ideas they propagate aren’t dangerous? What then is a good reason for fighting them, if it is not for their ideas? Okay, we could say: because of their consequences. But then I’ll ask: the consequences of what? The consequences of the ideas, of course, that lead to dangerous behaviour. Just for their consequences these ideas are considered dangerous. If the call for democracy and freedom wasn’t dangerous for the Syrian regime, the leading clique wouldn’t shoot down peaceful demonstrators. All this shows that what is seen as dangerous depends on on which side you are.

Nevertheless, there is some – or even much – truth in what Pinker says. Many ideas are or can be seen as dangerous, but when we talk of “dangerous ideas” we usually have something different in our minds: We (implicitly) take the position of the established political order and consider these ideas as subversive and so dangerous for this order. And this can go quite far, as we have seen in my last blog. For even the ideas of widely praised persons, national heroes honoured with special days and statues can still be seen as dangerous, although they are just praised and honoured because of these ideas and their consequences. But it’s so double, for on the one hand authorities (even democratic authorities) still see civil disobedience and nonviolence as dangerous (see the case in my last blog and there are many cases to add), but on the other hand they don’t believe in it (despite the recent success of nonviolent resistance in Tunisia and Egypt and a lot of older cases). For who has ever heard of states that support nonviolent resistance in other countries, while cases of states that support violent resistance in other countries abound? It’s so contradictory: as if an idea can be true and false at the same time.

Dangerous ideas (3)

In future it will be possible to scan your ideas before you enter an aeroplane in order to prevent that you’ll make an attempt. It works only, of course, if you got your intention before you went into the plane and not when you were already there. And it works only if what they “see” in your brain is really a dangerous idea and not something else that looks like it but what is in fact completely innocent or just very positive. But before the big brothers who are watching us have perfected brain scanners far enough, they’ll have to resort to more traditional means and they do. So recently an FBI agent and a Dallas police officer spoke with philosophy and religion professor Adam Briggle of the University of North Texas about specific materials in a syllabus for one of his courses on civil disobedience. In his syllabus Briggle had included an article that supports “monkey wrenching,” an act of sabotaging equipment performed by activists to stop projects they deem damaging to the environment. Briggle himself believed the FBI agent and officer were only seeking information. “They told me they are acting proactively and preventatively to smell out any signs of trouble for any potential eco-terrorist strikes revolving around the gas drilling issue on the Barnett Shale,” Briggle said. But have you ever heard of a chemistry professor being questioned by the security police because s/he explained how to make explosives? It seems that teaching chemistry is of another order than teaching philosophy, certainly if this philosophy is about civil disobedience. Or what to think of a political science professor who treats in his courses what nazism and anarchism stand for?

It’s true, Briggle propagates civil disobedience and he is also an activist. Moreover, he counsels his students to break the law. “Just the unjust laws,” as Briggle said. But in view of this, Briggle does nothing else than what people like Gandhi, King and many others did, who are the heroes of today. But apparently the authorities still see civil disobedience as a kind of continuation of terrorism and violence, and for them it is only a matter of degree. For what other reason would security officers have for interviewing Briggle about his course in civil disobedience and ask him during the interview whether he had heard anything about improvised explosive devices? (They repeatedly said that there is a difference between protesting and violence, indeed, but isn’t this actually a way of expressing that for them there isn’t?) But in fact, security officers and others who see civil disobedience and non-violence as dangerous are right: these are “dangerous” ideas for they might be effective. So there are good reasons to question a philosophy professor, even when he stays within the limits of the law and basically does nothing different than what, say, a chemistry professor does. However, it’s just one step to repression and controlling our minds.

Source and quotations from: http://www.ntdaily.com/?p=64495#comments

Virtual addiction

Once I wrote a blog in which I presented the results of a study by Susan Greenfield that the Internet can make us insensitive to what we do to others. On line we do not see the emotions we arouse in others when we hurt them, and in the long run this can make that we get less empathy with what we do to others, also outside the world of the Internet (see my blog dated April 25, 2011). In this sense the Internet creates first its own virtual world, and then this virtual world can change the real world. But there is more in this world of virtual social relations. I wonder whether it has anything to do with another effect of the Internet: that Internet relationships keep us insatiate. I think that everybody knows the phenomenon, if not from personal experience than from hearsay: people are addicted to Facebook, Twitter or another social network. They use it continuously at home, in the train, at work. When they are using a computer, they have it on the background and they check it every now and then, if not more often. The more “friends” they have the better it is. The essence of how it works in the brain is this: When we connect with people in real life, our brain produces the hormones oxytocin and seratonin in, what we could call, the social connection circuitry in our brain. These hormones are a reward for us and make that we calm down and finally become satisfied, even to that extent that after visiting a conference, for instance, we tend to avoid other people for some time. However, when connecting with people on the Internet, we tend not to get these hormones, with the result that we just want to have more virtual social connections. As a consequence we can become addicted to social network websites. (see David Rock, “Are Our Minds Going the Way of Our Waists?”

