by Katalin Balog

This is the last in a series of four essays on subjectivity and objectivity. You can read part 1 here, part 2 here, and part 3 here.

"…tie me to earth…"

(Angel Damiel from Wings of Desire)

1. Mind and body

Descartes thought God could create a disembodied mind – indeed he thought angels are such beings. Consequently, he thought that mind and body are distinct and separate entities. The essence of mind, or what he thought was the same, the person, is to think, feel, perceive, reflect, understand, and doubt; bodies, whose essence is to occupy space, are in some sense external to persons. Having a body, though supremely important for actual human beings, is not part of what it is to be a person.

Others deny that disembodied minds – minds that exists in the absence of anything physical – are possible. According to most contemporary philosophers, minds can only arise in brains – or, perhaps, in other physical substrates, not to rule out the possibility of alien intelligence – though the details of what this means are controversial. But even these philosophers could assent to the possibility of a brain-in-the-vat scenario, in which a person survives as a mere brain, hooked up to appropriate input and output channels; or, perhaps less fancifully, to the possibility of a brain transplant. These cases suggest that my body is external to myself, much in the way my cat is external to myself.

Yet Descartes was also puzzled about the relationship of mind and body. As he muses in his Sixth Meditation, sensations of hunger, pain, and bodily feeling reveal that "I am …compounded and intermingled with my body, that I form, as it were, a single whole with it". In a letter to Princess Elizabeth, he suggested that it is hard, maybe impossible to understand clearly how mind and body can be both separate and a "single whole". My body reveals itself, rather than being external to myself, as myself, a piece of the physical world, but alive and suffused by soul. The notion of two separate things interacting – as Descartes thought mind and body were – doesn't do justice to our experience of the intermingling of the mental and the physical in our own body.

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by Amanda Beth Peery

Many articles have been written about the greatest Hamlet actors of all time and what they brought to the role. One such article, a 2014 New York Times piece, describes John Gielgud's 1930s Hamlet as "melodious and intellectual" while Laurence Olivier played "an expressly physical Hamlet of quicksilver mood changes and Freudian motivation." Not only did the two actors interpret Hamlet differently, but with the same lines and the same minimal stage directions, Gielgud and Olivier created different characters.

What if an actor could play your life? By speaking the "lines" with a different inflection, or moving differently around a room, what kind of character could they create? Could they play your life more truly or beautifully than you?

I wonder how the subjects of biopics feel watching the movies about their lives. How would it feel to see an actor (probably more attractive, more glamorous than you) recreating pivotal scenes and dramatic conversations from your past? In a biopic, the script is different than the exact words you said, but even so, I wonder if you would feel a strange kind of doubling. Would your memories begin to merge with the scenes in the movie? Is it possible that the movie scenes could feel truer than the memories of real experiences? If the lead actor played a scene with more empathy or beauty than the way it was in life, would you wish you could go back in time and act, in that circumstance, more like the actor?

One purpose of a biopic is "for both artist and spectator to discover what it would be like to be this person, or to be a certain type of person" writes Dennis Bingham, a film scholar. On the other side, can the subject of the biopic, watching the movie, discover what it would be like if they were a different type of person?

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by Yohan J. John

Scientists have long acknowledged the power of metaphor and analogy. Properly understood, analogical and metaphorical thinking are not merely ornamental aspects of language, but serve as a bridge from the known to the unknown. Perhaps the most important example of this process was the one that epitomizes the scientific revolution: Isaac Newton's realization that both heavenly and terrestrial bodies were governed by the same physical laws. A precise mathematical analogy exists between the falling of an apple and the orbit of the moon around the earth. The moon can be thought of as a really big and far-away apple that's "perpetually falling". Newton's analogy rests upon a broadening of the concept of free-fall — in other words, it involves a more abstract concept of motion. A couple of centuries later, James Clerk Maxwell recognized the process of generalization and abstraction as central to the scientific enterprise. The new sense of an idea, "though perfectly analogous to the elementary sense, is wider and more general. These generalized forms of elementary ideas may be called metaphorical terms in the sense in which every abstract term is metaphorical." We might go so far as to call metaphor the alchemy of thought — the essence of creativity.

