Philosophical humour

Humour bij DALL.E when I asked it to make a picture
of putting Descartes before the horse

In these times that the world seems to explode, since two major wars and many small ones are going on, I should have a lot to comment on, to explain and to criticize. Nevertheless, maybe it is better, just now, to pay attention to the funny side of philosophy and to present again some instances of philosophical humour. In the end, philosophy is not only a serious affair! Philosophers are not inherently serious people. They are as human as humans are and they, too, make jokes: philosophical jokes; jokes in which they ridicule philosophical theories. It’s a way to criticize their opponents and themselves but also to make fun. Actually, philosophical jokes are minor philosophical theories in a fun package. Didn’t Wittgenstein say “A serious and good philosophical work could be written consisting entirely of jokes.”? But oops, I forget now what I wanted to do this time: giving you cases of philosophical humour instead of a philosophical theory of philosophy jokes; not more than that. So let me start. Enjoy it (and, it’s true, I can’t help to write some philosophical comments on the jokes here and there).

My most popular blog is one that I wrote already fifteen years ago. It criticizes Descartes’ idea “I think so I am” (see here). So let me start with a joke about Descartes and this idea. It exists in many versions. Here you find some, like this one:
* Descartes walks into a bar. He orders a beer, drinks it, the bartender asks if he would like another, he says “I think not” and disappears.
I assume that I don’t need to explain this joke to you. Nonetheless, I feel a need to comment on it, even if then it might not be funny any longer. To my mind, there are at least two flaws in this joke:
- Descartes’ idea “I think so I am” does not imply “I think not, so I am not”. From the implication if A then B, you cannot conclude that if not-A then not-B. So, the joke is based on a fallacy.
- In my blog on “I act, so I am” I rejected Descartes’ idea and defend the view that it should be “I act so I am”. So, if Descartes says “I think not”, nothing will happen, for his existence doesn’t depend on his thinking. A joke about Descartes should be then something like this:
* Far after midnight, a police officer sees a man sitting on a bench in a park. It’s Descartes, which he doesn’t know. The officer asks: “Sir, what are you doing here?”. “I am thinking, I do nothing”, Descartes replies. He had hardly finished his last word and, poof, he disappears.
But I am afraid that now the joke is not funny any longer. So, let me give some philosophical jokes and humour without comments:

* Wittgenstein is sitting with another philosopher in the garden; the latter says again and again “I know that that’s a tree,” pointing to a tree that is near them. Someone else arrives and hears this, and Wittgenstein tells him: “This fellow isn't insane. We are only doing philosophy.”
* Jeremy Bentham goes up to the counter at a coffee house, holding a $50 bill. “What’s the cheapest drink you have?” he asks. “That would be our decaf roast, for only $1.99,” says the barista. “Good,” says Bentham and hands her the $50. “I’ll buy those for the next twenty-five people who show up.” (source and explication)
* As I sometimes have explained in my blogs and as many philosophers hold true, sense data, like what you see with your eyes, are not reliable. Once you know this, the following joke may be funny:
Morty comes home to see his wife and his best friend, Lou, naked together in bed. Just as Morty is about to open his mouth, Lou jumps out of bed and says, “Before you say anything, old pal, what are you going to believe, me or your eyes?” (source)
* Dean, to the physics department. “Why do I always have to give you guys so much money, for laboratories and expensive equipment and stuff. Why couldn't you be like the math department - all they need is money for pencils, paper and waste-paper baskets. Or even better, like the philosophy department. All they need are pencils and paper.” (source)
* What is a kiss? (source)
- a Sartrean one: a kiss that you worry yourself to death about even though it really doesn't matter anyway.
- a Wittgensteinian one: The important thing about this type of kiss is that it refers only to the symbol (our internal mental representation we associate with the experience of the kiss–which must necessarily also be differentiated from the act itself for obvious reasons and which need not be by any means the same or even similar for the different people experiencing the act) rather than the act itself and, as such, one must be careful not to make unwarranted generalizations about the act itself or the experience thereof based merely on our manipulation of the symbology therefor.
- a Zenoian one: your lips approach, closer and closer, but never actually touch.
To end this blog, again one on Descartes:
* A horse walks into a bar. The bartender asks the horse if it’s an alcoholic considering all the bars he frequents, to which the horse replies “I don’t think I am. I think not!” Poof! The horse disappears. On hearing this, the philosophy students in the audience begin to giggle, as they are familiar with the philosophical proposition “I think, therefore, I am”. But to explain the concept aforehand would be putting Descartes before the horse. (source) 

Random quote
Man is certainly stark mad; he cannot make a flea, and yet he will be making gods by dozens.

Michel de Montaigne (1533-1592)

Pericles on democracy and war

When I read some parts of Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian War, I was surprised to see how topical this book still is, 2400 years after it has been written. The facts in the book are a history of the time that the historian Thucydides (c. 460 – c. 400 BC) lived. Nevertheless, if one abstracts from the concrete facts, and take the parties in the war as abstract agents, then it is as if not much has changed. The Peloponnesian War was a war between the Greek city states of Athens and Sparta. Although this war lasted from 431-404 BC, in fact both towns were for a big part of the 5th century BC each other’s competitors if not enemies. Politically and economically both states were very different. Athens was a democracy and a sea power, while Sparta was an authoritarian state and a land power. Both had built their empires by making alliances with other Greek states or by outright subjecting them by force and forcing them to return to their alliances if they wanted to quit. Already this is, I think, enough to make pop up in your mind the conflict between the USA and the Western countries on the one hand and the Soviet Union and now Russia and their allies on the other hand. Once I saw this, it was not difficult for me to apply what happened in Greece 2400-2500 years ago to the present Ukrainian War, in which Ukraine fights a proxy war for the western countries against Russia, after having been invaded by this country without having given any reason for that. This conflict of a democracy state v. an authoritarian state and a sea power v. a land power is especially apparent in the so-called “Funeral Oration” of the Athenian general Pericles (c. 495-429 BC) on occasion of the funeral of a number of fallen Athenian soldiers. Actually, you should read the whole speech.
Usually in my blogs, I comment on texts and I explain their relevance to the present situation, but in this case, I think it is better to quote a long passage of Pericles’ speech, which contains, to my mind, the essence of what he wants to say, and which would lose persuasion, when I would summarize it. It’s up to you to apply the text to the Ukrainian war or any other war since 1945, or maybe also before that date.
Before you are going to read this fragment, a few warnings. The text (which I have copied from the Gutenberg project website) does not give the words originally spoken by Pericles but the words as Thucydides thinks (with good reason) that Pericles has spoken them. Moreover, there is much ideology in the words of Pericles; just as there is much ideology in the way western leaders defend western democracy (and as there is much ideology in the words of their adversaries). The speech is meant to motivate the Athenians to participate in the war against Sparta and to praise the deeds of the soldiers fallen. In democratic Athens, women had no say in politics; only men had. Moreover, Athens was a slave society, as all Greek states in those days. Democracy in Athens existed only for the free male Athenians. Moreover, the speech represents only the Athenian point of view. It would be worthwhile to have the Spartan point of view as well (I have no idea whether Spartan writings that explain that view still exist). It’s the same as presenting the western point of view and ignoring how people in Russia think about the situation at the same time. Here then is the fragment I have chosen:

***

Excerpt from Pericles’ “Funeral Oration”
Our constitution does not copy the laws of neighbouring states; we are rather a pattern to others than imitators ourselves. Its administration favours the many instead of the few; this is why it is called a democracy. If we look to the laws, they afford equal justice to all in their private differences; if no social standing, advancement in public life falls to reputation for capacity, class considerations not being allowed to interfere with merit; nor again does poverty bar the way, if a man is able to serve the state, he is not hindered by the obscurity of his condition. The freedom which we enjoy in our government extends also to our ordinary life. There, far from exercising a jealous surveillance over each other, we do not feel called upon to be angry with our neighbour for doing what he likes, or even to indulge in those injurious looks which cannot fail to be offensive, although they inflict no positive penalty. But all this ease in our private relations does not make us lawless as citizens. Against this fear is our chief safeguard, teaching us to obey the magistrates and the laws, particularly such as regard the protection of the injured, whether they are actually on the statute book, or belong to that code which, although unwritten, yet cannot be broken without acknowledged disgrace.
Further, we provide plenty of means for the mind to refresh itself from business. We celebrate games and sacrifices all the year round, and the elegance of our private establishments forms a daily source of pleasure and helps to banish the spleen; while the magnitude of our city draws the produce of the world into our harbour, so that to the Athenian the fruits of other countries are as familiar a luxury as those of his own.
If we turn to our military policy, there also we differ from our antagonists. We throw open our city to the world, and never by alien acts exclude foreigners from any opportunity of learning or observing, although the eyes of an enemy may occasionally profit by our liberality; trusting less in system and policy than to the native spirit of our citizens; while in education, where our rivals from their very cradles by a painful discipline seek after manliness, at Athens we live exactly as we please, and yet are just as ready to encounter every legitimate danger. … Our united force was never yet encountered by any enemy, because we have at once to attend to our marine and to dispatch our citizens by land upon a hundred different services; so that, wherever they engage with some such fraction of our strength, a success against a detachment is magnified into a victory over the nation, and a defeat into a reverse suffered at the hands of our entire people. And yet if with habits not of labour but of ease, and courage not of art but of nature, we are still willing to encounter danger, we have the double advantage of escaping the experience of hardships in anticipation and of facing them in the hour of need as fearlessly as those who are never free from them.
Nor are these the only points in which our city is worthy of admiration. We cultivate refinement without extravagance and knowledge without effeminacy; wealth we employ more for use than for show, and place the real disgrace of poverty not in owning to the fact but in declining the struggle against it. Our public men have, besides politics, their private affairs to attend to, and our ordinary citizens, though occupied with the pursuits of industry, are still fair judges of public matters; for, unlike any other nation, regarding him who takes no part in these duties not as unambitious but as useless, we Athenians are able to judge at all events if we cannot originate, and, instead of looking on discussion as a stumbling-block in the way of action, we think it an indispensable preliminary to any wise action at all. Again, in our enterprises we present the singular spectacle of daring and deliberation, each carried to its highest point, and both united in the same persons; although usually decision is the fruit of ignorance, hesitation of reflection. But the palm of courage will surely be adjudged most justly to those, who best know the difference between hardship and pleasure and yet are never tempted to shrink from danger. In generosity we are equally singular, acquiring our friends by conferring, not by receiving, favours. Yet, of course, the doer of the favour is the firmer friend of the two, in order by continued kindness to keep the recipient in his debt; while the debtor feels less keenly from the very consciousness that the return he makes will be a payment, not a free gift. And it is only the Athenians, who, fearless of consequences, confer their benefits not from calculations of expediency, but in the confidence of liberality.

***

Source
Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War, https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/7142/pg7142-images.html
Recommended
Johanna Anink (ed., translation), How to think about war. Thucydides. An ancient guide to foreign policy. Speeches from The History of the Peloponnesian War. Princeton/Oxford: Prince University Press, 2019.

Random quote
People are often more passionate when they are first convinced to go to war than when they actually wage it.

Pericles (c. 495 - 429 BC)

Can AI systems have emotions?

Image generated by DALL.E

In a recent blog, I raised the question whether AI systems can have consciousness. Now I found on the Psychology Today website several articles by Marlynn Wei that shed an interesting light on the question. In these articles Marlynn Wei discusses recent AI research with psychological relevance.
In my blog I stated that having consciousness is not only a matter of showing consciousness-related behaviour, but that it involves also having consciousness-related subjective experiences. So, a conscious AI system should not only behave as if it is conscious, but it should also have the right feelings, like having the right emotions in the right situation. Having emotions is a complicated affair, but having the right emotions in the right situation at least involves being able to recognize the emotions of other humans, being able to have the right emotions in reaction to the emotions others have, and reacting in the right way to emotions others have. These three aspects of having emotions are not independent of each other, as the discovery of the so-called mirror neurons has made clear. If one of these three aspects of having emotions is missing, then we can say that an AI system doesn’t have consciousness in my sense.
Although such conscious AI systems are still far away and don’t (yet?) exist, some research discussed by Dr Wei is very interesting in this respect. For although, for example, ChatGPT has gained widespread attention for its ability to perform natural language processing tasks, its skills go much farther than “only” producing texts. This chatbot is also able to recognize and describe emotions. Moreover, it does it better than humans do. At least this was the outcome of a recent study by Zohar Elyoseph and others. Using a test called the Levels of Emotional Awareness Scale, the researchers found that ChatGPT scored higher on this test than humans did. (from Wei) Of course, so Wei, “this does not necessarily translate into ChatGPT being emotionally intelligent or empathetic” (a capability that wasn’t tested), nor does it show that it has a “conversational capability in sensing and interacting with the emotions of others.”
Nonetheless, steps into the direction of a conversational capability have already been taken, as another research shows. One of the problems when being in contact with other persons on the internet often is that we don’t see them. It’s a problem because seeing others makes it possible to read their emotions from their faces. Just the absence of face-to-face contacts makes that some people are ruder when dealing with internet partners than when they would have been in real-life contact with those persons. As such, contact via a screen is not the same as a real personal contact. Now the study just mentioned developed “an AI-in-the-loop agent” (called Hailey) “that provides just-in-time feedback to help participants who provide support (peer supporters) respond more empathically to those seeking help (support seekers).” Using Hailey led to a substantial increase in feeling empathy by the peer supporters and expressing this empathy in their contacts with support seekers. So, Hailey did not only help peer supporters to recognize emotions in support seekers but also helped them responding in the right way by advising how to respond. “Overall,” so Dr. Wei, “this study represents promising and innovative research that demonstrates how a human-AI collaboration can allow people to feel more confident about providing support.” But for this we need AI systems that can recognize emotions and then respond in the right way.
All this can be seen as first steps toward a world with conscious AI systems that can be characterized as virtual humans that apparently behave like real humans. Another study, discussed by Marilynn Wei, shows that such AI systems are no longer fiction but on the way to become fact. In such a world, empathy and social connection are within reach of AI systems. Once AI systems behave like humans, humans tend to see them as humans (see the article by Marilynn Wei just mentioned). It’s a bit like the famous theorem by W.I. Thomas: If men define situations as real, they are real in their consequences. Virtuality and reality intermingle, and the difference between men and machines tends to disappear. Nevertheless, behaving like humans is not the same as being human, for Chalmer’s hard problem still stands: Even if an AI system shows behaviour that is characteristic of having consciousness, we still don’t know whether it really has consciousness. It is still possible that the AI system is a zombie in the philosophical sense, because it shows consciousness-related behaviour but doesn’t have the consciousness-related subjective experience. Who cares?

Random quote
If people can choose between butter or cannons, they prefer the butter by far; but a mysterious fate forces us to choose cannons despite ourselves.