So far, so good and if that was all there is, it needn’t to be bad. Why would it? The problem is, however, that things never come alone. And besides that, if we do one thing, we cannot do something else, and as Rock points out, too much social seeking is not good for us. With Facebook or another website on the background when working, there is the risk of constantly being distracted, which will lead to a lesser quality of our work, and a drop of our IQ of, say, 15 points. However, I wonder whether the latter is really what happens: I guess that the score on the IQ test is worse; not the IQ as such (and who knows; maybe the social IQ is increased). But what makes me relate the fact that Internet contacts can make us feel insatiate and therefore addicted to them on the one hand and the possible loss of the feeling of empathy in Internet contacts on the other hand is this, and I think it is worrying: What if both go together? I mean, people become blunt when hurting others on the Internet and they stay insatiate when doing this. Then, eventually, they might become addicted to virtual hurting. But is this typical for the Internet? Isn’t it so that these things also happen in real life? That’s true, but the difference is that in real life generally it is easier to control and stop persons with “bad habits” than lonely agents in a virtual world, especially when everybody has the means of access to this world.

The art of photography

Pinhole camera

In my last blog I told that I take pictures with a pinhole camera. I think that most readers of my blogs don’t know what such a camera is. It is the simplest camera you can imagine. It’s not more than a box with a very small hole in it (the pinhole), which can be opened or closed with a shutter, and with a film or sensor in it (but most pinhole cameras still use film). There are more complicated types, but most pinhole cameras are like this. You can buy it or you make it yourself. In mine you cannot change the diaphragm (size of the pinhole). I open and close the shutter by hand and I use my watch for measuring the time that the shutter must be open for making a photo (which is a matter of several seconds).

Photos taken with a pinhole camera are a bit blurred and also moving people and objects are always vague. So photos taken with a pinhole camera do not meet the standards of a good photo. Why then make such photos in this age of digital cameras that allow you to make technically perfect photos? Well, my reply is another question: Why still make paintings in this age of photography?

I think that my answer has everything to do with what people consider beautiful. Beauty is not an objective experience. It is subjective; and there is no accounting for tastes, as is often said. Yet, there is something objective about beauty. When I have an exhibition of my photos or when I present them on an art market, it’s just these photos taken with my pinhole camera that attract attention. Why? I think because they have a shade of beauty that cannot be imitated by an ordinary digital or analogue camera. Beauty in photos (and beauty in general, but that’s not what I want to talk about here) has nothing to do with technical progress as people often seem to think. Nowadays, with these technically perfect cameras, everybody can make good photos, they say. Is that true? I doubt it. Even making a technically perfect photo with a simple digital pocket camera of good quality still seems to be a problem for many people. And is it the technical quality that makes a good photo a good photo? Then all photos taken by Cartier Bresson could be considered rubbish now, for instance. But they are still considered as top photography. Why? Because what is photographically good is in the eyes and the minds of the makers and the beholders and not in the technical quality (whatever this may mean, for isn’t it so that also the idea that a photo must not be blurred is nothing but a subjective opinion?). Technical progress is not the same as progress as such, let alone that it is implicitly good and beautiful. To take a photographic example, there are many photographers who make photos with digital cameras of top quality and next they use photographic filters (in Photoshop, for instance) to make them look like analogue photos made on film! Why not simply use an analogue camera then? No surprise that today we see a revival of analogue photography. For in the end the art of making a good photo has nothing to do with using the most up to date techniques but everything with choosing the right means for expressing what you want to express. Sometimes simple or old-fashioned means are the best for it. It’s an open door* and everybody knows, it’s true, but many people tend to forget it.

P.S. I have planned to buy a good digital camera, too. They have so many advantages (as they have disadvantages as well).

* Dutch expression for an obvious point.