Words like "abstraction" and "generalization" can often appear neutral, or even positive, depending on your intellectual tastes. But there are drawbacks to these unavoidable consequences of analogical thinking. The one that most often receives comment from scientists and philosophers is the fact that analogies are only ever partial: there are always differences between things and processes — that's how we know that they aren't identical in the first place. In other words, every abstraction involves a loss of specificity.

If scientists discover processes that are "perfectly analogous" to each other, as in the Maxwell quote above, then this loss is so minuscule that it doesn't cause any real problems. But in areas of active research, much more circumspection is required. When we propose that one system serve as a model for another that we don't understand, we must be careful not to lose sight of the inevitable differences between the model and reality. Otherwise we may confuse the map with the territory, forgetting that a map can only serve as a map by being less detailed than what it represents. As a model becomes more detailed, it eventually becomes just as complex as the real thing, and therefore useless as a tool for understanding. As the cybernetics pioneers Arturo Rosenblueth and Norbert Wiener joked, "the best material model for a cat is another, or preferably the same cat."

So the loss inherent in the process of analogy cannot be avoided through additional detail or specificity. In any case, any fastidious adherence to strictly literal language severely retards our ability to create new knowledge. If we seek any kind of usable understanding, we have to use analogy, taking care to watch out for the inevitable places where our analogies will inevitably break down.

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Jihad

by Sir Mohammad Iqbal

“The pen is mightier than the sword,”
preaches an imam from the pulpit.

In our era such sermons lack virtue: Don’t
talk of a Muslim with a dagger, speak

instead of a Christian gunrunner who
smears a striving for truth as unholy.

Ask: If war is immoral for the East,
is it not so for the West, and if truth

is the path, why are Western blunders
burnished and those of Islam broadcast?

Translated, from the original Urdu, by Rafiq Kathwari

by Elise Hempel

Did you catch it? Right before that commercial (or, if you have TiVo, right before your thumb plunged down on the double forward-arrow on the remote) on the NBC Nightly News on July 3rd. A little report on Chief Justice John Roberts' commencement speech at his son's 9th-grade graduation last month from Cardigan Mountain School, an elite boys' boarding school in New Hampshire. And after that report, a light-hearted little comment from Peter Alexander, the anchor replacing Lester Holt that night.

John Roberts' June 3^rd commencement speech to a class of 14-year-old boys and their parents/guardians is being described as "extraordinary," "a quiet rebuke to Trump" and "the best thing" he "wrote this term," is being praised for "bucking tradition." You may or may not have seen or heard any of the Chief Justice's speech, but here is a portion of what has gotten so much attention:

"Now the commencement speakers will typically also wish you good luck and extend good wishes to you. I will not do that, and I'll tell you why. From time to time in the years to come, I hope you will be treated unfairly, so that you will come to know the value of justice. I hope that you will suffer betrayal because that will teach you the importance of loyalty. Sorry to say, but I hope you will be lonely from time to time so that you don't take friends for granted. I wish you bad luck, again, from time to time so that you will be conscious of the role of chance in life and understand that your success is not completely deserved and that the failure of others is not completely deserved either."

Nice words. But soon after these words, within his remarks giving both "deep" and "simple" advice to the class – including not to act like the "privileged young men" that they are – quickly, snuck in between the serious stuff, there was this: "You've been at a school with just boys. Most of you will be going to a school with girls. I have no advice for you." (Laughter from the audience.) And, on the July 3rd NBC Nightly News, just after the video of Roberts making his joke, just before the cut to a commercial, this comment from Peter Alexander: "On that you will get no dissent here."

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by Max Sirak

July 4th makes me think about freedom. I'm not alone in this. Most people in the US get together with their friends and families, get drunk, eat meat, and watch or set off fireworks. This is what we're supposed to do to honor the United States as a sovereign nation and ourselves as sovereign individuals.