Simone Weil (1909-1943)

The Communist Manifesto 175 years

This year marks the 175th anniversary of one of the most influential books ever published: the Communist Manifesto, written by Karl Marx (1818-1883) and Friedrich Engels (1820-1895). Actually, the booklet – the first edition had only 23 pages – was titled Manifesto of the Communist Party, but since 1872 it is known under the present title.
1848, the year of publication, was a year of revolution. People revolted in many countries, because they wanted better living conditions and political control. France, Germany, Austria, Sweden …. However, soon the revolutions were crushed, and most reforms of 1848 were reversed. Anyway, the Netherlands – where the people did not revolt but the King found it better to give in before they would – got in 1848 a new and modern constitution, which made it the democracy it still is today.
It was on the eve of these revolutions and rebellions in 1848, on the 21sth of February, that Marx and Engels, then the intellectual leaders of the working-class movement, published their manifesto. They had written it as a political and programmatic statement for the Communist League, a group of German-born revolutionary socialists in London. It contained a materialistic view on history, a history of the development of humankind from feudalism till the 19th century capitalism, and a political program. It stated that the capitalist class would be overthrown by the working class and that the “proletariat” would govern society. The Communist Manifesto became the leading program for the communist movement in the years to come till far in the 20th century.
The book didn’t have only a long-term influence, but, having been published at the right moment, its impact was immediate. Of course, it didn’t cause the revolution in France, the first country that revolted and where one day after its publication revolution broke out over the banning of political meetings held by socialists and other opposition groups. Isolated riots followed, and two days later the French King Louis-Philippe abdicated. After this success, equal revolutions followed everywhere in Europe. As said, the revolutions were crushed and reforms were reversed, but not all reforms were. For instance, Hungary, which had declared its independence from Austria, got a special status within the Empire; I mentioned already the Netherlands; and also in other countries some reforms were permanent. Also the Communist Manifesto, the book that had predicted these revolutions, wasn’t placed in the archive of history, although after the end of the revolutions at first it was almost forgotten. In the 1870s, however, it experienced a revival. In 1872 a new edition was published, with a comment by Marx, saying why the manifesto was still important and which parts had been outdated. Numerous editions have followed since then and the manifesto became influential all over the world. Nowadays, this political pamphlet belongs to the classics of history.
When today you hear of the Communist Manifesto, maybe you think of an influential writing that contained maybe interesting ideas but that in essence was radical and dangerous. Maybe parts are quite extreme and maybe the list of ten measures for the advancement of the position of the proletariat somewhere halfway in the booklet was seen so in 1848, but I think that now in 2023 we judge it differently. Nowadays, many measures proposed are far from radical, and most of them have been realized. To give you an impression, here are some:
- Measure 2 wants to introduce a “heavy progressive or graduated income tax”. When Marx and Engels wrote this, no country had an income tax, but during the First World War (1914-1918) many European countries introduced such a tax and since then it is seen as just and correct. In 1980 in the Netherlands the highest tax bracket was as high as 72%! (now it is 52%, still a figure Marx wouldn’t have dreamed of). And doesn’t the influential French economist Thomas Piketty tell us that the present taxes on high incomes and on capital are too low? Also Bill Gates, one of the richest persons in the world, says that the taxes for the rich are too low.
- Measure 3 says “Abolition of all rights of inheritance”. In my country inheritance rights are undisputed, but inheritances in the second degree and further are heavily taxed.
- Measure 10 wants “Free education for all children in public schools. Abolition of children’s factory labour in its present form. Combination of education with industrial production, &c, &c.”. Also this demand has already been realized to a great extent if not fully in Europe and in many countries elsewhere in the world. However, still much is to be done in this respect.
But in 1848 there was still a long way to go, before such “radical” measures would be accepted.

Sources
- “The Communist Manifesto” in the Wikipedia.
- “The Communist Manifesto” in Britannica.
- “Karl Marx publishes Communist Manifesto” on history.com.
Plus the sources in the text.

Random quote
If philosophers are powerless, why are they murdered? Precisely because they are powerless. Ironically, they are targeted not because they are as a threat, but because they don’t count

Costica Bradatan (1971-)

What we don’t know we don’t know

Thinking is a difficult affair. Nobody is free from making mistakes when using arguments. Nobody is free from committing fallacies. Also professionals commit them, although they are supposed to argue correctly, since it may be a matter of death or life, or acquittal or conviction, if they don’t. But also judges commit fallacies, with sometimes disastrous consequences. Innocent people are sometimes sentenced to death. Or take some cases that now pop up in my mind: Nurses got long sentences as if they were mass murderers, because they were too often present when patients died. But isn’t it one of their tasks to help dying people and isn’t it obvious then that a nurse is more often present at the death of a patient than an average person? Nevertheless, it has happened several times that nurses were accused of murder (and sentenced) on grounds of a badly understood – so false – statistical analysis.
Also in politics fallacies abound. Politicians often don’t understand what they say; they don’t understand their own arguments. Nor do their followers. Even worse are the cases that politicians intentionally use fallacies and try to manipulate the people.
Also in less dramatic cases, it is important to know what is a correct argument and what is a fallacy. It can make life more pleasant, since it can help you avoid making mistakes, which are maybe not dramatic, but annoying anyway. Therefore, now and then I pay attention to fallacies, for everybody can commit them.
This time I want to discuss the fallacy that is called “Appeal to Ignorance”, or in Latin “Argumentum ad Ignorantiam”. As often, my description of the fallacy is based on a chapter from Robert Arp et al. 2019 (see source below) and also a bit on the Wikipedia.
The term “Appeal to Ignorance” was coined by the British philosopher John Locke (1632-1704). You commit this fallacy, if you think that a statement must be true because it has not yet proven false, or the other way round. In logical symbols:

~[proof that ~p] → p
~[proof that p] → ~p

Especially the version in logical symbols makes clear that “the fallacy uses lack of evidence as the grounds for accepting some claim” (McCraw, p. 106). It is a confusion between the categories “lack of evidence” and “presence of disconfirming evidence”. (106-7) That this fallacy is really an appeal to ignorance is illustrated by an example mentioned by McCraw (106). It’s a statement by the American senator Joe McCarthy from the early 1950s, when many people were falsely accused of being communist (implying that such a person is an enemy of the state): “I do not have much information on this except the general statement of the agency that there is nothing in the files to disapprove his Communist connections.” (106) Paraphrased: “I do not know that he is not X, so he must be X.” In fact, if I do not know that someone is not X, all options are open, besides being X, so also that he could be A or B or …or W or Y or Z or AA … etc.
The form of the Appeal to Ignorance just discussed is the basic form of this fallacy. However, it can have different forms that can all, in one way or another, be reduced to its basic form. I mention some:

May it not be that ~p? → p

In this “interrogative form” of the fallacy the ignorance in the argument is implied in the question. (107) For instance: “Isn’t it likely that John is a thief?” [although I actually have no proof that he is], implying that John is a thief.
Or take this case, which, I think, everyone will have encountered once:

  A: p
            B: Why?
            A: Why not?

Here the burden of proof is shifted by A to his opponent, while actually the burden of proof should be with A. (108) And if, as often happens, B doesn’t know how to answer the question “Why not?” (or doesn’t want to answer it), this is falsely seen by A as proof that p is the case (or A says so for manipulative reasons).
The upshot is that we only know that something is the case or not the case if we have evidence for it. Ignorance can never proof facts.

Source
- McCraw, Benjamin W., “Appeal to Ignorance”, in: Arp, Robert; Steven Barbone; Michael Bruce (eds.), Bad arguments. 100 of the most important fallacies in Western philosophy. Oxford, etc.: Wiley Blackwell, 2019; pp. 106-111.

Random quote
A philosopher who wants to make himself into a politician usually only manages to make a fool of himself

Costica Bradatan (1971-)

Must fake news be forbidden?