The art of travelling

Fumay sur Meuse - photo taken with pinhole camera

Montaigne loved travelling, albeit only because it gave him the opportunity to ride his horse. Usually he travelled for practical purposes. For his work (he has been a judge); for political missions in order of the king; for visiting friends; because he had something to do in Paris; and who knows for what other reasons. In 1580 Montaigne decided to make a long journey without a special purpose but only for the pleasure of travelling. The travel would last more than one year and five months and it would bring him to Northern France, then to Basel, Augsburg and Munich, to Florence and to Rome, before he was called back to Bordeaux, where he had been appointed mayor. Montaigne did not travel alone but with a company of friends, his youngest brother and servants, although he was “the leader of the gang”. But it had a big influence on his trip, for had he travelled alone, maybe he would have gone to Krakow in Poland, or to Greece, as he wrote in his diary, or to another place far away. But his fellow travellers were against it. This didn’t imply that he passed only well-trodden paths and visited only famous towns, for Montaigne did not look for tourist attractions that everybody knows. As Stefan Zweig writes in his essay on Montaigne: “when a place is very well known, he preferred to avoid it, because other persons, too many of them, had already seen and described it” (from the French edition: Montaigne, PUF, 1982, p. 105). Even more, he also avoided his compatriots abroad, for he knew them already well. No, when Montaigne travelled, he looked for what was different, for what was unknown to him. And he didn’t do it for rejecting it and for experiencing how superior his own way of life was. On the contrary, he was curious to see how other people lived and what their solutions for the daily problems were, hoping that he could learn from them. So, once he regretted that he did not have taken his cook with him, so that he could learn new recipes.

And why not? When I talk with other people about travelling, they often say: “Have you seen this?”, “Have you been there?”, when I tell them that I have recently been to Nancy or Oslo, or have made a tour through Hungary. They name a certain place or church or way of art that is famous there, if not well-known to “everybody” in the world, and are surprised if I say “No”. What kind of traveller am I, I see them thinking, that I failed to go there? That I failed to see what is “really” valuable? And yes, I must admit that I failed to see it and a lot more. But I did not fail to see what they failed to see: odd and ugly places that are really not worth a visit when you need not to be there, places that really are not “worth the detour”, to quote the words of the Michelin guides. Places where daily life takes place but that are just for that reason interesting to visit. And places beautiful in their simplicity and because they are just there, often full of details, which would make them “worth the detour”, if everybody knew about it. However, do not misunderstand me. I do not say that what others visit and like to see is not worth the visit. What I want to say is that there are also other ways of travelling; ways that are as valuable as looking for the sublime (or lying on the beach, to mention another thing). I am working on a photo project, which is photographing towns along a river with the river with a so-called pinhole camera. Once I followed a part of the Meuse, a river that begins in North-eastern France and ends near Rotterdam in the Netherlands. But when you want to make a picture of a town with the river you must be on the opposite bank in most cases, for most towns are only on one side of the river. And this trip brought me to many little but often beautiful towns, known almost only to its inhabitants, like Schayn, Yvoir, Chooz or Fumay. It brought me to places where a normal tourist would never come, like the industrial area of Herstal near Liege, or in the bush across a town the name of which I have forgotten. And I enjoy it.
(Some photos of the photo project can be seen on http://www.flickr.com/photos/photographybytheway/sets/72157625378290041/)

The art of letter writing

After Stefan Zweig had fled the Nazis, he established himself in Petrópolis in Brazil. Once he complained against his friend Jules Romain that weeks passed by that he didn’t receive any mail. Gradually Zweig had received less and less mail, which was, so Romain, a way the world told him that he wasn’t important any longer.

In those days letter writing was an important way of communicating and the letters you received said something about your personal network and your importance. You could talk with someone if you met him or her in person. Or maybe you could call him or her, but most people didn’t yet have telephones in those days. When talking or calling was not possible or when you didn’t want to do it for some reason, you wrote a letter. I have no statistics, but I wouldn’t be surprised if till not so long ago letter writing was the most important form of communication that was not from face to face. It had been for ages so. Letters were used for personal communication or for expressing ideas; or for both, of course. Therefore they often give a good view of the time that they were written. The letters written by the Roman philosopher and politician Marcus Tullius Cicero are well-known and still worth to be read, for instance. Letters were such an important way of expression that they had developed also into a special literary genre. Epistolary novels are a case in point.