However, recently I haven't had the will to buy in. Last year I expressed as much in my column. I wrote about a speech Fredrick Douglas gave in 1852 and ended my essay with, "You're a slave. Now wake the fuck up and do something about it."

One of my colleagues, Katalin Balog, left a comment. "Lovely," she said, "I'll start doing something right away." Katalin's comment struck me and stuck. Usually after painting a dark and damning picture of our collective predicament, I like to offer actions we can take to counter.

But I couldn't think of any.

Now, 54 weeks later, with the help of a history professor, I'd like to correct my missteps. Better late than never, right?

Definition Of Terms

Timothy Snyder is the Levin Professor of History at Yale. He has a permanent fellowship in Vienna at the Institute of Human Sciences and serves on the Committee on Conscience for the US Holocaust Museum. Earlier this year Snyder wrote On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons From the Twentieth Century.

In his book, Professor Snyder defines tyranny as "the usurpation of power by a single individual or group, or the circumvention of law by rulers for their own benefit."

This is a broad definition. It doesn't play favorites with where the threats to democracy come from. It could be a sitting president, an oligarchy, global business interests, or any other entity. All that matters is the desire to increase and consolidate power through the subversion of the rules.

There's no need to point fingers or name names. I don't care about where you perceive the dangers. I'm here to offer you 20 ways to support democracy when you feel it's threatened.

But first we need to talk about inevitability, disenchantment, and eternity.

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by Christopher Bacas

The boss' daughter, Cherie, came with a warning label. A coworker, who babbled endlessly about evil Ayatollah Khomeini and our hostages, told me:

"She's a piece of work. Just let her take whatever she wants and stay the fuck outta her way."

One night, twenty minutes before closing, a woman's head appeared above the swinging doors. Under swollen lids, her dark eyes licked out.

"I'm Cherie Lasalle"

Her voice was low and slightly raspy.

"Yes, Miss Lasalle"

She walked behind the counter with a tray holding two plates.

"You new here?"

"Yes, Miss Lasalle"

"Is there any chicken?"

"No, Miss."

"Well, shit! When did you sell it?"

"A while ago. They only put a couple on the pit"

"That's stupid! Don't you sell more than that?"

While I served the last customers and tallied their bills, Cherie dodged around me piling up meat and side dishes, then dotted the tray with small boats of sauce and butter. I had to turn sideways so she could totter everything past me on stiletto heels. She sat at a booth in the back. A few minutes later a tall man arrived. He craned his neck and after seeing her, walked back. Her boyfriend was an Iranian student, Marwan Aref. They drove matching IROC Z-28s. Her Texas plate read: "CHERIE-L", his: "MAR-ONE". While the pair canoodled and giggled incessantly, I carried the 6 foot cutting board to the sink for scrubbing, cleaned and replaced all serving utensils and pans, then mopped the floor with scalding water and industrial degreasers. Rick and I usually smoked a joint after he locked the doors; not tonight.

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by Ali Minai

Following the shock of Brexit in Britain and the cataclysmic election of Donald Trump in the United States, there is much soul-searching, head-scratching and gnashing of teeth in liberal circles. Some see the end of democracy, others predict the collapse of liberalism, or at least of the liberal world order. The more sanguine speak of history's pendulum and some see both promise and peril in new technologies. A sub-genre of political analysis that has blossomed in these troubled times is the critique of cruel, corrupt neoliberalism that has abandoned the working classes in its search for a technocratic utopia powered by unbridled markets. For the most part, all these responses take for granted the existence of a well-defined liberal ethos, and – more importantly – its stability in human affairs. Not surprisingly, liberal thinkers see liberalism as inherently "better" than the alternatives, and approach their analysis from a "How will liberalism succeed?" viewpoint. Conservative critics, in contrast, see liberalism as a deviant human condition that seeks to subvert the "natural" order of things. Understandably, these views are regarded as contradictory. The central aim of this article is to argue that, in fact, accepting both viewpoints as valid may provide a better understanding of liberalism, its promise, its challenges, and its current state.