Recent research by the Netherlands Institute for Social Research, the national Dutch “Think Tank” on social and cultural affairs, shows that a majority of the Dutch wants that the national or EU authorities take measures against fake news on the internet. There should come rules stating what is not allowed and if necessary the freedom of expression should be limited. I’ll spare you the details, but in short this is what the majority of the people here in the Netherlands thinks and I assume that not only in the Netherlands but also in other countries that theoretically stand for the freedom of expression most people think so. Is it a good idea?
I think that there are good reasons to be worried about the fake news and disinformation on the internet. They can really cause much damage and be really threatening for some persons. Indeed, some so-called fake news is clearly false. Last week yet there was an internet message that the French schools would start the new year on the 18th of September to come, while in fact it started last week, the 4th of September. Or persons are threatened because false information has been spread about them. In other cases, people are offended by disinformation about them on the internet. These are clear cases that, moreover (the second and third case), hit persons directly. I think that nobody will be against stopping such clearly false information and protecting people against threats and insults in the way as always has been done. Nevertheless, generally I think that it is not a good idea to prevent and stop information on the internet that is considered fake or false, for generally it is not as clear as that. How often doesn’t it happen that what first is seen as fake later is judged to be true. For example, in the 13th century saying that the earth revolves around the sun was considered fake “news”. You could even be sentenced to the stake for saying so. At least in Europe this could happen. In the 17th century, however, there were already many people who believed the statement to be true, although in some countries it was still dangerous to say so (see what happened to Galileo). Now in the 21st century the statement is common sense. Nevertheless, people in the 13th century had good reasons to think that it’s not the earth that revolves around the sun, but that’s the other way round, for the Bible, then the highest authority in Europe, said so. This shows that what fake news is, is not only an objective fact but also a social affair and depends on what is known at a certain moment. As for the latter, in the beginning of the Covid 19 pandemic the Dutch National Health Institute said that wearing a face mask was not necessary (unlike what was said in many other countries or what the World Health Organization said), but later it changed its mind. It shows again that it is not easy to say what is true and right.
Establishing what is really true and right doesn’t come by itself. And as we have seen so often, if not too often, we can better not leave it to the authorities to tell us what to believe. If we would have done so, maybe we still would have to think that the sun revolves around the earth, or that the earth is flat. In case authorities establish what is right and true, it will happen too often that what is said to be fact in reality is fake. Moreover, too often such “false facts” are used for manipulation, if not they are constructed to that end. Then the defenders of the “facts” are not different from the producers of fake news and disinformation today. To prevent such an undesirable situation there is only one effective measure: freedom of information and expression. Only crystal-clear cases like those mentioned above should be stopped (but rather afterwards than beforehand; in fact, stopping them beforehand without censorship will hardly be possible). However, we must be careful to do so. Only if persons are explicitly in danger or are hurt, it should be done. Yes, it will make that there’ll remain much fake news and disinformation on the internet. But isn’t a growing repression of free information and of the freedom of expression worse, since this will be done more and more in the name of combatting fake news and disinformation?

Random quote
There are countless people who would think it scandalous to falsify a scientific text-book, but would see nothing wrong in falsifying an historical fact.

George Orwell (1903-1950)

Can AI have consciousness?

One of the intriguing questions in the debate about the implications of artificial intelligence (AI) is whether AI systems can have consciousness. Consciousness is a characteristic that is seen as typical for human beings, although some – if not many – animals have it to a certain extent as well. Self-consciousness is seen as the highest form of consciousness. Probably only human beings and a limited group of animals have it, like chimpanzees and elephants. It can be established only in an indirect way. For instance, if an animal recognizes itself in a mirror, it is assumed that it has self-consciousness. Once we know that a being has consciousness, maybe it is relatively easy to establish whether it has self-consciousness (for example with the mirror test), but what does it mean that a being has consciousness tout court? This depends not only on the facts, namely on the way a being behaves, but also on how we define “consciousness”. As for this, scientists and philosophers disagree. Moreover, once we know how to define consciousness, the next problem is how to know that a being has consciousness. In a sense, human beings and other beings are black boxes: we can study their behaviour and maybe the mechanisms that cause this behaviour, but not directly the feelings and other qualia etc., so the subjective experience, behind the behaviour, and just the possibility to have subjective experience is essential for having consciousness. Therefore, even if we can measure behaviour that is typical for having consciousness, we don’t know for sure whether the being that we study really has consciousness. It is possible that the being concerned is a zombie, as David Chalmers called it: It does show consciousness-related behaviour, but it doesn’t have the consciousness-related subjective experience, like for instance, human beings have. Therefore, such a zombie is behaviorally indistinguishable from a human being. The problem is then: How else can we distinguish it from a human?
Recently, a group of AI experts has published a report in which they try to answer the question whether AI systems can have consciousness. Now I must say that I do not have read the report but I have read only about it. Nevertheless, I think that I can write some reasonable words about it in this blog. In their report, the experts come to the conclusion that computers can have consciousness, although the present AI systems are not yet developed to that extent that we can call them conscious. Far from that. Nevertheless, the experts think that sooner or later conscious AI systems will exist and they discuss also several possibilities how such systems would be structured. This is very interesting and intriguing, of course, especially because people (so you and I) tend to think that such conscious AI systems are a kind of humanlike beings, like apes are, for instance, and then maybe even yet more developed; even yet more human than apes already are. But even if we do not personify such AI systems and keep seeing them as machines, we do ascribe to them a typical human characteristic, namely consciousness. And we do so in view of the behaviour of the AI system plus the structure of the AI system (the “machine”), so in view of what we know about its software and hardware. However, being consciousness is not only a matter of showing a certain type of behaviour and of having a certain structure (mechanism); it is also a matter of having the related subjective experiences. And how do we know that AI systems do have subjective experiences, when they show the related behaviour? In this respect, David Chalmers distinguished two kinds of philosophical problems: the easy problem and the hard problem. The easy problem is to establish that a being or an AI system behaves like a conscious being. It is done by measuring and explaining its behaviour from its physical structure and then conclude that the behaviour is how a conscious being should behave (or just not). However, how do we know whether a being or AI system really has subjective experience? This is what Chalmers calls the hard problem. As yet, no answer has been given how to solve it. So, even if an AI system behaves like a conscious being and its physical structure might make having consciousness possible, it is still very well possible that it is a zombie.

Some interesting links:
- https://www.volkskrant.nl/nieuws-achtergrond/ai-wetenschappers-en-filosofen-computers-kunnen-bewustzijn-hebben~b2a213b7/
- https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-02684-5

Random quote
Writing a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout of some painful illness.

George Orwell (1903-1950)

Travelling around

The house in La Villa near Bagni di Lucca, Italy,
where Montaigne had rented some rooms