But nothing is eternal and so the art of letter writing is gradually disappearing. People write fewer and fewer letters. Does this mean that people are less in touch with each other and become more isolated? Just the opposite. Today, maybe Zweig wouldn’t have felt himself so isolated and meaningless in Petrópolis that he committed suicide. New ways of “networking” and keeping contact have come into being. First, letters were more and more replaced by phone calls, and then, it’s superfluous to tell it, we got the Internet with its possibilities to send e-mails and with its social network sites. I can write a lot here about this new way of communication and how it has changed the world, but others can do it (and have already done it) better than I can. Yet, for me receiving an e-mail is not the same as receiving a hand-written letter with a stamp. By saying that, I am a bit a hypocrite. For not only do I write more e-mails than I have written old style letters (“snail mail”) ever before, but I write my “snail mail” only exceptionally by hand. Usually I do it with my computer (and people who know me can assure you that I am still a fervent snail-mailer). But, okay, time doesn’t stop and one has to take the best of both sides.

I value a lot the arrival of e-mail and social network sites (and I have “friends” there, too), so you cannot excuse me of not keeping up with the changes, but like Stefan Zweig I receive fewer and fewer letters, and I miss it a bit. The difference is, of course, that Zweig got nothing instead, while I make full use of the new possibilities of the Internet. But receiving a paper letter with a stamp that falls through your letterbox on the doormat is different from getting an electronic version in your e-mail box. It’s a matter of feeling, but then I must say: for me it feels so. It’s true, snail mail contacts were often flimsy, but many Internet contacts are flimsier to a greater extent. And will e-mails ever be valued that way that they will lead to a new literary genre? A kind of digital epistolary novels? Maybe, although nothing like that is known to me so far (I admit, it can be my failing). Yet a first step in that direction has been taken. For what has been just published in the Netherlands? The Philosophy Twitter Canon: the thought of 43 important philosophers comprised in the 140 characters of a tweet for each thinker. Brilliant briefness or superficiality? There is no way back in time.

Running with my mind? No: watch TV!

Regular readers of my blogs will not have failed to notice that I have just published a book entitled Running with my mind (in Dutch). I took the title of the book from one of my blogs that I wrote about a year ago. There I discussed a study by Yue and Cole that showed that you can train your muscles with your mind: Simply think that you train them and they’ll become stronger. What a handy way of improving and maintaining my physical condition, I thought then, especially when the rain is pouring down or when I don’t have much time to go outdoors. I was so impressed by what you can do with your mind – not only performing purely mental activities but also physical activities – that I borrowed the title of this blog for my book. But now I wonder whether it was a good choice. For I had just sent my book to the publisher, when I read a newspaper report with the title “Not dancer does dance”. The essence of the little article was: People who do not dance themselves but who regularly visit dance performances have increased muscle activity while watching. Which muscles become active depends on the type of dance you are used to see. So regular visitors of Indian dance performances have especially a higher activity of the muscles in their hands while ballet watchers have more activity in their arms. Apparently, so the article, you do not need to be an active dancer for having this experience; you only need to be an experienced dance watcher.

Having read this, I thought: Well, when you activate your muscles, so when you move them, it cannot be so that you only move them and that’s it. There’ll certainly be a training effect. Moreover, it is unlikely that this effect will be restricted to Indian dance and ballet watchers. The effect will probably also occur when you regularly watch other physical activities like football matches, cycle races or athletics meetings. People even say that I tend to move my head from left to right and back when I follow a skating race on TV. When I am watching a sport on TV or live that I practise myself, too, I often have the idea that my body is also in the race. But if it is true that there is a training effect in your muscles when you simply watch your favourite sport, why then yet train your muscles by imitating the movement of the muscles in your mind, when the rain is pouring down and you do not want to go outside, or when you want to save time? There’s a much simpler solution: turn your TV on on a sports sender or take a DVD with your favourite sport. Sit down in your chair and watch. Then you do two things at the same time: both watching the race or match that you wanted to see this afternoon anyway and making yourself physically fitter. Yes, at the same time!

When I chose the title for my book, I took it because for me running with your mind was symbolic for the mind’s multi-sidedness. But since I have read this little article, I wonder whether it was a good choice, for that the mind gives you the possibility to run with it is actually quite a superfluous property. We can do without it. Just loll on the sofa, take a beer, and tune in. Your mind can stay passive, certainly when you compare it with what you have to do when you are running with it.

A new book: Thank you very much my dear readers !