An early disclaimer is also in order: this article on a very complicated topic is intended as a "view from 36,000 feet", and does not speak to the microdynamics of activism by individuals and organizations. The world is full of good works on all sides of the political spectrum; the focus in this piece is on historical forces and long-term global patterns.

Political analysts often express amazement that, in many important instances, ordinary people support leaders and causes against their own rational interests. But this surprise stems from an idealized and rather inaccurate view of human decision-making as a rational process focused on optimizing economic costs and benefits. In the practical situations of daily life, people usually make choices driven by values, not calculation or analysis. And, as students of human nature have always realized, and as the recent work of behavioral economists has shown systematically, these values are instantiated in a toolbox of heuristics – rules of thumb – that suffice for reasonably good and highly efficient real-time decision-making, but often flout the rules of probability and logic. At different levels, this repertoire of heuristics is termed instinct, intuition, or common sense, and is identified with the "natural" – as opposed to calculated – decision-making. Amos Tversky – one of the pioneers in this field – famously termed these irrational heuristics "natural stupidity" as a tongue-in-cheek contrast with "artificial intelligence", and with the implication that, in fact, much of "real" intelligence arises from this "natural stupidity" rather than the logical rules that underlie theories of classical economics and artificial intelligence.

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Maluma and Takete

No offense to Shakespeare, but I've never quite bought into the philosophy that names are immaterial. Calling a rose by another name might not affect its smell, but it could well impact our association with the flower.

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TV, Bronx News 6/30/17

Gun again.
In this case a pissed-off
former employee
with a not-so-extraordinary
sense of personal privilege
to take life by right,
which in the American zeitgeist
has become popular as
an act of self expression afforded
by liberty through an amendment to law
lucrative to private sector arms interests
who live by death through means of tiny explosions
of sulfur and saltpeter mixed with charcoal
which send chunks of lead by click of triggers
into the boney meat of flesh and blood
to end the only real thing
anyone ever has

Jim Culleny
6/30/17
.

by Holly A. Case

National Library, Sarajevo, 1994

Last November in Vienna, a number of us met to discuss what the outcome of the US election could mean. Because it was too early to tell, much of the conversation focused on parts of the world where leaders who had honed rhetoric and positions like Trump's years earlier had begun to translate them into concrete policies, namely in Russia, Hungary, Turkey, and Poland.

The group included a Bulgarian novelist, two Austrian high school students who had spent a year abroad in the US, a magazine editor, a cultural entrepreneur, and a spattering of graduate students and academics from various disciplines—from medieval studies to political science—and countries (the US, India, Canada, Poland, Hungary, Mexico, Austria, and Bulgaria, to name a few). What those present had in common was middle-class status and a penchant for reading, thinking, and studying, even if some of our lineages were often humbler (more than a few of us were first generation off the farm or factory, and as many had grown up in rural areas). Once all this was established, one of the Bulgarians wondered: "What if this isn't the end of the world. What if it's just the end of our world?"

Those two sentences have haunted me ever since. The late East German novelist Christa Wolf, who was a member of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (the ruling party of East Germany) from 1949 until a few months before the fall of the Berlin Wall, once recalled the first time she watched a Bertolt Brecht play. The year was 1950, and Brecht himself was sitting nearby in the audience. Wolf watched as the leftist playwright "shook with laughter" throughout the performance: "I would not have dared to laugh at all the places where Brecht had to laugh," she admitted. "His disrespect for the ‘bourgeois tragedy' drove us to distraction." It reminded me of my own reaction to Michael Haneke's Funny Games. Not funny.