When I publish this blog, I have just returned from a holiday in Norway. Norway is one of my favourite holiday destinations because of its beautiful landscapes and nature, so I have been there already many times and I have visited most of the country during the years, from Kristiansand to the North Cape. Only the eastern part of Finnmark in the extreme northeast is waiting yet for my visit. In 2020 my wife and I wanted to make a round trip in Sweden and Norway, to Stockholm and Oslo. However, we had to cancel it because of the pandemic. But at last we could go to Scandinavia again, although now we had chosen another destination: the region between Kristiansand on the south coast and Oslo.
Like often in the summer, we made a round trip without any specific planning. We had chosen the region, so we had booked a ferry to Kristiansand, and we had tickets for the opera in Oslo. But this was all we had planned before we left, so we had to look yet for places where to stay once we were there. It was a bit risky, for most of the time we made such a round trip we had our tent with us and then there is always a place on a camping site where you can stay. But now we had left our tent at home. If you need a camping hut or a hotel room, it’s always possible that they are already fully booked. In the end, it appeared not to be a problem.
I’ll spare you the details of the trip, for this is a philosophical blog and not a travel blog. Anyway, travelling around without a clear planning, is what I like most. However, I would not be a philosopher, if I would not think of the famous journey that Montaigne made in 1580 and 1581. He travelled from the north of France to Switzerland and then via Munich and Augsburg in Germany through Austria to Bagni di Lucca, Florence and Rome in Italy. From Rome he made also a round trip through central Italy. Montaigne returned to France only, when the king had ordered him to do so, because he had appointed him mayor of Bordeaux. Montaigne did so reluctantly and he didn’t hurry to reach Bordeaux.
Montaigne kept a travel diary and so we know much about this trip. From this diary, we get the impression that the journey was an unplanned round trip, in the way I often make them, though the French Montaigne specialist Philippe Desan thinks that Montaigne had a secret mission. Of course, both at the same time is also possible. Anyway, from his diary we know that Montaigne wanted to go to Rome and that his trip had a medical purpose as well, for he wanted to visit medicinal springs, hoping that he would be cured of his problem of kidney stones. So, Montaigne stayed not only several months in what he saw as the capital of the world, but also twice in Bagni di Lucca, a known spa resort in Tuscany. Montaigne stayed also in some other places he liked, so his journey was a bit like my round trips, although mine are usually only very short compared with his travel. But doesn’t everything go faster now than four centuries ago? Think of the current means of transport: In Montaigne’s time, you could not go faster than a horse could run. And when you travelled a long distance, you didn’t go much faster whether you travelled by horseback or on foot. Montaigne tells us in his dairy that, while he and his co-travellers used horses – friends and his younger brother travelled with him during a part of the trip –, their servants walked. Even if they had taken the shortest way to Rome, for this company the trip would have taken, say, two weeks, while nowadays you can do it within a few hours by air or in one or two days by car (depending on where you start in France).
What always has been an enigma for me is: How did Montaigne and his company find their overnight accommodation? Note that Montaigne’s company consisted of some twenty persons. When reading the diary, it never seemed to be a problem (actually Montaigne tells us only where he stayed himself; not where the others slept). Telephone and Internet did not yet exist, so did Montaigne reserve his accommodation by letter? Probably not, for his journey was not well planned, so he didn’t know when to arrive. Moreover, postal services in those days were slow, which could make booking an inn by letter a complicated affair. Did Montaigne (who was the leader of the company) send a servant to the next stop to reserve a place in the local inn? But what if the inn was already fully booked? If another company had already occupied the local inn? Maybe it was not difficult to find a place to stay in a big town like Augsburg, but Montaigne tells us also that he stayed in Seefeld, a little town in Austria, which had probably only one inn (Once when I was in Seefeld, I saw there an inn that was already 500 years old. I wonder whether Montaigne has stayed there). Maybe the inn in Seefeld had enough free rooms, when Montaigne arrived (and maybe the servants slept in a barn or somewhere else in Seefeld). But did it never happen that there was neither place in the local inn nor elsewhere nearby? When your fastest means of transport are your legs or a horse, you cannot go elsewhere to look for a place when the night is falling. But that’s a risk, when making a round trip.

Random quote
If an image is too good to be true, it is probably constructed, they think.

Carel De Keyser (1958-)

Hotel rooms

Look at the photo. It shows a hotel room. To be exact, it’s a hotel room in Brønnøysund in Norway. I took the photo when I was there on holiday many years ago. When on holiday, I always take photos of the hotel rooms where I stay. I didn’t get the idea to do so by myself but from the Belgian photographer Johan de Vos. In the 1990s, he wrote columns in the Dutch photo magazine Foto (which doesn’t exist any longer) about hotel rooms: a photo of the room plus a description and a comment. I liked the column and I decided to take pictures of all hotel rooms where I would stay. So, I did. Therefore, I have photos of all hotel rooms where I have spent the night the past 30 years.
The photo shows an average hotel room. Not really big, not really small. I have stayed in all kinds of hotel rooms during the years; small ones and large ones; simple ones and luxurious ones. But most of the time I stayed in hotel rooms like the one in the photo. You find there everything you need for a short stay: a double bed or two single beds (usually I travel with my wife); a bathroom and a toilet; a desk with a chair; an armchair; a mirror; sometimes a small table; a refrigerator, a TV set and sometimes a safe and a coffee maker, too. In the simplest hotel rooms you only find a bed, while luxurious hotel rooms can have much more, like two or more armchairs plus a bigger table; two TV sets; two rooms; two toilets; etc. The most luxurious hotel room I ever had, had a hall and several rooms and toilets; several TV sets and more, although I had asked only for a standard room. Apparently, the hotel was fully booked and therefore I got this apartment, for the price of a normal room, though not the special service that belonged to the apartment. The simplest hotel I ever had was a road hotel: only a bed and a little bathroom with sink and toilet and hardly any space to move. But let’s talk about a normal, average room like the one in the photo; just comfortable enough to stay there one, two, or maybe three nights but not much longer.
Hotel rooms may differ slightly from country to country, but generally they are everywhere the same. Some differences may exist, however. Hotel rooms in warmer countries often have stone floors and no carpets on the floor. The wall decorations and colours used may show regional influences or have regional pictures. However, especially in the bigger cities hotel rooms are the same all over the world, and often when you see only a picture of the room, you don’t know in which country it is; whether it’s a hotel room in Tokyo, New York or Amsterdam. You find differences mainly between hotel rooms in the countryside and in smaller towns. They may have a local look. But the differences are usually in the details.
A hotel room is a kind of passage. Hardly anybody stays there for a longer time. You come, stay there for a while and go. You take a hotel room only because you need or want to do something in or near the place. It is a temporary residence. Before you come there, another person or couple used the room; when you leave, others will take your place. You don’t know these people and you are also not interested to know them.
Just these characteristics make hotel rooms interesting from a philosophical and sociological point of view. They tell us something about a special category of people: travellers. They tell us what they need for a stay. Therefore, it would be interesting to compare contemporary hotel rooms with hotel rooms in the past and look what has changed. Of course, the TV set has been added in the course of the years, and the refrigerator as well; but what more? Moreover, there are categories of travellers. In the past, travellers were mainly businessmen, merchants and rich people with time and money to make a trip and to go on holiday. When other people travelled, they usually stayed with family, friends and acquaintances, or they didn’t go, and even the just mentioned categories often stayed with people they knew. It would also be interesting to compare hotel rooms for categories of people, and to see what is added to a hotel room if it is more expensive. Or to study regional differences, insofar they exist. It would tell us much about people on the way. For aren’t hotel rooms kind of pictorial descriptions of them?

Random quote
The photographic “shock” … consists less in traumatizing than in revealing what was so well hidden that the actor himself was unaware or unconscious of it.