Once the window-cleaner, who came to fill his bucket from the tap in my kitchen, asked me: “What are you doing?”, wanting to know what kind of job I had or something like that. Since I don’t have a steady job, I said: “I have written a book”. It was true, for I had just finished my PhD thesis and it had been published by a big publishing house. “Why then do you live here?”, the window-cleaner asked. I didn’t understand, so he explained what he meant. It became clear to me that he thought that when you publish a book, it brings you a lot of money, so you can buy a big expensive house, instead of the simple one where I live. Writing a book seemed to be same to him as writing a million seller. At that moment I was too baffled to give a good answer to such naivety. Now, fifteen years later, my PhD thesis still hasn’t sold more than about 200 copies.

Recently I had to think again of this story. For again I have written a book and it is a special one, for I owe it to you, my dear readers! About five years ago, I started to write these blogs, and as I have told before, I did it for myself. But, unexpectedly, I was praised for it, and I got a prize. Time went on and I continued to be praised by you, and I received and still receive many positive reactions. Then I got an idea: make a book of these blogs. And so I did. Of course, I didn’t put all my blogs in it. Such a book would be too thick, and some blogs are really not worth to be published anew. Therefore I made a selection of about ninety blogs that I considered good enough for a republication and that had a more or less a common theme. But my blogs were in English, and I am a Dutchman. Moreover, from the reactions I got, I knew that I have hardly any Dutch readers. So, I decided to translate the blogs into my native language, hoping to open up a new field of readers. Then I sent the manuscript to a publishing house, which accepted my idea. I found an intriguing title for my book (in fact, the title of one of the blogs) and I made an attractive  photo for the cover that fits the title. And now, since a few days, the book is off the press.

Although most of you, my dear readers, cannot read this book in Dutch – but you have been so lucky to be able to read the originals already since many years – you are the pillars of my book. You are those who have stimulated me to start and finish my book project, and therefore I want to thank you: Thank you a lot my dear readers for your stimulating reactions.

Will this book make me financially rich? I think it will not. However, I do not care. Even if in the end it will come out that the book has cost me more money than I’ll have earned with it, it has given me a richer mind: My writing has filled my mind with many interesting ideas, consciously and unconsciously, and now I know, for instance, that the mind is a many-sided and almost universal instrument. You can do a lot with it, and it makes you who you are. You can even run with it, as I discovered, a fact that for me symbolizes the mind’s multipurposiveness most.

Henk bij de Weg, Running with my mind. Who am I? What do I do? Zoetermeer: Free Musketeers, 2012 (in Dutch: see the picture and link in the left column here on this page).

Learning Italian by listening to operas

During the years I learned twelve languages. I must admit that I forgot some because I stopped investing time in them for keeping them up. Staying fluent in more than five or six languages is quite an effort, when one hasn’t a natural way to practice them, and when one doesn’t have a special talent for languages. I haven’t such a talent, so learning a language is hard work for me and keeping them up, too. Happily I found ways for daily practice for some languages, like reading or writing for my work, watching foreign news programs (which I find very interesting, for it tells you a lot about other countries), writing letters to people all over the world, and so on.
Once I met a Russian journalist on the Internet who asked me to write an article about how I learned all those languages. Actually learning twelve languages is not really extreme in view of the number of languages that some other people have mastered, but for her it was. Happily, I could write the article in English, for my Russian is not that good that I can use it for more than informal letters and for reading; then the journalist translated it for me (here it is: http://www.birzhaplus.ru/kariera/?33528; sorry for those readers who cannot read Russian). In the article I described my language history and I gave also some tips for learning, like those I just mentioned implicitly. But recently I realized that I forgot one tip. As said, I learned twelve languages through the years, but unknowingly I learned also a thirteenth one: Italian. How did I do it? Simply by following another passion: listening to opera music and going to opera performances. Of course, preferably Italian operas (although I must say that Russian and French etc. operas give me also some practice in these languages). That’s not so difficult for isn’t opera Italian in the first place? And so I learned many Italian words: Andiamo (let’s go; how often do the singers say “andiamo”, when they are going to leave from the scene!); ragazzo and – of course – ragazza (boy, respectively girl); piangi (cry! weep!). And you can even learn to count by listening to opera music. For who doesn’t know how many sweethearts Don Giovanni had in Spain? Exactly: mille tre (1003). And since the Italian grammar is not really difficult, thanks to my love (amore) for music (musica) I can make myself a bit understood in Italian, too. Tutte le strade portano a Roma (all roads lead to Rome).
P.S. A little practice in Italian: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZYlQ6rs9uZ8