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by Richard King

The British have always been wary of modern architecture, the British upper crust especially so. From the Prince of Wales and his "monstrous carbuncles" to Sir John Betjeman and his iambic fantasies about "heavy bombs" raining down on Slough, a deep suspicion of architectural modernism would appear to be the default position of the bluebloods and their literary hangers-on. The prejudice is perhaps most wittily expressed in Evelyn Waugh's Decline and Fall, in the figure of architect Otto Silenus. Silenus is talking to a journalist who has come to inspect his "surprising creation of ferro-concrete and aluminium". "The problem of architecture as I see it," he says, "is the problem of all art – the elimination of the human element from the consideration of the form."

Well, it wasn't modernism that did for the "human element" in Grenfell Tower two weeks ago, though it's clear that the attempts to prettify that building for the sake of the surrounding residents – some of the richest people in the world, mark you – had a fundamental part to play. For whatever one thinks of the "brutalist" style of that 24-story tower block, it was built with working people in mind, at the ragged end of Britain's post-war, social-democratic settlement. No, what did for Grenfell's tenants, 80 of whom are now known to have died, was the extent to which, and the manner in which, that settlement was undermined over decades. Their home, or what is left of it, is now a blackened monument to another kind of "decline": the "managed decline" of poor neighbourhoods as a central plank of the ideology we've come to know as neoliberalism.

"How the fuck does that even happen?" asks one fire-fighter on the way to the emergency, his horror caught in smart-phone footage taken in the small hours of 14 June. There's a technical answer to that question, of course, but there's also a political one; and, infuriatingly for those who would treat politics as something above or beyond lived experience (more on them a little later), the two are related in the most mundane ways possible, in ways that are sure to be labelled "criminal" even if they aren't labelled "manslaughter" or "murder" (more on that word later, too). This was not a "tragic accident"; it was the consequence of years of nihilism and neglect.

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by Muhammad Aurangzeb Ahmad

A cultural shift in our understanding of the arbitration of the truth is afoot. The shift is subtle but it has been creeping up in the collective unconscious for the last decade or so. Discourse on alternative facts and fake news has come to prominence since the last US presidential election and Brexit. This phenomenon is however not new but has a long and notorious lineage: Propaganda is as old as human civilization. The Nazi minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels is well known for developing a master plan for spreading false information and influencing the German populace. The Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact nations had their own versions of “truths” where all of history was rewritten through the singular lens of Marxism. The supposed end of history with the Fall of Soviet Union did not end the need for propaganda. People and states still need to spread misinformation as before. There is however one thing that has changed about spreading mass misinformation: In prior times, spreading falsehood on a massive scale almost always required access to state resources. Then the internet happened followed by the rise of social media; this has made the spread of misinformation on a global scale a truly democratic endeavor.

What then, is the effect of this democratization? For all practical purposes, “truth” has become synonymous with what gels with one’s values and what is accessible. When people look for information online, the search engine ranking determines what information that they are exposed to. Most people do not click after the first few pages when going through searching results. The implication here being that to get your version of facts heard you need to have your web pages at the top of the search results. In other words, searching engine optimization becomes part of the propaganda process. Alternatively, you may be one of those people who do not trust Google or Bing because of its supposed liberal bias. In that case Facebook is your friend as you can readily get information from your friends who are likely to have the same biases as you. This is not to suggest that the information bubbles are limited to the conservative segments of the society. Manipulating Wikipedia to suit one’s agenda is also a well-studied phenomenon. But if you are one of those people who think that Wikipedia is too liberal and too mainstream then there is Conservapedia which seeks to provide a ‘corrective’ to the Wikipedia from a conservative perspective. What is common in these examples is the democratization of means of production of information.

The amount of misinformation that could be pumped into the news cycle has traditionally been constrained by the number of people who are dedicated to the cause of spreading the information, their access to technologies to spread information and the biological constraints with respect to the amount of effort that one can spend in day e.g., everyone need to sleep to properly function. The arrival of intelligent bots and other automation tools on social media now allow wannabe propagandists to transcend such limitations. So, what does the future of misinformation look like? We already have systems that can write news stories. In the near future one would be able to give these systems cues regarding what kind of news to generate and lo and behold they could generate tens of thousands of reasonable sounding news stories with varying levels of untruths embedded in them.

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