Roland Barthes (1915-1980)

Passages

Look at the photo. I took it many years ago in Beja in Portugal. It shows two men walking across an open space that keeps the middle between a street and a square. Many people like it. However, it is not only photographically a good photo, but it is also a meaningful photo. Why?
My blog last week was about waiting. A related idea is passages. While waiting evokes a feeling of a standstill and the idea that it is fixed to a certain place, passages evoke a feeling of going from one place to another or the idea of a connection between two places, or sometimes also events that we have to go through, like passage rites that connect two phases in life. All this is expressed in the word “passage”, which means “going through”. So “passage” adds movement to waiting. We can also say that passage is waiting on the move. If a passage is a space, like in the photo, passages add a physical aspect to waiting.
If a passage is physical, for example a street or a corridor, it makes that we can abstract from the aspect of time and that passages can be there when nothing is happening, which is not possible for waiting. Waiting always involves the presence of people; of at least one human being. We can talk about a waiting room, if nobody is there, but actually we see the space involved then as a passage; the waiting as such is absent when nobody is there. On the other hand, a physical passage can be a passage, when nobody is there, so long as the idea of being used by humans is present at least in the background. When this idea lacks, there is no (longer) a passage, but there is simply a space.
Passages are an important aspect of the physical infrastructure of daily life. Take a town. It is a kind of infrastructure of people living together at some place. Living together doesn’t involve that they all need to know each other and go along with each other, but these people at least share a common space to live and in addition they share certain functions which make them to some degree dependent on each other. There are shops where you can buy what you need. There is a town hall where people work who make that the activities of the townspeople can go on in a smooth way. Etc. Of course, towns are open infrastructures in the sense that everybody, including non-townspeople, can go in and out. With this superficial description I want to give you an idea of what I am talking about.
To make that the physical movements of the townspeople are not a mess (going to the baker or to your work; to friends or to a meeting, and so on), a town has streets, squares, canals, and the like. They are the passages of a town. Note that a passage need not be only a passage. The function of a street can also be that it has houses where people live; squares can also be places where people meet. Both streets and squares can have shops or they can be marketplaces. They can have been made for concentrating just there important buildings, like government buildings or museums. But one of the main functions of streets and squares is that they are connections. In this way, streets and squares are planned spaces where people can pass from one place to another. They are passages (maybe besides something else). They are not the only passages you find in a town. I mentioned already waiting rooms, which are a kind of indoor passages, or I could mention railway stations and bus stops.
I began asking why the photo of this blog is meaningful. Unlike the photo in my last blog, which I took only because I was filling my time because I was bored, I took the photo of this blog, just because of its meaning. This photo doesn’t simply show a space that is neither a street nor a square. I didn’t take it just because it shows a photographically interesting town scenery. No, the socially significant aspect of this photo is that it is a passage and that’s why I took it. That it is a passage is stressed by the two men passing the space. They are not just walking there. They are a bit in a hurry. Apparently, they are passing the space on their way from one place to another. They unintentionally stress that the space is a passage. And that’s what the meaning of this photo is and what makes it interesting.
You find more photos of passing taken by me here and here.

Random quote
Although there is a sense in which the camera does indeed capture reality, not just interpret it, photographs are as much an interpretation of the world as paintings and drawings are.

Susan Sontag (1933-2004)

Waiting

Look at the photo. I took it a few weeks ago, when I visited a concert in Dortmund in Germany. The concert was excellent and one of the best I ever heard, but that’s not what I want to talk about. I want to talk about the photo.
The photo is very interesting, I think. I have taken it in the entrance hall of the concert house, so the hall where you come, when you enter the building. In the background you can see photos of artists who have performed in the hall in the past. I recognise the French countertenor Philippe Jaroussky, one of my favourites (third photo from the left). It’s a pity that he’ll not sing this evening, though he certainly would have fit in the cast, which performed Nicola Porpora’s opera Carlo il Calvo. What’s just outside the photo are the bar, where you can buy a drink, and the box office and information desk. However, most interesting is not the entrance hall itself and what you find there but the people in the hall.
In the centre of the photo, two attendants are standing behind a desk in front of the door that leads to the auditorium. They’ll check the tickets, when the visitors go to their seats. On the right, two women come from the toilet room. In the centre, in front of the attendants, a couple is standing near a table. They look bored. More to the left, a couple looks at something one of them has in his or her hands. Is it the programme of the concert? Apparently, they are talking about it. Far left, groups of people are talking with each other. In the foreground you can see two other attendants with things around their necks: they sell programme booklets. A woman opens her handbag. She wants to buy a booklet. Behind this woman, a man has two glasses with wine in his hands. Are both glasses for himself? One glass will be for the woman in front of him, although she makes the impression to ignore him. Then, a little bit more to the right, a man is reading in a programme booklet. The glass of wine on his table is already empty. His wife seems to be bored.
I’ll leave it to you to describe what the other people in the entrance hall are doing. All these people seem to do different things. In a sense this is true. Nevertheless, their activities – if you can call them activities – have one thing in common: the people in the hall are waiting. The concert has not yet begun, you cannot yet enter the auditorium and you have come well in advance, so that you need not to be in a hurry. The consequence is that you have to wait, and that you must fill the time that you are waiting. Each person does it in a different way. Some enjoy drinking a glass of wine. Others buy a program booklet and read yet some information about the concert. Again others have a social talk with partner, friends or acquaintances. Others are bored. Only the programme sellers are not really waiting but they are actively working.
I think that waiting is one of the most underestimated and ignored human activities. I have searched for studies about it on the internet, but I couldn’t find them. Nevertheless, we spend much time in life on waiting! Many people find it boring and look for useful activities to fill their waiting time. In the entrance hall, you buy a programme booklet and maybe you find yet some information there about the concert that you didn’t know. You drink a glass of wine, not because you are thirsty but because you simply enjoy it, and it fills your time. Other people “work” on their social contacts: they are networking. It’s not that they are preparing business contracts, but just talking with others helps maintaining their social relations. Again others don’t know what to do: they are bored.
I can say a lot more about this photo; about what the people there are doing and what the meaning of what they are doing is. However, I think that you understand what I want to say. At first sight, the photo seems to show nothing that is worth to talk about. Maybe, technically it is a good photo, but why would you take a photo of a group of people standing together or apart in a hall? Upon closer understanding, however, this photo is not trivial at all. It shows one of the most common pastimes in life and how we fill it: waiting. This photo also shows that all waiting is not the same, even when we are waiting for the same, which is a concert in this case. For some waiting is being bored; for others it is reading the programme booklet; for again others it is social talk; etc. All these activities are not activities of their own, but they are ways of waiting. In this sense, this photo captures in one image a sociological theory, a theory of waiting (a theory that must yet be written, though). The photo shows real life; life as it is.
By the way, I took this photo because I, too, was waiting for the concert and I didn’t know what else to do than taking this photo. Also this photo is waiting. The photo depicts itself. 

Random quote
We regard the photograph, the picture on our wall, as the object itself (the man, landscape, and so on) depicted there.

Ludwig Wittgenstein  (1889-1951)

How to become inspired

Inspiration does not come out of the blue. Everybody can become inspired, but you have to work for it. The essence is: fill your brain. Once your brain has been filled with the right stuff, ideas will get flushed out. This is the main lesson from Dijksterhuis’s book Inspiration and this is how creativity works. But all this is yet very abstract, although in my past blogs I have written already a little bit about the practice of inspiration. In order to get a better idea of how inspiration works, let me now follow the process step by step. Again this blog is based on Dijksterhuis’s book, but I don’t literally follow it. Below is how I see it after having read the book.
Ideally, we can discern six steps in the process of inspiration. Once, Gandhi was travelling somewhere in South Africa, but was thrown out of the train because he travelled first-class and non-whites were not allowed to do so, even when they had a first-class ticket (as Gandhi had). This inspired Gandhi to fight for the rights of the Indian people in South Africa. Fighting against repression became his leading theme of life, his evocation. However, how often doesn’t it happen that people think that they feel a calling, an evocation, to do something, to become someone, like a philosophical blogger, or someone who fights against repression, but then they see so many obstacles, or their plans are so vague that they don’t know how to realize their calling. Or after some time the evocation simply fades away. The process that started with your evocation can only go on when your motivation is big enough to try to overcome the obstacles, to avoid that your evocation fades away, etc.. In other words, you must be so motivated that you really begin to work on your plan. Such a motivation can be intrinsic or extrinsic. In Gandhi’s case it was both. He was simply outraged about his treatment in the train (intrinsic motivation) and if he didn’t want to accept the injustice done to him, he would have to change the law (extrinsic motivation).
If we have come that far, so if we have a theme of action and a motivation to act on it, the actual inspiration process starts. We can work on it hap snap, but then probably we’ll not come very far. In order to reach your goal, you must concentrate on it. For Gandhi this meant that he had to study the South African laws and the problems of the Indian population in SA caused by those laws; he had to win the support of the Indians in SA; and so on. However, such a concentration on the problem and on the world it belongs to can only be effective, if you are open to the opportunities that the world offers you. Look with an open eye at the world and let yourself being stimulated by the world you are in. By doing so, Gandhi developed his methods of nonviolent action. But often, ideas do not develop immediately after you have studied a problem, have listed your action possibilities, etc. Often it doesn’t immediately pop up in your mind what to do. You need some time to process the information you got. It needs some incubation period in your mind. This is not an activity you can do, for it is an unconscious process in your unconscious mind. I don’t know how Gandhi did it, but in India he lived some time in an ashram, a place of retreat. Moreover, Gandhi spent a lot of time spinning yarn, which is just the type of quiet activity that stimulates your unconscious mind. And when you do all this, then sooner or later, you’ll get ideas what to do, with a sense of eureka or in a flow.
And the sixth step? In fact, it’s not a step. It’s the grease that makes the steps seamlessly go into one another: transpiration. Or simply: work hard.

Random quote
Scientists live in a world full of controversies about what to accept as true.

Arjen Kleinherenbrink paraphrasing Bruno Latour (1947-2022)

The eureka feeling

Everybody knows it. Suddenly you have the feeling “I got it!”. You got an excellent idea. You got the solution of a difficult problem. You were already looking for it for a long time and you had invested a lot of time in it, but you couldn’t solve the problem. Then suddenly, during a walk, or when you take a shower or who knows when; at a moment that you were not thinking about it; then all at once: “I got it”. And even more, the solution seems very simple. “It cannot be true”, you think. Such a simple solution for such a complicated problem? You become euphoric. When this happens, you have the eureka feeling.
Not only problem solvers can get the eureka feeling. Artists can have it, too, when they get a brilliant artistic idea. Writers can also have it. Everybody can have the eureka feeling in the right circumstances.
The story goes that Archimedes (287-212 BC), a Greek mathematician and scientist, was asked to determine the volume of a certain object with an irregular shape, namely a golden crown. At that moment Archimedes didn’t know the answer, but, (and now I quote the Wikipedia) “while taking a bath [Archimedes noticed] that the level of the water in the tub rose as he got in, and realized that this effect could be used to determine the golden crown's volume. … Archimedes then took to the streets naked so excited by his discovery that he had forgotten to dress, crying ‘Eureka!’ ”, which is Greek for “I have found it”. (Greek: ηὕρηκα). Since then, this happy feeling of excitement to have made an important discovery, having got an important idea and the like is called the “eureka feeling”. If
Archimedes would have been an Englishman or an American, maybe we would have called it the “I-got-it feeling” or the “I-have-it feeling”.
The Dutch psychologist Ap Dijksterhuis tells us in his book Inspiration , chapter 7, that Wolfgang Goethe called the eureka feeling a “brilliant experience of the mind”. According to him, so Dijksterhuis, it had three characteristics: 1) It gives us a sense of god equality; 2) the eureka experience comes suddenly; 3) the eureka experience gives us “an idea of the eternal harmony of our existence”. A recent scientific article ascribed four characteristics to the eureka feeling, so Dijksterhuis: 1) The experience comes suddenly; 2) it causes a positive affect; 3) the person having the experience is convinced that the idea is correct; 4) the idea enters our conscious mind in an easy, smooth way.
The feeling involves also that the new idea is too good not to be true. Moreover, it is often very simple. However, this can make that after some time you start to think: The idea is so simple, so is it really new? Has anyone else not thought the same before and used the idea? This can make that you tend to keep the idea for yourself, for some time or for always.
More about it in my next blog, but how do we get an idea; especially an idea that can give us an eureka feeling? No, new ideas don’t come from nowhere. It’s not so that I, a philosopher and sociologist, suddenly can get a brilliant idea about, say, the origin of dark matter in the cosmos. Getting ideas is a matter of working hard. You must delve deep into your subject before you can get the kind of ideas that will give you a eureka feeling. You must study the ins and outs of your subject and be continuously busy with it. You must fill your unconscious mind with all knowledge you can find about your subject. And then, while you don’t know it, when your unconscious mind has time for it, it begins to process all you have put in it. Your unconscious mind is especially busy with it, when you are relaxing, so when it has some free time to pay attention to it; when it is not busy with your other daily sores, like your marital problems, the education of your children or how to become a better runner. And then suddenly, during a walk, when you take a shower or who knows when, at a moment that you are not consciously thinking about it, then suddenly it happens. Suddenly, it is “I got it!”. “It cannot be true”, you think. “Such a simple solution for such a complicated problem?” And then you become excited: “It’s true; I got it.” You become euphoric. When this happens, you have the eureka feeling.

Source:
Ap Dijksterhuis, Inspiratie. Hoe we tot grootse prestaties komen, chapter 7.

Imagination

No blog this week, because I have been on holiday. Instead, this photo. I hope that it triggers your imagination and gives you inspiration. Next week a blog as usual!

Random quote
From many sides, gifts are only counted as real gifts when the giver has spent money on it; to give what one has oneself appears to be shabby, illegitimate, insufficient.

Georg Simmel (1858-1918)

Inspiration

Two weeks ago I promised to write one or more blogs on the idea of inspiration, inspired, so to speak, by the book titled Inspiration by the Dutch psychologist Ap Dijksterhuis. “Inspiration” seems to be an inspiring word, for a short search on the internet showed me that the word is used as a name or title for a liqueur brand, for magazines, for a film, etc. etc. People see it as a positive value that can help to draw attention to what you have produced and want to promote.
The word inspiration has different meanings. For example, it can refer to Biblical inspiration, artistic or creative inspiration or to inhalation or breathing. It will be clear that it’s not the third kind of inspiration that I have in mind. Nor do I want to talk about Biblical inspiration, which refers to the supposed divine origin of the Bible. What I want to talk about is artistic or creative inspiration. In the Wikipedia a distinction is made between artistic and creative inspiration. Artistic inspiration should refer to creativity in artistic productions, while creative inspiration should refer to inventions (defined by the Wikipedia as unique or novel devices, methods, compositions, ideas or processes). I think that this distinction is not right and that artistic inspiration and creative inspiration are different expressions of the same basic process. Let me call this basic inspiration simply creative inspiration.
What then is creative inspiration, or – from now on – inspiration for short? My already rather old Collins Cobuild English Dictionary for Advanced Learners, which is my inspiration for correct English already for sixteen years when writing these blogs, says it this way: “Inspiration is a feeling of enthusiasm you get from someone or something, which gives you new creative ideas.” I think that it is a good characterization of what we mean by inspiration, whether you have become inspired as an artist, a writer, an inventor, a scientist or scholar, or also as a collector of, say, stamps or model trains. However, all this is yet very abstract, for it’s quite a difference, whether I get (as in my case) the idea to write a philosophical blog, which filled me with a feeling of enthusiasm sixteen years ago; whether I get the idea to write a blog about inspiration, which filled me with a feeling of enthusiasm an hour ago; or whether I am filled with a feeling of enthusiasm right now at this moment, because I am happy that I can type down these sentences, for example, because I just succeeded (with the help of some searching on the internet) to distinguish creative inspiration from other kinds of inspiration. Therefore, Dijksterhuis distinguishes three forms of inspiration (p. 31):
- Evocation: Your mission what you want to do or want to become. For instance that you want to become a writer or a philosophical blogger.
- The idea: Once you know what you want to become, you must have the inspiration for a concrete idea like a book or blog. For instance, that you want to write a fantasy novel about a young wizard, or, in my case, that you want to write several blogs about inspiration.
- The process: What is happening in your mind when you are developing your idea. For example, the process of how to structure your book, the popping up of the words in your mind when you are busy with writing the text of your book; or in my case the flow that comes from my mind that makes that I write these words for my blog.
This is what inspiration is. However, knowing what something is is not the same as knowing how you get it, and that is also so in the case of inspiration in all its forms. But everyone can become inspired, when he or she works hard for it, as Dijksterhuis shows in his book.

Random quote
Let us not seek our disease out of ourselves; ’tis in us, and planted in our bowels; and the mere fact that we do not perceive ourselves to be sick, renders us more hard to be cured.

Michel de Montaigne (1533-1592)

Of thumbs

Montaigne writes essays about all kinds of themes. Some themes are very personal while other themes are so banal that one wonders why he has written about them. For example, essay II 26 in his Essays is about thumbs. Why should you write about thumbs and what can you write about thumbs, if you are not a doctor? But Montaigne does. His essay on thumbs is short and on the face of it it tells us not more than the kind of “funny facts” that abound on the internet, for example on Facebook. So, Montaigne tells us that teachers in Sparta bit the thumb of a pupil in order to punish him. Or that a Roman soldier was exempted from service in case his thumb was wounded, which is pretty obvious, I think, for how to handle a sword, when you can’t use your thumb? Are such facts really word to mention and are they really worth to devote an essay to, even if it is only a short one? Apparently, Montaigne changed his mind later in life, for you find such essays only in Books I and II of his Essays and not in Book III, which he wrote much later, when he had become a mature man.
But are such themes really banal? In a sense they are: Life is short and you can spend your time better on more important subjects, so many people think. Besides that it’s always a question what is important and what isn’t, you can wonder, however, if one must always be serious. Moreover, I think that there is more. To say it short: Is what we call banal really banal? I don’t want to deny that banality exists, but many things that we find not worth to talk about and not worth to pay attention to can suddenly become important, when they are not there or when there is something wrong with them. Take thumbs. I think that there are not many people who would get the idea to write about such a “banal” theme like thumbs (if you are not a doctor). However, as Montaigne’s example of the Roman soldier shows, thumbs become important when they are hurt and even more so, when we miss it. A Roman soldier couldn’t fight when his thumb was hurt. When it had been cut off in a fight, I think he would have been dismissed, which is far from being banal.
In the same way, our daily life is full of banality. We go to the office, park our cars, do our shopping, clean the windows and peel the potatoes. Banality? Without this banality – or something like that, depending on where in the world you live and on which culture and society you belong to – the stream of life would not be possible or be deeply disturbed. Such routine – so “banal” – actions and events become suddenly important, when you are unemployed, poor or ill. Then you feel their importance. Maybe this kind of banality is one of the most important things in life. On purpose I write “this kind of banality”, since I don’t want to deny that “real” banality exists, though many of what is considered banal is not that banal as it seems at first sight.
That we ignore the normal routine and the normal things of daily life, says a lot about life today, I think. I wonder whether it isn’t a recent phenomenon, for in the past life was so full of risks and unexpected happenings that it was hardly possible to speak of routine. Also many normal daily activities lacked routine. Illness, death, accidents, war, hold-ups, sudden meetings (note that nowadays we call up when you want to meet someone, but until not so long ago you just walked or travelled to his or her house without giving notice that you would come) were once integrated in daily life. A big part of life was like a whirlpool. But medicine, social order, technology and so on have brought the life stream under control in many respects. For many of us banality set in and it became increasingly exceptional that the routine was broken. And so banality became a characteristic of modern society, but that doesn’t mean that what we now call banal has become less important than in the past.

Random quote
First they ignore you
Then they laugh at you
Then they fight you
Then you win.

Mahatma Gandhi (1869-1948)

How creativity works

Recently, I bought the book Inspiration by the Dutch psychologist Ap Dijksterhuis. Dijksterhuis is not only an outstanding psychologist but also a good writer, who well knows how to explain themes of general interest to a lay public. I bought the book because I find the theme interesting. For isn’t it interesting to read how your mind works, if you are a creative author? (In the end I wrote already almost thousand blogs plus a lot of other stuff, like articles and books; see this blog page) Moreover, I am also a photographer, and I always try to see the world around me in a new light and then to capture my view in a picture, hoping that others will grasp it (which not always happens). That’s one reason, why I bought the book: understanding myself. However, I bought it also because I am always looking for stuff for my blogs and I think that this book will certainly give me inspiration for a few blogs (and this is the first one). However. I haven’t had yet the time to read it, so I can only promise to write about it later, but I got the idea that it might be interesting to write here, how I think that I become inspired, and then I can later compare my ideas with Dijksterhuis’s expert view on the matter.
When you have already ideas popping up in your mind, it’s not so difficult to elaborate them, especially when you are an experienced writer, artist, photographer, etc. However, it’s more difficult to get inspiration when your head is empty, so to speak, and you urgently need inspiration, because there is a deadline. Also, for me, it can happen that I urgently need ideas, but as you can see, I always got my inspiration in time, for in those sixteen years that I am writing these blogs, I never missed my self-imposed deadlines (the rare occasions that I didn’t write my weekly blog happened always for particular reasons). Indeed, sometimes it’s time to write a new blog, but I don’t know what to write. Normally it is so that my mind is always attentive to certain things, and usually it is so that a new idea pops up in my mind automatically, if it fits the existing structure of what is already there in my brain, and so I get a new theme: A new idea is a new element that fits with what’s already there. But now and then, it doesn’t work.
Since I am also a photographer, I always watch the world around me not only with a philosophical eye but also with a photographic eye. Since my mind is also full of photographic themes, this makes that it often happens that a photographic idea pops up in my mind. It can be that I see a photographic object, and then I get my camera and take a photo. It’s in this way that most photos like these came about. Or it is, for example that I got the idea for a new photo project, and so photos like these were realized; or I just got the idea for a single photo. The photos of the latter link are also a bit accidental in the sense that it is difficult to plan them; you must simply have the idea of the theme in your mind and then take the pic at the moment you happen to pass the right object or scene. However, photos can also be planned, like those under this link.
So I got the ideas for my blogs and for my photos more or less in the same way. The difference is that the ideas for my photos often pop up when I am walking somewhere, or anyway when I am outdoors, while the ideas for my blogs often pop up when I am reading. Since I am an avid reader, there is a big chance that the week before I write a new blog, a useful idea settles itself in my mind. Maybe, it does when I am reading a newspaper, maybe it is when I am reading a book; though it can also happen when I am watching TV, or doing something else which has no relation to my blogs. And when I have too many ideas, I write them down for later. Anyway, both for photography and for writing, the essence is (at least for me) that I must have already a certain mental structure in my mind and I must be attentive. After all those years, that mental structure is certainly there, but I am continually busy (consciously or without being aware of it) to extend and to develop it.
Nevertheless, sometimes my mind lacks creativity. It’s empty, so to speak, and I don’t know what to write about. But no problem, there are tricks for this case. Since my study is full of books, especially philosophy books, I take one or a few that might be useful. Then it soon happens that I get an idea. For that’s how creativity works. Or in the case of photography, I just take my camera and go out. For if you have already a photographic mental structure in your brain, certainly soon a new idea will come up. But don’t think that inspiration can take place in an empty space. In an empty mind nothing can pop up. No thing comes from nothing. From nothing comes nothing.
What remains now is a promise: A blog about Dijksterhuis’s book.

Random quote
Texts are sometimes hung on the wall. But not theorems of mechanics.

Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951)